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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17867-8.txt b/17867-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8655ca1 --- /dev/null +++ b/17867-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15714 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Helpmate, by May Sinclair + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Helpmate + + +Author: May Sinclair + + + +Release Date: February 26, 2006 [eBook #17867] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE*** + + +E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +THE HELPMATE + +by + +MAY SINCLAIR + +Author of "The Divine Fire," "Superseded," "Audrey Craven," Etc. + + + + + + + +New York +Henry Holt and Company +1907 +The Quinn & Boden Co. Press +Rahway, N.J. + + + + + +BOOK I + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +It was four o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Walter Majendie still lay on +the extreme edge of the bed, with her face turned to the dim line of sea +discernible through the open window of the hotel bedroom. + +Since midnight, when she had gone to bed, she had lain in that +uncomfortable position, motionless, irremediably awake. Mrs. Walter +Majendie was thinking. + +At first the night had gone by her unperceived, black and timeless. Now +she could measure time by the dull progress of the dawn among the objects +in the room. A slow, unhappy thing, born between featureless grey cloud +and sea, it had travelled from the window, shimmered in the watery square +of the looking-glass, and was feeling for the chair where her husband had +laid his clothes down last night. He had thought she was asleep, and had +gone through his undressing noiselessly, with movements of angelic and +elaborate gentleness that well-nigh disarmed her thought. He was sleeping +now. She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing. Only the +other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and +heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine +unconsciousness of sleep. The childlike, huddled posture of the sleeper +had then stirred her heart to an unimaginable tenderness. + +Now she had got to think, to adjust a new and devastating idea to a +beloved and divine belief. + +Somewhere in the quiet town a church clock clanged to the dawn, and the +sleeper stretched himself. The five hours' torture of her thinking wrung +a low sob from the woman at his side. + +He woke. His hand searched for her hand. At his touch she drew it away, +and moved from under her cramped shoulder the thick, warm braid of her +hair. It tossed a gleam of pale gold to the risen light. She felt his +drowsy, affectionate fingers pressing and smoothing the springy bosses of +the braid. + +The caress kindled her dull thoughts to a point of flame. She sat up and +twisted the offending braid into a rigid coil. + +"Walter," she said, "_who_ is Lady Cayley?" + +She noticed that the name waked him. + +"Does it matter now? Can't you forget her?" + +"Forget her? I know nothing about her. I want to know." + +"Haven't you been told everything that was necessary?" + +"I've been told nothing. It was what I heard." + +There was a terrible stillness about him. Only his breath came and went +unsteadily, shaken by the beating of his heart. + +She quieted her own heart to listen to it; as if she could gather from +such involuntary motions the thing she had to know. + +"I know," she said, "I oughtn't to have heard it. And I can't believe +it,--I don't, really." + +"Poor child! What is it that you don't believe?" + +His calm, assured tones had the force of a denial. + +"Walter--if you'd only say it isn't true--" + +"What Edith told you?" + +"Edith? Your sister? No; about that woman--that you--that she--" + +"Why are you bringing all that up again, at this unearthly hour?" + +"Then," she said coldly, "it _is_ true." + +His silence lay between them like a sword. + +She had rehearsed this scene many times in the five hours; but she had +not prepared herself for this. Her dread had been held captive by her +belief, her triumphant anticipation of Majendie's denial. + +Presently he spoke; and his voice was strange to her as the voice of +another man. + +"Anne," he said, "didn't she tell you? It was before I knew you. And it +was the only time." + +"Don't speak to me," she cried with a sudden passion, and lay shuddering. + +She rose, slipped from the bed, and went to a chair that stood by the +open window. There she sat, with her back to the bed, and her eyes +staring over the grey parade and out to the eastern sea. + +"Anne," said her husband, "what are you doing there?" + +Anne made no answer. + +"Come back to bed; you'll catch cold." + +He waited. + +"How long are you going to sit there in that draught?" + +She sat on, upright, immovable, in her thin nightgown, raked by the keen +air of the dawn. Majendie raised himself on his elbow. He could just see +her where she glimmered, and her braid of hair, uncoiled, hanging to her +waist. Up till now he had been profoundly unhappy and ashamed, but +something in the unconquerable obstinacy of her attitude appealed to the +devil that lived in him, a devil of untimely and disastrous humour. The +right thing, he felt, was not to appear as angry as he was. He sat up on +his pillow, and began to talk to her with genial informality. + +"See here,--I suppose you want an explanation. But don't you think we'd +better wait until we're up? Up and dressed, I mean. I can't talk +seriously before I've had a bath and--and brushed my hair. You see, +you've taken rather an unfair advantage of me by getting out of bed." +(He paused for an answer, and still no answer came.)--"Don't imagine I'm +ignobly lying down all the time, wrapped in a blanket. I'm sitting on my +pillow. I know there's any amount to be said. But how do you suppose I'm +going to say it if I've got to stay here, all curled up like a blessed +Buddha, and you're planted away over there like a monument of all the +Christian virtues? Are you coming back to bed, or are you not?" + +She shivered. To her mind his flippancy, appalling in the circumstances, +sufficiently revealed the man he was. The man she had known and married +had never existed. For she had married Walter Majendie believing him to +be good. The belief had been so rooted in her that nothing but his own +words or his own silence could have cast it out. She had loved Walter +Majendie; but it was another man who called to her, and she would not +listen to him. She felt that she could never go back to that man, never +sit in the same room, or live in the same house with him again. She would +have to make up her mind what she would do, eventually. Meanwhile, to get +away from him, to sit there in the cold, inflexible, insensitive, to +obtain a sort of spiritual divorce from him, while she martyrised her +body which was wedded to him, that was the young, despotic instinct she +obeyed. + +"If you won't come," he said, "I suppose it only remains for me to go." + +He got up, took Anne's cloak from the door where it hung, and put it +tenderly about her shoulders. + +"Whatever happens or unhappens," he said, "we must be dressed." + +He found her slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back +and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that +Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an +insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable +nervousness. Anne, not recognising the utterance of his helpless +humanity, put that laugh down to the account of the devil that had +insulted her. Her heart grew harder. + +"I am clothed, and in my right mind," said Majendie, standing before her +with his hand on the window sill. + +She looked up at him, at the face she knew, the face that (oddly, it +seemed to her) had not changed to suit her new conception of him, that +maintained its protest. She had loved everything about him, from the +dark, curling hair of his head to his well-finished feet; she had loved +his slender, virile body, and the clean red and brown of his face, the +strong jaw and the mouth that, hidden under the short moustache, she +divined only to be no less strong. More than these things she had loved +his eyes, the dark, bright dwelling-places of the "goodness" she had +loved best of all in him. Used to smiling as they looked at her, they +smiled even now. + +"If you'll take my advice," he said, "you'll go back to your warm bed. +You shall have the whole place to yourself." + +And with that he left her. + +She rose, went to the bed, arranged the turned-back blanket so as to hide +the place where he had lain, and slid on to her knees, supporting herself +by the bedside. + +Never before had Anne hurled herself into the heavenly places in +turbulence and disarray. It had been her wont to come, punctual to some +holy, foreappointed hour, with firm hands folded, with a back that, even +in bowing, preserved its pride; with meek eyes, close-lidded; with +breathing hushed for the calm passage of her prayer; herself marshalling +the procession of her dedicated thoughts, virgins all, veiled even before +their God. + +Now she precipitated herself with clutching hands thrown out before her; +with hot eyes that drank the tears of their own passion; with the shamed +back and panting mouth of a Magdalen; with memories that scattered the +veiled procession of the Prayers. They fled before her, the Prayers, in a +gleaming tumult, a rout of heavenly wings that obscured her heaven. When +they had vanished a sudden vagueness came upon her. + +And then it seemed that the storm that had gone over her had rolled her +mind out before her, like a sheet of white-hot iron. There was a record +on it, newly traced, of things that passion makes indiscernible under its +consuming and aspiring flame. Now, at the falling of the flame, the faint +characters flashed into sight upon the blank, running in waves, as when +hot iron changes from white to sullen red. Anne felt that her union with +Majendie had made her one with that other woman, that she shared her +memory and her shame. For Majendie's sake she loathed her womanhood that +was yesterday as sacred to her as her soul. Through him she had conceived +a thing hitherto unknown to her, a passionate consciousness and hatred of +her body. She hated the hands that had held him, the feet that had gone +with him, the lips that had touched him, the eyes that had looked at him +to love him. Him she detested, not so much on his own account, as because +he had made her detestable to herself. + +Her eyes wandered round the room. Its alien aspect was becoming +transformed for her, like a scene on a tragic stage. The light had +established itself in the windows and pier-glasses. The wall-paper was +flushing in its own pink dawn. And the roses bloomed again on the grey +ground of the bed-curtains. These things had become familiar, even dear, +through their three days' association with her happy bridals. Now the +room and everything in it seemed to have been created for all time to be +the accomplices and ministers of her degradation. They were well +acquainted with her and it; they held foreknowledge of her, as the +pier-glass held her dishonoured and dishevelled image. + +She thought of her dead father's house, the ivy-coated Deanery in the +south, and of the small white bedroom, a girl's bedroom that had once +known her and would never know her again. She thought of her father and +mother, and was glad that they were dead. Once she wondered why their +death had been God's will. Now she saw very clearly why. But why she +herself should have been sent upon this road, of all roads of suffering, +was more than Anne could see. + +She, whose nature revolted against the despotically human, had schooled +herself into submission to the divine. Her sense of being supremely +guided and protected had, before now, enabled her to act with decision +in turbulent and uncertain situations of another sort. Where other people +writhed or vacillated, Anne had held on her course, uplifted, +unimpassioned, and resigned. Now she was driven hither and thither, +she sank to the very dust and turned in it, she saw no way before her, +neither her own way nor God's way. + +Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless. If her +husband's body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood +beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his +spirit. But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her love, love +that had already given itself over, too weak to struggle against +dissolution, it was as if she had seen some horrible reversal of the +law of death, spirit returning to earth, the incorruptible putting on +corruption. + +Not only was her house of life made desolate; it was defiled. Dumb and +ashamed, she abandoned herself like a child to the arms of God, too +agonised to pray. + +An hour passed. + +Then slowly, as she knelt, the religious instinct regained possession of +her. It was as if her soul had been flung adrift, had gone out with the +ebb of the spiritual sea, and now rocked, poised, waiting for the turn of +the immortal tide. + +Her lips parted, almost mechanically, in the utterance of the divine +name. Aware of that first motion of her soul, she gathered herself +together, and concentrated her will upon some familiar prayer for +guidance. For a little while she prayed thus, grasping at old shadowy +forms of petition as they went by her, lifting her sunken mind by main +force from stupefaction; and then, it was as if the urging, steadying +will withdrew, and her soul, at some heavenly signal, moved on alone into +the place of peace. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +It was broad daylight outside. A man was putting out the lights one by +one along the cold little grey parade. A figure, walking slowly, with +down-bent head, was approaching the hotel from the pier. Anne recognised +it as that of her husband. Both sights reminded her that her life had to +be begun all over again, and to go on. + +Another hour passed. Majendie had sent up a waitress with breakfast to +her room. He was always thoughtful for her comfort. It did not occur to +her to wonder what significance there might be in his thus keeping away +from her, or what attitude toward her he would now be inclined to take. +She would not have admitted that he had a right to any attitude at all. +It was for her, as the profoundly injured person, to decide as to the new +disposal of their relations. + +She was very clear about her grievance. The facts, that her husband had +been pointed at in the public drawing-room of their hotel; that the +terrible statement she had overheard had been made and received casually; +that he had assumed, no less casually, her knowledge of the thing, all +bore but one interpretation: that Walter Majendie and the scandal he had +figured in were alike notorious. The marvel was that, staying in the town +where he lived and was known, she herself had not heard of it before. A +peculiarly ugly thought visited her. Was it possible that Scarby was the +very place where the scandal had occurred? + +She remembered now that, when she had first proposed that watering-place +for their honeymoon, he had objected on the ground that Scarby was full +of people whom he knew. Besides, he had said, she wouldn't like it. But +whether she would like it or not, Anne, who had her bridal dignity to +maintain, considered that in the matter of her honeymoon his wishes +should give way to hers. She was inclined to measure the extent of his +devotion by that test. Scarby, she said, was not full of people who knew +_her_. Anne had been insistent and Majendie passive, as he was in most +unimportant matters, reserving his energies for supremely decisive +moments. + +Anne, bearing her belief in Majendie in her innocent breast, failed at +first to connect her husband with the remarkable intimations that passed +between the two newcomers gossiping in the drawing-room before dinner. +They, for their part, had no clue linking the unapproachably strange lady +on the neighbouring sofa with the hero of their tale. The case, they +said, was "infamous." At that point Majendie had put an end to his own +history and his wife's uncertainty by entering the room. Three words and +a look, observed by Anne, had established his identity. + +Her mind was steadied by its inalienable possession of the facts. She had +returned through prayer to her normal mood of religious resignation. She +tried to support herself further by a chain of reasoning. If all things +were divinely ordered, this sorrow also was the will of God. It was the +burden she was appointed to take up and bear. + +She bathed and dressed herself for the day. She felt so strange +to herself in these familiar processes that, standing before the +looking-glass, she was curious to observe what manner of woman she had +become. The inner upheaval had been so profound that she was surprised +to find so little record of it in her outward seeming. + +Anne was a woman whose beauty was a thing of general effect, and the +general effect remained uninjured. Nature had bestowed on her a body +strongly made and superbly fashioned. Having framed her well, she +coloured her but faintly. She had given her eyes of a light thick grey. +Her eyebrows, her lashes, and her hair were of a pale gold that had ashen +undershades in it. They all but matched a skin honey-white with that +even, sombre, untransparent tone that belongs to a temperament at once +bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the +significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the +forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the +slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a +hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in +modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with +the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself +she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the thin +rose of the upper lip, foreshortened it, and gave to its low arc the +emphasis of a curve, the vivacity of a dimple (Anne's under lip was +straight as the tense string of a bow). When she spoke or smiled Anne's +mole seemed literally to catch up her lip against its will, on purpose to +show the small white teeth below. Majendie loved Anne's mole. It was that +one charming and emphatic fault in her face, he said, that made it human. +But Anne was ashamed of it. + +She surveyed her own reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went +through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the +back of her irreproachable coat, arranging her delicate laces with a +deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in +that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie +admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he +could have seen in her--after Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's personality +she had not permitted herself so much as to guess. Enough that the woman +was notorious--infamous. + +There was a knock at the door, the low knock she had come to know, and +Majendie entered in obedience to her faint call. + +The hours had changed him, given his bright face a tragic, submissive +look, as of a man whipped and hounded to her feet. + +He glanced first at the tray, to see if she had eaten her breakfast. + +"There are some things I should like to say to you, with your permission. +But I think we can discuss them better out of doors." + +He looked round the disordered room. The associations of the place were +evidently as painful to him as they were to her. + +They went out. The parade was deserted at that early hour, and they found +an empty seat at the far end of it. + +"I, too," she said, "have things that I should like to say." + +He looked at her gravely. + +"Will you allow me to say mine first?" + +"Certainly; but I warn you, they will make no difference." + +"To you, possibly not. They make all the difference to me. I'm not going +to attempt to defend myself. I can see the whole thing from your point of +view. I've been thinking it over. Didn't you say that what you heard you +had not heard from Edith?" + +"From Edith? Never!" + +"When did you hear it, then?" + +"Yesterday afternoon." + +"From some one in the hotel?" + +"Yes." + +"From whom? Not that it matters." + +"From those women who came yesterday. I didn't know whom they were +talking about. They were talking quite loud. They didn't know who I was." + +"You say you didn't know whom they were talking about?" + +"Not at first--not till you came in. Then I knew." + +"I see. That was the first time you had heard of it?" + +Her lips parted in assent, but her voice died under the torture. + +"Then," he said, "I am profoundly sorry. If I had realised that, I would +not have spoken to you as I did." + +The memory of it stung her. + +"That," she said, "was--in any circumstances--unpardonable." + +"I know it was. And I repeat, I am profoundly sorry. But, you see, I +thought you knew all the time, and that you had consented to forget it. +And I thought, don't you know, it was--well, rather hard on me to have it +all raked up again like that. Now I see how very hard it was on you, +dear. Your not knowing makes all the difference." + +"It does indeed. If I _had_ known----" + +"I understand. You wouldn't have married me?" + +"I should not." + +"Dear--do you suppose I didn't know that?" + +"I know nothing." + +"Do you remember the day I asked you why you cared for me, and you said +it was because you knew I was good?" + +Her lip trembled. + +"And of course I know it's been an awful shock to you to discover +that--I--was _not_ so good." + +She turned away her face. + +"But I never meant you to discover it. Not for yourself, like this. I +couldn't have forgiven myself--after what you told me. I meant to have +told you myself--that evening--but my poor little sister promised me that +she would. She said it would be easier for you to hear it from her. Of +course I believed her. There _were_ things she could say that I +couldn't." + +"She never said a word." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Perfectly. Except--yes--she _did_ say----" + +It was coming back to her now. + +"Do you mind telling me exactly what she said?" + +"N--no. She made me promise that if I ever found things in you that I +didn't understand, or that I didn't like----" + +"Well--what did she make you promise?" + +"That I wouldn't be hard on you. Because, she said, you'd had such a +miserable life." + +"Poor Edith! So that was the nearest she could get to it. Things you +didn't understand and didn't like!" + +"I didn't know what she meant." + +"Of course you didn't. Who could? But I'm sorry to say that Edith made me +pretty well believe you did." + +He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister's +strange duplicity. Apparently he gave it up. + +"You can't be a brute to a poor little woman with a bad spine," said he; +"but I'm not going to forgive Edith for that." + +Anne flamed through her pallor. "For what?" she said. "For not having had +more courage than yourself? Think what you put on her." + +"I didn't. She took it on herself. Edith's got courage enough for +anybody. She would never admit that her spine released her from all moral +obligations. But I suppose she meant well." + +The spirit of the grey, cold morning seemed to have settled upon Anne. +She gazed sternly out over the eastern sea. Preoccupied with what he +considered Edith's perfidy, he failed to understand his wife's silence +and her mood. + +"Edith's very fond of you. You won't let this make any difference between +you and her?" + +"Between her and me it can make no difference. I am very fond of Edith." + +"But the fact remains that you married me under false pretences? Is that +what you mean?" + +"You may certainly put it that way." + +"I understand your point of view completely. I wish you could understand +mine. When Edith said there were things she could have told you that I +couldn't, she meant that there were extenuating circumstances." + +"They would have made no difference." + +"Excuse me, they make all the difference. But, of course, there's no +extenuation for deception. Therefore, if you insist on putting it that +way--if--if it has made the whole thing intolerable to you, it seems to +me that perhaps I ought, don't you know, to release you from your +obligations----" + +She looked at him. She knew that he had understood the meaning and the +depth of her repugnance. She did not know that such understanding is +rare in the circumstances, nor could she see that in itself it was a +revelation of a certain capacity for the "goodness" she had once believed +in. But she did see that she was being treated with a delicacy and +consideration she had not expected of this man with the strange devil. +It touched her in spite of her repugnance. It made her own that she had +expected nothing short of it until yesterday. + +"_Do_ you insist?" he went on. "After what I've told you?" + +"After what you've told me--no. I'm ready to believe that you did not +mean to deceive me." + +"Doesn't that make any difference?" he asked tenderly. + +"Yes. It makes some difference--in my judgment of you." + +"You mean you're not--as Edith would say--going to be too hard on me?" + +"I hope," said Anne, "I should never be too hard on any one." + +"Then," he inquired, eager to be released from the strain of a most +insupportable situation, "what are we going to do next?" + +He had assumed that the supreme issue had been decided by a polite +evasion; and his question had been innocent of all momentous meaning. He +merely wished to know how they were going to spend the day that was +before them, since they had to spend days, and spend them together. But +Anne's tense mind contemplated nothing short of the supreme issue that, +for her, was not to be evaded, nor yet to be decided hastily. + +"Will you leave me alone," she said, "to think it over? Will you give me +three hours?" + +He stared and turned pale; for, this time, he understood. + +"Certainly," he said coldly, rising and taking out his watch. "It's +twelve now." + +"At three, then?" + +They met at three o'clock. Anne had spent one hour of bewilderment out of +doors, two hours of hard praying and harder thinking in her room. + +Her mind was made up. However notorious her husband had been, between him +and her there was to be no open rupture. She was not going to leave him, +to appeal to him for a separation, to deny him any right. Not that she +was moved by a profound veneration for the legal claim. Marriage was to +her a matter of religion even more than of law. And though, at the +moment, she could no longer discern its sacramental significance through +the degraded aspect it now wore for her, she surrendered on the religious +ground. The surrender would be a martyrdom. She was called upon to lay +down her will, but not to subdue the deep repugnance of her soul. + +Protection lay for her in Walter's chivalry, as she well knew. But she +would not claim it. Chastened and humbled, she would take up her wedded +life again. There was no vow that she would not keep, no duty she would +not fulfil. And she would remain in her place of peace, building up +between them the ramparts of the spiritual life. + +Meanwhile she gave him credit for his attitude. + +"Things can never be as they were between us," she said. "That you cannot +expect. But--" + +He listened with his eyes fixed on hers, accepting from her his destiny. +She reddened. + +"It was good of you to offer to release me--" He spared her. + +"Are you not going to hold me to it, then?" + +"I am not." She paused, and then forced herself to it. "I will try to be +a good wife to you." + +"Thank you." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was impossible for them to stay any longer at Scarby. The place was +haunted by the presence and the voice of scandalous rumour. Anne had the +horrible idea that it had been also a haunt of Lady Cayley, of the infamy +itself. + +The week-old honeymoon looked at them out of its clouds with such an +aged, sinister, and disastrous aspect that they resolved to get away from +it. For the sake of appearances, they spent another week of aimless +wandering on the East coast, before returning to the town where an +unintelligible fate had decided that Majendie should have a business he +detested, and a house. + +Anne had once asked herself what she would do if she were told that +she would have to spend all her life in Scale on Humber. Scale is +prevailingly, conspicuously commercial. It is not beautiful. Its streets +are squalidly flat, its houses meanly rectangular. The colouring of Scale +is thought by some to be peculiarly abominable. It is built in brown, +paved and pillared in unclean grey. Its rivers and dykes run brown under +a grey northeastern sky. + +Once a year it yields reluctantly to strange passion, and Spring is +born in Scale; born in tortures almost human, a relentless immortality +struggling with visible corruption. The wonder is that it should be born +at all. + +To-day, the day of their return, the March wind had swept the streets +clean, and the evening had secret gold and sharp silver in its grey. Anne +remembered how, only last year, she had looked upon such a spring on the +day when she guessed for the first time that Walter cared for her. She +was not highly endowed with imagination; still, even she had felt dimly, +and for once in her life, that sense of mortal tenderness and divine +uplifting which is the message of Spring to all lovers. + +But that emotion, which had had its momentary intensity for Anne +Fletcher, was over and done with for Anne Majendie. Like some mourner for +whom superb weather has been provided on the funeral day of his beloved, +she felt in this young, wantoning, unsympathetic Spring the immortal +cruelty and irony of Nature. She was bearing her own heart to its burial; +and each street that they passed, as the slow cab rattled heavily on its +way from the station, was a stage in the intolerable progress; it brought +her a little nearer to the grave. + +From her companion's respectful silence she gathered that, though lost +to the extreme funereal significance of their journey, he was not +indifferent; he shared to some extent her mourning mood. She was grateful +for that silence of his, because it justified her own. + +They were both, by their temperaments, absurdly and diversely, +almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very +worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble. +Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all +lives passed between walls that protect them from the world. At +seven-and-twenty she was a girl, with a girl's indestructible innocence. +She had not yet felt within her the springs of her own womanhood. +Marriage had not touched the spirit, which had kept itself apart even +from her happiness, in the days that were given her to be happy in. Her +suffering was like a child's, and her attitude to it bitterly immature. +It bounded her; it annihilated the intellectual form of time, +obliterating the past, and intercepting any view of a future. Only, +unlike a child, and unlike Majendie, she lacked the power of the +rebound to joy. + +"Dear," said her husband anxiously, as the cab drew up at the door of the +house in Prior Street, "have you realised that poor Edith is probably +preparing to receive us with glee? Do you think you could manage to look +a little less unhappy?" + +The words were a shock to her, but they did her the service of a shock +by recalling her to the realities outside herself. All the courtesies +and kindnesses she owed to those about her insisted that her bridal +home-coming must lack no sign of grace. She forced a smile. + +"I'm sorry. I didn't know I was looking particularly unhappy." + +It struck her that Walter was not looking by any means too happy himself. + +"It doesn't matter; only, we don't want to dash her down, first thing, do +we?" + +"No--no. Dear Edith. And there's Nanna--how sweet of her--and Kate, and +Mary, too." + +The old nurse stood on the doorstep to welcome them; her fellow-servants +were behind her, smiling, at the door. Interested faces appeared at the +windows of the house opposite. At the moment of alighting Anne was aware +that the eyes of many people were upon them, and she was thankful that +she had married a man whose self-possession, at any rate, she could rely +on. Majendie's manner was perfect. He avoided both the bridegroom's +offensive assiduity and his no less offensive affectation of +indifference. It had occurred to him that, in the circumstances, Anne +might find it peculiarly disagreeable to be stared at. + +"Look at Nanna," he whispered, to distract her attention. "There's no +doubt about her being glad to see you." + +Nanna grasped the hands held out to her, hanging her head on one side, +and smiling her tremorous, bashful smile. The other two, Kate and Mary, +came forward, affectionate, but more self-contained. Anne realised with a +curious surprise that she was coming back to a household that she knew, +that knew her and loved her. In the last week she had forgotten Prior +Street. + +Majendie watched her anxiously. But she, too, had qualities which could +be relied on. As she passed into the house she had held her head high, +with an air of flinging back the tragic gloom like a veil from her face. +She was not a woman to trail a tragedy up and down the staircase. Above +all, he could trust her trained loyalty to convention. + +The servants threw open two doors on the ground floor, and stood back +expectant. On such an occasion it was proper to look pleased and to give +praise. Anne was fine in her observance of each propriety as she looked +into the rooms prepared for her. The house in Prior Street had not lost +its simple old-world look in beautifying itself for the bride. It had put +on new blinds and clean paint, and the smell of spring flowers was +everywhere. The rest was familiar. She had told Majendie that she liked +the old things best. They appealed to her sense of the fit and the +refined; they were signs of good taste and good breeding in her husband's +family and in himself. The house was a survival, a protest against the +terrible all-invading soul of Scale on Humber. + +For another reason, which she could not yet analyse, Anne was glad that +nothing had been changed for her coming. It was as if she felt that it +would have been hard on Majendie if he had been put to much expense in +renovating his house for a woman in whom the spirit of the bride had +perished. The house in Prior Street was only a place for her body to +dwell in, for her soul to hide in, only walls around walls, the shell +of the shell. + +She turned to her husband with a smile that flashed defiance to the +invading pathos of her state. Majendie's eyes brightened with hope, +beholding her admirable behaviour. He had always thoroughly approved of +Anne. + +Upstairs, in the room that was her own, poor Edith (the cause, as he +felt, of their calamity) had indeed prepared for them with joy. + +Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her, +as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured +spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little +while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The +flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave +to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into +vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its +temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched +them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped on her cushions, had +acquired a dominant yet passionless presence, as of some regal woman of +the earth surrendered to a heavenly empire. You could see that, however +sanctified by suffering, Edith had still a placid mundane pleasure in her +white wrapper of woollen gauze, and in her long lace scarf. She wore them +with an appearance of being dressed appropriately for a superb occasion. + +The sign of her delicacy was in her hands, smoothed and wasted with +inactivity. Yet they had an energy of their own. The hands and the weak, +slender arms had a surprising way of leaping up to draw to her all +beloved persons who bent above her couch. They leapt now to her brother +and his wife, and sank, fatigued with their effort. Two frail, nervous +hands embraced Majendie's, till one of them let go, as she remembered +Anne, and held her, too. + +Anne had been vexed, and Majendie angry with her; but anger and vexation +could not live in sight of the pure, tremulous, eager soul of love that +looked at them out of Edith's eyes. + +"What a skimpy honeymoon you've had," she said. "Why did you go and cut +it short like that? Was it just because of me?" + +In one sense it was because of her. Anne was helpless before her +question; but Majendie rose to it. + +"I say--the conceit of her! No, it wasn't just because of you. Anne +agreed with me about Scarby. And we're not cutting our honeymoon short, +we're spinning it out. We're going to have another one, some day, in a +nicer place." + +"Anne didn't like Scarby, after all?" + +"No, I knew she wouldn't. And she lived to own that I was right." + +"That," said Edith, laughing, "was a bad beginning. If I'd been you, +Anne, whether I was right or not, I'd never have owned that _he_ was." + +"Anne," said Majendie, "is never anything but just. And this time she was +generous." + +Edith's hand was on the sleeve of Majendie's coat, caressing it. She +looked up at Anne. + +"And what," said she, "do you think of my little brother, on the whole?" + +"I think he says a great many things he doesn't mean." + +"Oh, you've found that out, have you? What else have you discovered?" + +The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her tragedy. + +"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?" + +Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue, +withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the +movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested +there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself. + +At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad +assumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon Nanna +as she came in with the tea-tray. + +Nanna was sly and shy and ceremonial in her bearing, but under it there +lurked the privileged audacity of the old servant, and (as poor Majendie +perceived) the secret, terrifying gaiety of the hymeneal devotee. The +faint sound of giggling on the staircase penetrated to the room. It was +evident that Nanna was preparing some horrid and tremendous rite. + +She set her tray in its place by Edith's couch, and cleared a side table +which she had drawn into a central and conspicuous position. The three, +as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of what +Nanna had in hand. + +She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned, +herself in jubilee let loose. She carried an enormous plate, and on the +plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a +little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown. She +stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly. + +The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing. Nanna, +listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an appreciation +too profound for utterance. + +They looked at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling +yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and +of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed +its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like +innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and +formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding +symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves +in her companions' minds as one vast sensation of discomfort. + +As usual when he was embarrassed, Majendie laughed. + +"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous +thing. _Must_ we eat it?" + +"_You_ must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't." + +"I don't think I can--possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her +sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache. + +"Let's all eat it--and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of +fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and +buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that +Nanna will dig it up again?" + +Anne turned white over her tea, pleaded her headache, and begged to be +taken to her room. Majendie took her there. + +"Isn't Anne well?" asked Edith anxiously, when he came back. + +"Oh, it's nothing. She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake +finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man. +Let's ring for Nanna to take it away." + +He rang. When Nanna appeared Edith was eating her crumbs ostentatiously, +as if unwilling to leave the last of a delicious thing. + +"Oh, Nanna," said she, "that's a heavenly wedding-cake!" + +Majendie was reminded of the habitual tender perfidy of that saint, his +sister. She was always lying to make other people happy, saying that she +had everything she wanted, when she hadn't, and that her spine didn't +hurt her, when it did. When Edith was too exhausted to lie, she would +look at you and smile, with the sweat of her torture on her forehead. He +knew Edith, and wondered how far she had lied to Anne, and what she had +done it for. He had a good mind to ask her; but he shrank from "dashing +her down the first day." + +But Edith herself dashed everything down the first five minutes. There +was nothing that _she_ shrank from. + +"I'm sorry for poor Anne," said she; "but it's nice to get you all to +myself again. Just for once. Only for once. I'm not jealous." + +He smiled, and stroked her hair. + +"I was jealous--oh, furiously jealous, just at first, for five minutes. +But I got over it. It was so undignified." + +"It didn't show, dear." + +"I didn't mean it to. It wouldn't have been pretty. And now, it's all +over and I like Anne. But I don't like her as much as you." + +"You must like her more," he said gravely. "She'll need it--badly." + +Edith looked at him. "How can she need it badly, when she has you?" + +"You're a good woman, and I'm a mere mortal man. She's found that out +already, and she doesn't like it." + +"Wallie, _dear_, what do you mean?" + +"I mean exactly what I say. She's found it out. She's found _me_ out. +She's found everything out." + +"Found out? But how?" + +"It doesn't matter how. Edie, why didn't you tell her? You said you +would." + +"Yes--I said I would." + +"And you told me you had." + +"No. I didn't tell you I had." + +"What did you tell me, then?" + +"I told you there was nothing to be afraid of, that it was all right." + +"And of course I thought you'd told her." + +"If I had told her it wouldn't have been all right; for she wouldn't have +married you." + +Majendie scowled, and Edith went on calmly. + +"I knew that--she as good as told me so--and I knew _her_." + +"Well--what if she hadn't married me?" + +"That would have been very bad for both of you. Especially for you." + +"For me? And how do you know this isn't going to be worse? For both of +us. It's generally better to be straight, and face facts, however +disagreeable. Especially when everybody knows that you've got a skeleton +in your cupboard." + +"Anne didn't, and she was so afraid of skeletons." + +"All the more reason why you should have hauled the horrid thing out and +let her have a good look at it. She mightn't have been afraid of it then. +Now she's convinced it's a fifty times worse skeleton than it is." + +"She wouldn't have lived with it in the house, dear. She said so." + +"But I thought you never told her?" + +"She was talking about somebody else's skeleton, dear." + +"Oh, somebody else's, that's a very different thing." + +"She meant--if she'd been the woman. I was testing her, to see how she'd +take it. Do you think I was very wrong?" + +"Well, frankly, dear, I cannot say you were very wise." + +"I wonder----" + +She lay back wondering. Doubt of her wisdom shook her through all her +tender being. She had been so sure. + +"How would you have liked it," said she, "if Anne had given you up and +gone away, and you'd never seen her again?" + +His face said plainly that he wouldn't have liked it at all. + +"Well, that's what she'd have done. And I wanted her to stay and marry +you." + +"Yes, but with her eyes open." + +She shook her head, the head that would have been so wise for him. + +"No," said she. "Anne's one of those people who see best with their eyes +shut." + +"Well, they're open enough now in all conscience. But there's one thing +she hasn't found out. She doesn't know how it happened. Can you tell her? +_I_ can't. I told her there were extenuating circumstances; but of +course I couldn't go into them." + +"What did she say?" + +"She said no circumstances could extenuate facts." + +"I can hear her saying it." + +"I understand her state of mind," said Majendie. "She couldn't see the +circumstances for the facts." + +"Our Anne is but young. In ten years' time she won't be able to see the +facts for the circumstances." + +"Well--will you tell her?" + +"Of course I will." + +"Make her see that I'm not necessarily an utter brute just because I----" + +"I'll make her see everything." + +"Forgive me for bothering you." + +"Dear--forgive me for breaking my promise and deceiving you." + +He bent to her weak arms. + +"I believe," she whispered, "the end will yet justify the means." + +"Oh--the end." + +He didn't see it; but he was convinced that there could hardly be a worse +beginning. + +He went upstairs, where Anne lay in the agonies of her bilious attack. He +found comfort, rather than gave it, by holding handkerchiefs steeped in +eau-de-Cologne to her forehead. It gratified him to find that she would +let him do it without shrinking from his touch. + +But Anne was past that. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +For once in his life Majendie was glad that he had a business. Shipping +(he was a ship-owner) was a distraction from the miserable problem that +weighed on him at home. + +Anne's morning face was cold to him. She lay crushed in her bed. She had +had a bad night, and he knew himself to be the cause of it. + +His pity for her hurt like passion. + +"How is she?" asked Edith, as he came into her room before going to the +office. + +"She's a wreck," he said, "a ruin. She's had an awful night. Be kind to +her, Edie." + +Edie was very kind. But she said to herself that if Anne was a ruin that +was not at all a bad thing. + +Edith Majendie was a loving but shrewd observer of the people of her +world. Lying on her back she saw them at an unusual angle, almost as if +they moved on a plane invisible to persons who go about upright on their +legs. The four walls of her room concentrated her vision in bounding it. +She saw few women and fewer men, but she saw them apart from those +superficial activities which distract and darken judgment. Faces that +she was obliged to see bending over her had another aspect for Edith than +that which they presented to the world at large. Anne Majendie, who had +come so near to Edith, had always put a certain distance between herself +and her other friends. While they were chiefly impressed with her superb +superiority, and saw her forever standing on a pedestal, Edith declared +that she knew nothing of Anne's austere and impressive attributes. She +protested against anything so dreary as the other people's view of her. +They and their absurd pedestals! She refused to regard her sister-in-law +as an established solemnity, eminent and lonely in the scene. Pedestals +were all very well at a proper distance, but at a close view they were +foreshortening to the human figure. Other people might like to see more +pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they +didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter. + +If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with +her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for +Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you +traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause +of all Anne's troubles. + +That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever +obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. She knew that it was her spine +that had kept her brother from marrying all those years. He couldn't +leave her alone with it, neither could he ask any woman to share the +house inhabited, pervaded, dominated by it. Unsafeguarded by marriage, he +had fallen into evil hands. To Edith, who had plenty of leisure for +reflection, all this had become terribly clear. + +Then Anne had come, the strong woman who could bear Walter's burden for +him. She had been jealous of Anne at first, for five minutes. Then she +had blessed her. + +But Edith, as she had told her brother, was not a fool. And all the time, +while her heart leapt to the image of Anne in her dearness and sweetness, +her brain saw perfectly well that her sister-in-law had not been free +from the sin of pride (that came, said Edith, of standing on a pedestal. +It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at +any rate, where you were). + +Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a +woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you +to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to +disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him. + +Anne owned herself baffled. + +Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness, +by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her +ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health. +As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man +she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen +his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling +her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in +the house in Prior Street before her memories assailed her. Her new and +detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him. +The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile +them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected +by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence +were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her +memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her, +her conscience resisted and rose against them both. + +Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs +she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening. +She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's +home-coming. + +To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She +could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept +that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, +and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at +from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong +space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had +planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many +thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But +something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As +Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended +knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to +them. + +To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of +that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious +of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that +way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it +did not appeal to her in any way at all. + +"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of +mine--of yours, I mean." + +"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not +jealous." + +"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't +garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache." + +"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly. + +Her calmness irritated Edith. + +"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!" + +Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for. + +"You know, you used to think so, too." + +"Of course I did," said Anne evasively. + +"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?" + +"I _have_ married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?" + +"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that." + +"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying--mere marrying--may be a +great deal--about as much as many men have a right to ask." + +"Hasn't every man a right to ask for--what shall I say--a little +understanding--from the woman he cares for?" + +"Edith, what has he told you?" + +"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself." + +"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?" + +"Did he pose as _l'homme incompris_? No, he didn't." + +"Still--he told you," Anne insisted. + +"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to +her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand." + +"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring. +I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook. + +"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he +is." + +"I know what he was--what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with +what he is." + +"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him +something too bad for words?" + +Anne broke down weakly. + +"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?" + +"What? That Wallie was bad?" + +"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything." + +"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It +wouldn't have been true." + +"He says himself that everything was true." + +"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know +the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell +you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left +it to me; he said I was to tell you." + +"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me." + +"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose +for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?" + +"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible +part of it." + +"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But _I_ knew all right. He never kept +anything from me, not for long." + +"But, Edith--how _could_ he? How _could_ he? When the woman--Lady +Cayley--She was _bad_, wasn't she?" + +"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them--worse. You know she was +divorced?" + +"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know." + +"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were +several others--four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a +mere drop in her ocean." + +Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her. + +"But," said she, "he was in it." + +"Oh yes, he was in it. The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the +others. But it couldn't keep him. He couldn't live in it, like them." + +"But how did she get hold of him?" + +"She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry." + +(His chivalry--she knew it.) + +"It's what happens, over and over again. He thought her a vilely injured +woman. He may have thought her good. He certainly thought her pathetic. +It was the pathos that did it." + +"That--did--it?" + +"Yes. Did it. She hurled herself at his head--at his knees--at his +feet---till he _had_ to lift her. And that's how it happened." + +Anne's spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening. + +"I know it oughtn't to have happened. I know Walter wasn't the holy saint +he ought to have been. But oh, he was a martyr!" She paused. "And--he was +very young." + +"Edith--when was it?" + +"Seven years ago." + +Anne pondered. The seven years helped to purify him. Every day helped +that threw the horror further back in time--separated it from her. If--if +he had not been steeped too long in it. She wanted to know _how_ long, +but she was afraid to ask; afraid lest it should be brought nearer to her +than she could bear. Edith saw her fear. + +"It lasted two years. It was all my fault." + +"Your fault?" + +"Yes, my fault. Because of my horrid spine. You see, it kept him from +marrying." + +"Well, but--" + +"Well, but it couldn't have happened if he had married. How _could_ it? +How could it have happened if you had been there? You would have saved +him." + +She paused on that note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was +a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the +dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of brooding, +mystic harmonies. + +"You would have saved him." + +Anne saw herself for one moment as his guardian angel, her mission +frustrated through a flaw of time. That vision was dashed by another, +herself as the ideal, the star he should have looked to before its dawn, +herself dishonoured by his young haste, his passion, his failure to +foresee. + +"He should have waited for me." + +"Did you wait for him?" + +A quick flush pulsed through the whiteness of Anne's face. She looked +back seven years to her girlhood in the southern Deanery, her home. She +had another vision, a vision of a Minor Canon, whom she had loved with +the pure worship of her youth, a love of which somehow she was now +ashamed. Ashamed, though it had then seemed to her so spiritual. Her dead +parents had desired the marriage, but neither she nor they had the power +to bring it about. + +Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a +venture. + +"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can +say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'" + +"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to +marry him." + +For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased +to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a +disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed +of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one +and Lady Cayley? + +"Edith," she said suddenly, "did you ever see her?" + +"Never," said Edith emphatically. + +"You don't know what she was like?" + +"I don't. I never wanted to. I dare say there are people in Scale who +could tell you all about her, only I wouldn't inquire if I were you." + +"Did it happen at Scarby?" She was determined to know the worst. + +"I believe so." + +"Oh--why did I ever go there?" + +"He didn't want you to. That was why." + +"Where is she now?" + +"Nobody knows. She might be anywhere." + +"Not here?" + +"No, not here. My dear, you mustn't get her on your nerves." + +"I'm afraid of meeting her." + +"It isn't likely that you ever will. She isn't the sort one does +meet--now, poor thing." + +"Who was she?" + +"The wife of Sir Andrew Cayley, a tallow-chandler." + +"Oh, how did Walter ever--" + +"My dear, one meets all sorts of funny people in Scale. He was a very +wealthy tallow-chandler. Besides, it wasn't he that Walter did meet, +naturally." + +"How can you joke about it? It makes me sick to think of it." + +"It made me sick enough once, dear. But I don't think of it." + +"I can't help thinking of it." + +"Well, whenever you do, when it does come over you--it will, +sometimes--think of what Walter's life was before he knew you. Everything +was spoiled for him because of me. He was sent to a place he detested +because of me; put into an office which he loathed, shut up here in this +hateful house, because of me. And he was good to me, good and dear. Even +at the worst he hardly ever left me if he thought I wanted him--not even +to go to _her_. But he was young, and it was an awful life for him; you +don't know how awful. It would have been bad enough for a woman. It was +intolerable for a man. I was worse then than I am now. I was horribly +fretful, and I worried him. I think I drove him to her--I know I did. He +had to get away from it sometimes. Won't you think of that?" + +"I'll try to think of it." + +"And it won't make you not like him?" + +"My dear, I liked him first for your sake, then I liked you for his, now +I suppose I must like him for yours again." + +"No--for his own sake." + +"Does it matter which?" + +"Not much--so long as you like him. He really is angelic, though you +mayn't think it." + +"I think you are." + +Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew +with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that +hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her +likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature +not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne, +a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers +sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing +in her hair. + +"You're a saint," said Edith. + +"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery. + +"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with +me." + +Whereupon Anne kissed her. + +"And I may tell Walter what you've said?" + +It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would +shrink from telling him. + +Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They +returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was +burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an +arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there. + +His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that +room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together. +She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when +Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always +in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine +devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of +the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been +hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She +felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith, +it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his +goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in +Anne. + +It came over her now with a fresh shock, how very little, after all, she +had known of him. It was through Edith that she really knew him. And yet +it was impossible that Edith could have absorbed him utterly. Anne had +not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that +Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least. What +remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must +partially reveal. + +She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about +her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and +his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings +with the outer world. Now she rose and went round the room, searching for +its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old. +If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used +it, how little he had been able to call anything his own. The things in +it had no comfortable look of service. He could not have smoked there +much, the curtains were too innocent. He could not have sat in that +arm-chair much, the surface was too smooth. He could not have come there +much at any time, for, though the carpet was faded, there was no +well-worn passage from the threshold to the hearth. As far as she could +make out he came there for no earthly purpose but to change his boots +before going upstairs to Edith. + +The bookcase told the same story. It held histories and standard works +inherited from Majendie's father; the works of Dickens, and Thackeray, +and Hardy, read over and over again in the days when he had time for +reading; several poets whom, by his own confession, he could not have +read in any circumstances. One Meredith, partly uncut, testified to an +honest effort and a baulked accomplishment. On a shelf apart stood the +books that he had loved when he was a boy, the Annuals, the tales of +travel and adventure, and one or two school prizes gorgeously bound. + +As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence +appealed to her comprehension and compassion. + +She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition. Instead of being +sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early +support himself. He had supported himself. And he had stuck to the +business that he might the better support Edith. + +She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness. + +She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she +had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day. +It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had +answered: "Because you are good. You always have been good." + +And he had said (how it came back to her!), "And if I hadn't always? +Wouldn't you have cared then?" + +She had answered, "I would have cared, but I couldn't marry you." + +And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping +his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment. She had +wondered what had come over him. + +Now she knew. He had not been good. And she had married him. + +At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung +her, and again she trampled them down. + +She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that +her knowledge of him had laid low. She told herself that, after all, much +remained. She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his +goodness. He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other +woman who could have borne his burden half so well. Edith was too sweet +to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed. In +marrying Walter she would lift half the weight. Anne was strong, and she +glorified in her strength. That was what she was there for. + +How much more was she prepared to do? Keeping his house was nothing; +Nanna had always kept it well. Caring for Edith was nothing; she could +not help but care for her. She had promised Walter that she would be a +good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her +spiritual life apart. + +Was that being a good wife to him? To divorce her soul, her best self, +from him? If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere +material tie, what would she make of herself? Of him? + +It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than +that. She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never +would have appreciated _her_. That other woman didn't count; she had +thrust herself on him. When it came to choosing, he had chosen a +spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.) +And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter's choice was really +God's will. God's hand had led him to her. + +It had been a blow to Anne's pride to realise that she had +married--spiritually--beneath her. Her pride now recovered wonderfully, +seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself +superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's +poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give +than to receive. + +Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not +be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had +meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband +with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen +again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it +could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme. + +But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring +herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual +state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some +satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the +sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with +nervous trepidation. + +He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of +comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more +formidable question than, "How's your headache?" + +"Better, thank you." + +"That's all right." + +He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable +thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had +recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne, +tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was +disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance. +She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more cause to. + +"Do you mind my smoking? Say if you really do." + +She really did, but she forbore to say so. Forbearance henceforth was to +be part of her discipline. + +He smoked contentedly, with half-closed eyes; and when he talked, he +talked of the garden and of bulbs. + +Of bulbs, after what he had discussed with Edith upstairs. She would +rather that he had asked his question, forced her to the issue. That at +least would have shown some comprehension of her state. But he had taken +the issue for granted, refused to face the immensity of it all. She had +had her first taste of sacrificial flames, and her spirit was prepared to +go through fire to reach him. And he presented himself as already folded +and protected; satisfied with some inferior and independent secret of his +own. + +She felt that a little perturbation would have become him more than that +impenetrable peace. + +It would make it so difficult to raise him. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The bell of St. Saviour's had ceased. Over the open market-place the air +throbbed with a thousand pulses from the dying heart of sound. The great +grey body of the Church was still; tower and couchant nave watched in +their monstrous, motionless dominion, till the music stirred in them like +a triumphant soul. + +As they hurried over the open market-place, Anne realised with some +annoyance that she was late again for the Wednesday evening service. She +dearly loved punctuality and order, and disliked to be either checked or +hastened in her superb movements. She disliked to be late for anything. +Above all she disliked standing on a mat outside a closed church door, in +the middle of a General Confession, trying to surrender her spirit to the +spirit of prayer, while Walter lingered, murmuring profane urbanities +that claimed her as his own. + +He had perceived what he called her innocent design, her transparent +effort to lead him to her heavenly heights. He had lent himself to +it, tenderly, gravely, as he would have lent himself to a child's +heart-rending play. He could not profess to follow the workings of his +wife's mind, but he did understand her point of view. She had been "let +in" for something she had not expected, and he was bound to make it up +to her. + +There had been a week of concessions, crowned by his appearance at St. +Saviour's. + +But that was on a Sunday. This was Wednesday, and he drew the line at +Wednesdays. + +Oh yes, he saw her drift. He knew that what she expected of him was +incessant penitence. But, after all, it was difficult to feel much +abasement for a fault committed quite a number of years ago and +sufficiently repented of at the time. He had settled his account, and +it was hard that he should be made to pay twice over. To-night his mood +was strangely out of harmony with Lent. + +Anne slackened her pace to intimate as much to him. Whereupon he lapsed +into strange and disturbing legends of his childhood. He told her he had +early weaned himself from the love of Lenten Services, observing their +effect upon the unfortunate lady, his aunt, who had brought him up. +Punctually at twelve o'clock on Palm Sunday, he said, the poor soul, +exhausted with her endeavours after the Christian life, would fly into +a passion, and punctually would rise from it at the same hour on Easter +Day. For quite a long time he had believed that that was why they called +it Passion Week. + +She moaned "Oh, Walter--don't!" as if he had hurt her, while she +repressed the play of a little, creeping, curling, mundane smile. + +If he would only leave her! But, as they crossed to the curbstone, he +changed over, preserving his proper place. He leaned to her with the +indestructible attention of a lover. His whole manner was inimitably +chivalrous, protective, and polite. + +Anne hardened her heart against him. At the church gate she turned and +faced him coldly. + +"If you're not going in," said she, "you needn't come any further." + +He glanced at the belated group of worshippers gathered before the church +door, and became more than ever polite and chivalrous and protective. + +"I must see you safely in," he said, and took up his stand beside her on +the mat. + +Her eyes rested on him for a second in reproach, then dropped behind the +veil of their lids. In another moment he would have to go. He had already +surrendered her prayer-book, tucking it gently under her arm. + +"You'll be all right when you get in, won't you?" he said encouragingly. + +"Please go," she whispered. + +"Do I jar, dear?" he asked sweetly. + +"You do, very much." + +"I'm so sorry. I won't do it again." + +But his whispered vows and promises belied him, battling with her +consecrated mood. She felt that his innermost spirit remained in its +profanity, unillumined by her rebuke. + +Once more she set her face, and hardened her heart against him, and +removed herself in the silence and isolation of her prayer. + +Through the closed door there came the rich, confused murmur of the +Confession. He saw her lips curl, flower-like, with emotion, as her +breath rose and fell in unison with the heaving chant. He watched her +with a certain reverence, incomprehensibly chastened, till the door +opened, and she went from him, moving down the lighted aisle with her +remote, renunciating air. + +The door was shut in Majendie's face, and he turned away, intending to +kill, to murder the next hour at his club. + +Anne was self-trained in the habit of detachment. She had only to kneel, +to close her eyes and cover her face, and her soul slid of its own accord +into the place of peace. Her very breathing and the beating of her heart +were stayed. Her mind, emptied in a moment, was in a moment filled, +brimming over with the thought of God. To her veiled vision that thought +was like a sheet of blank light let down behind her drooped eyelids, and +centring in a luminous whorl. It fascinated her. Her prayer shot straight +to the heart of it, a communion too swift to trouble or divide the +blessed light. + +In that instant her husband, the image and the thought of him, were cast +into the secular darkness. + +She remembered how difficult it had once been thus to renounce him. +Her trouble, in the days of her engagement, had been that, thrust him +from her as she would, the idea of his goodness--the goodness that +justified her through its own appeal--would call up his presence, +emerging radiant from the outermost abyss. Inferior emotions then mingled +indistinguishably with her holiest ardours. Spiritually ambitious, she +had had her young eye on a hard-won crown of glory, and she had found +that happiness made the spiritual life almost contemptibly easy. It was +no effort in those days to realise divine mysteries, when the miracle of +the Incarnation was, as it were, worked for her in her own soul; when she +heard in her own heart the beating of the heart of God; when his hand +touched her with a tenderness that warmed her place of peace. She had +hardly known this flamed and lyric creature for herself. It was as if her +soul, resting after long flight, had contemplated for the first time the +silver and fine gold of her wings. + +It was the facility of the revelation that had first caused her to +suspect it. And she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon +her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She +could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in +her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost +purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine. + +Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God +set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment, +oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for +light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great +mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night." + +Her hands, as she prayed, were folded close over her eyes. Having +annihilated her husband, she was disagreeably astonished to find that he +was there, that he had been there for some time, in the seat beside her. + +He was sitting in what he took to be an attitude of extreme reverence, +his head bowed and resting on his left arm, which was supported by the +back of the seat in front of him. His right arm embraced, unconsciously, +Anne's muff. Anne was vividly, painfully aware of him. Over the crook of +his elbow one eye looked up at her, bright, smiling with inextinguishable +affection. His lips gave out a sound that was not a prayer, but something +between a murmur and a moan, distinctly audible. She felt his gaze as a +gross, tangible thing, as a violent hand, parting the veils of prayer. +She bowed her head lower and pressed her hands to her face till the blood +tingled. + +The sermon obliged her to sit upright and exposed. It gave him +iniquitous opportunity. He turned in his seat; his eyes watched her under +half-closed lids, two slits shining through the thick, dark curtain of +their lashes. He kept on pulling at his moustache, as if to hide the dumb +but expressive adoration of his mouth. Anne, who felt that her soul had +been overtaken, trapped, and bared to the outrage, removed herself by a +yard's length till the hymn brought them together, linked by the book she +could not withhold. The music penetrated her soul and healed its hurt. + + + "Christian, doth thou see them, + On the holy ground, + How the troops of Midian + Prowl and prowl around?" + + +sang Anne in a dulcet pianissimo, obedient to the choir. + +Profound abstraction veiled him, a treacherous unspiritual calm. Majendie +was a man with a baritone voice, which at times possessed him like a +furious devil. It was sleeping in him now, biding its time, ready, she +knew, to be roused by the first touch of a _crescendo_. The _crescendo_ +came. + + + "Christian! Up and fight them!" + + +The voice waked; it leaped from him; and to Anne's terrified nerves it +seemed to be scattering the voices of the choir before it. It dropped on +the Amen and died; but in dying it remained triumphant, like the trump of +an archangel retreating to the uttermost ends of heaven. + +Anne's heart pained her with a profane tenderness, and a poignant +repudiation. Her soul being once more adjusted to the divine, it was +intolerable to think that this preposterous human voice should have power +to shake it so. + +She sank to her knees and bowed her head to the Benediction. + +"Did you like it?" he asked as they emerged together into the open air. + +He spoke as if to the child she seemed to him now to be. They had been +playing together, pretending they were two pilgrims bound for the +Heavenly City, and he wanted to know if she had had a nice game. He +nursed the exquisite illusion that this time he had pleased her by +playing too. + +"Of course I liked it." + +"So did I," he answered joyously, "I quite enjoyed it. We'll do it again +some other night." + +"What made you come, like that?" said she, appeased by his innocence. + +"I couldn't help it. You looked so pretty, dear, and so forlorn. It +seemed brutal, somehow, to abandon you on the weary road to heaven." + +She sighed. That was his chivalry again. He would escort her politely to +the door of heaven, but would he ever go in with her, would he ever stay +there? + +Still, it was something that he should have gone with her so far. It gave +her confidence and an idea of what her power might come to be. Not that +she relied upon herself alone. Her plan for Majendie's salvation was +liberal and large, it admitted of other methods, other influences. There +was no narrowness, any more than there was jealousy, in Anne. + +"Walter," said she, "I want you to know Mrs. Eliott." + +"But I do know her, don't I?" + +He called up a vision of the lady whose house had been Anne's home in +Scale. He was grateful to Mrs. Eliott. But for her slender acquaintance +with his sister, he would never have known Anne. This made him feel that +he knew Mrs. Eliott. + +"But I want you to know her as I know her." + +He laughed. "Is that possible? Does a man ever know a woman as another +woman knows her?" + +Anne felt that she was not only being diverted from her purpose, but led +by a side tract to an unexplored profundity. On the further side of it +she discerned, dimly, the undesirable. It was a murky region, haunted +by still murkier presences, by Lady Cayley and her kind. She persisted +with a magnificent irrelevance. + +"You must know her. You would like her." + +He didn't in the least want to know Mrs. Eliott, he didn't think that he +would like her. But he was soothed, flattered, insanely pleased with +Anne's assumption that he would. It was as if in her thoughts she were +drawing him towards her. He felt that she was softening, yielding. His +approaches were a delicious wooing of an unfamiliar, unwedded Anne. + +"I would like her, because you like her, is that it?" + +"It wouldn't follow." + +"Oh, how you spoil it!" + +"Spoil what?" + +"My inference. It pleased me. But, as you say, the logic wasn't sound." + +Silence being the only dignified course under mystification, Anne was +silent. Some men had that irritating way with women; Walter's smile +suggested that he might have it. She was not going to minister to his +male delight. Unfortunately her silence seemed to please him too. + +"Never mind, dear, I do like her; because she likes you." + +"You will like her for herself when you know her." + +"Will she like me for myself when she knows me? It's extremely doubtful. +You see, hitherto she has made no ardent sign." + +"My dear, she says you've never been near her. You've never come to one +of her Thursdays." + +"Oh, her Thursdays--no, I haven't." + +"Well, how can you expect--but you'll go sometimes, now, to please me?" + +"Won't Wednesdays do?" + +"Wednesdays?" + +"Yes. It wasn't half bad to-night. I'll go to every blessed Wednesday, as +long as they last, if you'll only let me off Thursdays." + +"Please don't talk about being 'let off.' I thought you might like to +know my friends, that's all." + +"So I would. I'd like it awfully. By the way, that reminds me. I met +Hannay at the club to-night, and he asked if his wife might call on you. +Would you mind very much?" + +"Why should I mind, if she's a friend of yours and Edith's?" + +"Oh well, you see, she isn't exactly--" + +"Isn't exactly what?" + +"A friend of Edith's." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +There is a polite and ancient rivalry between Prior Street and Thurston +Square, a rivalry that dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, +when Prior Street and Thurston Square were young. Each claims to be the +aristocratic centre of the town. Each acknowledges the other as its +solitary peer. If Prior Street were not Prior Street it would be Thurston +Square. There are a few old families left in Scale. They inhabit either +Thurston Square or Prior Street. There is nowhere else that they could +live with any dignity or comfort. In either place they are secure from +the contamination of low persons engaged in business, and from the wide +invading foot of the newly rich. These build themselves mansions after +their kind in the Park, or in the broad flat highways leading into the +suburbs. They have no sense for the dim undecorated charm of Prior Street +and Thurston Square. + +Nothing could be more distinguished than Prior Street, with its sombre +symmetry, its air of delicate early Georgian reticence. But its +atmosphere is a shade too professional; it opens too precipitately on +the unlovely and unsacred street. + +Thurston Square is approached only by unfrequented ancient ways paved +with cobble stones. It is a place of garden greenness, of seclusion and +of leisure. It breathes a provincial quietness, a measured, hallowed +breath as of a cathedral close. Its inhabitants pride themselves on this +immemorial calm. The older families rely on it for the sustenance of +their patrician state. They sit by their firesides in dignified +attitudes, impressively, luxuriously inert. Their whole being is a +religious protest against the spirit of business. + +But the restlessness of the times has seized upon the other families, the +Pooleys, the Gardners, the Eliotts, younger by a century at least. They +utilise the perfect peace for the cultivation of their intellects. + +Every Thursday, towards half-past three, a wave of agreeable expectation, +punctual, periodic, mounts on the stillness and stirs it. Thursday is +Mrs. Eliott's day. + +The Eliotts belong to the old high merchant-families, the aristocracy of +trade, whose wealth is mellowed and beautified by time. Three centuries +met in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room, harmonised by the gentle spirit of the +place. Her frail modern figure moved (with elegance a little dishevelled +by abstraction) on an early Georgian background, among mid-Victorian +furniture, surrounded by a multitude of decorative objects. There were +great jars and idols from China and Japan; inlaid tables; screens and +cabinets and chairs in Bombay black wood, curiously carved; a splendid +profusion of painted and embroidered cloths; the spoils of seventy years +of Eastern trade. And on the top of it all, twenty years or so of recent +culture. The culture was represented by a well-filled bookcase, a few +diminished copies of antique sculpture, some modern sketches made in Rome +and Venice (for the Eliotts had travelled), and an illuminated triptych +with its saints in glory. + +Here, Thursday after Thursday, the same people met each other; they met, +Thursday after Thursday, the same fervid little company of ideas, of +aspirations and enthusiasms. + +It was five o'clock on one of her Thursdays, and Mrs. Eliott had been +conversing with great sweetness and fluency ever since half-past three. +That was the way she and Mrs. Pooley kept it up, and they could have kept +it up much longer but for the arrival of Miss Proctor. + +There was nothing, in Miss Proctor's opinion (if dear Fanny only knew +it), so provincial as an enthusiasm. As for aspirations (and Mrs. Pooley +was full of them) what could be more provincial than these efforts to be +what you were not? Miss Proctor disapproved of Thurston Square's +preoccupation with its intellect, a thing no well-bred person is ever +conscious of. She announced that she had come to take dear Fanny down +from her clouds and humanise her by a little gossip. She ignored Mrs. +Pooley, since Mrs. Pooley apparently wished to be ignored. + +"I want," said she, "the latest news of Anne." + +"If you wait, you may get it from herself." + +"My dear, do you suppose she'd give it me?" + +"It depends," said Mrs. Eliott, "on what you want to know." + +"I want to know whether she's happy. I want to know whether, by this +time, she _knows_." + +"You can't ask her." + +"Of course I can't. That's why I'm asking you." + +"I know nothing. I've hardly seen her." + +Miss Proctor looked as if she were seeing her that moment without Fanny +Eliott's help. + +"Poor dear Anne." + +Anne Fletcher had been simply dear Anne, Mrs. Walter Majendie was poor +dear Anne. + +Her friends were all sorry for her. They were inclined to be indignant +with Edith Majendie, who, they declared, had been at the bottom of her +marriage all along. She was the cause of Anne's original callings in +Prior Street. If it had not been for Edith, Anne could never have +penetrated that secret bachelor abode. The engagement had been an +awkward, unsatisfactory, sinister affair. It was a pity that Mr. +Majendie's domestic circumstances were such that poor dear Anne appeared +as having made all the necessary approaches and advances. If Mr. Majendie +had had a family that family would have had to call on Anne. But Mr. +Majendie hadn't a family, he had only Edith, which was worse than having +nobody at all. And then, besides, there was his history. + +Mrs. Eliott looked distressed. Mr. Majendie's history could not +be explained away as too ancient to be interesting. In Scale a +seven-year-old event is still startlingly, unforgetably modern. Anne's +marriage had saddled her friends with a difficult responsibility, the +justification of Anne for that astounding step. + +Acquaintances had been made to understand that Mrs. Eliott had had +nothing to do with it. They went away baffled, but confirmed in their +impression that she knew; which was, after all, what they wanted to know. + +It was not so easy to satisfy the licensed curiosity of Anne's friends. +They came to-day in quantities, attracted by the news of the Majendies' +premature return from their honeymoon. Mrs. Eliott felt that Miss Proctor +and the Gardners were sitting on in the hope of meeting them. + +Mrs. Eliott had been obliged to accept Anne's husband, that she might +retain Anne's affection. In this she did violence to her feelings, which +were sore on the subject of the marriage. It was not only on account of +the inglorious clouds he trailed. In any case she would have felt it as a +slight that her friend should have married without her assistance, and so +far outside the charmed circle of Thurston Square. She herself was for +the moment disappointed with Anne. Anne had once taken them all so +seriously. It was her solemn joy in Mrs. Eliott and her circle that had +enabled her young superiority to put up so long with the provincial +hospitalities of Scale on Humber. They, the slender aristocracy of +Thurston Square, were the best that Scale had to offer her, and they had +given her of their best. Socially, the step from Thurston Square to Prior +Street could not be defined as a going down; but, intellectually, it was +a decline, and morally (to those who knew Fanny Eliott and to Fanny +Eliott who _knew_) it was, by comparison, a plunge into the abyss. Fanny +Eliott was the fine flower of Thurston Square. She had satisfied even the +fastidiousness of Anne. + +She owned that Mr. Majendie had satisfied it too. It was not that quality +in Anne that made her choice so--well, so incomprehensible. + +It was Dr. Gardner's word. Dr. Gardner was the President of the Scale +Literary and Philosophic Society, and in any discussion of the +incomprehensible his word had weight. Vagueness was his foible, the +relaxation of an intellect uncomfortably keen. The spirit that looked +at you through his short-sighted eyes (magnified by enormous glasses) +seemed to have just returned from a solitary excursion in a dream. In +that mood the incomprehensible had for him a certain charm. + +Mrs. Eliott had too much good taste to criticise Anne Majendie's. They +had simply got to recognise that Prior Street had more to offer her than +Thurston Square. That was the way she preferred to put it, effacing +herself a little ostentatiously. + +Miss Proctor maintained that Prior Street had nothing to offer a creature +of Anne Fletcher's kind. It had everything to take, and it seemed bent on +taking everything. It was bad enough in the beginning, when she had given +herself up, body and soul, to the spinal lady; but to go and marry the +brother, without first disposing of the spinal lady in a comfortable home +for spines, why, what must the man be like who could let her do it? + +"My dear," said Mrs. Eliott, "he's a saint, if you're to believe Anne." + +Even Dr. Gardner smiled. "I can't say that's exactly what I should call +him." + +"Need we," said Mr. Eliott, "call him anything? So long as she thinks him +a saint--" + +Mr. Eliott--Mr. Johnson Eliott--hovered on the borderland of culture, +with a spirit purified from commerce by a Platonic passion for the exact +sciences. He was, therefore, received in Thurston Square on his own as +well as his wife's merits. He too had his little weaknesses. Almost +savagely determined in matters of business, at home he liked to sit in +a chair and fondle the illusion of indifference. There was no part of +Mr. Eliott's mental furniture that was not a fixture, yet he scorned the +imputation of conviction. A hunted thing in his wife's drawing-room, Mr. +Eliott had developed in a quite remarkable degree the protective +colouring of stupidity. + +"How can she?" said Miss Proctor. "She's a saint herself, and she ought +to know the difference." + +"Perhaps," said Dr. Gardner, "that's why she doesn't." + +"I'm sure," said Mrs. Eliott, "it was the original attraction. There +could be no other for Anne." + +"The attraction was the opportunity for self-sacrifice. Whatever she's +makes of Mr. Majendie, she's bent on making a martyr of herself." Miss +Proctor met the vague eyes of her circle with a glance that was defiance +to all mystery. "It's quite simple. This marriage is a short cut to +canonisation, that's all." + +Then it was that little Mrs. Gardner spoke. She had been married for a +year, and her face still wore its bridal look of possession that was +peace, the look that it would wear when Mrs. Gardner was seventy. Her +voice had a certain lucid and profound precision. + +"Anne was always certain of herself. And since she cares for Mr. Majendie +enough to accept him and to accept his sister, and the rather _triste_ +life which is all he has to offer her, doesn't it look as if, probably, +she knew her own business best?" + +"I think," said Mr. Eliott firmly, "we may take it that she does." + +Miss Proctor's departure was felt as a great liberation of the intellect. + +Mrs. Pooley sat up in her corner and revived the conversation interrupted +by Miss Proctor. Mrs. Pooley had felt that to talk about Mrs. Majendie +was to waste Mrs. Eliott. Mrs. Majendie apart, Mrs. Pooley had many ideas +in common with her friend; but, whereas Mrs. Eliott would spend superbly +on one idea at a time, Mrs. Pooley's intellect entertained promiscuously +and beyond its means. It was inclined to be hospitable to ideas that had +never met outside it, whose encounter was a little distressing to +everybody concerned. Whenever this happened Mrs. Pooley would appeal to +Mr. Eliott, and Mr. Eliott would say, "Don't ask me. I'm a stupid fellow. +Don't ask me to decide anything." + +Thus did Mr. Eliott wilfully obscure himself. + +To-day he was more impregnably concealed than ever. He hadn't any +opinions of his own. They were too expensive. He borrowed other people's +when he wanted them. "But," said Mr. Eliott, "it is very seldom that I +do want an opinion. If you have any facts to give me--well and good." For +he knew that, at the mention of facts, Mrs. Pooley's intellect would +retreat behind a cloud and that his wife would pursue it there. + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Eliott, "there's such a thing as realising your +ideals." + +Her eyes gleamed and wandered and rested upon Mrs. Gardner. Mrs. Gardner +had a singularly beautiful intellect which she was known to be shy of +displaying. People said that Dr. Gardner had fallen in love with it +years ago, and had only waited for it to mature before he married it. +Mrs. Gardner had a habit of sitting apart from the discussion and +untroubled by it, tolerant in her own excess of bliss. It irritated Mrs. +Eliott, on her Thursdays, to think of the distinguished ideas that Mrs. +Gardner might have introduced and didn't. She felt Mrs. Gardner's silence +as a challenge. + +"I wonder" (Mrs. Eliott was always wondering) "what becomes of our ideals +when we've realised them." + +The doctor answered. "My dear lady, they cease to be ideals, and we have +to get some more." + +Mrs. Eliott, in her turn, was received into the cloud. + +"Of course," said Mrs. Pooley, emerging from it joyously, "we must have +them." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Eliott vaguely, as her spirit struggled with the +cloud. + +"Of course," said Dr. Gardner. He was careful to array himself for +tea-parties in all his innocent metaphysical vanities, to scatter +profundities like epigrams, to flatter the pure intellects of ladies, +while the solemn vagueness of his manner concealed from them the +innermost frivolity of his thought. He didn't care whether they +understood him or not. He knew his wife did. Her wedded spirit moved +in secret and unsuspected harmony with his. + +He had a certain liking for Mrs. Eliott. She seemed to him an apparition +mainly pathetic. With her attenuated distinction, her hectic ardour, her +brilliant and pursuing eye, she had the air of some doomed and dedicated +votress of the pure intellect, haggard, disturbing and disturbed. His +social self was amused with her enthusiasms, but the real Dr. Gardner +accounted for them compassionately. It was no wonder, he considered, that +poor Mrs. Eliott wondered. She had so little else to do. Her nursery +upstairs was empty, it always had been, always would be empty. Did she +wonder at that too, at the transcendental carelessness that had left her +thus frustrated, thus incomplete? Mrs. Eliott would have been scandalised +if she had known the real Dr. Gardner's opinion of her. + +"I wonder," said she, "what will become of Anne's ideal." + +"It's safe," said the doctor. "She hasn't realised it." + +"I wonder, then, what will become of Anne." + +Mrs. Pooley retreated altogether before this gross application of +transcendent truth. She had not come to Mrs. Eliott's to talk about +Mrs. Majendie. + +Dr. Gardner smiled. "Oh, come," he said, "you _are_ personal." + +"I'm not," said Mrs. Eliott, conscious of her lapse and ashamed of it. +"But, after all, Anne's my friend. I know people blamed me because I +never told her. How could I tell her?" + +"No," said Mrs. Gardner soothingly, "how could you?" + +"Anne," continued Mrs. Eliott, "was so reticent. The thing was all +settled before anybody could say a word." + +"Well," said Dr. Gardner, "there's no good worrying about it now." + +"Isn't it possible," said the little year-old bride, "that Mr. Majendie +may have told her himself?" + +For Dr. Gardner had told her everything the day before he married her, +confessing to the light loves of his youth, the young lady in the Free +Library and all. She looked round with eyes widened by their angelic +candour. Even more beautiful than Mrs. Gardner's intellect were Mrs. +Gardner's eyes, and the love of them that brought the doctor's home from +their wanderings in philosophic dream. Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that +Mrs. Gardner's intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes. + +"There's one thing," said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened. "Our not +having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him +now." + +"Aren't we all talking," said Mrs. Gardner, "rather as if Anne had +married a monster? After all, have we ever heard anything against +him--except Lady Cayley?" + +"Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?" + +"Never. He's not half a bad fellow, Majendie." + +Dr. Gardner rose to go. + +"Oh, please--don't go before they come." + +Mrs. Gardner hesitated, but the doctor, vague in his approaches, +displayed a certain energy in his departure. + +They passed Mrs. Walter Majendie on the stairs. + +She had come alone. That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning. She +could see that it struck even Johnson's obtuseness as unfavourable, for +he presently effaced himself. + +"Fanny," said Anne, holding her friend's evasive eye with the +determination of her query, "tell me, who are the Ransomes?" + +"The Ransomes? Have they called?" + +"Yes, but I was out. I didn't see them." + +"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne +_did_ see them---- + +"Are they very dreadful?" + +"Well--they're not your sort." + +Anne meditated. "Not--my--sort. And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are +they?" + +"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one +doesn't know." + +"Are they socially impossible, or what?" + +"Oh--socially, they would be considered--in Scale--all right. But he is, +or was, mixed up with some very queer people." + +Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her. +Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in +Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so +much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer. + +"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very +fast set before he married her." + +"And she? Is she nice?" + +"She may be very nice for all I know." + +"I think," said Anne, "she wouldn't call if she wasn't nice, you know." + +She meant that if Mrs. Lawson Hannay hadn't been nice Walter would never +have sanctioned her calling. + +"Oh, as for that," said her friend, "you know what Scale is. The less +nice they are the more they keep on calling. But I should think"--she had +suddenly perceived where Anne's argument was tending--"she is probably +all right." + +"Do you know anything of Mr. Charlie Gorst?" + +"No. But Johnson does. At least I'm sure he's met him." + +Mrs. Eliott saw it all. Poor Anne was being besieged, bombarded by her +husband's set. + +"Then he isn't impossible?" + +"Oh no, the Gorsts are a very old Lincolnshire family. Quite grand. What +a number of people you're going to know, my dear. But, your husband isn't +to take you away from _all_ your old friends." + +"He isn't taking me anywhere. I shall stay," said Anne proudly, "exactly +where I was before." + +She was determined that her old friends should never know to what a +sorrowful place she had been taken. + +"You dear," said Mrs. Eliott, holding out a suddenly caressing hand. + +Anne trembled a little under the caress. "Fanny," said she, "I want you +to know him." + +"I mean to," said Mrs. Eliott hurriedly. + +"And I want him, even more, to know you." + +"Then," Mrs. Elliot argued to herself, "she knows nothing; or she never +could suppose we would be kindred spirits." + +But she carried it off triumphantly. "Well," said she, "I hope you're +free for the fifteenth?" + +"The fifteenth?" + +"Yes, or any other evening. We want to give a little dinner, dear, to you +and to your husband--for him to meet all your friends." + +Anne tried not to look too grateful. + +The upward way, then, was being prepared for him. Beneficent +intelligences were at work, influences were in the air, helping her +to raise him. + +In her gladness she had failed to see that, considering the very obvious +nature of the civility, Fanny Eliott was making the least shade too much +of it. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Anne presented herself that evening in her husband's study with a sheaf +of visiting cards in her hand. She thought it possible that she might +obtain further illumination by confronting him with them. + +"Walter," said she "all these people have called on us. What do you think +I'd better do?" + +"I think you'll have to call on them some day." + +"All of them?" + +He took the cards from her and glanced through them. + +"Let me see. Charlie Gorst--we must be nice to him." + +"Is _he_ nice?" + +"I think so. Edie's very fond of him." + +"And Mrs. Lawson Hannay?" + +"Oh, you must call on her." + +"Shall I like her." + +"Possibly. You needn't see much of her if you don't." + +"Is it easy to drop people?" + +"Perfectly." + +"And what about Mrs. Ransome?" + +He frowned. "Has _she_ called?" + +"Yes." + +"I'll find out when she's not at home and let you know. You can call +then." + +A fourth card he tore up and threw into the fire. + +"Some people have confounded impudence." + +Anne went away confirmed in her impression that Walter had a large +acquaintance to whom he was by no means anxious to introduce his wife. He +might, she reflected, have incurred the connection through the misfortune +of his business. The life of a ship-owner in Scale was fruitful in these +embarrassments. + +But if these disagreeable people indeed belonged to the period she +mentally referred to as his "past," she was not going to tolerate them +for an instant. He must give them up. + +She judged that he was prepared for so much renunciation. She hoped that +he would, in time, adopt her friends in place of them. He was inclined, +after all, to respond amicably to Mrs. Eliott's overtures. + +Anne wondered how he would comport himself at the dinner on the +fifteenth. She owned to a little uneasiness at the prospect. Would he +indeed yield to the sobering influence of Thurston Square? Or would he +try to impose his alien, his startling personality on it? She had begun +to realise how alien he was, how startling he could be. Would he sit +silent, uninspiring and uninspired? Or would unholy and untimely +inspirations seize him? Would he scatter to the winds all conversational +conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity? What would he +say to Mrs. Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect? Was there +anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial +charm? Would he see that Mr. Eliott's density was only a mask? Would +the Gardners bore him? And would he like Miss Proctor? And if he +didn't, would he show it, and how? His mere manners would, she knew, be +irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour. He +impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but +immeasurably capricious. + +The event surprised her. + +For the first five minutes or so, it seemed that Mrs. Eliott and her +dinner were doomed to failure; so terrible a cloud had fallen on her, and +on her husband, and on every guest. Never had the poor priestess appeared +so abstract an essence, so dream-driven and so forlorn. Never had Mr. +Eliott worn his mask to so extinguishing a purpose. Never had Miss +Proctor been so obtrusively superior, Mrs. Gardner so silent, Dr. Gardner +so vague. They were all, she could see, possessed, crushed down by their +consciousness of Majendie and his monstrous past. + +Into this circle, thus stupefied by his presence, Majendie burst with the +courage of unconsciousness. + +Mr. Eliott had started a topic, the conduct of Sir Rigley Barker, the +ex-member for Scale. A heavy ball of conversation began to roll slowly up +and down the table, between Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. Majendie snatched +at it deftly as it passed him, caught it, turned it in his hands till it +grew golden under his touch. Mr. Eliott thought there wasn't much in poor +Sir Rigley. + +"Not much in him?" said Majendie. "How about that immortal speech of +his?" + +"Immortal--" echoed Mr. Eliott dubiously. + +"Indestructible! The poor fellow couldn't end it. It simply coiled and +uncoiled itself and went off, in great loops, into eternity. It began in +all innocence--naturally, as it was his maiden speech--when he rose, +don't you know, to propose an amendment. I take it that speech was so +maidenly that it shrank from anything in the nature of a proposal. It +went on in a terrified manner, coyly considering and hesitating--till it +cleared the House. And he was awfully pleased when we congratulated him +on his 'maidenly reserve.'" + +"How did he ever get elected?" said Miss Proctor. + +"My dear lady, it was a glorious stroke of the Opposition. They withdrew +their candidate when he contested the election. Of course, they felt that +he'd only got to make a speech and there'd be a dissolution. You simply +saw Parliament melting away before him. If he'd gone on he'd have worn +out the British constitution." + +Dr. Gardner looked at Mrs. Gardner and their eyes brightened, as Majendie +continued to unfold the amazing resources of Sir Rigley. He breathed on +the ex-member like a god, and played with him like a juggler; he tossed +him into the air and kept him there, a radiant, unsubstantial thing. The +ex-member disported himself before Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party as he had +never disported himself in Parliament. Majendie had given him a career, +endowed him with glorious attributes. The ex-member, as a topic, +developed capacities unsuspected in him before. The others followed his +flight breathless, afraid to touch him lest he should break and disappear +under their hands. + +By the time Majendie had done with him, the ex-member had entered on a +joyous immortality in Scale. + +And in the middle of it all Anne laughed. + +Miss Proctor was the first to recover from the surprise of it. She leaned +across the table with a liberal and vivid smile, opulent in appreciation. + +"Well, Mr. Majendie, Sir Rigley ought to be grateful to you. If ever +there was a dull subject dead and buried, it was he, poor man. And now +the difficulty will be to forget him." + +"I don't think," said Majendie gravely, "I shall forget him myself in a +hurry." + +Oh no, he never would forget Sir Rigley. He didn't want to forget him. He +would be grateful to him as long as he lived. He had made Anne laugh. A +girl's laugh, young and deliciously uncontrollable, springing from the +immortal heart of joy. + +It was the first time he had heard her laugh so. He didn't know she could +do it. The hope of hearing her do it again would give him something to +live for. He would win her yet if he could make her laugh. + +Anne was more surprised than anybody, at him and at herself. It was a +revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift. She was +only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on +lectures and on books. She had not thought of Walter as clever. She had +only thought of him as good. That one quality of goodness had swallowed +up the rest. + +Miss Proctor took possession of her where she sat in the drawing-room, as +it were amid the scattered fragments of the ex-member (he still, among +the ladies, emitted a feeble radiance). Miss Proctor had always approved +of Anne. If Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not +in the least provincial. She was something by herself, superior and rare. +A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her +husband's admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her. + +"My dear," said Miss Proctor, "I congratulate you. He's brilliant, he's +charming, he's unique. Why didn't we know of him before? Where has he +been hiding his talents all this time?" + +(A talent that had not bloomed in Thurston Square was a talent pitiably +wasted.) + +Anne smiled a blanched, perfunctory smile. Ah, where had he been hiding +himself, indeed? + +Miss Proctor stood central, radiating the rich afterglow of her +appreciation. Her gaze was a little critical of her friends' faces, as +if she were measuring the effect, on a provincial audience, of Majendie's +conversational technique. She swept down to a seat beside her hostess. + +"My dear Fanny," she said, "why didn't you tell me?" + +"Tell you--" + +"That he was that sort. I didn't know there was such a delightful man in +Scale. What have you all been dreaming of?" + +Mrs. Eliott tried to look both amiable and intelligent. In the presence +of Mr. Majendie's robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been +dreaming. Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was +destruction to the dreams she dreamed. She tried to be genial to her +guest's accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie's talents were +let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of +intellectual culture. On the other hand she perceived that Miss Proctor's +idea was to empty that drawing-room by securing Mr. Majendie for her own. +Mrs. Eliott remained uncomfortably seated on her dilemma. + +Sounds of laughter reached her from below. The men were unusually late in +returning to the drawing-room. They appeared a little flushed by the +hilarious festival, as if Majendie had had on them an effect of mild +intoxication. She could see that even Dr. Gardner was demoralised. He +wore, under his vagueness, the unmistakable air of surrender to an +unfamiliar excess. Mr. Eliott too had the happy look of a man who has fed +loftily after a long fast. + +"Anne dear," said Majendie, as they walked back the few yards between +Thurston Square and Prior Street, "we shan't have to do that very often, +shall we?" + +"Why not? You can't say we didn't have a delightful evening." + +"Yes, but it was very exhausting, dear, for me." + +"You? You didn't show much sign of exhaustion. I never heard you talk so +well." + +"Did I talk well?" + +"Yes. Almost too well." + +"Too much, you mean. Well, I had to talk, when nobody else did. Besides, +I did it for a purpose." + +But what his purpose was Majendie did not say. + +Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range +of her anticipations. She was glad, above all, that Walter had made +himself acceptable in Thurston Square. But when she came to think of +what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his +incomprehensible ease of attitude. She reflected that this must have been +the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal. Was it +possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that +incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that +had been stretched to take him in? She felt that it was impossible to +exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening. They had met +together, as it were, to celebrate Walter's return to the sanctities +and proprieties he had offended. He had been formally forgiven and +received by the society which (however Fanny Eliott might explain away +its action) had most unmistakably cast him out. She had not expected him +to part with his indomitable self-possession under the ordeal, but she +could have wished that he had borne himself with a little more modesty. +He had failed to perceive the redemptive character of the feast, he had +turned it into an occasion for profane personal display. + +Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party had not saved him; on the contrary, he had +saved the dinner-party. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her +designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be +played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From +his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never +have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way +you looked at them. + +Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward +pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way, +and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously. + +He confided his scruples to Edith. + +"Poor dear," he said, "it's quite pathetic. You know, she thinks she's +saving me." + +"And do you mind being saved?" + +"Well, no, I don't mind a little of it. But the question is, how long I +can keep it up." + +"You mean, how long she'll keep it up?" + +He laughed. "Oh, she'll keep it up for ever. No possible doubt about +that. She'll never tire. I wonder if I ought to tell her." + +"Tell her what?" + +"That it won't work. That she can't do it that way. She's wasting my time +and her own." + +"Oh, what's a little time, dear, when you've all eternity in view?" + +"But I haven't. I've nothing in view. My view, at present, is entirely +obscured by Anne." + +"Poor Anne! To think she actually stands between you and your Maker." + +"Yes, you know--in her very anxiety to introduce us." + +They looked at each other. Her sainthood was so accomplished, her union +with heaven so complete, that she could afford herself these profaner +sympathies. She was secretly indignant with Anne's view of Walter as +unpresentable in the circles of the spiritual _élite_. + +"It never struck her that you mightn't need an introduction after all; +that you were in it as much as she. That's the sort of mistake one might +expect from--from a spiritual parvenu, but not from Anne." + +"Oh, come, I don't consider myself her equal by a long chalk." + +"Well, say she does belong to the peerage; you're a gentleman, and what +more can she require?" + +"She can't see that I am (If I am. You say so). She considers +me--spiritually--a bounder of the worst sort." + +"That's her mistake. Though I must say you sometimes lend yourself to it +with your horrible profanity." + +"I can't help it, Edie. She's so funny with it. She _makes_ me profane." + +"Dear Walter, if you can think Anne funny--" + +"I do. I think she's furiously funny, and horribly pathetic. All the +time, you know, she thinks she's leading me upward. Profanity's my only +refuge from hypocrisy." + +"Oh no, not your only refuge. You say she thinks she's leading you. Don't +_let_ her think it. Make her think you're leading her." + +"Do you think," said Majendie, "she'd enjoy that quite so much?" + +"She'd enjoy it more. If you took her the right way. The way I mean." + +"What's that?" + +"You must find out," said she. "I'm not going to tell you everything." + +Majendie became thoughtful. "My only fear was that I couldn't keep it up. +But you really don't think, then, that I should score much if I did?" + +"No, my dear, I don't. And as for keeping it up, you never could. And if +you did she'd never understand what you were doing it for. That's not the +way to show you're in love with her." + +"But that's just what I don't want her to see. That's what she hates so +much in me. I've always understood that in these matters it's discreeter +not to show your hand too plainly. You see, it's just as if we'd never +been married, for all she cares. That's the trouble." + +"There's something in that. If she's not in love with you--" + +"Look here, Edie, you're a woman, and you know all about them. Do you +really, honestly think Anne ever was in love with me?" + +"Oh, don't ask me. How should I know?" + +"No, but," he persisted, "what do you think?" + +"I think she _was_ in love." + +"But not with me, though?" + +"No, no, not with you." + +"With whom, then?" + +"Darling idiot, there wasn't any who. If there was, do you think I'd give +her away like that? If you'd asked me _what_ she was in love with--" + +"Well, what then?" + +"Your goodness. She was head over ears in love with that." + +"I see. With something that I wasn't." + +"No, with something that you were, that you are, only she doesn't know +it." + +"Then," said Majendie, "you can't get out of it, she's in love with +_me_." + +"Oh no, no, you dear goose, not with you. To be in love with you she'd +have to be in love with everything you're _not_, as well as everything +you are; with everything you have been, with everything you never were, +with everything you will be, with everything you might be, could be, +should be." + +"That's a large order, Edie." + +"There's a larger one than that. She might sweep all that overboard, see +it go by whole pieces (the best pieces) at a time, and still be in love +with the dear, incomprehensible, indescribable _you_. That," said Edie, +triumphant in her wisdom, "is what being in love is." + +"And do you think she isn't in it?" + +"No. Not anywhere near it. But--it's a big but--" + +"I don't care how big it is. Don't bother me with it." + +"Bother you? Why, it's a beautiful but. As I said, she isn't in love with +you; but she may be any minute. It's just touch and go with her. It +depends on _you_." + +"Heavens, what am I to do? I've done everything." + +"Yes, you have, but she hasn't. She's done nothing. She doesn't know how +to. You've got to show her." + +He shook his head hopelessly. "You're beyond me. I don't understand. +There isn't anything for me to do. How am I to show her?" + +"I mean show her what there is in it. What it means. What it's going to +be for her as well as you. Just go at it hard, harder than you did before +you married her." + +"_I_ see, I've got to make love to her all over again." + +"Exactly. All over again from the very beginning." + +"I say!" He took it in, her idea, in all the width and splendour of its +simplicity. "And do it differently?" + +"Oh, very differently." + +"I don't quite see where the difference is to come in. What did I do +before that was so wrong?" + +"Nothing. That's just the worst of it. It was all too right. Ever so much +too right. Don't you see? It's what we've been talking about. You made +her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because +it was _your_ goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted +to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason, +because she's an egoist." + +"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't." + +"Oh, you _are_ in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the +nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?" + +"I don't love you less for anything." + +"Well--unless you can make Anne jealous of me--and you can't--you've got +to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in--to be kept out of +it." + +She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into +bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they +would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous +journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He +had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had +failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights, +and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way. + +"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you? +You were the beginning of it." + +"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's +all." + +"What on earth do you mean?" + +"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for _my_ +sake, do you?" + +"N--no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she +was in love with me for my own." + +"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of +it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived +that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and +its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I +brought it _out_, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing +else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something +monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on +itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it, +and when it went everything went. _You_ went first of all. Well, you must +just see that that doesn't happen again." + +"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?" + +"You mustn't lead a life of anything." + +"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?" + +Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this +preposterous notion of his goodness. + +"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good +to me. Concentrate on her, stupid." + +"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified beyond endurance. "Besides, +you said I couldn't make her jealous." + +"No, I wish you could. I mean, don't let her fall in love with your +devotion to me again. Don't hold her by that one rope. Hold her by all +your ropes; then, if one goes, it doesn't so much matter." + +"I see. You don't trust my goodness." + +"Oh, _I_ trust it, so will she again. But don't _you_ trust it. That +precious goodness of yours is your rival. A bad, dangerous rival. You've +got to beat it out of the field. Show that you're jealous of it. A little +judicious jealousy won't hurt." Edith's eyes were still and profound with +wisdom. "I don't believe you've ever yet made love to Anne properly. +That's what it all comes to." + +"Oh, I say," said he, "what do you know about it?" + +"I'm only judging," said Edith, "by the results." + +"Oh, that isn't fair." + +"Perhaps it isn't," she owned, her wisdom growing by what it fed on. + +"You see, she wouldn't let me do it properly." + +Edith pondered. "Yes, but how long ago is it? And you've been married +since." + +"What difference does that make?" + +"I should say it would make all the difference. Anne was a girl, then. +She didn't understand. She's a woman now. She does understand. She can be +appealed to." + +He hid his face in his hands. + +"I never thought of that," he murmured thickly. + +"Of course you didn't." + +"Edie," he said, and his face was still hidden, "however did you think of +it?" + +"Oh, I don't know. I see some things, and then other things come round to +me. But you mustn't forget that _you've_ got to begin all over again from +the very beginning. You'll have to be very careful with her, every bit as +careful as if she were a strange lady you've just met at a dance. Don't +forget that she's strange, that she's another woman, in fact." + +"I see. If there are to be many of these remarkable transformations of +Anne, I shall have all the excitement of polygamy without its drawbacks." + +"You will. And it's the same for her, remember. You're a strange man. +You've just been introduced, you know--by me--and you're begging for the +pleasure of the first waltz, and Anne pretends that her programme is +full, and you look over her shoulder and see that it isn't, and that she +puts you down for all the nice ones. And you sit out all the rest, and +you flirt on the stairs, and take her in to supper, and, finally, you +know, you pull yourself together and you do it--in the conservatory. Oh, +it'll be so amusing, and so funny to watch. You'll begin by being most +awfully polite to each other." + +"I suppose I may yet be permitted to call this strange young lady Anne?" + +"Yes. That's because you remember that you _have_ known her once before, +a very long time ago, when you were children. You are children, both of +you. Oh, Walter, I believe you're looking forward to it; I believe you're +glad you've got to do it all over again." + +"Yes, Edie, I positively believe I am." + +He rose, laughing, prepared to begin that minute his new wooing of Anne. + +"Good-bye," said Edith, "it _is_ good-bye, you know, and good luck to +you." + +This time she knew that she had been wise for him. + +Anne would have been horrified if she had known that the situation, so +terrible for her, was developing for her husband certain possibilities of +charm. His irrepressible boyishness refused to accept it in all its moral +gloom. There were, he perceived, advantages in these strained relations. +They had removed Anne into the mysterious realm her maidenhood had +inhabited, before marriage had had time to touch her magic. She had +become once more the unapproachable and unattained. Their first +courtship, pursued under intolerable restrictions of time and place, had +been a rather uninspired affair, and its end a foregone conclusion. He +had been afraid of himself, afraid sometimes of her. For he had not +brought her the spontaneous, unalarmed, unspoiled spirit of his youth. +He had come to her with a stain on his imagination and a wound in his +memory. And she was holy to him. He had held himself in, lest a touch, +a word, a gesture should recall some insufferable association. + +Marriage had delivered him from the tyranny of reminiscence. No +reminiscence could stand before the force of passion in possession. It +purified; it destroyed; it built up in three days its own inviolable +memory. + +And Anne, with the best will in the world, had had no power to undo its +work in him. + +In herself, too, below her kindling spiritual consciousness, in the +unexplored depth and darkness of her, its work remained. + +Majendie was unaware how far he had become another man and she another +woman. He was merely alive to the unusual and agreeable excitement of +wooing his own wife. There was a piquancy in the experiment that appealed +to him. Her new coldness called to him like a challenge. Her new +remoteness waked the adventurous youth in him. His imagination was +touched as it had not been touched before. He could see that Anne had +not yet got over her discovery. The shock of it was in her nerves. He +felt that she shrank from him, and his chivalry still spared her. + +He ceased to be her husband and became her very courteous, very distant +lover. He made no claims, and took nothing for granted. He simply began +all over again from the very beginning. His conscience was vaguely +appeased by the illusion of the new leaf, the rejuvenated innocence of +the blank page. They had never been married (so the illusion suggested). +There had been no revelations. They met as strangers in their own house, +at their own table. In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his +courtship with infinite precautions. He found himself exaggerating Anne's +distance and the lapse of intimacy. He made his way slowly, through all +the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through friendship to +permissible fervour. + +And from time to time, with incomparable discretion, he would withhold +himself that he might make himself more precious. He was hardly aware of +his own restraint, his refinements of instinct and of mood. It was as if +he drew, in his desperate necessity, upon unrealised, untried resources. +There was something in Anne that checked the primitive impulse of swift +chase, and called forth the curious half-feminine cunning of the +sophisticated pursuer. She froze at his ardour, but his coldness almost +kindled her, so that he approached by withdrawals and advanced by +flights. + +He displayed, first of all, a heavenly ignorance, an inspired curiosity +regarding her. He consulted her tastes, as if he had never known them; he +started the time-honoured lovers' topics; he talked about books--which +she preferred and the reasons for her preference. + +He did not advance very far that way. Anne was simply annoyed at the +lapses in his memory. + +He then began to buy books on the chance of her liking them, which +answered better. + +He promoted himself by degrees to personalities. He talked to her about +herself, handling her with religious reticence as a thing of holy and +incomprehensible mystery. + +"I suppose," he said one day, "if I were good enough, I should understand +you. Why do you sigh like that? Is it because I'm not good enough? Or +because I don't understand?" + +"I think," said she, "it is because I don't understand you." + +"My dear" (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment), +"I thought I was disgracefully transparent--I'm limpidity, simplicity +itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith. +She understands me." + +"Ah, Edith--" said Anne, as if Edith were a very different affair. + +The intonation was hopeful, it suggested some slender and refined +jealousy. (If only he could make her jealous!) + +On the strength of it he advanced to the punctual daily offering of +flowers, flowers for her drawing-room, flowers for her bedroom, flowers +for her to wear. After that he took to writing her letters from the +office with increasing frequency and fervour. Anne, too, was courteous +and distant. She accepted all he had to offer as a becoming tribute to +her feminine superiority, and evaded dexterously the deeper issue. + +Now and then he reported his progress to Edith. + +"I rather think," he said, "she's coming round. I'm regarded as a +distinctly eligible person." + +They laughed at his complete adoption of the part and his innocent joy in +it. + +That had always been his way. When he had begun a game there was no +stopping him. He played it through to the end. + +Edith would look up smiling and say: "Well, how goes the affair?" (They +always called it the affair.) Or: "How did you get on to-day?" + +And it would be: "Pretty well."--"Better to-day than yesterday."--"No +luck to-day." + +One Sunday he came to her radiant. + +"She really does," said he, "seem interested in what I say." + +"What did you talk about?" + +"The influence of Christianity on woman. Was that good?" + +"Very good." + +"I didn't know very much about it, but I got her to tell me things." + +"That," said Edith, "was still better." + +"But she sticks to it that she doesn't understand me. That's bad." + +"No," said Edith, "that's best of all. It shows she's thinking of you. +She wants to understand. Believe me, the affair marches." + +He meditated on that. + +In the evening, the better to meditate, he withdrew to his study. It was +not long before Anne came to him of her own accord. She asked if she +might read aloud to him. + +"I should be honoured," he replied stiffly. + +She chose Emerson, "On Compensation." And Majendie did not care for +Emerson. + +But Anne had a charming voice; a voice with tones that penetrated like +pain, that thrilled like a touch, that clung delicately like a shy +caress; tones that were as a funeral bell for sadness; tones that rose to +passion without ever touching it; clear, cool tones that were like water +to passion's flame. Majendie closed his eyes and let her voice play over +him. + +"Did you like it?" she asked gravely. + +"Like it? I love it." + +"So do I. I _hoped_ you would." + +"My dear, I didn't understand one word of it." + +"You can't make me believe you loved it then." + +He looked at her. + +"I loved the sound of your voice, dear." + +"Oh," said she coldly, "is that all?" + +"Yes," he said, "isn't it enough?" + +"I'd rather--" she began and hesitated. + +"You'd rather I understood Emerson?" + +Her blood flushed in the honey whiteness of her face. She rose, put the +book in its place, and left the room. + +"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was +coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go +like that?" + +"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay." + +"Why afraid?" + +"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to +fight." + +"Yes, but suppose she wins?" + +"She can't win fighting--she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away." + +That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for +Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without +sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and +together be received into the heavenly places. + +She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come +back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour +it without spiritual justification. + +She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love +him--unless God makes him fit for me to love." + +Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +It was Anne's birthday. It shone in mid-May like the front of June. +Anne's bedroom was over Edith's and looked out on the garden. A little +rain had fallen over night. Through the open window the day greeted +her with a breath of flowers and earth; a day that came to her all +golden, ripe and sweet from the south. + +Her dressing-table was placed sideways from the window. Anne, fresh from +her cold bath, in a white muslin gown, with her thick sleek hair coiled +and burnished, sat before the looking-glass. + +There was a knock at the door, not Nanna's bold awakening summons, but a +shy and gentle sound. Her heart shook her voice as she responded. + +"Is it permitted?" said Majendie. + +"If you like," she answered quietly. + +He presented his customary morning sacrifice of flowers. Hitherto he +had not presumed so far as to bring it to her room. It waited for her +decorously at breakfast time, beside her plate. + +She took the flowers from him, acknowledged their fragrance by a +quiver of her delicate nostrils, thanked him, and laid them on the +dressing-table. + +He seated himself on the window-sill, where he could see her with the day +upon her. She noticed that he had brought with him, beside the flowers, a +small oblong wooden box. He laid the box on his knee and covered it with +his hand. He sat very still, looking at her as her firm white hands +caressed her coiled hair into shape. Once she moved his flowers to find +her comb, and laid them down again. + +"Aren't you going to wear them?" he inquired anxiously. + +Her upper lip lifted an instant, caught up, in its fashion, by the pretty +play of the little sensitive amber mole. Two small white teeth showed and +were hidden again. It was as if she had been about to smile, or to speak, +and had thought better of it. + +She took up the flowers and tried them, now at her breast, and now at her +waist. + +"Where shall I put them?" said she. "Here? Or here?" + +"Just there." + +She let them stay there in the hollow of her breast. + +He laid the box on the dressing-table close to her hand where it searched +for pins. + +"I've brought you this," he said gently. + +She smiled that divine and virgin smile of hers. Anne was big, but her +smile was small and close and shy. + +"You remembered my birthday?" + +"Did you think I should forget?" + +She opened the lid with cool unhurried fingers. Under the wrappings of +tissue paper and cotton wool, a shape struck clear and firm and familiar +to her touch. A sacred thrill ran through her as she felt there the +presence of the holy thing, the symbol so dear and so desired that it was +divined before seen. + +She lifted from the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the +work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he +had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found +something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort +and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again +the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow +eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the +torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. Surely, on the closed eyelids +there rested the glory and the peace of divine accomplishment? + +She stood still, holding it in her hand and looking at it. Majendie stood +still, also looking at her. He was not quite sure whether she were going +to accept that gift, whether she would hesitate to take from his profane +hands a thing so sacred and so supreme. He was aware that his fate +somehow hung on her acceptance, and he waited in silence, lest a word +should destroy the work of love in her. + +Anne, too (when she could detach her mind from the crucifix), felt that +the moment was decisive. To accept that gift, of all gifts, was to lay +her spirit under obligation to him. It was more than a surrender of body, +heart, or mind. It was to admit him to association with the unspeakably +sacred acts of prayer and adoration. + +If it were possible that that had been his desire; if he had meant his +gift as a tribute, not to her only, but to the spirit of holiness in her; +if, in short, he had been serious, then, indeed, she could not hesitate. +For, if it were so, her prayer was answered. + +She laid down the crucifix and turned to him. They searched each other +with their eyes. She saw, without wholly understanding, the pain in his. +He saw, also unintelligently, the austerity in hers. + +"Are you not going to take it, then?" he said. + +"I don't know. Do you realise that you are giving me a very sacred +thing?" + +"I do." + +"And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary present?" + +He lowered his eyelids. "I didn't think you'd want to wear it in your +hair, dear." + +She was about to ask him what he did mean then; but some instinct held +her, told her not to press the sign of grace too hard. She looked at him +still more intently. His eyes had disconcerted and baffled her, but now +she was sheltered by their lowered lids. Then she noticed for the first +time that his face showed the marks of suffering. It was as if it had +dropped suddenly the brilliant mask it wore for her, and given up its +secret unaware. He had suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to +her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes +and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a +certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she +closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was +his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it was, above all, +God's hour. + +She laid her hand on her husband's gift, saying to herself that if she +took that crucifix she would be taking him with it into the holy places +of her heart. + +"I will take it." Her voice came shy and inarticulate as a marriage vow. + +"Thank you," he said. + +He wondered if she would turn to him with some sign of tenderness, +whether she would stoop to him and touch him with her hand or her lips; +or whether she looked to him to offer the first caress. + +She did nothing. It was as if her intentness, her concentration upon +her holy purpose held her. While her soul did but turn to him in the +darkness, it kept and would keep their hands and lips apart. + +He divined that she was only half-won. But, though her body yet moved in +its charmed inviolate circle, he felt dimly that the spiritual barrier +was down. + +She turned from him and went slowly to the door. He opened it and +followed her. On the stairs she parted from him and went alone into his +sister's bedroom. + +Edith's spine had been hurting her in the night. She lay flat and +exhausted, and the embrace of her loving arms was slow and frail. + +Edith was what she called "dressed," and waiting for her sister-in-law. +The little table by her bed was strewn with the presents she had bought +and made for Anne. A birthday was a very serious affair for Edith. She +was not content to buy (buying was nothing; anybody could buy); she must +also make, and make beautifully. "I mayn't have any legs that can carry +me," said Edith; "but I've hands and I _will_ use them. If it wasn't for +my hands I'd be nothing but a great lumbering, lazy mass of palpitating +heart." But her making had become every year more and more expensive. Her +beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights. And at six +o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna, +Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's +birthday!" + +"And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith?" + +"I didn't expect this. I do believe it's getting worse." + +"Worse?" Nanna was contemptuous. "It was worse on Master Walter's +birthday last year." + +(Last year she had made a waistcoat.) + +"I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays." + +But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted +to destroy the spirit of the day. + +Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed. + +"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent +mendacity, "you may well look at me. You couldn't make yourself as flat +as I am if you tried. There are two books for you, and a thingummy-jig, +and a handkerchief to blow your dear nose with." + +"Edie--" + +"Do you like them?" + +"Like them? Oh, you dear--" + +"Why don't you have a birthday oftener? It makes you look so pretty, +dear." + +Anne's heart leaped. Edie's ways, her very words sometimes were like +Walter's. + +"Has Walter seen you?" + +Anne's face became instantly solemn, but it was not sad. + +"Edie," she said, "do you know what he has given me!" + +"Yes," said Edith. Her eyes searched Anne's eyes with pain in them that +was somehow akin to Walter's pain. + +"She knows everything," thought Anne, "and it was her idea, then, not +his." + +"Edith," said she, "was it you who thought of it, or he?" + +"I? Never. He didn't say a word about it. He just went and got it. He +thought it all out by himself, poor dear." + +"Can you think why he thought of it?" + +"Yes," said Edith gravely, "I can. Can't you?" + +Anne was silent. + +"It's very simple. He wants you to trust him a little more, that's all." + +Anne's mouth trembled, and she tightened it. + +"Are you afraid of him?" + +"Yes," she said, "I am." + +"Because you think he isn't very spiritual?" + +"Perhaps." + +"Oh, but he's on his way there," said Edith. "He's human. You've got to +be human before you can be spiritual. It's a most important part of the +process. Don't you omit it." + +"Have I omitted it?" + +She stroked one of the thin hands that were out-stretched towards her on +the coverlet, and the other closed on her caress. The touch brought the +tears into her eyes. She raised her head to keep them from falling. + +"Dear," said Edith, and paused and reiterated, "dear, you have about all +the big things that I haven't. You're splendid. There's only one thing I +want for you. If you could only see how divinely sacred the human part of +us is--and how pathetic." + +Anne looked at her as she lay there, bright and brave, untroubled by her +own mortal pathos. In her, humanity, woman's humanity, was reduced to its +simplest expression of spiritual loving and bodily suffering. Anne was a +child in her ignorance of the things that had been revealed to Edith +lying there. + +Looking at her, Anne's tears grew heavy and fell. + +"It's your birthday," said Edith softly. + +And as she heard Majendie's foot on the stairs Anne dried her eyes on the +birthday pocket handkerchief. + +"Here she is," said Edith as he entered. "What are you going to do with +her? She doesn't have a birthday every day." + +"I'm going," he said, "to take her down to breakfast." + +Their meals so abounded in occasions for courtesy that they had become +profoundly formal. This morning Anne's courtesy was coloured by some +emotion that defied analysis. She wore her new mood like a soft veil +that heightened her attraction in obscuring it. + +He watched her with a baffled preoccupation that kept him unusually +quiet. His quietness did him good service with Anne in her new mood. + +When the meal was over she rose and went to the window. The sedate +Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here from the cool +clear north. + +"What are you thinking of?" said he. + +"I'm thinking what a beautiful day it is." + +"Yes, isn't it a jolly day?" + +"If it's beautiful here, what must it be in the country?" + +"The country?" A thought struck him. "I say, would you like to go there?" + +"Do you mean to-day?" + +Her upper lip lifted, and the two teeth showed again on the pale rose of +its twin. In spite of the dignity of her proportions, Anne had the look +of a child contemplating some hardly permissible delight. + +"Now, this minute. There's a train to Westleydale at nine fifty." + +"It would be very nice. But--how about business?" + +"Business be--" + +"No, no, _not_ that word." + +"But it is, you know; it can't help itself. There's a devil in all the +offices in Scale at this time of the year." + +"Would _you_ like it?" + +"I? Rather. I'm on!" + +"But--Edith--oh no, we can't." + +She turned with a sudden gesture of renunciation, so that she faced him +where he stood smiling at her. His face grew grave for her. + +"Look here," he said, "you mustn't be morbid about Edith. It isn't +necessary. All the time we're gone, she'll be there, in perfect bliss +with simply thinking of the good time _we_'re having." + +"But her back's bad to-day." + +"Then she'll be glad that we're not there to feel it. Her back will add +to her happiness, if anything." + +She drew in a sharp breath, as if he had hurt her. + +"Oh, Walter, how can you?" + +He replied with emphasis. "How can I? I can, not because I'm a brute, as +you seem to suppose, but because she's a saint and an angel. I take off +my hat and go down on my knees when I think of her. Go and put _your_ +hat on." + +She felt herself diminished, humbled, and in two ways. It was as if he +had said: "You are not the saint that Edith is, nor yet the connoisseur +in saintship that I am." + +She knew that she was not the one; but to the other distinction she +certainly fancied that she had the superior claim. And she had never yet +come behind him in appreciation of Edith. Besides, she was hurt at being +spoken to in that way on her birthday. + +Her resentment faded when she found him standing at the foot of the +stairs by Edith's door, waiting for her. He looked up at her as she +descended, and his eyes brightened with pleasure at the sight. + +Edith was charmed with their plan. It might have been conceived as an +exquisite favour to herself, by the fine style in which she handled it. + +They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne's coat. He +had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap +he had worn at Scarby. The pang that struck her at the sight of them was +softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure. +They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn +for her with that open-air attire. + +An hour's journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station. +They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland +field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of +Westleydale, in the heart of the hills. + +They followed a mossy trail. The shade fell thin, warm, and +coloured, from leaves so tender that the light passed through their +half-transparent panes. Overhead there was the delicate scent of green +things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened +earth. + +Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, +and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the +vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned +and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall +beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold +of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and +primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien +beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She +threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like +wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them +palpably as a touch. + +And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him. +If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward, +saying to him: "Not yet." + +A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable +throne for the regal woman that she was. He spread out her coat, and she +made room for him beside her. He sat for a long time without speaking. +The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that +subtle silence. He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for +keeping still. + +Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of +dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream. Its green arms, +plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in. + +Majendie's figure was not diminished by the background. The smallest +nervous movement on his part would have undone him, but he did not move. +His profound stillness, suggesting an interminable patience, gave him a +beautiful immensity of his own. + +Anne, left in her charmed, inviolate circle, surrendered sweetly to the +spirit of Westleydale. + +The place was peace folded upon the breast of peace. + +Presently she spoke, calling his name, as if out of the far-off +unutterable peace. + +"Walter, it was kind of you to bring me here." + +"I am so glad you like it." + +"I do indeed." + +He tried to say more, but his heart choked him. + +She closed her eyes, and the peace poured over her, and sank in. Her +heart beat quietly. + +She opened her eyes and turned them on her husband. She knew that it was +his gaze that had compelled them to open. She smiled to herself, like a +young girl, shyly but happily aware of him, and turned from him to her +contemplation of the woods. + +Anne had always rather prided herself on her susceptibility to the beauty +of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch. +Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her +through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously aware of her own +body as a part of it, and of her husband's joy in contemplating her. + +"He thinks me good-looking," she said to herself, and the thought came to +her as a revelation. + +Then her young memory woke again and thrust at her. + +"He thinks me good-looking. That's why he married me." + +She longed to find out if it were so. + +"Walter," said she, "I want to ask you a question." + +"Well--if it's an easy one." + +"It isn't--very. What made you want to marry me?" + +He paused a moment, searching for the truth. + +"Your goodness." + +"Is that really true?" + +"To the best of my belief, madam, it is." + +"But there are so many other women better than me." + +"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them." + +"And if you had met them?" + +"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them. +I shouldn't have fallen in love with _you_, if it hadn't been for your +goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any +other woman." + +"Have you known many other women?" + +"One way and another, in the course of my life--yes. And what I liked so +much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me +rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love +with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit. +It was as if they were always expecting something from me--I couldn't +for the life of me tell what--always on the look out, don't you know, for +some mysterious moment that never arrived." + +She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with +incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed +to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have +been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable, +mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever +at assigning causes. + +He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you +know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly. +Being with you was peace." + +"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all." + +"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began." + +"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me. +I must have seemed to you at peace, then." + +"You did--you did. Weren't you?" + +"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace +here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?" + +"I wish we had. I say--are you never going to forget that?" + +"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand." + +"Understand _what_?" + +"How you could be capable of caring for me--like that--and yet--" + +"But the two things are so entirely different. It's impossible to explain +to you how different. Heaven forbid that you should understand the +difference." + +"I understand enough to know--" + +"You understand enough to know nothing. You must simply take my word for +it. Besides, the one thing's an old thing, over and done with." + +"Over and done with. But if the two things are so different, how can you +be sure?" + +"That sounds awfully clever of you, but I'm hanged if I know what you +mean." + +"I mean, how can you tell that it--the old thing--never would come back?" + +It _was_ clever of her. He realised that he had to deal now with a more +complete and complex creature than Anne had been. + +"How could it?" he asked. + +"If _she_ came back--" + +"Never. And if it did--" + +"Ah, if it did--" + +"It couldn't in this case--my case--your case--" + +"Her case--" she whispered. + +"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come +back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is _that_ what +you've been afraid of all the time?" + +"I never was really afraid till now." + +"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head +for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you +should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take +my word for it." + +He paused. + +"But, since you have raised the question--and it's interesting, too--I +knew a man once--not a 'bad' man--to whom that very thing did happen. And +it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary, +he was still insanely fond of her." + +"What did it mean, then?" + +"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more +for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way +it was a sort of test." + +"I pray heaven--" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the +anecdote to shape her prayer. + +Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious +for the exposition, went on. + +"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her +still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet +all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have +been as straight as anybody if he could have married her." + +"But what does all this prove?" + +"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two +things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you +seem to think." + +"Did Edie care for that man?" + +"I believe so." + +"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made +him a sinner." + +"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was +uncommonly hard on him." + +"Does she know?" + +"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows." + +"And she loves him in spite of it?" + +"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either." + +No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace. + +Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its +vibrating, sub-passionate note. + +"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different." + +He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart +of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own +hour, warned him that his hour was not yet. + +And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne +Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged +with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland +influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul. +They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the +flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth. + +The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above +them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +"Are you tired?" he asked. + +They had walked about the wood, made themselves hungry, and lunched like +labourers at high noon. + +"No, I'm only thirsty. Do you think there's a cottage anywhere where you +could get me some water?" + +"Yes, there's one somewhere about. I'll try and find it if you'll sit +here and rest till I come back." + +She waited. He came back, but without the water. His eyes sparkled with +some mysterious, irrepressible delight. + +"Can't you find it?" + +"Rather. I say, do come and look. There's such a pretty sight." + +She rose and went with him. Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards +from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild +hyacinths. It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that +hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either +side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the +wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks +and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that +sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in +one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for +it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from +their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver. +The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light +till it shone like emerald. A stone cottage faced the path; so small that +a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against +the grey gable of its side. The patch of garden in front was stuffed with +wall-flowers and violets. The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred +in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day. + +Majendie grasped Anne's arm and led her forward. + +In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in +warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet. She +laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to +the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with +the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body +to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and +began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song. + +"Look," said Majendie, "that's what I wanted to show you." + +"Oh--oh--oh--" said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still. + +The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene. Green +earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and +solitary joy. + +"Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?" said Majendie. "That +anything could be so young!" + +Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination. + +As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and +crawled over the grass to her feet. + +"The little lamb--" said she, and stooped, and lifted it. + +It turned to her, cuddling. Through the thin muslin of her bodice she +could feel the pressure of its tender palms. + +Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess +himself of the delicate clinging fingers. But his eyes were upon +Anne's eyes. They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the +meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze. + +A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen +thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast. + +At first she did not heed it. She stood hushed, attentive to the +prescience that woke in her; surrendered to the secret, with desire that +veiled itself to meet its unveiled destiny. + +Then the veil fell. + +The eyes that looked at her grew tender, and before their tenderness the +veil, the veil of her desire that had hidden him from her, fell. + +Her face burned, and she hid it against the child's face as it burrowed +into the softness of her breast. When she would have parted the child +from her, it clung. + +She laughed. "Release me." And he undid the clinging arms, and took the +child from her, and laid it again in the cradling grass. + +"It's conceived a violent passion for you," said he. + +"They always do," said she serenely. + +The door of the cottage was open. The mother stood on the threshold, +shading her eyes and wondering at them. She gave Anne water, hospitably, +in an old china cup. + +When Anne had drunk she handed the cup to her husband. He drank with his +eyes fixed on her over the brim, and gave it to her again. He wondered +whether she would drink from it after him (Anne was excessively +fastidious). To his intense satisfaction, she drank, draining the last +drop. + +They went back together to their tree. On the way he stopped to gather +wild hyacinths for her. He gathered slowly, in a grave and happy passion +of preoccupation. Anne stood erect in the path and watched him, and +laughed the girl's laugh that he longed to hear. + +It was as if she saw him for the first time through Edith's eyes, with +so tender an intelligence did she take in his attitude, the absurd, the +infantile intentness of his stooping figure, the still more absurdly +infantile emotion of his hands. It was the very same attitude which had +melted Edith, that unhappy day when they had watched him as he walked +disconsolate in the garden, and she, his wife, had hardened her heart +against him. She remembered Edith's words to her not two hours ago: +"If you could only see how unspeakably sacred the human part of us is, +and how pathetic." Surely she saw. + +The deep feeling and enchantment of the woods was upon her. He was sacred +to her; and for pathos, it seemed to her that there was poured upon his +stooping body all the pathos of all the living creatures of God. + +She saw deeper. In the illumination that rested on him there, she saw the +significance of that carelessness, that happiness of his which had once +troubled her. It was simply that his experience, his detestable +experience, had had no power to harm his soul. Through it all he had +preserved, or, by some miracle of God, recovered an incorruptible +innocence. She said to herself: "Why should I not love him? His heart +must be as pure as the heart of that little blessed child." + +The warning voice of the wisdom she had learnt from him whispered: "And +it rests with you to keep him so." + +He led her to her tree, where she seated herself regally as before. He +poured his sheaves of hyacinths as tribute into her lap. As his hands +touched hers her cold face flushed again and softened. He stretched +himself beside her and love stirred in her heart, unforbidden, as in a +happy dream. He watched the movements of her delicate fingers as they +played with the tangled hyacinth bells. Her hands were wet with the thick +streaming juice of the torn stalks; she stretched them out to him +helplessly. He knelt before her, and spread his handkerchief on his +knees, and took her hands and wiped them. She let them rest in his for a +moment, and, with a low, panting cry, he bowed his head and covered them +with kisses. + +At his cry her lips parted. And as her soul had called to him across the +spiritual ramparts, so her eyes said to him: "Come"; and he knew that +with all her body and her soul she yearned to him and consented. + +He held her tight by the wrists and drew her to him; and she laid her +arms lightly on his neck and kissed him. + +"I'm glad now," she whispered, "that Edith didn't tell me. She knew you. +Oh, my dear, she knew." + +And to herself she said proudly: "It rests with me." + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +It was October, five months after Anne's birthday. She was not to know +again the mood which determined her complete surrender. Supreme moods can +never be recaptured or repeated. The passion that inspires them is +unique, self-sacrificial, immortal only through fruition; doomed to pass +and perish in its exaltation. She would know tenderness, but never just +that tenderness; gladness, but never that gladness; peace, but never the +peace that possessed her in the woods at Westleydale. + +The new soul in her moved steadily, to a rhythm which lacked the diviner +thrill of the impulse which had given it birth. It was but seldom that +the moment revived in memory. If Anne had accounted to herself for that +day, she would have said that they had taken the nine-fifty train to +Westleydale, that they had had a nice luncheon, that the weather was +exceptionally fine, and that well, yes, certainly, that day had been the +beginning of their entirely satisfactory relations. Anne's mind had a +tendency to lapse into the commonplace when not greatly stirred. Happily +for her, she had a refuge from it in her communion with the Unseen. + +Only at times was she conscious of a certain foiled expectancy. For the +greater while it seemed to her that she had attained an indestructible +spiritual content. + +She conceived a profound affection for her home. The house in Prior +Street became the centre of her earthward thoughts, and she seldom left +it for very long. Her health remained magnificent; her nature being +adapted to an undisturbed routine, appeased by the well-ordered, even +passage of her days. + +She had made a household religion for herself, and would have suffered in +departing from it. To be always down before her husband for eight-o'clock +breakfast; to sit with Edith from twelve till luncheon time, and in the +early afternoon; to spend her evenings with her husband, reading aloud or +talking, or sitting silent when silence soothed him; these things had +become more sacred and imperative than her attendance at St. Saviour's. +The hours of even-song struck for her no more. + +For, above all, she had made a point of always being at home in time for +Majendie's return from his office. At five o'clock she was ready for him, +beside her tea-table, irreproachably dressed. Her friends complained that +they had lost sight of her. Regularly at a quarter to five she would +forsake the drawing-rooms of Thurston Square. However absorbing Mrs. +Eliott's conversation, towards the quarter, the tender abstraction of +Anne's manner showed plainly that her spirit had surrendered to another +charm. Mrs. Eliott, in letting her go, had the air of a person serenely +sane, indulgent to a persistent and punctual obsession. Anne divided her +friends into those who understood and those who didn't. Fanny Eliott +would never understand. But little Mrs. Gardner, through the immortality +of her bridal spirit, understood completely. And for Anne Mrs. Gardner's +understanding of her amounted to an understanding of her husband. Anne's +heart went out to Mrs. Gardner. + +Not that she saw much of her, either. She had grown impatient of +interests that lay outside her home. Once she had decided to give herself +up to her husband, other people's claims appeared as an impertinence +beside that perfection of possession. + +She was less vividly aware of her own perfect possession of him. Majendie +was hardly aware of it himself. His happiness was so profound that he had +not yet measured it. He, too, had slipped into the same imperturbable +routine. It was seldom that he kept her waiting past five o'clock. He +hated the people who made business appointments with him for that hour. +His old associates saw little of him, and his club knew him no more. +He preferred Anne's society to that of any other person. They had no more +fear of each other. He saw that she was beginning to forget. + +In one thing only he was disappointed. The trembling woman who had held +him in her arms at Westleydale had never shown herself to him again. She +had been called, created, for an end beyond herself. The woman he had +married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance +in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her +reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of +the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an +explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too +sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him when he +thought of her. As for the actual present Anne, loyalty was part of the +large simplicity of his nature, and he could not criticise her. +Remembering Westleydale, he told himself that her blanched susceptibility +was tenderness at white heat. If she said little, he argued that (like +himself) she felt the more. And at times she could say perfect things. + +"I wonder, Nancy," he once said to her, "if you know how divinely sweet +your voice is?" + +"I shall begin to think it is, if you think so," said she. + +"And would you think yourself beautiful, if I thought so?" + +"Very beautiful. At any rate, as beautiful as I want to be." + +He could not control the demonstration provoked by that admission, and +she asked him if he were coming to church with her to-morrow. + +His Nancy chose her moments strangely. + +But not for worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in +a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it. +Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and +sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him +during his hours of business. + +Anne did not like his business. But, in spite of it, she was proud +of him, of his appearance, his charm, his distinction, his entire +superiority to even the aristocracy of Scale. + +She no longer resented his indifference to her friends in Thurston +Square, since it meant that he desired to have her to himself. Of his own +friends he had seen little, and she nothing. If she had not pressed Fanny +Eliott on him, he had spared her Mrs. Lawson Hannay and Mrs. Dick +Ransome. She had been fortunate enough to find both these ladies out when +she returned their calls. And Majendie had spoken of his most intimate +friend, Charlie Gorst, as absent on a holiday in Norway. + +It was, therefore, in a mood of more than usual concession that she +proposed to return, now in October, the second advance made to her by +Mrs. Hannay in July. + +Majendie was relieved to think that he would no longer be compelled to +perjure himself on Anne's account. The Hannays had frequently reproached +him with his wife's unreadiness in response, and (as he had told her) he +had exhausted all acceptable explanations of her conduct. He had "worked" +her headaches "for all they were worth" with Hannay; for weeks he had +kept Hannay's wife from calling, by the fiction, discreetly presented, of +a severe facial neuralgia; and his last shameless intimation, that Anne +was "rather shy, you know," had been received with a respectful +incredulity that left him with nothing more to say. + +Mrs. Hannay was not at home when Anne called, for Anne had deliberately +avoided her "day." But Mrs. Hannay was irrepressibly forgiving, and Anne +found herself invited to dine at the Hannays' with her husband early in +the following week. It was hardly an hour since she had left Mrs. +Hannay's doorstep when the pressing, the almost alarmingly affectionate +little note came hurrying after her. + +"I'll go, dear, if you really want me to," said she. + +"Well--I think, if you don't mind. The Hannays have been awfully good to +me." + +So they went. + +"Don't snub the poor little woman too unmercifully," was Edith's parting +charge. + +"I promise you I'll not snub her at all," said Anne. + +"You can't," said Majendie. "She's like a soft sofa cushion with lots of +frills on. You can sit on her, as you sit on a sofa cushion, and she's as +plump, and soft, and accommodating as ever the next day." + +The Hannays lived in the Park. + +Majendie talked a great deal on the way there. His supporting and +attentive manner was not quite the stimulant he had meant it to be. Anne +gathered that the ordeal would be trying; he was so eager to make it +appear otherwise. + +"Once you're there, it won't be bad, you know, at all. The Hannays are +really all right. They'll ask the very nicest people they know to meet +you. They think you're doing them a tremendous honour, you know, and +they'll rise to it. You'll see how they'll rise." + +Mrs. Hannay had every appearance of having risen to it. Anne's entrance +(she was impressive in her entrances) set the standard high; yet Mrs. +Hannay rose. When agreeably excited Mrs. Hannay was accustomed to move +from one end of her drawing-room to the other with the pleasing and +impalpable velocity of all soft round bodies inspired by gaiety. So +exuberant was the softness of the little lady and so voluminous her +flying frills, that at these moments her descent upon her guests appeared +positively winged like the descent of cherubim. To-night she advanced +slowly from her hearth-rug with no more than the very slightest swaying +and rolling of all her softness, the very faintest tremor of her downy +wings. Mrs. Hannay's face was the round face of innocence, the face of +a cherub with blown cheeks and lips shaped for the trumpet. + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie--at last." She retained Mrs. Majendie's hand for +the moment of presenting her to her husband. By this gesture she +appropriated Mrs. Majendie, taking her under her small cherubic wing. +"Wallie, how d'you do?" Her left hand furtively appropriated Mrs. +Majendie's husband. Anne marked the familiarity with dismay. It was +evident that at the Hannays' Walter was in the warm lap of intimacy. + +It was evident, too, that Mr. Hannay had married considerably beneath +him. Anne owned that he had a certain dignity, and that there was +something rather pleasing in his loose, clean-shaven face. The sharp +slenderness of youth was now vanishing in a rosy corpulence, corpulence +to which Mr. Hannay resigned himself without a struggle. But above it the +delicate arch of his nose attested the original refinement of his type. +His mouth was not without sweetness, Mr. Hannay being as indulgent to +other people as he was to himself. + +He received Anne with a benign air; he assured her of his delight in +making her acquaintance; and he refrained from any allusions to the long +delay of his delight. + +Little Mrs. Hannay was rolling softly in another direction. + +"Canon Wharton, let me present you to Mrs. Walter Majendie." + +She had risen to Canon Wharton. For she had said to her husband: "You +must get the Canon. She can't think us such a shocking bad lot if we have +him." Her face expressed triumph in the capture of Canon Wharton, triumph +in the capture of Mrs. Walter Majendie, triumph in the introduction. +Owing to the Hannays' determination to rise to it, the dinner-party, in +being rigidly select, was of necessity extremely small. + +"Miss Mildred Wharton--Sir Rigley Barker--Mr. Gorst. Now you all know +each other." + +The last person introduced had lingered with a certain charming +diffidence at Mrs. Majendie's side. He was a man of about her husband's +age, or a little younger, fair and slender, with a restless, flushed face +and brilliant eyes. + +"I can't tell you what a pleasure this is, Mrs. Majendie." + +He had an engaging voice and a still more engaging smile. + +"You may have heard about me from your husband. I was awfully sorry to +miss you when I called before I went to Norway. I only came back this +morning, but I _made_ Hannay invite me." + +Anne murmured some suitable politeness. She said afterwards that her +instinct had warned her against Mr. Gorst, with his restlessness and +brilliance; but, as a matter of fact, her instinct had done nothing of +the sort, and his manners had prejudiced her in his favour. Fanny Eliott +had told her that he belonged to a very old Lincolnshire family. There +was a distinction about him. And he really had a particularly engaging +smile. + +So she received him amiably; so amiably that Majendie, who had been +observing their encounter with an intent and rather anxious interest, +appeared finally reassured. He joined them, releasing himself adroitly +from Sir Rigley Barker. + +"How's Edith?" said Mr. Gorst. + +His use of the name and something in his intonation made Anne attentive. + +"She's better," said Majendie. "Come and see her soon." + +"Oh, rather. I'll come round to-morrow. If," he added, "Mrs. Majendie +will permit me." + +"Mrs. Majendie," said her husband, "will be delighted." + +Anne smiled assent. Her amiability extended even to Mrs. Hannay, who had +risen to it, so far, well. + +During dinner Anne gave her attention to her right-hand neighbour, Canon +Wharton; and Mrs. Hannay, looking down from her end of the table, saw her +selection justified. In rising to the Canon she had risen her highest; +for the ex-member hardly counted; he was a fallen star. But Canon +Wharton, the Vicar of All Souls, stood on an eminence, social and +spiritual, in Scale. He had built himself a church in the new quarter of +the town, and had filled it to overflowing by the power of his eloquence. +Lawson Hannay, in a moment of unkind insight, had described the Canon as +"a speculative builder"; but he lent him money for his building, and +liked him none the less. + +Out of the pulpit the Vicar of All Souls was all things to all men. In +the pulpit he was nothing but the Vicar of All Souls. He stood there for +a great light in Scale, "holding," as he said, "the light, carrying the +light, battling for light in the darkness of that capital of commerce, +that stronghold of materialism, founded on money, built up in money, +cemented with money!" He snarled out the word "money," and flung it in +the face of his fashionable congregation; he gnashed his teeth over it; +he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in +little Tommy Wharton's pluck in "giving it them hot." He was always +giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire. And then little +Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock, +and into the Hannays' house for whiskey and soda. He could drink peg for +peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned +many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid the whiskey and shook her +handkerchief at the little Canon, and "shooed" him merrily away. And +Lawson, big, good-natured Lawson, would lend him more "money" to build +his church with. + +So the Vicar of All Souls, who aspired to be all things to all men, was +hand in glove with the Lawson Hannays. He had occasionally been known to +provide for the tables of the poor, but he dearly loved to sit at the +tables of the rich; and he justified his predilection by the highest +example. + +Anne, who knew the Canon by his spiritual reputation only, turned to him +with interest. Her eye, keen to discern these differences, saw at once +that he was a man of the people. He had the unfinished features, the +stunted form of an artisan; his body sacrificed, his admirers said, to +the energies of his mighty brain. His face was a heavy, powerful oval, +bilious-coloured, scarred with deep lines, and cleft by the wide mouth of +an orator, a mouth that had acquired the appearance of strength through +the Canon's habit of bringing his lips together with a snap at the close +of his periods. His eyes were a strange, opaque grey, but the clever +Canon made them seem almost uncomfortably penetrating by simply knitting +his eyebrows in a savage pent-house over them. They now looked forth at +Anne as if the Canon knew very well that her soul had a secret, and that +it would not long be hidden from him. + +They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon's catholicity bridged the +gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fashionable +Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning +over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win +over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had +yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying +other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success, +hoping (he said) to see his money back again. + +Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie. Ladies, +when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate +decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he +loved his dinner more. He loved it with a certain pure extravagance, +illuminated by thought and imagination. Mrs. Hannay was one with him in +this affection. Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising +higher and higher in unwearying flights. It was a link between them; +almost (so fine was the passion) an intellectual tie. But reticence was +not in Hannay's nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly. +She missed the high lyric note in it. All epicurean pleasures, even so +delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay's in his dinner, appeared gross +to Anne. + +Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached, +unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay +rallied him on his abstraction. + +"If you _are_ in love, my dear Wallie," she whispered, "you needn't show +it so much. It's barely decent." + +"Isn't it? Anyhow, I hope it's quite decently bare," he answered, tempted +by her folly. They were gay at Mrs. Hannay's end of the table. But Anne, +who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance +which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston +Square. These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull. + +Now, though Anne didn't in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr. +Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her. Not that he +talked very much to anybody. Now and then the Canon's niece, Mildred +Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in +those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred +and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck +Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their +intercourse. + +To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. She tried to be patient with it, +judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen +to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the +Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation. + +At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests +to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she +whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint +of filling his master's glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his +protests. And then her voice rose. + +"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice +to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're +drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's glass, Gould, fill it--fill it." +She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay. + +In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her +to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she +put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs. +Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable +about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa, +and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cushion. +No?--Do--Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay, +supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, "one for +my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I +adore cushions, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cushion +myself, so I suppose that's why." + +Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but +she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually +than you could snub a little down cushion. It would be impossible, she +thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface. +Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended +and her vulgarity began. + +"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's +attitude. "My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and +I ought to be friends too." + +Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning +unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on +the theme of friendship, till her husband appeared with the other three +men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile +drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it +dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it +was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin. + +"Did you ever see such a pair? I tell Lawson he's fonder of Wallie than +he is of me. I believe he'd go down on his knees and black his boots for +nothing, if he asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson +I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little +talk with you." + +Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her place to him, +cushions and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to +the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his +friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness. + +He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty utterance. + +"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear +lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint--a Bayard." He +flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the +crescendo of his thought. "A _preux chevalier, sans peur_" said Mr. +Hannay, "_et sans reproche_." + +Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence. + +Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had +been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife. + +And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her +attitude--conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own +shortcomings, and it struck him that Majendie needed some defence against +her judgment of his taste in friendship. + +When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last +lingering guest. + +"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay. + +"_Poor_ Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed. + +"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst. + +"Oh, I think she's magnificent." + +"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?" + +"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully. + +"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine +it's going to be any gayer now." + +"_Now_" said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation +of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville, +with Gwen Richards on." + +"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay. + +"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no +appetite herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular +dog-in-the-manger of a woman." + +"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst. "She can't be as bad as all that. +Edith's awfully fond of her." + +"And _that's_ good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay. + +"Yes. That's good enough for me. _I_ like her," said Gorst stoutly; and +Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth. + +But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated, +"Honestly, I like her." + +"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy +forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda. + +Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him. + +"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she. + +"It was a dead failure, Pussy." + +"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party." + +Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she +did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a +woman of exquisite tact. + +"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream--a happy dream." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me." + +Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and +hostess of the night before. + +"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that +she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays. + +"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had +not. + +"How you ever could--" she began, but he stopped her. + +"Oh well, we needn't go into that." + +It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind +those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not +wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to +the discussion. + +She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble +had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned, +somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She +wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays--detestable people. + +She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an +account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into +life.) + +"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question. + +"No, I don't know that I did. _I_ should have enjoyed it very much +indeed." + +"I don't believe you." + +"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?" + +"The Hannays were there. It was enough." + +"You liked Mr. Gorst?" + +"Yes. He was different." + +"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him." + +"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear." + +"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy." + +"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to +me." + +"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a +good friend to him." + +"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?" + +"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay." + +"It's intolerable!" said Anne. + +"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike +so much stood by Walter when your friends the Eliotts, my child, turned +their virtuous backs on him--when none of his own people, even, would +lend him a helping hand. It was Lawson Hannay who saved him." + +"Saved him?" + +"Saved him. Moved heaven and earth to get him out of that woman's +clutches." + +Anne shook her head, and put her hands over her eyes to dispel her vision +of him. Edith laughed. + +"You can't see Mr. Hannay moving heaven?" + +"No, really I can't." + +"Well, _I_ saw him. At least, if he didn't move heaven, he moved earth. +When nothing else could shake her hold, he bought her off." + +"Bought--her--off?" + +"Yes, bought her--paid her money to go. And she went." + +"He owes him money, then?" + +"Money, and a great many other things beside. You don't like it?" + +"I can't bear it." + +"Of course you can't. It hurts your pride. It hurt mine badly. But my +pride has had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay." + +Anne raised her head as if she refused to lower her pride an inch to him. +She was trying to put the whole episode behind her, as it had come before +her. She had nothing whatever to do with it. Edith, of course, had to be +grateful. _She_ was not bound by the same obligation. But she was +determined that they should be quit of the Hannays. She would make Walter +pay back that money. + +Meanwhile Edith's eyes filled with tears at the recollection. "Lawson +Hannay may not have been a very good man himself--I believe at one time +he wasn't. But he loved his friend, and he didn't want to see him going +the same way." + +"The same way? That means that, if it hadn't been for Mr. Hannay, he +would never have met her." + +"Mr. Hannay did his best to prevent his meeting her. He knew what she +was, and Walter didn't. He took him off in his yacht for weeks at a time, +to get him out of her way. When she followed him he brought him back. +When she persecuted him--well, I've told you what he did." + +Anne lifted her hand in supplication, and rose and went to the open +window, as if, after that recital, she thirsted for fresh air. Edith +smiled, in spite of herself, at her sister-in-law's repudiation of the +subject. + +"Poor Mr. Hannay," said she, "the worst you can say of him now is that he +eats and drinks a little more than's good for him." + +"And that he's married a wife who sets him the example," said Anne, +returning from the window-sill refreshed. + +"She keeps him straight, dear." + +"Edith! I shall never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's +horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps him straight!'" + +"You think I take for granted a natural tendency to crookedness. I +don't--I don't. What I take for granted is a natural tendency to +straightness, when it gets its way. It doesn't always get it, though, +especially in a town like Scale." + +"I wish we were out of it." + +"So did I, dear, once; but I don't now. We must make the best of it." + +"Has Walter paid any of that money back to Mr. Hannay?" + +Edith looked up at her sister-in-law, startled by the hardness in her +voice. She had meant to spare Anne's pride the worst blow, but something +in her question stirred the fire that slept in Edith. + +"No," she said, "he hasn't. He was going to, but Mr. Hannay cancelled the +debt, in order that he might marry--that he might marry you." + +Anne drew back as if Edith had struck her bodily. She, then, had been +bought, too, with Mr. Hannay's money. Without it, Walter could not have +afforded to marry her; for she was poor. + +She sat silent, until her self-appointed hour with Edith ended; and then, +still silently, she left the room. + +And Edith turned her cheek on her cushions and sobbed weakly to herself. +"Walter would never forgive me if he knew I'd told her that. It was awful +of me. But Anne would have provoked the patience of a saint." + +Anne owned that Edith was a saint, and that the provocation was extreme. + +In the afternoon, Edith, at her own request, was forgiven, and Anne, by +way of proving and demonstrating her forgiveness, announced her amiable +intention of calling on Mrs. Hannay on her "day." + +The day fell within a week of the dinner. It was agreed that Majendie was +to meet his wife at the Hannays, and to take her home. There was a good +mile between Prior Street and the Park; and Anne was a leisurely walker; +so it happened that she was late, and that Majendie had arrived a few +minutes before her. She did not notice him there all at once. Mrs. Hannay +was a sociable little lady; the radius of her circle was rapidly +increasing, and her "day" drew crowds. The lamps were not yet lit, and as +Anne entered the room, it was dim to her after the daylight of the open +air. She had counted on an inconspicuous entrance, and was astonished to +find that the announcement of her name caused a curious disturbance and +division in the assembly. A finer ear than Anne's might have detected an +ominous sound, something like the rustling of leaves before a storm. But +Anne's self-possession rendered her at times insensible to changes in the +social atmosphere. In any case the slight commotion was no more than she +had come prepared for in a whole roomful of ill-bred persons. + +"Pussy," said a lady who stood near Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had her back +to the doorway. The lady's voice rang on a low note of warning, and she +brought her mouth close to Mrs. Hannay's ear. + +The hostess started, turned, and came at once towards Mrs. Majendie, +rolling deftly between the persons who obstructed her perturbed and +precipitate way. The perfect round of her cheeks had dropped a little; it +was the face of a poor cherub in vexation and dismay. + +"Dear Mrs. Majendie,"--her voice, once so triumphant, had dropped too, +almost to a husky whisper,--"how very good of you." + +She led her to a sofa, the seat of intimacy, set back a little from the +central throne. (Majendie could be seen fairly immersed in the turmoil, +struggling desperately through it, with a plate in his hand.) + +Mrs. Hannay was followed by her husband, by the other lady, and by +Gorst. She introduced the other lady as Mrs. Ransome, and they seated +themselves, one on each side of Anne. The two men drew up in front of +the sofa, and began to talk very fast, in loud tones and with an +unnatural gaiety. The women, too, closed in upon her somewhat with their +knees; they were both a little confused, both more than a little +frightened, and the manner of both was mysteriously apologetic. + +Anne, with her deep, insulating sense of superiority, had no doubt as to +the secret of the situation. She felt herself suitably protected, guarded +from contact, screened from view, distinguished very properly from +persons to whom it was manifestly impossible, even for Mrs. Hannay, to +introduce her. She was very sorry for poor Mrs. Hannay, she tried to make +it less difficult for her, by ignoring the elements of confusion and +fright. But poor Mrs. Hannay kept on being frightened; she refused to +part with her panic and be natural. So terrified was she, that she hardly +seemed to take in what Mrs. Majendie was saying. + +Anne, however, conversed with the utmost amiability, while her thoughts +ran thus: "Dear lady, why this agitation? You cannot help being vulgar. +As for your friends, what do you think I expected?" + +The other lady, Mrs. Dick Ransome, could not be held accountable for +anything but her own private vulgarity; and it struck Anne as odd that +Mrs. Dick Ransome, who was not responsible for Mrs. Hannay, seemed, if +anything, more terrified than Mrs. Hannay, who was responsible for her. + +Mrs. Dick Ransome did not, at the first blush, inspire confidence. She +was a woman with a great deal of blonde hair, and a fresh-coloured, +conspicuously unspiritual face; coarse-grained, thick-necked, ruminantly +animal, but kind; kind to Mrs. Hannay, kind to Anne, kinder even than +Mrs. Hannay who was responsible for all the kindness. + +Charlie Gorst hurried away to get Mrs. Majendie some tea, and Lawson's +Hannay's large form moved into the gap thus made, blocking Anne's view of +the room. He stood looking down upon her with an extraordinary smile of +mingled apology and protection. Gorst's return was followed by Majendie, +wandering uneasily with his plate. He smiled at Anne, too; and his smile +conveyed the same suggestion of desperation and distress. It was as if he +said to her: "I'm sorry for letting you in for such a crew, but how can +I help it?" She smiled back at him brightly, as much as to say; "Don't +mind. It amuses me. I'm taking it all in." + +He wandered away, and Anne felt that the women exchanged looks across her +shoulders. + +"I think I'll be going, Pussy dear," said Mrs. Ransome, nodding some +secret intelligence. She elbowed her way gently across the room, and came +back again, shaking her head hopelessly and helplessly. "She says I can +go if I like, but she'll stay," said Mrs. Ransome under her breath. + +"Oh-h-h," said Mrs. Hannay under hers. + +"What am I to do?" said Mrs. Ransome, flurried into audible speech. + +"Stay--stay. It's much better." Mrs. Hannay plucked her husband by the +sleeve, and he lowered an attentive ear. Mrs. Ransome covered the +confidence with a high-pitched babble. + +"You find Scale a very sociable place, don't you, Mrs. Majendie?" said +Mrs. Ransome. + +"Go," said Mrs. Hannay, "and take her off into the conservatory, or +somewhere." + +"More sociable in the winter-time, of course." (Mrs. Ransome, in her +agitation, almost screamed it.) + +"I can't take her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a +thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of +Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, +benignant gaze. + +Mrs. Hannay was beside herself, beholding his invertebrate behaviour. +"Don't sit down, stupid. Do something--anything." + +He went to do it, but evidently, whatever it was, he had no heart for it. + +A maid came in and lit a lamp. There was a simultaneous movement of +departure among the nearer guests. + +"Oh, heavens," said Mrs. Hannay, "don't tell me they're all going to go!" + +Anne, serenely contemplating these provincial manners, was bewildered by +the horror in Mrs. Hannay's tone. There was no accounting for provincial +manners, or she would have supposed that Mrs. Hannay, mortified by the +presence of her most undesirable acquaintance, would have rejoiced to see +them go. + +Their dispersal cleared a space down the middle of the room to the +bay-window, and disclosed a figure, a woman's figure, which occupied, +majestically, a settee. The settee, set far back in the bay of the +window, was in a direct line with Anne's sofa. That part of the room was +still unlighted, and the figure, sitting a little sideways, remained +obscure. + +A servant went round lighting lamps. + +The first lamp to be lit stood beside Anne's sofa. The effect of the +illumination was to make the lady in the window turn on her settee. +Across the space between, her eyes, obscure lights in a face still +undefined, swept with the turning of her body, and fastened upon Anne's +face, bared for the first time to their view. They remained fixed, as if +Anne's face had a peculiar fascination for them. + +"Who is the lady sitting in the window?" asked Anne. + +"It's my sister." Mrs. Ransome blinked as she answered, and her blood ran +scarlet to the roots of her blonde hair. + +A cherub, discovering a horrible taste in his trumpet, would have looked +like Mrs. Hannay. + +"Do let me give you some more tea, Mrs. Majendie?" said she, while Mrs. +Ransome signalled to her husband. "Here, Dick, come and make yourself +useful." + +Mr. Ransome, a little stout man with a bald head, a pale puffy face, a +twinkling eye and a severe moustache, was obedient to her summons. + +"Let me see," said she, "have you met Mrs. Majendie?" + +"I have not had that pleasure," said Mr. Ransome, and bowed profoundly. +He waited assiduously on Mrs. Majendie. The Ransomes might have been +responsible for the whole occasion, they so rallied around and supported +her. + +Hannay and Gorst, Ransome and another man were gathered together in a +communion with the lady of the settee. There was a general lull, and her +voice, a voice of sweet but somewhat penetrating quality, was heard. + +"Don't talk to me," said she, "about women being jealous of each other. +Do you suppose I mind another woman being handsome? I don't care how +handsome she is, so long as she isn't handsome in my style. Of course, +I don't say I could stand it if she was the very moral of me." + +"I say, supposing Toodles met the very moral of herself?" + +"Could Toodles have a moral? I doubt it." + +"I want to know what she'd do with it." + +"Yes, by Jove, what _would_ you do?" + +"Do? I should do my worst. I should make her sit somewhere with a good +strong light on her." + +"Hold hard there," said her brother-in-law (the man who called her +Toodles), "Lady Cayley doesn't want that lamp lit just yet" + +In the silence of the rest, the name seemed to leap straight across the +room to Anne. + +The two women beside her heard it, and looked at each other and at her. +Anne sickened under their eyes, struck suddenly by the meaning of their +protection and their sympathy. She longed to rise, to sweep them aside +and go. But she was kept motionless by some superior instinct of disdain. + +Outwardly she appeared in no way concerned by this revelation of the +presence of Lady Cayley. She might never have heard of her, for any +knowledge that her face betrayed. + +Majendie, not far from the settee in the window, was handing cucumber +sandwiches to an old lady. And Lady Cayley had taken the matches from the +maid and was lighting the lamp herself, and was saying, "I'm not afraid +of the light yet, I assure you. There--look at me." + +Everybody looked at her, and she looked at everybody, as she sat in the +lamplight, and let it pour over her. She seemed to be offering herself +lavishly, recklessly, triumphantly, to the light. + +Lady Cayley was a large woman of thirty-seven, who had been a slender and +a pretty woman at thirty. She would have been pretty still if she had +been a shade less large. She had tiny upward-tilted features in her large +white face; but the lines of her jaw and her little round prominent chin +were already vanishing in a soft enveloping fold, flushed through its +whiteness with a bloom that was a sleeping colour. Her forehead and +eyelids were exceedingly white, so white that against them her black +eyebrows and blue eyes were vivid and emphatic. Her head carried high a +Gainsborough hat of white felt, with black plumes and a black line round +its brim. Under its upward and its downward curve her light brown hair +was tossed up, and curled, and waved, and puffed into an appearance of +great exuberance and volume. Exuberance and volume were the note of this +lady, a note subdued a little by the art of her dressmaker. A gown of +smooth black cloth clung to her vast form without a wrinkle, sombre, +severe, giving her a kind of slenderness in stoutness. She wore a white +lace vest and any quantity of lace ruffles, any number of little black +velvet lines and points set with paste buttons. And every ruffle, every +line, every point and button was an accent, emphasising some beauty of +her person. + +And Anne looked at Lady Cayley once and no more. + +It was enough. The trouble that she had put from her came again upon her, +no longer in its merciful immensity, faceless and formless (for she had +shrunk from picturing Lady Cayley), but boldly, abominably defined. She +grasped it now, the atrocious tragedy, made visible and terrible for her +in the body of Lady Cayley, the phantom of her own horror made flesh. + +A terrible comprehension fell on her of that body, of its power, its +secret, and its sin. + +For the first moment, when she looked from it to her husband, her mind +refused to associate him with that degradation. Reverence held her, and +a sudden memory of her passion in the woods at Westleydale. Mercifully, +they veiled her intelligence, and made it impossible for her to realise +that he should have sunk so low. + +Then she remembered. She had known that it was, that it would be so, +that, sooner or later, the woman would come back. Her brain conceived a +curious two-fold intuition of the fact. + +It was all foreappointed and foreknown, that she should come to this +hateful house, and should sit there, and that her eyes should be opened +and that she should see. + +And the woman's voice rose again. "Do I see cucumber sandwiches?" said +Lady Cayley. "Dick, go and tell Mr. Majendie that if he doesn't want all +those sandwiches himself, I'll have one." + +Ransome gave the message, and Majendie turned to the lady of the settee, +presenting the plate with the finest air of abstraction. Her large arm +hovered in selection long enough for her to shoot out one low quick +speech. + +"I only wanted to see if you'd cut me, Wallie. Topsy bet me two to ten +you wouldn't." + +"Why on earth should I?" + +"Oh, on earth I know you wouldn't. But didn't I hear just now you'd +married and gone to heaven?" + +"Gone to----?" + +"Sh--sh--sh--I'm sure she doesn't let you use those naughty words. You +needn't say you're not in heaven, for I can see you are. You didn't +expect to meet me there, did you?" + +"I certainly didn't expect to meet you here." + +"How can you be so rude? Dick, take that tiresome plate from him, he +doesn't know what to do with it. Yes. I'll have another before it goes +away for ever." + +Majendie had given up the plate before he realised that he was parting +with the link that bound him to the outer world. He turned instantly to +follow it there; but she saw his intention and frustrated it. + +"Butter? Ugh! You might hold my cup for me while I take my gloves off." + +She peeled two skin-tight gloves from her plump hands, so carefully that +the operation gave her all the time she wanted. + +"I believe you're still afraid of me?" said she. + +He was doing his best to look over her head; but she smiled a smile so +flashing that it drew his eyes to her involuntarily; he felt it as +positively illuminating their end of the room. + +"You're not? Well, prove it." + +"Is it possible to prove anything to you?" + +Again he was about to break from her impatiently. Nothing, he had told +himself, would induce him to stay and talk to her. But he saw Anne's +face across the room; it was pale and hard, fixed in an expression of +implacable repulsion. And she was not looking at Lady Cayley, but at him. + +"You can prove it," said Lady Cayley, "to me and everybody else--they're +all looking at you--by sitting down quietly for one moment, and trying to +look a little less as if we compromised each other." + +He stayed, to prove his innocence before Anne; and he stood, to prove +his independence before Lady Cayley. He had longed to get away from the +woman, to stand by his wife's side--to take her out of the room, out of +the house, into the open air. And now the perversity that was in him kept +him where he hated to be. + +"That's right. Thank heaven one of us has got some presence of mind." + +"Presence of _mind_?" + +"Yes. You don't seem to think of _me_," she added softly. + +"Why should I?" he replied with a brutality that surprised himself. + +She looked at him with blue eyes softly suffused, and the curve of a red +mouth sweet and tremulous. "Why?" her whisper echoed him. "Because I'm a +woman." + +Her eyelids dropped ever so little, but their dark lashes (following the +upward trend of her features) curled to such a degree that the veil was +ineffectual. He saw a large slit of the wonderful, indomitable blue. + +"I'm a woman, and you're a man, you see; and the world's on your side, my +friend, not on mine." + +She said it sweetly. If she had been bitter she would have (as she +expressed it) "choked him off"; but Lady Cayley knew better than to be +bitter now, at thirty-seven. She had learnt that her power was in her +sweetness. + +His face softened (from the other end of the room Anne saw it soften), +and Lady Cayley pursued with soundless feet her fugitive advantage. + +"Poor Wallie, you needn't look so frightened. I'm quite safe now, or +soon will be. Didn't I tell you I was going there too? I'm going to be +married." + +"I'm delighted to hear it," he said stiffly. + +"To a perfect angel," said she. + +"Really? If you're going up to heaven, he, I take it, is not coming down +to earth." + +"Nothing is settled," said Lady Cayley, with such monstrous gravity that +his stiffness melted, and he laughed outright. + +Anne heard him. + +"Who, if I may ask, is this celestial, this transcendent being?" + +She shook her head. "I can't tell you, yet." + +"What, isn't even that settled?" + +Majendie was so genuinely diverted at that moment that he would not have +left her if he could. + +She took the sting of it, and flushed, dumbly. Remorse seized him, and he +sought to soothe her. + +"My dear lady, I had a vision of heavenly hosts standing round you in +such quantities that it might be difficult to make a selection, you +know." + +She rallied finely under the reviving compliment. "My dear, it's a case +of quality, not quantity--" Her past was so present to them both that he +almost understood her to say, "this time." + +"I see," he said. "The wings. But nothing's settled?" + +"It's settled right enough," said she, by which he understood her to +imply that the "angel's" case was. She had settled him. Majendie could +see her doing it. His imagination played lightly with the preposterous +idea. He conceived her in the act of bringing down her bird of heaven, +actually "winging him." + +"But it's not given out yet." + +"I see." + +"You're the first I've told, except Topsy. Topsy knows it. So you mustn't +tell anybody else." + +"I never tell anybody anything," said he. + +He gathered that it was not quite so settled as she wished him to +suppose, and that Lady Cayley anticipated some possible dashing of the +cup of matrimony from her lips. + +"So I'm not to have panics, in the night, and palpitations, every time +I think of it?" + +"Certainly not, if it rests with me." + +"I wanted you to know. But it's so precious, I'm afraid of losing it. +Nothing," said Lady Cayley, "can make up for the loss of a good man's +love. Except," she added, "a good woman's." + +"Quite so," he assented coldly, with horror at his perception of her +drift. + +His coldness riled her. + +"Who," said she with emphasis, "is the lady who keeps making those awful +eyes at us over Pussy's top-knot?" + +"That lady," said Majendie, "as it happens, is my wife." + +"Why didn't you tell me that before? That's what comes, you see, of not +introducing people. I'll tell you one thing, Wallie. She's awfully +handsome. But you always had good taste. Br-r-r, there's a draught +cutting my head off. You might shut that window, there's a dear." + +He shut it. + +"And put my cup down." + +He put it down. + +Anne saw him. She had seen everything. + +"And help me on with my cape." + +He lifted the heavy sable thing with two fingers, and helped her +gingerly. A scent, horrid and thick, and profuse with memories, was +shaken from her as she turned her shoulder. He hoped she was going. But +she was not going; not she. Her body swayed towards him sinuously from +hips obstinately immobile, weighted, literally, with her unshakable +determination to sit on. + +She rewarded him with a smile which seemed to him, if anything, more +atrociously luminous than the last. "I must keep you up to the mark," +said she, as she turned with it. "Your wife's looking at you, and I feel +responsible for your good behaviour. Don't keep her waiting. Can't you +see she wants to go?" + +"And I want to go, too," said he savagely. And he went. + +And as she watched Mrs. Walter Majendie's departure, Lady Cayley smiled +softly to herself; tasting the first delicious flavour of success. + +She had made Mrs. Walter Majendie betray herself; she had made her +furious; she had made her go. + +She had sat Mrs. Walter Majendie out. + +If the town of Scale, the mayor and the aldermen, had risen and given her +an ovation, she could not have celebrated more triumphally her return. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Anne and her husband walked home in silence across the Park, grateful for +its darkness. Majendie could well imagine that she would not want to +talk. He made allowance for her repulsion; he respected it and her +silence as its sign. She had every right to her resentment. He had let +her in for the Hannays, who had let her in for the inconceivable +encounter. On the day of her divorce Sarah Cayley had removed herself +from Scale, and he had shrunk from providing for the supreme +embarrassment of her return. He had looked on her as definitely, +consummately departed. She had disappeared, down dingy vistas, into +unimaginable obscurities. He pictured her as sunk, in Continental +abysses, beyond all possibility of resurgence. And she had emerged (from +abominations) smiling that indestructible smile. The incident had been +unpleasant, so unpleasant that he didn't want to talk about it. All the +same, he would have done violence to his feelings and apologised for it +then and there, but that he really judged it better to let well alone. It +was well, he thought, that Anne was so silent. She might have had a great +deal to say, and it was kind of her not to say it, to let him off so +easily. + +Anne's interpretation of Majendie's silence was not so favourable. After +being exposed to the pain and insult of Lady Cayley's presence she had +expected an immediate apology, and she inferred from its omission an +unpardonable complicity. Any compliance with the public toleration of +that person would have been inexcusable, and he had been more than +compliant, more than tolerant; he had been solicitous, attentive, +deferent. And deference to such a woman was insolence to his wife. Anne +was struck dumb by the shameless levity of the proceedings. The two had +behaved as if nothing had happened, or rather (she bitterly corrected +herself) as if everything had happened, and might happen any day again +(she inferred as much from his silence). It would--it would happen. _Her_ +intentions were, to Anne's mind, unmistakable; that was plainly what she +had come back for. As to his intentions, Anne was not yet clear. She had +not made up her mind that they were bad; but she shuddered as she said to +herself that he was "weak." He had come at that woman's call; he had hung +round her; he had waited on her at her bidding; at her bidding he had sat +down beside her; he had listened to her, attracted, charmed, delighted; +he had talked to her in the low voice Anne knew. How could she tell what +had or had not passed between them there, what intimacies, what +recognitions, what resurrections of the corrupt, ill-buried past? He had +been "weak--weak--weak." Henceforth she must reckon with his weakness, +and reckoning with it, she must keep him from that woman by any method, +and at any cost! It was something that he had the grace to be ashamed of +himself (another inference from his silence). No wonder, after that +communion, if he was ashamed to look at his wife or speak to her. + +He went straight to Edith when they reached home, and Anne went upstairs +to her bedroom. + +She had a great desire to be alone. She wanted to pray, as she had +prayed in that room at Scarby on the morning of her discovery. Not that +she felt in the least as she had felt then. She was more profoundly +wounded--wounded beyond passion and beyond tears, calm and self-contained +in her vision of the inevitable, the fore-ordained reality. She had to +get rid of her vision; it was impossible to live with it, impossible to +live through another hour like the last. Her desire to pray was a +terrible, urgent longing that consumed her, impatient of every minute +that kept her from her prayer. She controlled it, moving slowly as she +took off her outdoor clothes and put them decorously away; feeling that +the force of her prayer gathered and mounted behind these minute +obstructions and delays. + +She knelt down by her bed. She had been used to pray there with her eyes +fixed upon the crucifix which he had given her. It hung low, almost +between the pillows of their bed. Now she closed her eyes to shut it from +her sight. It was then that she realised what had been done to her. With +the closing of her eyes she opened some back room in her brain, a hot +room, now dark, and now charged with a red light, vaporous and vivid, +that ran in furious pulses, as it were the currents of her blood made +visible. The room thus opened was tenanted by the revolting image of Lady +Cayley. Now it loomed steadily in the dark, now it leapt quiveringly into +the red, vaporous light. She could not see her husband, but she had a +sickening sense that he was there, looming, and that his image, too, +would leap into sight at some signal of her unwilling thought. She knew +that that back room would remain, built up indestructibly in the fabric +of her mind. It would be set apart for ever for the phantom of her +husband and her husband's mistress. By a tremendous effort of will she +shut the door on it. There it must be for ever, but wherever she looked, +she would not look there; much less allow herself to dwell in the unclean +place. It was not to think of that woman, his mistress, that she had gone +down on her knees. To think of her was contamination. After all, the +woman had no power over her inner life. She was not forced to think of +her. She had her sanctuary and her way of escape. + +But before she could get there she had to struggle against the fatigue +which came of her effort not to think. Once she would have resigned +herself to this physical lassitude, mistaking it for the sinking of the +soul in the beatific self-surrender. But Anne's sufferings had brought +her a little further on her path. She had come to recognise that supine +state as a great danger to the spiritual life. It was not by lassitude, +but by concentration that the intense communion was attained. She lifted +her bowed head as a sign of her exaltation. + +And as she lifted it, she caught, as it were, the approach of triumphal +music. Words gathered, as on wings, from the clean-swept heavenly +spaces--they went by her like the passing of an immense processional: +"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting +doors, and the King of Glory shall come in...." It came on, that heavenly +invasion, and all her earthly barriers went down before it. And it was as +if something strong in her, something solitary and pure, had cloven its +way through the mesh of the throbbing nerves, through the beating +currents of the blood, through the hot red lights of the brain, and had +escaped into the peaceful blank. She remained there a moment, in the +place of bliss, the divine place of the self-surrendered soul, where +mortal emptiness draws down immortality. + +She said to herself, "I have my refuge; no one can take it from me. +Nothing matters so long as I can get there." + +She rose from her knees more calm and self-contained than ever, barely +conscious of her wound. + +So calm and so self-contained was she at dinner that Majendie had an +agreeable rebound; he supposed that she had recovered from the abominable +encounter, and had put Lady Cayley out of her head like a sensible woman. +Edith had received his account of that incident with a gravity that had +made him profoundly uncomfortable; and his relief was in proportion to +his embarrassment. Unfortunately it gave him the appearance of +complacency; and complacency in the circumstances was more than Anne +could bear. Coming straight from her exaltation and communion, she was +crushed by the profound, invisible difference that separated them, the +perpetual loneliness of her unwedded, unsubjugated soul. They lived a +whole earth and a whole heaven apart. He was untouched by the fires that +burnt and purified her. The tragic crises that destroyed, the spiritual +moments that built her up again, passed by him unperceived. If she were +to tell him how she had attained her present serenity of mind, by what +vision, by what effort, by what sundering of body and soul, he would not +understand. + +And that was not the worst. She had learnt not to look for that spiritual +understanding in him. It mattered little that her unique suffering and +her unique consolation should remain alike ignored. The terrible thing +was that he should have come out of his own ordeal so smiling and so +unconcerned; that he could have sinned as he had sinned, and that he +could meet, after seven years, in his wife's presence, the partner of his +sin (whose face was a revelation of its grossness)--meet her, and not be +shaken by the shame of it. It showed how lightly he held it, how low his +standard was. She recalled, shuddering, the woman's face. Nothing in the +visions she had so shrunk from could compare with the violent reality. +For one moment of repulsion she saw him no less gross. She wondered, +would she have to reckon with that, henceforth, too? + +She looked up, and met across the table the engaging innocence that she +recognised as the habitual expression of his face. He had no idea of what +dreadful things she was thinking of him. She put her thoughts from her, +admitting that she had never had to reckon with that, yet. But it was +terrible to her that, while he forced her to such thinking, he could sit +there so unconscious, and so unashamed. He sat there, bright-eyed, +smiling, a little flushed, playing with a light topic in a manner that +suggested a conscience singularly at ease. He went on sitting there, +absolutely unembarrassed, eating dessert. The eating of dinner was bad +enough, it showed complacency. But dessert argued callousness. She had +wondered how he could have any appetite at all. Her dinner had almost +choked her. + +And she sat waiting for him to finish, hardly looking at him, detached, +saint-like, and still. + +At last her silence struck him as a little ominous. He had distinct +misgivings as they turned into the study for coffee and his cigarette. +Anne sat up in her chair, refusing the support and luxury of cushions, +leaning a little forward with a brooding air. + +"Well, Nancy," said he, "are you going to read to me?" + +(Better to read than talk.) + +"Not now," said she. "I want to talk to you." + +He saw that it was not to be avoided. "Won't you let me have my coffee +and a cigarette first?" + +She waited, silent, with a strained air of patience more uncomfortable +than words. + +"Well," said he, lighting a second cigarette, and settling in the +position that would best enable him to bear it, "out with it, and get it +over." + +"I want to know," said she, "what you are going to do." + +"To do?" He was genuinely bewildered. + +"Yes, to do." + +"But about what?" + +"About that woman." + +He was so charmed with the angelic absurdity of the question that he +paused while he took it in, smiling. + +"I can't see," he said presently, "that I'm called upon to take action. +Why should I?" + +She drew herself up proudly. + +"For my sake." + +He was instantly grave. "For your sake, dear, I would do a great deal. +But"--he smiled again--"what action should I take?" + +"Is it for me to say?" + +"Well, I hardly know. I should be glad, at any rate, if you'd make a +suggestion. I can't, for instance, get up and turn the lady out of her +own sister's house. Do you want me to do that? Would you like me to--to +take her away in a cab?" + +There was a long silence, so awful that he forced himself to speak. "I am +extremely sorry. It was, of course, outrageous that you should have had +to sit in the same room with her for five minutes. But what could I do?" + +"You could have taken _me_ away." + +"I did, as soon as I got the chance." + +"Not before you had"--she paused for her phrase--"condoned her +appearance." + +"Condoned her appearance? How?" + +"By your whole manner to her." + +"Would you have had me uncivil?" + +"There are degrees," said she, "between incivility and marked attention." + +He coloured. "Marked attention! There was nothing marked about it. What +could I do? Would you, I say, have had me turn my back on the unfortunate +woman? That would have been marked attention, if you like." + +"I don't know what I would have had you do. One has no rules beforehand +for inconceivable situations. It was inconceivable that I should have met +her as I did, in your friend's house. Inconceivable that I should meet +such people anywhere. What I do ask is that you will not let me be +exposed in that way again." + +"That I certainly will not. The Ransomes did their best to get her out +of the room to-day. They won't annoy you. I can't conceive why they +called--except that they have always been rather fond of me. You can't +hold people accountable for all the doings of all their relations, can +you?" + +"In this case I should say you could--perfectly well." + +"Well, I don't, as it happens. But you needn't have anything to do with +them; not, at least, while she's living in their house." + +"It was in the Hannays' house I met her. But I'm not thinking of myself." + +"I'm thinking of you, and of nothing else." + +"You needn't," said she, cold to his warmth. "I can take care of myself. +It's you I'm thinking of." + +"Me? Why me?" + +"Because I'm your wife and have a right to. It's out of the question that +I should call on Mrs. Hannay or receive her calls. I must also beg of you +to give up going there, and to the Ransomes, and to every place where you +will be brought into contact with Lady Cayley." + +He stared at her in amazement. "My dear girl, you don't expect me to cut +the Ransomes because she isn't brute enough to turn her sister out of +doors?" + +"I expect you to give up going to them, and to the Hannays, as long as +Lady Cayley is in Scale. Promise me." + +"I can't promise you anything of the sort. Heaven knows how long she's +going to stay." + +"I ought not to have to explain that by countenancing her you insult me. +You should see it for yourself." + +"I can't see it. In the first place, with all due regard to you, I don't +insult you by countenancing her, as you call it. In the second place, I +don't countenance her by going into other people's houses. If I went into +her house, you might complain. She hasn't got a house, poor lady." + +She ignored his pity. "In spite of your regard for me, then, you will +continue to meet her?" + +"I shan't if I can help it. But if I must, I must. I can't be rude to +people." + +"You can be firm." + +He laughed. "What have I got to be firm about?" + +"Not meeting her." + +"What if I do meet her? I sincerely hope I shan't; but what if I do?" + +Her mouth trembled; her eyes filled with tears. He sprang up and leaned +over her, resting his arms on the back of her chair, bringing his face +close to hers and smiling into her eyes. + +"No--no--no!" She drew back her head and shrank away from him. He put out +his hand and turned her face to him, gazing into her eyes, as if for the +first time he saw and could fathom the sorrow and the fear in them. + +"What if I do?" he repeated. + +She tried to push his hand from her, but she could not. + +"You stupid child," he said, "do you mean to say that you're still afraid +of that?" + +"It's you who have made me--" + +"My sweetheart--" + +"No, no. Don't touch me." + +"What do you mean?" he asked gravely, still leaning over and looking down +at her. + +"I mean--I mean--I can't bear it!" she cried, gasping for breath under +the oppression of his nearness. + +He realised her repugnance, and removed himself. + +"Do you mean," he said, "because of her?" + +"Yes," she said, "because of her." + +He laughed softly. "Dear child--she doesn't exist. She doesn't exist." He +swept her out of existence with a gesture of his hand. "Not for me at any +rate." + +The emphasis was lost upon her. "It's all nonsense to talk in that way. +If she doesn't exist for you, you shouldn't have gone near her, you +shouldn't have sat talking--to her." + +"What do you suppose we were talking about?" + +"I don't know. I don't want to know. I saw and heard enough." + +"Look here, Anne. You wanted me to be rude to her, didn't you? I _was_ +rude. I was brutal. She had to remind me that she was a woman. By heaven, +I'd forgotten it. If you're always to be going back on that--" + +"I'm not going back. She has come back." + +"It doesn't matter. She doesn't exist. What difference does she make?" + +She rose for better delivery of what she had to say. + +"She makes the whole difference. It's not that I'm afraid of her. I don't +think I am. I believe that you love me." + +"Ah--if you believe that--" He came nearer. + +"I do believe it. It's to me that it makes the difference. I must be +honest with you. It's not that I'm afraid. It is--I think--that I'm +disgusted." + +He lowered his eyes and moved from her uneasily. + +"I was horrified enough when I first knew of it, as you know. You know, +too, that I forgave you, and that I forgot. That was because I didn't +realise it. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't before I had seen her. +Now I have seen her, and I know." + +"What do you know?" he said coldly. + +"The awfulness of it." + +"Do you! Do you!" + +"Yes--and if you had realised it yourself--But you don't, and your not +realising it is what shocks me most." + +"I don't realise it?" His smile, this time, was grim. "I should think I +was in a better position for realising it than you." + +"You don't realise the shame, the sin of it" + +"Oh, don't I?" He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all +over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But +you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me +that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth +and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you +are never--never--going to forget it. And you are going to make me +remember it every day of my life. Is that it?" + +"It is not." She could not see herself thus hard and implacable. She had +vowed that there was no duty that she would omit; and it was her duty to +forgive; if possible, to forget. "I am going to try to forget it, as I +have forgotten it before. But it will be very hard, and you must be +patient with me. You must not remind me of it more than you can help." + +"When have I--?" + +She was silent. + +"When?" he insisted. + +She shook her head and turned away. A sudden impulse roused him, and he +sprang after her. He grasped her wrist as she laid her hand on the door +to open it. He drew her to him. "When?" he repeated. "How? Tell me." + +She paused, gazing at him. He would have kissed her, hoping thus to make +his peace with her; but she broke from him. + +"Ah," she cried, "you are reminding me of it now." + +He opened the door, dumb with amazement, and turned from her as she went +through. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +It was a fine day, early in November, and Anne was walking alone along +one of the broad flat avenues that lead from Scale into the country +beyond. Made restless by her trouble, she had acquired this pedestrian +habit lately, and Majendie encouraged her in it, regarding it less as a +symptom than as a cure. She had flagged a little in the autumn, and he +was afraid that the strain of her devotion to Edith was beginning to tell +upon her health. On Saturdays and Sundays they generally walked together, +and he did his best to make his companionship desirable. Anne, given now +to much self-questioning as to their relations, owned, in an access of +justice, that she enjoyed these expeditions. Whatever else she had found +her husband, she had never yet found him dull. But it did not occur to +her, any more than it occurred to Majendie, to consider whether she +herself were brilliant. + +She made a point of never refusing him her society. She had persuaded +herself that she went with him for his own good. If he wanted to take +long walks in the country, it was her duty as his wife to accompany him. +She was sustained perpetually by her consciousness of doing her duty as +his wife; and she had persuaded herself also that she found her peace in +it. She kept his hours for him as punctually as ever; she aimed more +than ever at perfection in her household ways. He should never be able +to say that there was one thing in which she had failed him. + +No; she knew that neither he nor Edith, if they tried, could put their +finger on any point, and say: There, or there, she had gone wrong. Not +in her understanding of him. She told herself that she understood him +completely now, to her own great unhappiness. The unhappiness was the +price she paid for her understanding. + +She was absorbed in these reflections as she turned (in order to be home +by five o'clock), and walked towards the town. She was awakened from +them by the trampling of hoofs and the cheerful tootling of a horn. A +four-in-hand approached and passed her; not so furiously but that she had +time to recognise Lady Cayley on the box-seat, Mr. Gorst beside her, +driving, and Mr. Ransome and Mr. Hannay behind amongst a perfect +horticultural show in millinery. + +Anne had no acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Scale and +Beesly Four-in-hand Club, and her intuition stopped short of recognising +Miss Gwen Richards, of the Vaudeville, and the others. All the same her +private arraignment of these ladies refused them whatever benefit they +were entitled to from any doubt. Not that Anne wasted thought on them. +In spite of her condemnation, they barely counted; they were mere +attendants, accessories in the vision of sin presented by Lady Cayley. + +Nothing could have been more conspicuous than her appearance, more +unabashed than the proclamation of her gay approach. Mounted high, +heralded by the tootling horn, her hair blown, her cheeks bright with +speed, her head and throat wrapped in a rosy veil that flung two broad +streamers to the wind (as it were the banners of the red dawn flying and +fluttering over her), she passed, the supreme figure in the pageant of +triumphal vice. + +Her face was turned to Gorst's face, his to hers. He looked more than +ever brilliant, charming and charmed, laughing aloud with his companion. +Hannay and Ransome raised their hats to Mrs. Majendie as they passed. +Gorst was too much absorbed in Lady Cayley. + +Anne shivered, chilled and sick with the resurgence of her old disgust. +These were her husband's chosen associates and comrades; they stood by +one another; they were all bound up together in one degrading intimacy. +His dear friend Mr. Gorst was the dear friend of Lady Cayley. He knew +what she was, and thought nothing of it. Mr. Ransome, her brother-in-law, +knew, and thought nothing of it. As for Mr. Hannay, Walter's other dear +friend, you only had to look at the women he was with to see how much Mr. +Hannay thought. There could have been nothing very profound in his +supposed repudiation of Lady Cayley. If it was true that he had once paid +her money to go, he was doing his best to welcome her, now she had come +back. But it was Gorst, with his vivid delight in Lady Cayley, who amazed +her most. Anne had identified him with the man of whom Walter had once +told her, the man who was "fond of Edith," the man of whom Walter +admitted that he was not "entirely straight." And this man was always +calling on Edith. + +She was resolved that, if she could prevent it, he should call no more. +It should not be said that she allowed her house to be open to such +people. But it required some presence of mind to state her determination. +Before she could speak with any authority she would have to find out all +that could be known about Mr. Gorst. She would ask Fanny Eliott, who had +seemed to know, and to know more than she had cared to say. + +Instead of going straight home, she turned aside into Thurston Square; +and had the good luck to find Fanny Eliott at home. + +Fanny Eliott was rejoiced to see her. She looked at her anxiously, and +observed that she was thin. She spoke of her call as a "coming back"; the +impression conveyed by Anne's manner was so strikingly that of return +after the pursuit of an illusion. + +Anne smiled wearily, as if it had been a long step from Prior Street to +Thurston Square. + +"I thought," said Mrs. Eliott, "I was never going to see you again." + +"You might have known," said Anne. + +"Oh yes, I might have known. And you're not going to run away at five +o'clock?" + +"No. I can stay a little--if you're free." + +Mrs. Eliott interpreted the condition as a request for privacy, and rang +the bell to ensure it. She knew something was coming; and it came. + +"Fanny, I want you to tell me what you know of Mr. Gorst." + +Mrs. Eliott looked exceedingly embarrassed. She avoided gossip as +inconsistent with the intellectual life. And unpleasant gossip was +peculiarly distasteful to her. Therefore she hesitated. "My dear, I +don't know much--" + +"Don't put me off like that. You know something. You must tell me." + +Mrs. Eliott reflected that Anne had no more love of scandalous histories +than she had; therefore, if she asked for knowledge, it must be because +her need was pressing. + +"My dear, I only know that Johnson won't have him in the house." + +She spoke as if this were nothing, a mere idiosyncrasy of Johnson's. + +"Why not?" said Anne. "He has very nice manners." + +"I dare say, but Johnson doesn't approve of him." (Another eccentricity +of Johnson's.) + +"And why doesn't he?" + +"Well, you know, Mr. Gorst has a very unpleasant reputation. At least he +goes about with most objectionable people." + +"You mean he's the same sort of person as Mr. Hannay?" + +"I should say he was, if anything, worse." + +"You mean he's a bad man?" + +"Well--" + +"So bad that you won't have him in the house?" + +"Well, dear, you know we are particular." (A singularity that she shared +with Johnson.) + +"So am I," said Anne. + +"And this," she said to herself, "is the man whom Edie's fond of, +Walter's dearest friend. And my friends won't have him in their house." + +"Charming, I believe, and delightful," said Mrs. Eliott, "but perhaps a +little dangerous on that account. And one has to draw the line. I want to +know about you, dear. You're well, though you're so thin?" + +"Oh, very well." + +"And happy?" (She ventured on it.) + +"Could I be well if I weren't happy? How's Mrs. Gardner?" + +The thought of happiness called up a vision of the perpetually radiant +bride. + +"Oh, Mrs. Gardner, she's as happy as the day is long. Much too happy, she +says, to go about paying calls." + +"_I_ haven't called much, have I?" said Anne, hoping that her friend +would draw the suggested inference. + +"No, you haven't. _You_ ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +"Why I any more than Mrs. Gardner? But I am." + +Mrs. Eliott perceived her blunder. "Well, I forgive you, as long as +you're happy." + +Anne kissed her more tenderly than usual as they said good-bye, so +tenderly that Mrs. Eliott wondered "Is she?" + +Majendie was late that afternoon, and Anne had an hour alone with Edith. +She had made up her mind to speak seriously to her sister-in-law on the +subject of Mr. Gorst, and she chose this admirable opportunity. + +"Edith," said she with the abruptness of extreme embarrassment, "did you +know that Lady Cayley had come back?" + +"Come back?" + +"She's here, living in Scale." + +There was a pause before Edith answered. Anne judged from the quiet of +her manner that this was not the first time that she had heard of the +return. + +"Well, dear, after all, if she is, what does it matter? She must live +somewhere." + +"I should have thought that for her own sake it was a pity to have chosen +a town where she was so well known." + +"Oh well, that's her own affair. I suppose she argues that most people +here know the worst; and that's always a comfort." + +"Oh, for all they appear to care--" Her face became tragic, and she lost +her unnatural control. "I can't understand it. I never saw such people. +She's received as if nothing had happened." + +"By her own people. It's decent of them not to cast her off." + +"Oh, as for decency, they don't seem to have a shred of it amongst them. +And the Hannays are not her own people. I thought I should be safe in +going there after what you told me. And it was there I met her." + +"I know. They were most distressed about it." + +"And yet they received her, too, as if nothing had happened." + +"Because nothing can happen now. They got rid of her when she was +dangerous. She isn't dangerous any more. On the contrary, I believe her +great idea now is to be respectable. I suppose they're trying to give her +a lift up. You must admit it's nice of them." + +"You think them nice?" + +"I think _that's_ nice of them. It's the sort of thing they do. They're +kind people, if they're not the most spiritual I have met." + +"You may call it kindness, I call it shocking indifference. They're worse +than the Ransomes. I don't believe the Ransomes know what's decent. The +Hannays know, but they don't care. They're all dreadful people; and their +sympathy with each other is the most dreadful thing about them. They hold +together and stand up for each other, and are 'kind' to each other, +because they all like the same low, vulgar, detestable things. That's why +Mr. Hannay married Mrs. Hannay, and Mr. Ransome married Lady Cayley's +sister. They're all admirably suited to each other, but not, my dear +Edie, to you or me." + +"They're certainly not your sort, I admit." + +"Nor yours either." + +"No, nor mine either," said Edith, smiling. "Poor Anne, I'm sorry we've +let you in for them." + +"I'm not thinking only of myself. The terrible thing is that you should +be let in, too." + +"Oh, me--how can they harm me?" + +"They have harmed you." + +"How?" + +"By keeping other people away." + +"What people?" + +"The nice people you should have known. You were entitled to the very +best. The Eliotts and the Gardners--those are the people who should have +been your friends, not the Hannays and the Ransomes; and not, believe me, +darling, Mr. Gorst." + +For a moment Edith unveiled the tragic suffering in her eyes. It passed, +and left her gaze grave and lucid and serene. + +"What do you know of Mr. Gorst?" + +"Enough, dear, to see that he isn't fit for you to know." + +"Poor Charlie, that's what he's always saying himself. I've known him too +long, you see, not to know him now. Years and years, my dear, before I +knew you." + +"It was through Mrs. Eliott that I knew you, remember." + +"Because you were determined to know me. It was through you that I knew +Mrs. Eliott. Before that, she never made the smallest attempt to know me +better or to show me any kindness. Why should she?" + +"Well, my dear, if you kept her at arm's length--if you let her see, for +instance, that you preferred Mr. Gorst's society to hers--" + +"Do you think I let her see it?" + +"No, I don't. And it wouldn't enter her head. But, considering that she +can't receive Mr. Gorst into her own house--" + +"Why should she?" + +"Edie--if she cannot, how can you?" + +Edith closed her eyes. "I'll tell you some day, dear, but not now." + +Anne did not press her. She had not the courage to discuss Mr. Gorst with +her, nor the heart to tell her that he was to be received into her house +no more. She saw Edith growing tender over his very name; she felt that +there would be tears and entreaties, and she was determined that no +entreaties and no tears should move her to a base surrender. Her pause +was meant to banish the idea of Mr. Gorst from Edith's mind, but it only +served to fix it more securely there. + +"Edith," she said presently, "I will keep my promise." + +"Which promise?" Edith was mystified. Her mind unwillingly renounced the +idea of Mr. Gorst, and the promise could not possibly refer to him. + +"The promise I made to you about Walter." + +"My dear one, I never thought you would break it." + +"I shall never break it. I've accepted Walter once for all, and in spite +of everything. But I will not accept these people you say I've been let +in for. I will not know them. And I shall have to tell him so." + +"Why should you tell him anything? He doesn't want you to take them to +your bosom. He sees how impossible they are." + +"Ah--if he sees that." + +"Believe me" (Edith said it wearily), "he sees everything." + +"If he does," thought Anne, "it will be easier to convince him." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +The task was so far unpleasant to her that she was anxious to secure the +first opportunity and get it over. Her moment would come with the two +hours after dinner in the study. + +It did not come that evening; for Majendie telegraphed that he had been +detained in town, and would dine at the Club. He did not come home till +Anne (who sat up till midnight waiting for that opportunity) had gone +tired to bed. + +Her determination gathered strength with the delay, and when her moment +came with the next evening, it came gloriously. Majendie gave himself +over into her hands by bringing Gorst, of all people, back with him to +dine. + +The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarrassed youthful +air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his +confidence over something unfortunate and absurd. He had evidently +counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with +her. He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease, +his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his +knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile +candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's +encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he +had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was +a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give +a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it +amounted to, that awful prodigality of his. + +But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging +smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he +deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm +and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the +prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, +the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the +paraphernalia of triumphant sin. She turned upon her guest the cold eyes +of a condign destiny. + +By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking +in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there. He might even have had +some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend's table so +consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating +his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved +house. + +Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his +wife's protesting presence. The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne +had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained +behind to preserve her protest. Gorst had changed his oppression for a +nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie. + +"My dear fellow," he said, "what is the matter with you?" + +"How should I know?" said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper. "I'm not a +nerve specialist." + +Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, _you_ mustn't go in for +nerves, you know; you can't afford it." + +"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused +with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the +most innocent amusements. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for +them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly +anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith, +can't I?" + +He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all +his "innocent amusements," that supreme consolation would be still open +to him. + +"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do. +I told her you were coming." + +"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to +Edith. + +Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do. + +Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered +noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new +worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's +worship perpetually new. + +Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her +eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She +seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some +cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he +raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly. + +"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she. + +"Months, isn't it?" said he. + +"Weeks, three weeks, by the calendar." + +"I say--tell me--I _am_ to come and see you, just the same?" + +"Just the same? Why, what's different?" + +"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me, when a man's married, it's bound +to make a difference." + +Edith's colour mounted; she made an effort to control the trembling of +her mouth, the soft woman's mouth where all that was bodily in her love +still lingered. But the sweetness deepened in her eyes, which were the +dwelling-place of the immortal, immaterial power. They met Gorst's eyes +steadily, laying on his restlessness their peace. + +"Are you going to be married, Charlie?" said she, and smiled bravely. + +He laughed. "Oh, Lord, no; not I." + +"Who is, then?" + +"Walter, of course. I mean he is married, don't you know." + +"Yes, and is there any difference in him to you?" + +"In him? Oh, rather not." + +"In whom, then?" + +"Well--I don't think, Edie, that Mrs. Walter--I like her--" he stuck +to it--"I like her, you know, she's charming, but--I don't think she +particularly cares for _me_." + +"How do you know that?" + +"How do I know anything? By the way she looks at me." + +"Oh, the way Anne looks at people--" + +"Well, you know, it's something tremendous, something terrible. +Unutterable things, you know. She knocks the Inquisition and the day of +judgment all to pieces. They're simply not in it. It's awfully hard lines +on me, you see, because I like her." + +"I'm glad you like her." + +"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think." + +"And I like her. Please remember that." + +"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all +that?" + +"To Walter? Yes, very devoted." + +"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as +I can come and see you just the same." + +"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same." + +He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he +could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He +lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his +innocent amusements, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth +while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused +to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible +for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated +situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making +desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high +and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the +illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the +person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In +spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the damnable +cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of +adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days. +It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his +rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the +diviner air. + +And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours +had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived +her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life, +in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her +womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual +growth into something like maternal passion. There was no selfishness in +her attitude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best +and offered it to God for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed +and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had +foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped +from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed +itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own +nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover. + +She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them, +laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her +unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible +for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have +married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady +Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had +to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him. + +That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that +sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still. +But Edith insisted that she would make no difference. + +"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's +absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter--" + +He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it +turns out to my advantage." + +"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll +play to me." + +He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her +was the one thing he could do, and he did it well. + +He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys +with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific? +Or loud and strong?" + +"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud." + +"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake +the dead." + +That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself +loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour. +The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble +piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too, +triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It +was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the +miracle that he alone could accomplish for her. + +And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the +dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of +Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It +flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous +joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing. + +Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the +opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play." + +He listened, glancing now and then at Anne with a smile of pride in his +friend's performance. It was as if he were asking her to own that there +must be some good in a fellow who could play like that. + +Anne was considering in what words she would intimate to him that Mr. +Gorst's music was never to be heard again in that house. Some instinct +told her that she was courting danger, but the approval of her conscience +urged her on. She waited till the Polonaise was over before she spoke. + +"You say," said she, "he's all right as long as he can play like that. To +me, it's the most convincing proof that he's all wrong." + +"How do you make that out?" + +"I don't want to go into it," said Anne. "I don't approve of Mr. Gorst; +but I should think better of him if he had only better taste." + +"You're the first person who ever accused Gorst of bad taste." + +"Do you call it good taste to live as he does, as I know he does, and you +know he does, and yet to come here, and sit with Edie, and behave as if +he'd never done anything to be ashamed of? It would be infinitely better +taste if he kept away." + +"Not at all. There are a great many very nice things about Gorst, and his +caring to come here is one of the nicest. He has been faithful to Edith +for ten years. That sort of thing isn't so common that one can afford to +despise it." + +"Faithful to her? Poor darling, does she think he is?" + +"She doesn't think. She knows." + +"Preserve me from such faithfulness." + +"You don't know what you're talking about." + +"I do know. And you know that I know." In proof of her contention she +offered him the incident of the four-in-hand. + +Majendie made a movement of impatience. "Oh, that's nothing," he said. +"He doesn't like her. He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any +show (I can't see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing +up beside him, he couldn't very well knock her off, you know. You don't +seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she +takes a fancy to sit on. You simply can't do it." + +Anne was silent. She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable +levity. + +He smoked placidly. "No," he said presently. "Gorst mayn't be a saint, +but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah." + +Anne fired. "He may be a very bad man for all that." + +"There again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. He +is not a 'very bad man'. You've no discrimination in these things. You +simply lump us all together as a bad lot. And so we may be, compared with +the angels and the saints. But there are degrees. If Gorst isn't as good +as--as Edie, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's bad." + +"Please--I would rather not argue the point. But I am not going to have +anything to do with Mr. Gorst." + +"Of course not. You disapprove of him. There's nothing more to be said." + +He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he +preserved his own. + +"There is a great deal more to be said, dear. And I may as well say it +now. I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in +this house if I am to remain in it." + +Astonishment held him dumb. + +"You have no right to expect me to," said she. + +"To expect you to remain, or what?" + +"To receive a man of Mr. Gorst's character." + +"My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?" + +"My right as your wife." + +"My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that." + +"I ought not to have to ask you. You should have thought of it yourself. +You should have had more care for my reputation." + +At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers. + +"Your reputation? Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from +poor Gorst." + +"Is it not? My friends--the Eliotts--will not receive him." + +"There's no reason why they should." + +"Is there any reason why I should? Do you want me to be less fastidious +than they are? You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious +people. My father wouldn't have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr. +Gorst. Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my +mother's?" + +"Have you considered what my standard would look like if I turned my best +friend out of the house--a man I've known all my life--just because my +wife doesn't happen to approve of him? I know nothing about your Eliotts; +but if Edie can stand him, I should think you might." + +"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him." + +He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say, +your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like +that." + +"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself." + +"What did I tell you?" + +"That Edith cared for him." + +He remembered. + +"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie." + +"I do care for her." + +"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how +much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What +it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal +hardship of it?" + +"I know it was hard." + +"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them." + +"It isn't I who am hard." + +"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?" + +"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on +himself, and he is hard on her. There's nobody else to blame." + +"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come +any more?" + +"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after--" + +"After what?" + +"After everything." + +"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor +Edie was to blame for that, it's the least _she_ can do for you to give +him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to +her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?" + +She was silent. + +"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?" + +"I cannot _help_ what you think of me," said she with the stress of +despair. + +"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of +understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a +hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your +extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to +turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do +it--No, that's beyond me." + +"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house, +I shall go out of it." + +"Well--" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a +wise solution. + +"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'." + +"Well--and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst, +and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be +pleased." + +Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it +seemed the very cry of his delight. + +"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right." + +Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He +broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit +of levity ran riot in immortal sounds. + +"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on +him." + +"If all good women were to reason that way--" + +"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would +happen?" + +"There would be more good men in the world." + +"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because, +don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to." + +"If you're thinking of his good--" + +"Have you thought of hers?" + +"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do +then?--poor Edie!" + +"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear +little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to +heaven." + +Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing +the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch. + +Majendie rose, placid and benignant. + +"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Majendie could never be angry with any woman for more than five minutes. +And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen, +as Edith had said, "everything." + +But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He +thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel." + +She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward +eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the +eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of +a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her +encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral +force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be +described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She +believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral +deadness that he carried. + +It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair. +But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly +impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to +understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if +he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr. +Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the +fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have known that, if +she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past, +she would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer. + +She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman +and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her +own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the +sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the +burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such +presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had +married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn. + +She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once +persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was +driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the +question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to +them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal. + +If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew +which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender +to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at +once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was +peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had +not invited him at once. + +At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and +remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress +upon the name) to dinner on Friday. + +The day was Tuesday. + +"And is he coming?" said Anne. + +"He is," said Majendie. + +When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine +with Mrs. Eliott. + +"I thought you would," said Majendie. + +She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't. + +They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in +Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst +came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as +her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such +weather. + +He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door. + +"Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella +and held it over her. + +"Not at all," said she significantly. + +At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab. + +Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished +the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's +manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her +tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as +she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep, +with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding +rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on. + +Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a +pathetic spectacle. + +"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry." + +He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in +the cab, with Anne's boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing +hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood +in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped +with its passage from the cab to their doorstep. + +"I think my feet are wet," said she. + +"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he. + +He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and +stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands +to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and +kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for +a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her +shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission, +to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then +magnanimously forgive. + +It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the +downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing +gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head. + +"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he. + +"What was worth while?" + +"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?" + +There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in +sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she +would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and +that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne +had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her +to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual +voluptuary. + +Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband's manner. +He seemed positively to pander to her curious passion, while preserving +an attitude of superior purity. He multiplied her opportunities. A week +had hardly passed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne +again took refuge in Thurston Square. + +This time Majendie made no comment on her action. He seemed to take it +for granted. + +But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a +sense of moving in a divine combat. Every time she dined in Thurston +Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that +Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up. Thus +unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in +him. + +When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the +Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on +Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and +looked for some irritating maneuver in response. He would, of course, +proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect +a retreat to Mr. Gorst's rooms, or to his club. + +But Majendie lacked her passion and her inspiration. He simply said he +was delighted to hear it, and that he would make a point of being at +home. He would have to give up an engagement which he would not have made +if he had known. But that did not greatly matter. + +They came, the Eliotts and the rest, and Miss Proctor again pronounced +him charming. To be sure, he was not half so amusing as he had been on +his first appearance in Thurston Square; but it was only becoming that +he should repress himself a little at his own table and in the presence +of the Canon. _He_, the Canon, was brilliant, if you like. + +For that night the Canon was, as usual, all things to all men, and +especially to all women. He was the man of the world for Miss Proctor; +the fine epicure of books for Mrs. Eliott; for Mr. Eliott and Dr. +Gardner, the broad-minded searcher and enthusiast, the humble +camp-follower of the conquering sciences. "You are the pioneers," +said he; "you go before us on the march. But we keep up, we keep up. +We can step out--cassock and all." + +But he spread out all his spiritual lures for Mrs. Majendie. His eyes +seemed more than ever to pursue her, to search her, to be gazing +discreetly at the secret of her soul. They drew her with the clear and +candid flattery of their understanding. She could feel the clever little +Canon taking her in and making notes on her. "Sensitive. Unhappy. +Intensely spiritual nature. Too fine and pure for _him_." And over the +unhallowed, half-abandoned table, flushed slightly with Majendie's good +wine, the Canon drew up his chair to his host, and stretched his little +legs, and let his spirit expand in a rosy, broad humanity. As he had +charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to +flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in +his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the +versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous +eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his +after-dinner moments, made him sick.) + +Anne heard nothing more of Mr. Gorst for over a fortnight. It was on a +Saturday, and Majendie asked her suddenly, during luncheon, if she +thought the Eliotts would be disengaged that evening. + +"Why?" + +"Because I've asked Gorst" (again that disagreeable emphasis) "to dine +to-night." + +"Very well. I will ask Mrs. Eliott if she can have me." + +"Can you?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Oh--and I must prepare you for something quite horrible. Some time, you +know" (he smiled provokingly), "I shall have to ask the Hannays. Do you +think you can arrange that?" + +"I shall have to," said she. + +This time (it was the third) she was obliged to take Mrs. Eliott into her +confidence. She fairly flung herself on her friend's mercy. + +"I feel as if I were making use of you," said she. + +"My dear, make any use of me you please. I'm always here. You can come to +me any time you want to escape." + +"To escape?" Anne's face flew a colour that was a flag of defiance to +any reflection on her husband. She would be loyal to him as long as she +lived. Not one of her friends should know of her trouble and her fear. + +"From your Gorsts and Hannays and people." + +"Oh, from them." Anne felt that she was shielding him. + +Mrs. Eliott marked the flag of defiance and the attitude of defence. If +Anne had meant to "give him away," she could not have given him more +lavishly. Mrs. Elliott's sad inward comment was that there was more in +all this than met the eye. + +And Anne's life now continued on this rather uncomfortable footing. The +Hannays came to dinner, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. The Ransomes +came, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. Mr. Gorst came (for the fourth +time in as many weeks), and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. She began to +wonder whether the Eliotts' hospitality would stand the strain. She also +wondered whether her other friends in Thurston Square were wondering; and +what Canon Wharton must think of it. It had not occurred to her to wonder +what Mr. Gorst would think. + +At first he thought nothing of it. When he found that he had not to +encounter the terrible eyes of Mrs. Majendie, Mr. Gorst's relief was so +great that it robbed him of reflection. And when he began to think, he +merely thought that Majendie had asked him because his wife was absent, +rather than that Majendie's wife was absent because he had been asked. +Majendie had calculated on this. He was not in the least distressed by +Anne's absences. He believed that she was thoroughly enjoying both her +own protest and Mrs. Eliott's society. And the arrangement really solved +the problem nicely. Otherwise the whole thing was trivial to him. He +remained unaware of the tremendous spiritual conflict that was being +waged round the person of the unhappy Gorst. + +But Christmas was now at hand and Christmas brought the problem back +again in a terrific form. For ten years poor Gorst had dined with his +friends in Prior Street on Christmas Day. His presence was considered +by Edith to borrow a peculiar significance and sanctity from the +festival. Did they not celebrate on that day the birth of the Divine +Humanity, the solemn advent of redeeming love? Punctually on Christmas +Day the prodigal returned from his farthest wanderings, and made for +Prior Street as for his home. He had never missed a Christmas. And how +could they expel him now? His coming was such a sacred and established +thing, that he had spoken of it to Edith as a certainty. And it was as +a certainty that Edith spoke of it to Majendie. + +She asked him how they were to break the news to Anne. + +"Better not break it at all," said he. "Just let him come." + +"If he does," said Edith, "she'll walk straight out of the house." + +"Oh no, she won't." + +"Yes, she will. On principle. I understand her." + +"I confess I don't." + +"But I believe," said she, "if you explained it all to her, she'd give in +for once." + +Rather against his judgment, he endeavoured to explain, "We simply can't +not ask him, you know." + +"Ask him by all means. But I shall have to put myself on the Gardners, or +the Proctors, for the Eliotts are away." + +"Don't be absurd. You know you won't be allowed to do anything of the +sort." + +"There's nothing else left for me to do." + +He looked at her gravely; but his speech was light, for it was not in him +to be weighty. "Don't you think that, at this holy season, for the sake +of peace, and good-will, and all the rest of it, you might drop it just +for once? And let the poor chap have a happy Christmas?" + +She seemed to be considering it. "You think me very hard," said she. + +"Oh no, no, not hard." But he was wondering for the first time what this +wife of his was made of. + +"Yes, hard. I don't want you to think me hard. If you could understand +why I cannot meet that man--what it means to me--the effect it has on +me." + +"What," he said, "is the precise effect?" He was really interested. He +had always been curious to know how different men affected different +women, and to get his knowledge at first hand. + +"It's the effect," said she, "of being brought into contact with +something terribly painful and repulsive, the effect of intense +suffering--of unbearable disgust." + +He listened with his thoughtful, interested air. "I know. The effect that +your friend Canon Wharton sometimes has on me." + +"I see no resemblance between Canon Wharton and your friend Mr. Gorst." + +"And I see no resemblance between my friend Mr. Gorst and Canon Wharton." + +She was silent, gathering all her strength to deliver her spirit's last +appeal. + +"Dear," said she (for she wished to be very gentle with him, since he had +thought her hard), "dear, I wonder if you ever realise what the thing we +call--purity is?" + +He blushed violently. + +"I only know it's one of those things one doesn't speak about." + +"I must speak," said she. + +"You needn't," he said curtly; "I understand all right." + +"If you did you wouldn't ask me. All the same, Walter--" She lifted to +him the set face of a saint surrendered to the torture--"If you compel +me--" + +"Compel you? I can't compel you. Especially if you're going to look like +that." + +"It's no use," he said to Edith. "First she talks of dining with the +Gardners--" + +"She will, too--" + +"No. She'll stay--if I compel her." + +"Oh, I see. That's worse. She'd let him see it. He wouldn't enjoy his +Christmas if he came." + +"No, poor fellow, I really don't think he would. She's awfully funny +about him." + +"You still think her funny?" + +"My dear--it's the only way to take her. I'm sorry, but I can't let +Charlie spoil her Christmas; nor," he added, "Anne his." + +So Mr. Gorst did not come to Prior Street that Christmas. There came +instead of him whole sheaves and stacks of flowers, Christmas roses and +white lilies, the sacred flowers which, at that festival, the poor +prodigal brought as his tribute to his adored and beloved lady. + +He spent the greater part of his Christmas Day in the society of Mr. Dick +Ransome, and the greater part of his Christmas Night in the society of +pretty Maggie Forrest, the new girl in Evans's shop who had sold him the +Christmas roses and the lilies. "For," said he, "if I can't go and see +Edie, I'll go and see Maggie." And he enjoyed seeing Maggie as much as it +was possible to enjoy anything that was not seeing Edie. + +And Edie lay among her Christmas roses and her lilies, and smiled, with +a high courage, at Nanna, at Majendie, and Anne; and did her best to make +everybody believe that she was having a very happy Christmas. But at +night, when it was all over, Majendie held a tremulous and tearful Edie +in his arms. + +"Don't think me a brute, darling," he said. "I would have insisted, only +if he'd come to-day he'd have found out he wasn't wanted." + +"I know; and he never would have come again." + +He didn't come. For Canon Wharton enlightened Mrs. Hannay, and Mrs. +Hannay enlightened Mr. Hannay, and Mr. Hannay enlightened Mr. Gorst. + +"Of course," said the prodigal, "if she walks out of the house when +I walk into it, I can't very well go." + +"Well, not at present, perhaps, for the sake of peace," said Hannay. "It +strikes me poor old Majendie's in a pretty tight place with that wife of +his." + +So, for the sake of peace, Mr. Gorst kept away from Prior Street and his +Edie, and spent a great deal of time in Evans's shop, cultivating the +attention of Miss Forrest. + +And, for the sake of peace, Majendie kept silence, and his sister +concealed her trembling and her tears. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Gloom fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks that followed +Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it. Anne began +to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's +face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter +garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine. + +The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its +pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as +she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could +make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink +deeper into her couch. + +Anne, between her headaches, devoted herself to her sister with a kind +of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the +emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told +herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she +fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any +other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this +relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her +relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she +thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love +her--but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by +loving her." + +She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing silently by her fireside, +or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold +a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in +hers, as if she would have given them her own strength. + +And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than +ever to her husband. + +At times she mourned, obscurely, the destruction of the new soul that had +been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again +to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect +thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events +that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of +her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in +consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he +always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At +times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she slipped from +her trouble, and turned, with her arms stretched towards him, where he +lay. In her dreams he came to her with the low cry she had heard in the +wood at Westleydale. And in her dreams she was tender; but her waking +thoughts were sad and hard. + +Majendie found it more than ever difficult to realise that she had ever +shown him kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten +with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change of +soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small, +reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely +thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress, +and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very +serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully suggestive, to her husband's +fancy, of her renunciation of the will to please. + +On her first appearance in this garb he enquired whether she had embraced +the religious life. + +"I always have embraced it," said she in her ringing voice. + +"I believe it's about the only thing you ever wanted to embrace." + +"You need not say so," she returned. + +"Then why, oh why, do you wear those awful clothes?" + +"My clothes are suitable," said she. + +"Suitable? My dear girl, they suggest a divorce-suit, Majendie _versus_ +Majendie, if you like. You're a walking prosecution. Your face, with that +expression on it, is a decree _nisi_ with costs. You don't want to be a +libel on your husband, do you?" + +"How can you say such things?" + +"Well--look in the glass, dear, if you don't believe me." + +She looked. The dress was certainly not becoming. She greeted the joyless +apparition with her thin, unwilling smile. + +He put his arm around her and drew her to him. He loved her dearly, for +all her sadness and unsweetness. + +"Poor Nancy," he said, "I _am_ a brute. Forgive me." + +"I do forgive you." + +The words seemed the refrain of her life's sad song. + +And as he kissed her he said to himself, "That's all very well; but if I +only knew what I'm supposed to have done to her! Her friends must think +me a perfect monster." + +And, indeed, there was more truth than Majendie was aware of in his +extravagant jests. His wife's face was so eloquent of misery that her +friends were not slow in drawing their conclusions. Thurston Square +prepared itself to rally round her. Mrs. Eliott was loyal in keeping what +she supposed to be Anne's secret, but when she found that the Gardners +also understood that young Mrs. Majendie wasn't very happy with her +husband, discussion became free in Thurston Square, though it went no +further. + +"The kindest thing we can do is to give her a refuge sometimes from his +dreadful friends," said Mrs. Eliott. "I have to ask her here every time +they're there." + +Mrs. Gardner declared that she also would ask her gladly. Miss Proctor +said that she would ask Mr. Majendie and Mr. Gorst, which would come to +the same thing for Anne, but that she would not have Anne without her +husband. Miss Proctor could be depended on to take a light view of any +situation, a view entirely her own. + +So the Gardners, as well as the Eliotts, rallied round Mrs. Majendie, and +offered their house also as her refuge. And thus poor Anne, whose ideal +was an indestructible loyalty, contrived to build up the most undesirable +reputation for her husband in Thurston Square. Of this reputation she now +became aware, and it reacted on her own estimate of him. She said to +herself, "They don't approve of him. They seem to know something. They +are sorry for me." And she was humbled in her pride. + +The one who seemed to know most, and to be sorriest of all, was Canon +Wharton. She was always meeting him now. It was positively as if he lay +in wait for her. His eyes seemed more than ever to have penetrated her +secret. They held it safe under the pent-house of his brows. They seemed +to be always making allusions to it, while his tongue preserved a +delicate reticence. At meeting they said to her, "It doesn't matter if I +know your secret. Do you suppose it is so evident to everybody? Why, in +all this town, there is no one--no one, dear lady--capable of discovering +it but I. It is a spiritual secret." And at parting they said, "When you +can bear it no longer you must come to me. Sooner or later you will come +to me." + +And the weeks went on towards Lent. Anne longed for the time of +cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day +services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at +evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her +girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days. + +She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour's for All Souls. She +loved the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that +sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her +the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to +forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb +tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and +strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine +forces centring on her, she went to All Souls. + +On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent +personal mood. In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon's +church. + +She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning, +and more evidently unhappy. She went alone. Majendie had admitted lately +that he liked going to St. Saviour's, but he refused to accompany her to +All Souls. + +She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great +illumination. It came with the Collect for the day. Anne was deeply moved +by the Collect. She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the +sources of her spiritual help. Her light went up with the ascending, +sentence by sentence, of the prayer. + +"Oh, Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are +nothing worth; + +"Send Thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of +charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues; + +"Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee; + +"Grant this for thine only Son, Jesus Christ's sake." The ritual rang +upon that note. The music of the hymns of charity was part of the light +that penetrated her, poignant, but tender. + +Poignant but tender, too, were the aspect and the mood of the Canon as he +ascended the pulpit and looked upon his congregation. + +There was a rustling, sliding sound as the congregation turned to listen +to their vicar. + +"Though I speak,'" said the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of +angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a +tinkling cymbal." + +He gripped his hearers with the stress he laid upon certain words, +"angels," and "cymbal." He bade them mark that it was not by hazard that +the great prayer for Charity was appointed for the Sunday before Lent. +"The Church," he said, "has such care for her children that she does +nothing by hazard. This call is made to us on the eve of the great battle +against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why, but that those among us +who come off victors may have mercy upon those weakly ones who are +worsted and fallen in the fight. The life of the spirit has its own +unique temptations. It is against these that we pray to-day. We are all +prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its +corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's +and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To +follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of +the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the +statement, we have gone on accepting it, year after year, as the +statement of a somewhat remote, but well-authenticated historical fact. +Have we yet realised its significance? Have we pictured, are we able to +picture to ourselves, what company He kept? Among what surroundings His +divine figure was actually seen? In what purlieus of degenerate +Jerusalem? In what iniquitous splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles? +And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich +young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven +devils? Which is the divinest of the divine parables? The parable of the +prodigal son who devoured his father's living with harlots!" + +The Canon's voice rose and fell, and rose again; thrilling, as his breast +heaved with the immense pathos and burden of the world. + +Anne had a vision of the Hannays and the Ransomes, and of the prodigal +cast out from the house that loved him. And she said to herself for the +first time: "Have I done right? Have I done what Christ would have me +do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked +doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the +problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration. + +"Therefore we pray for charity"--the Canon's voice rang tears--"for +charity, oh, dear and tender Lord, lest, having known Thy love, we fall, +ourselves, into the sins of unpity and of pride." + +Tears came into Anne's eyes. She was overcome, bowed, shaken by the +Canon's incomparable pleading. The Canon was shaken by it himself, his +voice trembled in the benediction that followed. No one had a clearer +vision of the spiritual city. It was his tragedy that he saw it, and +could not enter in. Many, remembering that sermon, counted it, long +afterwards, to him for righteousness. It had conquered Anne. The tongues +of men and of angels, of all spiritual powers, human and divine, spoke to +her in that vibrating, indomitable voice. + +The problem it had raised remained with her, oppressed, tormented her. +What she had done had seemed to her so good. But if, after all, she had +done wrong? If she had failed in charity? + +She had come to a turning in her way when she could no longer see for +herself, or walk alone. She was prepared to surrender, meekly, her own +judgment. She must ask help of the priest whose voice told her that he +had suffered, and whose eyes told her that he knew. + +She sent a note to All Souls Vicarage, requesting an interview, at Canon +Wharton's house rather than her own. She did not want Edith or the +servants to know that she had been closeted with the Canon. The answer +came that night, making an appointment after early Evensong on the +morrow. + +After early Evensong, Anne found herself in the Canon's library. He did +not keep her waiting, and, as he entered, he held out to her, literally, +the hand of help. For the Canon never wasted a gesture. There was no +detail of social observance to which he could not give some spiritual +significance. This was partly the secret of his power. His face had lost +the light that illuminated it in the pulpit, but his eyes gleamed with a +lambent triumph. They said, "Sooner or later. But rather sooner than I +had expected." + +Anne presented her case in a veiled form, as a situation in the abstract. +She scrupulously refrained from mentioning any names. + +The Canon smiled at her precautions. "We are working in the dark," said +he. "I think I can help you a little bit more if you'll allow me to come +down to the concrete. You are speaking, I fancy, of our poor friend, Mr. +Gorst?" + +She looked at him helplessly, startled at his penetration and her own +betrayal, but appeased by the pitying adjective which brought Gorst into +the regions of pardonable discussion. + +"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I had to be certain before I could +advise you. I can now tell you with confidence that you are doing right. +I--know--the--man." + +He uttered the phrase with measured emphasis, and closed his teeth upon +the last words with a snap. It was impossible to convey a stronger effect +of moral reprobation. "But I see your difficulty," he continued. "I +understand that he is a rather intimate friend of Miss Majendie." + +Anne noticed that he deliberately avoided all mention of her husband. + +"She has known him for a very long time." + +"Ah yes. And it is your affection, your pity for your sister that makes +you hesitate. You do not wish to be hard, and at the same time you wish +to do right. Is it not so?" + +She murmured her assent. (How well he understood her!) + +"Ah, my dear Mrs. Majendie, we have sometimes to be a little hard, in +order that we may not be harder. You have thought, perhaps, that you +should be tender to this friendship? Now, I am an old man, and I have had +a pretty large experience of men and women, and I tell you that such +friendships are unwholesome. Unwholesome. Both for the woman and the +man." + +"If I thought that--" + +"You may think it. Look at the man--What has it done for him? Has it made +him any better, any stronger, any purer? Has it made her any happier?" + +"I think so. It is all she has--" + +"How can you say that, my dear Mrs. Majendie, when she has you?" + +"And her brother." + +The Canon gave her a keen glance. He seemed to be turning a little extra +light on to her secret, to see it the better by. And under that light her +mind conceived again a miserable suspicion. + +"He knows something," she thought. "What is it that he knows? They all +seem to know." + +She turned the subject back again to her sister-in-law and Mr. Gorst. +"She thinks she can save him." + +"Her brother?" + +It was another turn of the searchlight, but this time the Canon veiled +his eyes, as if in mercy. He really knew nothing, nothing at all; but, as +a man of the world, he felt that there was a great deal more than Mr. +Gorst and Miss Majendie at the back of this discussion, and he was very +curious to know what it might be. + +Anne recoiled from the veiled condemnation of his face more than she had +from its open intimations. She was not clever enough to see that the +clever Canon had simply laid a trap for her. + +She was now convinced that there was something that he knew. She lifted +her head in loyal defiance of his knowledge. "No," said she proudly, "Mr. +Gorst. It was of him I was speaking." + +"Ah," said the Canon, as if his mind had come down with difficulty from +the contemplation of another and more interesting personality; and again +the significance of his manner was not lost upon Anne. + +"I do not know Miss Majendie," he went on, still with the air of forcing +himself to deal equitably with a subject of minor interest; "but if I am +not much mistaken, she is, is she not, a little morbid?" + +"She is a hopeless invalid." + +"I know she is" (his voice dropped pity). "Poor thing--poor thing! And +she thinks that she can save him? Mark me, I put no limit to the saving +grace of God, and I would not like to say whom He may not choose as +His instrument. But before we presume to act for Him, we should be +very sure about the choice. Judging by the fruits--the fruits of this +friendship"--he paused, as if seeking for a perfect justice--"Yes. That +is what we must look at. I imagine Miss Majendie has been morbid on this +subject. Morbid; and, perhaps, a little weak?" + +Anne flushed. She was distressed to think she had given such an +impression. "Indeed, indeed she isn't. You wouldn't say that if you knew +her." + +"I do not know her. But the strongest of us may be sometimes weak. You +must be strong for her. And I"--he smiled--"must be strong for you. And I +tell you that you have been--so far--wise and right. As long as this man +continues in his evil courses, go on as you are doing. Do not encourage +him by admitting him to your house and to your friendship. But"--(the +Canon stood up, both for the better emphasis of his point, and as a +gentle reminder to Mrs. Majendie that his dinner-hour was now +approaching)--"but let him repent; let him give up his most objectionable +companions; let him lead a pure life--and _then_--accept him--welcome +him--"(the Canon opened his arms, as if he were that moment receiving a +repentant sinner) "rejoice over him"--(the Canon's face became fairly +illuminated) "as--as much as you like." + +The peroration was rapid, valedictory, complete. He thrust out his hand, +displaying the whole palm of it as a sign of openness, honesty, and +good-will. + +"God bless you." + +The solemn benediction atoned for any little momentary brusquerie. + +Anne went away with a conscience wholly satisfied, in an exalted mood, +fortified by all the ramparts of the spiritual life. + +She was very gentle with Edith that evening. She said to herself that her +love must make up to Edie for the loss her conscience had been compelled +to inflict. "After all," she said to herself, "it's not as if she hadn't +me." Measuring her services with those of the disreputable Mr. Gorst, it +seemed to her that she was amply making up. She had a hatred of moral +indebtedness, as of any other, and she loved to spend. In reckoning the +love she had spent so lavishly on Edie, she had not allowed for the +amount of forgiveness that Edie had spent on her. Forgiveness is a gift +we have to take, whether we will or no, and Anne was blissfully unaware +of what she took. + +Majendie watched her ministrations curiously. Her tenderness was the +subtlest lure to the love in him that still watched and waited for its +hour. That night, in the study, he was silent, nervous, and unhappy. She +shrank from the unrest and misery in his eyes. They followed or were +fixed on her, rousing in her an obscure resentment and discomfort. She +was beginning to be afraid of him. It had come to that. + +She left him earlier than usual, and went very miserably to bed. She +prayed, to-night, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix. It had become for +her the symbol of her life, and of her marriage, which was nothing to her +now but a sacrifice, a martyrdom, a vicarious expiation of her husband's +sin. + +As she lay down, the beating of her pulses told her that she was not to +sleep. She longed for sleep, and tried to win it to her by repeating the +Psalm which had been her comfort in all times of her depression. "I will +lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh +from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." + +She closed her eyes under the peace of the beloved words. And as she +closed them she felt herself once more in the arms of the green hills, +the folding hills of Westleydale. + +She shook off the obsession and prayed another prayer. She longed to be +alone; but, to her grief, she heard the opening and shutting of a door +and her husband's feet moving in the room beyond. + +A few blessed moments of solitude were left her during Majendie's +undressing. She devoted them to the final expulsion of all lingering +illusions. She had long ago lost the illusion of her husband's immaculate +goodness; and now she cast off, once for all, the dear and pitiful belief +that had revived in her under her brief enchantment in the wood at +Westleydale. She told herself that she had married a man who had, not +only a lower standard than her own, but an entirely different code of +morals, a man irremediably contaminated, destitute of all perception of +spiritual values. And she had got to make the best of him, that was all. +Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two +things seemed, at moments, incompatible. To guard herself from all +contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the +spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare +duty to herself and him. She must create a standard for him by keeping +herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he +must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness--the +highest goodness--in her. + +Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was +untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It +was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world. + +Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She +tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay +still as a stone, stiff with her fear. Once, at midnight, she felt him +stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow. She was conscious through +all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her +sleep. + +At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream. She found +herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy, +mystic, cathedral woods. The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the +temple. A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree +that she knew. And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree. It lay on +its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the +left. As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm +hollow of the other she saw that it cradled a little naked child. And at +the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her. The child +stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel's breast, and +it fondled it with searching lips and hands. Then it wailed, and as she +heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne's breast; and the +angel's eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and +despair. She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the +little child. And she was moved to compassion at the helplessness of them +both, of the heavenly and of the earthly thing; and she stooped and +lifted the child, and laid it to her own breast, and nourished it; and +had peace from her pain. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +It was the first day in Lent. Anne had come down in a state of +depression. She was silent during breakfast, and Majendie became absorbed +in his morning paper. So much wisdom he had learnt. Presently he gave a +sudden murmur of interest, and looked up with a smile. "I see," said he, +"your friend Mrs. Gardner has got a little son." + +"Has she?" said Anne coldly. + +The blood flushed in her cheeks, and a sudden pang went through her and +rose to her breasts with a pricking pain, such pain as she had felt once +in her dream, and only once in her waking life before. She thought of +dear little Mrs. Gardner, and tried to look glad. She failed miserably, +achieving an expression of more than usual austerity. It was the +expression that Majendie had come to associate with Lent. He thought he +saw in it the spiritual woman's abhorrence of her natural destiny. And +with the provocation of it the devil entered into him. + +"Is there anything in poor Mrs. Gardner's conduct to displease you?" + +She looked at him in a dull passion of reproach. + +"Oh," she said, "how can you be so unkind to me!" + +Her breast heaved, her lower lip trembled. She rose suddenly, pressing +her handkerchief to her mouth, and left the room. He heard the study door +open hastily and shut again. And he said to himself, as if with a sudden +lucid freshness, "What an extraordinary woman my wife is. If I only knew +what I'd done." + +As she had left her breakfast unfinished, he waited a judicious interval +and then went to fetch her back. + +He found her standing by the window, holding her hands tight to her +heaving sides, trying by main force to control the tempest of her sobs. +He approached her gently. + +"Go away," she whispered, through loose lips that shook with every word. +"Go away. Don't come near me." + +"Nancy--what is it?" + +She turned from him, and leaned up against the folded window shutter. Her +emotion was the more terrible to him because she was so seldom given to +these outbursts. She had seemed to him a woman passionless, and of almost +superhuman self-possession. He removed himself to the hearth-rug and +waited for five minutes. + +"Poor child," he said at last. "Can't you tell me what it is?" + +No answer. + +He waited another five minutes, thinking hard. + +"Was it--was it what I said about Mrs. Gardner?" + +He still waited. Then he conceived a happy idea. He would try to make her +laugh. + +"Just because I said she'd had a little son?" + +Her tears fell to answer him. + +She gathered herself together with a supreme effort, and steadied her +lips to speak. "Please leave me. I came here to be alone." + +A light broke in on him, and he left her. + +He shut himself up in the dining-room with his light. He had pushed his +breakfast aside, too preoccupied to eat it. + +"So that's it?" he said to himself. "That's it. Poor Nancy. That's what +she's wanted all the time. What a fool I was never to have thought of +it." + +He breathed with an immense relief. He had solved the enigma of Anne with +all her "funniness." It was not that she had turned against him, nor +against her destiny. She had been disappointed of her destiny, that was +all. It was enough. She must have been fretting for months, poor darling, +and just when she could bear it no longer, Mrs. Gardner, he supposed, had +come as the last straw. No wonder that she had said he was unkind. + +And in that hour of his enlightenment a great chastening fell upon +Majendie. He told himself that he must be as gentle with her as he knew +how; gentler than he had ever yet known how. And his heart smote him as +he thought how he had hurt her, how he might hurt her again unknowingly, +and how the tenderness of the tenderest male was brutality when applied +to these wonderful, pitiful, incomprehensible things that women were. +He accepted the misery of the last three months as a fit punishment for +his lack of understanding. + +His light brought a great longing to him and a great hope. From that +moment he watched her anxiously. He had never realised till now, after +three months of misery, quite what she meant to him, how sacred and dear +she was, and how much he loved her. + +The depth of this feeling left him for the most part dumb before her. His +former levity forsook him, and Anne wondered at this change in him, and +brooded over the possible cause of his serious and unintelligible +silences. She attributed them to some deep personal preoccupation of +which she was not the object. + +Meanwhile her days went on much as before, a serene and dignified +procession to the outward eye. She was thankful that she had so +established her religion of the household that its services could still +continue in their punctual order, after the joy of the spirit had +departed from them. The more she felt that she was losing, hour by hour, +her love of the house in Prior Street, the more she clung to the +observances that held her days together. She had become a pale, sad-eyed, +perfunctory priestess of the home. Majendie protested against what he +called her base superstition, her wholesale sacrifice to the gods of the +hearth. He forbade her to stay so much indoors, or to sit so long in +Edith's room. + +One afternoon he came home unexpectedly and found her there, doing +nothing, but watching Edith, who dozed. He touched her gently, and told +her to get up and go out for a walk. + +"I'm too tired," she whispered. + +"Then go upstairs and lie down." + +She went; but, instead of lying down, she wandered through the house, +restless and unsettled. She was possessed by a terrible sense of +isolation. It came over her that this house of which she was the +mistress did not in the least belong to her. She had not been consulted +or thought of in any of its arrangements. There was no place in it that +appealed to her as her own. She went into the little grave old-fashioned +drawing-room. It had a beauty she approved of, a dignity that was in +keeping with her own traditions, but to-day its aspect roused in her +discontent and irritation. The room had remained unchanged since the days +when it was inhabited, first by her husband's mother, then by his aunt, +then by his sister. He had handed it over, just as it stood, to his wife. +It was full, the whole house was full, of portraits of the Majendies; +Majendies in oils; Majendies in water-colours; Majendies in crayons, in +miniatures and silhouettes. She thought of Mrs. Eliott's room in Thurston +Square, of the bookcases, the bronzes, the triptych with its saints in +glory, and of how Fanny sat enthroned among these things that reflected +completely her cultured individuality. Fanny had counted. Her rarity had +been appreciated by the man who married her; her tastes had been studied, +consulted, exquisitely indulged. Anne did not want more books, nor +bronzes, nor a triptych in her drawing-room. But such things were +symbols. Their absence stood for the immense spiritual want through which +her marriage had been made void. Brooding on it, she closed her heart to +her unspiritual husband. She looked round the room with her cold +disenchanted eyes. Numberless signs of his thought and care for her +rebuked her, and rebuking, added to her misery. As her restlessness +increased, it occurred to her that she might find some satisfaction in +arranging the furniture on an entirely different plan. She rang the bell +and sent for Walter. He came, and found her sitting on the high-backed +chair whose cover had been worked by his grandmother. He smiled at the +uncomfortable figure she presented. + +"So that's what you call resting, is it?" + +"Walter--do you mind if I move some of the furniture in this room?" + +"Move it? Of course I don't. But why?" + +"Because I don't very much like the room as it is." + +"Why don't you like it?" (He really wanted to know.) + +"Because I don't feel comfortable in it." + +"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. Perhaps--we'd better have some new things." + +"I don't want any new things." + +"What do you want, then?" His voice was gentleness itself. + +"Just to move all the old ones--to move everything." + +She spoke with an almost infantile petulance that appealed to him as +pathetic. There was something terrible about Anne when armoured in the +cold steel of her spirituality, taking her stand upon a lofty principle. +But Anne, sitting on a high-backed chair, uttering tremulous absurdities, +Anne, protected by the unconscious humour of her own ill-temper, was +adorable. He loved this humanly captious and capricious, childishly +unreasonable Anne. And her voice was sweet even in petulance. + +"My darling," he said, "you shall turn the whole house upside down if it +makes you any happier. But"--he looked round the room in quest of its +deficiencies--"what's wrong with it?" + +"Nothing's wrong. You don't understand." + +"No, I don't." His eye fell upon the corner where the piano once stood +that was now in Edith's room. + +"There are three things," said he, "that you certainly ought to have. A +piano, and a reading-stand, and a comfortable sofa. You shall have them." + +She threw back her head and closed her eyes to shut out the stupidity, +and the mockery, and the misery of that idea. + +"I--don't--want"--she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high +petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note--"I don't want a +piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can +call my own." + +"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and +every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors +and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for +myself." + +She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating +impression of his folly. + +"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?" + +She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its +place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was +delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be +able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and +waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he +laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as +perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable. + +When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the +windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with +his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the +perspiration from his forehead. + +"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a +chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where +it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit +better pleased with it to-morrow." + +He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you +don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?" + +"The trouble?" + +"Yes, Nancy, the trouble. Do you think I'm such a fool that I don't see +it? It's been coming on a long time. I know you're not happy. You're not +satisfied with things as they are. As they are, you know, there's a sort +of incompleteness, something wanting, isn't there?" + +She sighed. "It's you who are putting it that way, not I." + +"Of course I'm putting it that way. How am I to put it any other way? Let +me think now--well--of course I know perfectly well that it's not a +piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do. +We want the same thing, sweetheart." + +She smiled sadly. "Do we? I should have said the trouble is that we don't +want the same thing, and never did." + +"I don't understand you." + +"Nor I you. You think I'm always wanting something. What is it that you +think I want?" + +"Well--do you remember Westleydale?" + +She drew back. "Westleydale? What has put that into your head?" + +He grew desperate under her evasions, and plunged into his theme. "Well, +that jolly baby we saw there--in the wood--you looked so happy when you +grabbed it, and I thought, perhaps--" + +"There's no use talking about that," said she. "I don't like it." + +"All right--only--it's still a little soon, you know, isn't it, to give +it up?" + +"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly. "It isn't that. It never has +been. If I want anything, Walter, that you haven't given me, it's +something that you cannot give me. I've long ago made up my mind to +that." + +"But why make up your mind to anything? How do you know I can't give it +you--whatever it is--if you won't tell me anything about it? What _do_ +you want, dear?" + +"Ah, my dear, I want nothing, except not to have to feel like this." + +"What do you feel like?" + +"Like what I am. A stranger in my husband's house." + +"And is that my fault?" he asked gently. + +"It is not mine. But there it is. I feel sometimes as if I'd never been +married to you. That's why you must never talk to me as you did just +now." + +"Good God, what a thing to say!" + +He hid his face in his hands. The pain she had inflicted would have been +unbearable but for the light that was in him. + +He rose to leave her. But before he left, he took one long, scrutinising +look at her. It struck him that she was not, at the moment, entirely +responsible for her utterances. And again his light helped him. + +"Look here," said he, "I don't think you're feeling very well. This isn't +exactly a joyous life for you." + +"I want no other," said she. + +"You don't know what you want. You're overstrained--frightfully--and +you ought to have a long rest and a change. You're too good, you know, +to my little sister. I've told you before that I won't allow you to +sacrifice yourself to her. I shall get some one to come and stay, and I +shall take you down this week to the south coast, or wherever you like to +go. It'll do you all the good in the world to get away from this beastly +place for a month or two." + +"It'll do me no good to get away from poor Edie." + +"It will, dearest, it will, really." + +"It will not. If you go and take me away from Edie I shall get ill +myself." + +"You only think so because you're ill already." + +"I am not ill." She turned to him her sombre, tragic face. +"Walter--whatever you do, don't ask me to leave Edie, for I can't." + +"Why not?" he asked gently. + +"Because I love her. And it's--it's the only thing." + +"I see," he said; and left her. + +He went back to Edith. She smiled at his disarray and enquired the cause +of it. He entertained her with an account of his labours. + +"How funny you must both have looked," said Edith, "and, oh, how funny +the poor drawing-room must feel." + +"The fact is," said Majendie gravely, "I don't think she's very well. I +shall get her to see Gardner." + +"I would, if I were you." + +He wrote to Dr. Gardner that night and told Anne what he had done. She +was indignant, and expounded his anxiety as one more instance of his +failure to understand her nature. But she did not refuse to receive the +doctor when he called the next morning. + +When Majendie came back from the office he found his wife calm, but +disposed to a terrifying reticence on the subject of her health. "It's +nothing--nothing," she said; and that was all the answer she would give +him. In the evening he went round to Thurston Square to get the truth out +of Gardner. + +He stayed there an hour, although a very few words sufficed to tell him +that his hope had become a certainty. The President of the Scale +Philosophic Society had cast off all his vagueness. His wandering eyes +steadied themselves to grip Majendie as they had gripped Majendie's +wife. To Gardner Majendie, with his consuming innocence and anxiety, was, +at the moment, by far the more interesting of the two. The doctor brought +all his grave lucidity to bear on Majendie's case, and sent him away +unspeakably consoled; giving him a piece of advice to take with him. "If +I were you," said he, "I wouldn't say anything about it until she speaks +to you herself. Better not let her know you've consulted me." + +In one hour Majendie had learnt more about his wife than he had found out +in the year he had lived with her; and the doctor had found out more +about Majendie than he had learnt in the ten years he had been practising +in Scale. + +And upstairs in her drawing-room, little Mrs. Gardner waited impatiently +for her husband to come back and finish the very interesting conversation +that Majendie had interrupted. + +"Who is the fiend," she said, "who's been keeping you all this time? One +whole hour he's been." + +"The fiend, my dear, is Mr. Majendie." The doctor's face was thoughtful. + +"Is he ill?" + +"No; but I think he would have been if he hadn't come to me. I've been +revising my opinion of Majendie to-night. Between you and me, our friend +the Canon is a very dangerous old woman. Don't you go and believe those +tales he's told you." + +"I don't believe the tales," said Mrs. Gardner, "but I can't help +believing poor Mrs. Majendie's face. _That_ tells a tale, if you like." + +"Poor Mrs. Majendie's face is a face of poor Mrs. Majendie's own making, +I'm inclined to think." + +"I don't think Mrs. Majendie would make faces. I'm sure she isn't happy." + +"Are you? Well then, if you're fond of her, I think you'd better try and +see a little more of her, Rosy. You can help her a good deal better than +I can now." + +Professional honour forbade him to say more than that. He passed to a +more absorbing topic. + +"I must say I can't see the force of this fellow's reasoning. What's +that?" + +"I thought I heard baby crying." + +"You didn't. It was the cat. You must learn the difference, my dear. +Don't you see that these pragmatists are putting the cart before the +horse? Conduct is one of the things to be explained. How can you take it, +then, as the ground of the explanation?" + +"I don't," said Mrs. Gardner. + +"But you do," said Dr. Gardner. It was in such bickerings that they +lived and moved and had their happy being. Each was the possessor of a +strenuous soul, made harmless by its extreme simplicity. They were united +by their love of argument, divided only by their adoration of each other. +They now plunged with joy into the heart of a vast metaphysical +contention; and Majendie, his conduct and the explanation of it, were +forgotten until another cry was heard and, this time, Mrs. Gardner fled. + +She came back full of reproach. "Oh, Philip, to think that you can't +recognise the voice of your little son!" + +Dr. Gardner looked guilty. "I really thought," said he, "it was the cat." +He hated these interruptions. + +He looked for Mrs. Gardner to take up the thread of the delicious +argument where she had dropped it; but something had reminded Mrs. +Gardner that she must write a note to Mrs. Majendie. She sat down and +wrote it at once while she remembered. She could think of nothing to say +but, "When will you come and take tea with me, and see my little son?" + +Anne came that week, and saw the little son, and rejoiced over him. She +kept on coming to see him. She always had been fond of Mrs. Gardner, now +she was growing fonder of her than ever. In her happy presence she felt +wonderfully at peace. There had been a time when the spectacle of Mrs. +Gardner's happiness would have given her sharp pangs of jealousy; but +that time was over now for Anne. She liked to sit and look at her and +watch the happiness flowering in Mrs. Gardner's face. She thought Mrs. +Gardner's face was more beautiful than any woman's she had ever seen, +except Edie's. Edie's face was perfect; but Mrs. Gardner's was a simple +oval that sacrificed perfection in the tender amplitude of her chin. +There were no lines on it; for Mrs. Gardner was never worried, nor +excited, nor perplexed. How could she be worried when Dr. Gardner was +well and happy? Or excited, when, having Dr. Gardner, there was nothing +left to be excited about? Or perplexed, when Dr. Gardner held the +solution of all problems in his mighty brain? + +Mrs. Gardner's bridal aspect had not disappeared with the advent of her +motherhood. She was not more wrapped up in the baby than she was in Dr. +Gardner and his metaphysics. She even admitted to Anne that the baby had +been something of a disappointment. Anne was sitting in the nursery with +her when Mrs. Gardner ventured on this confidence. + +"You know I'd rather have had a little daughter." + +Anne confessed that her own yearning was for a little son. + +"Oh," said Mrs. Gardner, "I wouldn't have him different now. He's going +to have as happy a life as ever I can give him. I've got so much to make +up for." + +"To make up for?" Anne wondered what little Mrs. Gardner could possibly +have to make up for. + +"Well, you see it's a shocking confession to make; but I didn't care for +him at all before he came. I didn't want him. I didn't want anybody but +Philip, and Philip didn't want anybody but me. Are you horrified?" + +"I think I am," said Anne. She had difficulty in believing that dear +little Mrs. Gardner could ever have taken this abnormal, this monstrous +attitude. + +"You see our life was so perfect as it was. And we have so little time +to be together, because of his tiresome patients. I grudged every minute +taken from him. And, when I knew that this little creature was coming, +I sat down and cried with rage. I felt that he was going to spoil +everything, and keep me from Philip. I hadn't a scrap of tenderness for +him, poor little darling." + +"Oh," said Anne. + +"I hadn't really. I was quite happy with my husband." She paused, feeling +that the ground under her was perilous. "I don't know why I'm telling you +all this, dear Mrs. Majendie. I've never told another soul. But I +thought, perhaps, you ought to know." + +"Why," Anne wondered, "does she think I ought to know?" + +"You see," Mrs. Gardner went on, "_I_ thought I couldn't be any happier +than I was. But I am. Ten times happier. And I didn't think I _could_ +love my husband more than I did. But I do. Ten times more, and quite +differently. Just because of this tiny, crying thing, without an idea in +his little soft head. I've learned things I never should have learned +without him. He takes up all my time, and keeps me from enjoying Philip; +and yet I know now that I never was really married till he came." + +Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged +forgiveness if she had said too much. And Anne realised that it was for +her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her +that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously +wedded heart. + +In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing +for the little son. And Anne's heart grew soft over the many little +vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns. + +She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom +when Majendie came in. The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and +Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small, +pure, shy smile of hers. Her soft face drew him to her. He thought it was +his hour. He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his +hand. "I'm so glad," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +She shook her head. + +"Nancy--" + +"I can't talk about it." + +"Not to me?" + +"No," she said. "Not to you." + +"I should have thought--" + +Her face hardened. "I can't. Please understand that, Walter. I don't +think I ever can, now. You've made everything so that I can't bear it." + +She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest. + +And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another +sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating +in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was +too clever for him. + +"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked. + +"Yes. Has she not to you?" + +"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She +treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the +primeval slime." + +"Poor Wallie!" + +"Well, but it's pretty serious. Do you think she's going to keep it up +for all eternity?" + +"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all." + +"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up." + +"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do." + +"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?" + +"Well--I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the +first--she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at +Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken +that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have +killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her. +Think of the shock it must have been to her." + +"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at +four o'clock in the morning--before I was awake. What could I do? +Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to +it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between." + +"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember." + +"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if +she was a hard woman." + +"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to +be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive. +Besides, think of her health." + +"I wonder if that really accounts for it." + +"I think it may." + +"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay." + +"What has come to stay?" + +"The dislike she's taken to me." + +"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time." + +"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more." + +"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait." + +He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her +child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full +and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from +the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream. + +He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken +one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at +the birth of their child he looked for it to pass. + +The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and +very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing +in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe. + +He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull +and white, and her arms were stretched out by her sides in utter +exhaustion. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, but her lips moved +as if she were trying to speak to him. He felt her breath upon his face, +but he could hear no words. + +"What is it?" he whispered to the nurse who stood beside him. She held in +one arm the new-born child, hooded and folded in a piece of flannel. + +The nurse touched him on the shoulder. "She's trying to tell you to look +at your little daughter, sir." + +He turned and saw something--something queer and red between two folds of +flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave +forth a cry. + +And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted +when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and +self-possession. She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had +once been. The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood +her nature was fulfilled. She had given herself up to the child from the +first moment that she held it to her breast. She had found again her +tenderness, her gladness, and her peace. + +Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so +happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father. + +In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this +hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more +certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices +for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change. +Such as his wife was now, she always would be. + +She had settled down. + +And he had accepted the situation. + +He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and +sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It +kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came +to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell +asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It +had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small +tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had +abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said +to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use +for me." + +Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from +him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to +ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the +idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too. + +But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was +conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the +imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded +her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood +strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal +father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had +loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and +towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while +she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never +swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to +him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the +spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and +a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but +dimly understood. + +Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy +touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he +could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him +back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She +made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him. + +By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete. + +As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture. +Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition, +and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on +the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to +the test. + +She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to +trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play +a passionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent +drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her +strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the +Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child; +her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her +ability to keep them up. + +It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for +appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction, +and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he +had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too +perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years +that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be +tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice; +always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the +thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling +politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to +interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to +return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her +duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about +to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to +feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine +with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be +read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was +how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources +of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his +affection for the child, as well as his passion for the mother. + +For that was the thorn in Anne's side now. The child was content with her +only when Majendie was not there. The moment he came into the room she +would struggle from her mother's lap, and crawl frantically to his feet. +Her tiny face curled in its white, angelic smile as soon as he lifted her +in his arms. Little Peggy had an adorable way of turning her back on her +mother and tucking her face away under Majendie's chin. When she was +cross or ailing she cried for Majendie, and refused to take food or +medicine from any one but him. + +He was sitting one day in the nursery with the little year-old thing on +his knees, feeding her deftly from a cup of warm milk that she had pushed +away when presented by her mother. The nurse and Nanna looked kindly on +the spectacle of Majendie's success, while his wife watched him steadily +without a word. The nurse, presuming on her privileges, made an +injudicious remark. + +"She won't do anything for anybody but her daddy. I never saw such a +funny little girl." + +"I never saw such a shocking little flirt," said Majendie; "she takes +after her mother." + +"She's the living image of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the +other's blunder. + +"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as +a sword. + +Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly. + +The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl. +Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was +thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more +than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain +was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little +Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed +through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said, +"I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her +mother's coldness." + +He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left +them. + +Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of +self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his +own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great +unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was +suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the +least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless +attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told +upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change +and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times +when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's +lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening, +and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never +tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that +Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and +kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down +cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the +Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this +frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends. + +Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and +the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was +always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming, +she contrived adroitly to be out. Her attitude to the Hannays was one of +the things she undoubtedly meant to keep up. The natural result was that +Majendie was driven to an increasing friendliness, by way of making up +for the slights the poor things had to endure from his wife. He was +always meaning to remonstrate with Anne, and always putting off the +uncomfortable moment. The subject was so mixed with painful matters that +he shrank from handling it. But, with the New Year following Peggy's +first birthday, circumstances forced him to take, once for all, a firm +stand. Certain entanglements in the affairs of Mr. Gorst had called for +his intervention. There had been important developments in his own +business; Majendie was about to enter into partnership with Mr. Hannay. +And Anne had given him an opportunity for protest by expressing her +unqualified disapprobation of Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had offended +grossly; she had passed the limits; having no instincts, Anne maintained, +to tell her where to stop. Mrs. Hannay had a passion for Peggy which she +was wholly unable to conceal. Moved by a tender impulse of vicarious +motherhood, she had sent her at Christmas a present of a little coat. +Anne had acknowledged the gift in a note so frigid that it cut Mrs. +Hannay to the heart. She had wept over it, and had been found weeping by +her husband, who mentioned the incident to Majendie. + +It was more than Majendie could bear; and that night, in the drawing-room +(Anne had left off sitting in the study. She said it smelt of smoke), he +entered on an explanation, full, brief, and clear. + +"I must ask you," he said, "to behave a little better to poor Mrs. +Hannay. You've never known her anything but kind, and sweet, and +forgiving; and your treatment of her has been simply barbarous." + +"Indeed?" + +"I think so. There are reasons why you will have to ask the Hannays to +dinner next week, and reasons why you will have to be nice to them." + +"What reasons?" + +"One's enough. I'm going into partnership with Lawson Hannay." + +She stared. The announcement was a blow to her. + +"Is that a reason why I should make a friend of Mrs. Hannay?" + +"It's a reason why you should be civil to her. You will send an +invitation to Gorst at the same time." + +She winced. "That I cannot do." + +"You can, dear, and you will. Gorst's in a pretty bad way. I knew he +would be. He's got entangled now with some wretched girl, and I've got to +disentangle him. The only way to do it is to get him to come here again." + +"And _I_ am to write to him?" Her tone proclaimed the idea preposterous. + +"It will come best from you, as it's you who have kept him out of the +house. You must, please, put your own feelings aside, and simply do what +I ask you." + +He rose and went to the writing-place, and prepared a place for her +there. + +Anne said nothing. She was considering how far it was possible to oppose +him. It had always been his way to yield greatly in little things; to +drift and let "things" drift till he created an illusory impression of +his weakness. Then when "things" had gone too far, he would rise, as +he had risen now, and take his stand with a strength the more formidable +because it came as a complete surprise. + +"Come," said he, "it's got to be done; and you may as well do it at once +and get it over." + +She gave one glance at him, as if she measured his will against hers. +Then she obeyed. + +She handed the notes to him in silence. + +"That's all right," said he, laying down her note to Gorst. "And this +couldn't be better. I'm glad you've written so charmingly to Mrs. +Hannay." + +"I'm sorry that I ever seemed ungracious to her, Walter. But the other +note I wrote under compulsion, as you know." + +"I don't care how you did it, my dear, so long as it's done." He slipped +the note to Mrs. Hannay into his pocket. + +"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously. + +"I'm going to take this myself to Mrs. Hannay." + +"What are you going to say to her?" + +"The first thing that comes into my head." + +She called him back as he was going. "Walter--have you paid Mr. Hannay +that money you owed him?" + +He stood still, astounded at her knowledge, and inclined for one moment +to dispute her right to question him. + +"I have," he said sternly. "I paid it yesterday." + +She breathed freely. + +Majendie found Mrs. Hannay by her fireside, alone but cheerful. She gave +him a little anxious look as she took his hand. "Wallie," said she, +"you're depressed. What is it?" + +He owned to the charge, but declined to give an account of himself. + +She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his +pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew +how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy. + +"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't. +I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of +a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter." + +"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll +be a help to her." + +"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that." + +"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong. +Peggy, I mean." + +"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at +me now!" + +He looked at her and laughed. + +"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind." + +"Why should I?" + +"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's +happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I +suppose you know it's all come to nothing?" + +"What has?" + +"Her marriage." + +"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?" + +"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been +going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think +he really was?" + +"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to +marry her?" + +"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't." + +"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in +for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have +troubled his bright essence." + +Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings +and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that +poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and +entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in +society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?" + +"I don't think I mind anything very much now." + +The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to +mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off +and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented +a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in +meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a +quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women +of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead +youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the +triumph of maturity. + +She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie +among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to +meet _you_ here." + +She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then +ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her +success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the +glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful +illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and +other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle +and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires +urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration +was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved +respectability. + +But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young +appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady +Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of +the happy past. + +"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?" + +Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must +approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with +time. + +He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago." + +"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her +memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?" + +She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?" + +"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night." + +"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if +anything, more discreetly than before. + +"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now." + +"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling +she is, too." + +"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was +another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?" + +"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with +the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the +dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck." + +Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy. + +"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw +how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_ +could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half +an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah +had ever taken part. + +When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she +turned to Mrs. Hannay. + +"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful." + +"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with +him." + +"I knew he would. He was born to do it." + +"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child." + +"Oh--the child!" + +She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a +genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration +of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its +brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable +master of commercial detail. + +The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at +home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of +financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there +early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in +his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business. +Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he +applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal +satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this +devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was +older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a +wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At +thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling +down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age. + +To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he +informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be +sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently +required to give his best attention. + +The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of +his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he +was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he +claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise +to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his +reform must be regarded as the price of his admission. + +For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality +had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense +surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence +of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred, +the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening. + +In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon +Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and +appealed to his friend to help him out. + +"I thought you _were_ out," said Majendie. + +"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have +turned her off. She's down on her luck--and--well--you see, _now_ she +wants me to marry her." + +"I see. Well--" + +"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but--you see--I'm +not the first." + +"You're sure of that?" + +"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute. +I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were +sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her. +Always provided I could keep her. But you know--" + +"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for +her?" + +Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie. + +"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned +out, till I get a berth somewhere." + +Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living. +"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?" + +"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him, +but she won't. That's it." + +"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?" + +"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of +anybody." + +"And what do you want me to do?" + +"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her." + +"See her?" + +"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad +when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I +don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces." + +"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?" + +"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things +you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?" + +"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It +never does, you know. Where does the woman live?" + +He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him. + +Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many +tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat +street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It +was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie +gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with +decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be +possible, given the complete rupture of their relations. + +A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of +hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room +on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress +rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again. + +Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent +occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach. + +The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely +embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see +anybody." + +He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it. + +Then Maggie came to him. + +He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her +blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on +the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she +approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her +sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him +against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little +hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to +spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable +grace. + +He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in +Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's +shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under +Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost +(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor +inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed +delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her +colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face +was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure +cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a +sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little +high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and +that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her +little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest +feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him, +preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered +that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that +was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He +thought he should get tired of it in time. + +Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her +eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all +over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with +her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and +disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in +the girl to help him out. + +He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told +her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things +to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie +cut him short. + +"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would +_marry_ me." + +"Well--then--" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to +you, Mr. Mumford?" + +"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I +can't--Mr. Magendy--because of Charlie." + +She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr. +Mumford. + +"Oh dear--" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again. + +She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show +of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed. + +And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined +nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out, +fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature +of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be +crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had +followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs. +Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only +felt. + +"See here," he said. "Charlie _can't_ marry you. He can't marry anybody." + +"Why not?" + +"Well, for one thing, he's too poor." + +"I know he's poor." + +"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you +happy." + +"I'd be unhappy, then." + +"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?" + +"No--no--no! You don't understand." + +"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me." + +"To help him." + +"You can't help him," he said softly. + +"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor." + +He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?" + +"Well--he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd +cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd +work for him." + +Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than +he had thought. + +She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning +dressmaking. Look--" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching +at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a +novice in her art. + +"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him." + +"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let +his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's +another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you." + +Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought--if he was +poor--he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes." + +"I don't think you quite know what I mean." + +"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very +good. But I would be--if he married me--I would--I would indeed." + +"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That +wasn't what I meant by the other reason." + +Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?" + +He was silent, and the flame died in her face. + +"Does he care for somebody else?" + +"It would be better for you if you could think so." + +"_I_ know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I +thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals." + +She sat very still, taking it in. + +"Is he going to marry her?" + +"No. He isn't going to marry her." + +"She's not got enough money, I suppose. _She_ can't help him." + +"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can." + +He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of +jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her +tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again. + +Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation? +That you understand?" + +"Am I never to see him again?" + +"I'm afraid not." + +"Nor write to him?" + +"It's better not. It only worries him." + +She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream. + +"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?" + +"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for +you, and you shall have a small allowance." + +"But who's going to give it me?" + +"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am." + +"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you." + +He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should +misunderstand him. + +"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said +significantly; "if it must be." + +But Maggie had not misunderstood. + +"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little _now_." + +"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it--keep all you earn." + +"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the +bone." + +"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go. + +Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour. + +"Yes," she said, "for you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In +justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the +passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which +Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent. +Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing +and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary +taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little +vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's +honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him +to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child, +and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with +Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him." + +He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal, +to have that on his conscience. + +As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called +in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's +intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct. +He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do +worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was +his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only +disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that +Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford. +But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not +to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment +of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that +Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to +which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a +salutary shock of shame. + +But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence. +From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her +prodigal had fallen far. That night, before his departure, he confirmed +her sad suspicions. + +"It's awfully good of you," he said stiffly, "to let me come again." + +"Good of me? Charlie!" Her eyes and voice reproached him for this +strained formality. + +"Yes. Mrs. Majendie's perfectly right. I've justified her bad opinion of +me." + +"I don't know that you've justified it. I don't know what you've done. No +more does she, my dear. And you didn't think, did you, that Walter and I +were going to give you up?" + +"I'd have forgiven you if you had." + +"I couldn't have forgiven myself, or Walter." + +"Oh, Walter--if it hadn't been for him I should have gone to pieces this +time. He's pulled me out of the tightest place I ever was in." + +"I'm sure he was very glad to do it." + +"I wish to goodness I could do the same for him." + +"Why do you say that, Charlie?" + +The prodigal became visibly embarrassed. He seemed to be considering the +propriety of a perfect frankness. + +"I say, you don't mind my asking, do you? Has anything gone wrong with +him and Mrs. Majendie?" + +"What makes you think so?" + +"Well, you see, I've got a sort of notion that she doesn't understand +him. She's never realised in the least the stuff he's made of. He's the +finest man I know on God's earth, and somehow, it strikes me that she +doesn't see it." + +"Not always, I'm afraid." + +"Well--see here--you'll tell her, won't you, what he's done for me? +That ought to open her eyes a bit. You can give me away as much as +ever you like, if you want to rub it in. Only tell her that I've chucked +it--chucked it for good. He's made me loathe myself. Tell her that I'm +not as bad as she thinks me, but that I probably would be if it hadn't +been for him. And you, Edie, only I'm going to leave you out of it." + +"You certainly may." + +"It's because she knows all that already; and the point is to get her to +appreciate him." + +Edith smiled. "I see. And I'm to make what I like of you, if I can only +get her to appreciate him?" + +"Yes. Tell her that, as far as I'm concerned, I respect her attitude +profoundly." + +"Very well. I'll tell her just what you've told me." + +She spoke of it the next day, when Anne came to read to her in the +afternoon. Anne was as punctual as ever in her devotion, but the passion +of it had been transferred to Peggy. The child was with them, playing +feebly at her mother's knee, and Anne's mood was propitious. She listened +intently. It was the first time that she had brought any sympathy into a +discussion of the prodigal. + +"Did he tell you," said she, "what Walter did for him?" + +"No." + +"Nor what had happened?" + +"No. I didn't like to ask him. Whatever it was, it has gone very deep +with him. Something has made a tremendous difference." + +"Has it made him change his ways?" + +"I believe it has. You see, Nancy, that's what Walter was trying for. He +always had that sort of hold on him. That was why he was so anxious not +to have him turned away." + +Anne's face was about to harden, when Peggy gave the sad little cry that +brought her mother's arms about her. Peggy had been trying vainly to +climb into Anne's lap. She was now lifted up and held there while her +feet trampled the broad maternal knees, and her hands played with Anne's +face; stroking and caressing; smoothing her tragic brow to tenderness; +tracing with soft, attentive fingers the line of her small, close mouth, +until it smiled. + +Anne seized the little hands and kissed them. "My lamb," she said, "what +are you doing to your poor mother's face?" She did not see, as Edith saw, +that Peggy, a consummate little sculptor, was moulding her mother's face +into the face of love. + +"I should never have dreamed," said Anne, "of turning him away, if I had +thought he was really going to reform. Besides, I was afraid he would be +bad for Walter." + +"It didn't strike you that Walter might be good for him?" + +"It struck me that I had to be strong for Walter." + +"Ah, Walter can be strong for all of us." She paused on that, to let it +sink in. Anne's face was thoughtful. + +"Anne, if you believed that all I've said to you was true, would you +still object to having Charlie here?" + +"Certainly not. I would be the first to welcome him." + +"Then, will you write to him of your own accord, and tell him that, if +what I've told you is true, you'll be glad to see him? He knows why you +couldn't receive him before, dear, and he respects you for it." + +Anne thought better of Mr. Gorst for that respect. It was the proper +attitude; the attitude she had once vainly expected Majendie to take. + +"After all, what have I to do with it? He comes to see you." + +"Yes, dear; but I shan't always be here for him to see. And if I thought +that you would help Walter to look after him--will you?" + +"I will do what I can. My little one!" + +Anne bowed her head over the soft forehead of her little one. She had a +glad and solemn vision of herself as the protector of the penitent. It +was in keeping with all the sanctities and pieties she cherished. She had +not forgotten that Canon Wharton (a saint if ever there was one) had +enjoined on her the utmost charity to Mr. Gorst, should he turn from his +iniquity. + +She was better able to admit the likelihood of that repentance because +Mr. Gorst had never stood in any close relation to her. His iniquity had +not profoundly affected her. But she found it impossible to realise that +Majendie's influence could count for anything in his redemption. Where +her husband was concerned Anne's mind was made up, and it refused to +acknowledge so fine a merit in so gross a man. She was by this time +comfortably fixed in her attitude, and any shock to it caused her +positive uneasiness. Her attitude was sacred; it had become one of the +pillars of her spiritual life. She was constrained to look for +justification lest she should put herself wrong with God. + +She considered that she had found it in Majendie's habits, his silences, +his moods, the facility of his decline upon the Hannays and the Ransomes. +He was determined to deteriorate, to sink to their level. + +To-night, when he remarked tentatively that he thought he would dine at +the Hannays', she made an effort to stop him. + +"Must you go?" said she. "You are always dining with them." + +"Why?--do you mind?" said he. + +"Well--when it's night after night--" + +"Is it that you mind my dining with the Hannays, or my leaving you?" + +"I mind both." + +"Oh--if I'd thought you wanted me to stay--" + +She made no answer, but rose and led the way to the dining-room. + +He followed. Her arm had touched him as she passed him in the doorway, +and his heart beat thickly, as he realised the strength of her dominion +over him. She had only to say "Stay," and he stayed; or "Come," and she +could always draw him to her. He had never turned away. His very mind was +faithful to her. It had not even conceived, and it would have had +difficulty in grasping, the idea of happiness without her. + +To-night he was profoundly moved by this intimation of his wife's desire +to have him with her. His surprise and satisfaction made him curiously +shy. He sat through two courses without speaking, without lifting his +eyes from his plate; brooding over their separation. He was wondering +whether, after all, it had been so inevitable; whether he had +misunderstood her; whether, if he had had the sense to understand, he +might not have kept her. It was possible she had been wounded by his +absences. He had never explained them. He could not tell her that she +had made him afraid to be alone with her. + +The situation, which he had accepted so obediently, had been more than +a mere mortal man could endure. Especially in the terrible five minutes +after dinner, before they settled for the evening, when each sat waiting +to see if the other had anything to say. Sometimes Majendie would take up +his book and Anne her work. She would sew, and sew, patient, persistent, +in her tragic silence. And when he could bear it no longer, he would put +down his book and go quietly away, to relieve the intolerable constraint +that held her. Sometimes it was Anne who read, while he smoked and +brooded. Then, in the warm, consenting stillness of the summer evenings +(they were now in June), her presence seemed to fill the room; he was +possessed by the sense of it; by the sound of her breathing; by the +stirring of her body in the chair, or of her fingers on the pages of her +book; and he would get up suddenly and leave her, dragging his passion +from the sight of her. + +As he considered these things, many perplexities, many tendernesses, +stirred in him and kept him still. + +Anne watched him from the other end of the table, and her thoughts +debased him. He seemed to her disagreeably incommunicative, and she had +found an ignoble explanation of his mood. There had been too much salt in +the soup, and now there was something wrong with the salmon. He had not +responded to her apology for these accidents, and she supposed that they +had been enough to spoil his evening with her. + +She had come to consider him a creature grossly wedded to material +things. + +"It's a pity you stayed," said she. "Mrs. Hannay would have given you a +better dinner." + +He had nothing to say to so preposterous a charge. His eyes were fixed +more than ever on his plate. She saw his face flush as he bowed his head +in eating; she allowed her fancy to rest in its morbid abhorrence of the +act, and in its suspicion of its grossness. She went on, lashed by her +fancy. "I cannot understand your liking to go there so much, when you +might go to the Eliotts or the Gardners. They're always asking you, and +you haven't been near them for a year." + +"Well, you see, the Hannays let me do what I like. They don't bother me." + +"Do the Eliotts bother you?" + +"They bore me. Horribly." + +"And the Gardners?" + +"Sometimes--a little." + +"And Canon Wharton? No. I needn't ask." + +He laughed. "You needn't. _He_ bores me to extinction." + +"I'm sorry it is my friends who are so unfortunate." + +"It's your husband who's unfortunate. He is not an intellectual person. +Nor a spiritual one, either, I'm afraid." + +He looked up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played +irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had +combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner. +She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that +veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He +had come to dread more than anything those attentive, sacrificial eyes. + +"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "to keep you waiting." + +She rang the bell. "Will you have the lamp lit in the drawing-room or the +study?" + +He looked at her. There was no lamp for him in her eyes. + +"Whichever you like. I think I shall go over to the Hannays', after all." + +He went; and by the lamp in the drawing-room Anne sat and brooded in her +turn. + +She said to herself: "It's no use my trying to keep him from them. It +only irritates him. He lets me see plainly that he prefers their society +to mine. I don't wonder. They can flatter him and kow-tow to him, and I +cannot. He can be a little god to them; and he must know what he is to +me. We haven't a thought in common--not a feeling--and he cannot bear to +feel himself inferior. As for me--if I've married beneath me, I must pay +the penalty." + +But there was no penalty for her in these reflections. They satisfied +her. They were part of the curious mental process by which she justified +herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne, +Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance +had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted +that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a +bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His +immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of +Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of +inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself +so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all +situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The +discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost +brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began, +and here, therefore, it shall end." + +He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure +by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he +believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's +prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not +make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his +claim to her respect. + +And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen +things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their +separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible +repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation +(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and +complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her. + +Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts. + +"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that +evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him +to understand. + +He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he +was good enough, who were good enough for him. + +He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst, +oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with +Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she +presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of +simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little +better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and +her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body +leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast, +listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to +Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little +dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem +to mind. + +There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't +consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it +more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him; +and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least +so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little +patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was +really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her +vulgarity. + +He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly +straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably, +if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated +somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a +little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify +them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The +Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their +way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job +for any woman to tackle at the start. + +A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson +straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's +little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic +love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson +was now a model of sobriety. + +And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped +Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She +ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if +he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She +convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale, +was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make +money for, especially Peggy. + +And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and +more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for +the persons whom he loved. + +He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did +not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and +agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small +sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it), +not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless. +She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way +to the street. + +But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it +might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the +payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little +work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began +to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by +for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for +Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl +would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr. +Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she +had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him. + +Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion +to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would +have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was +"really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be +sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he +had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made +her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue. + +At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three +weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would +have to look her up. + +Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the +office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to +his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie +had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit +long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get +more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would +begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for +not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't +too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some +day and see her. + +He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the +next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before. + +Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief. +In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian, +the benefactor, the sender of rent. + +"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you +written to till she was better." + +"Why not?" + +"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was." + +It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling. +He was soon to know that she had little else. + +He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her +as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a +sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he +might give the poor thing time to recover herself. + +"Did I startle you?" he said. + +Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come." + +"Why not?" + +"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very +weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of +brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a +greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face. +She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth. + +She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anæmia. A horrible thought +came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to +repay him? + +"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely. + +Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said. + +"Working your fingers to the bone?" + +She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have +me." + +"Well--" he said kindly. + +"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses +and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans +would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her +immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties. +I used to. Do you think--perhaps--they'd have me?" + +Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her. + +"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would." + +"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's. +I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably +foolish; but her folly was adorable.) + +"Why wouldn't she have you?" + +Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered +that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago." + +"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?" + +He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of +industry, which was to her the path of virtue. + +She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls +and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table +various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs, +and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the +patterns--flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy. + +"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?" + +"Yes, that's what I _can_ do. I make the patterns out of me head, and +they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said +Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she +had never sold in Evans's shop. + +"Very pretty--very beautiful." + +"I've sold lots--to a lady, before I was ill. See here." + +Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar +care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered +with blue pansies (always blue pansies). + +"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little +girl--a little fair girl." + +He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a +little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said. + +Maggie reddened now. + +"Oh--I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only +to tell people." + +So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could +tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner--no, Mrs. Gardner was +Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He +could have told her everything. As it was--No. + +He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces +of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs. +Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing +to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always +have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go +again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on +making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it. + +Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to +an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she +liked her work. + +She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of +anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want +anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I +can't put in another stitch. Sometimes--when it comes--I'm that tired, +it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew. +And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire +under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But +I'm only tired now." + +She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her +thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again. + +"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months." + +"Not even Mr. Mumford?" + +"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to +where they started from. + +"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long +time." + +"What hasn't come?" + +"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of." + +"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father +or the doctor.) + +"If it does, it'll be worse now." + +"Why should it be?" + +"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls +have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there +isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea." + +"You'll make friends." + +She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom. + +Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again. + +"Is that woman kind to you?" + +"Yes, very kind." + +"She looks after you well?" + +"Looks after me? I don't want looking after." + +"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to +eat?" + +"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes." + +"You like her?" + +"I love her." + +"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all." + +"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with +Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?" + +Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead. + +"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to +me." + +"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to +understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more +amusing for you." + +"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't. +I only wanted you to know--" + +"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's +no reason why you should be dull. Is there?" + +"I don't know," said Maggie simply. + +"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep +some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to +places." + +"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you." + +He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you +should." + +"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly, +tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's +metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him +that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were +always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power. + +"Well--" He straightened himself stiffly for departure. + +"Are you going?" she said. + +"I must." + +"Will you--come again?" + +"Yes, I'll come, if you want me." + +He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went +through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It +recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a +sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure. + +It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him, +even poor, perverted Maggie. + +Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face. + +Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's +been the matter with her?" he asked. + +"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted +herself ill." + +"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all." + +He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance. + +That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the +embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending +Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne +became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her +evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer +needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no +worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The +prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He +was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer +loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept +the invading darkness from her door. + +Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with +them. + +Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had +been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put +to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It +was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he +left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she +moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her +circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only +meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and +undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its +approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in +Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber +was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her +constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her +husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a +horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him +by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, +no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long +ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now +aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him. +He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and +made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in +Thurston Square. + +Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business +men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay. + +A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she +saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to +his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when +she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was +touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up +in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to +be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to +be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal +memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably +mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so +familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing +goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great +longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even +for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the +growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile +sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was +softer. + +At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed +to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other +measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its +divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could +not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let +him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie +between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced +difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something +threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual +life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and +winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous +petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning +the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for +her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense +of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil, +opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She +thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's +deterioration. + +Yet Anne was softer. + +Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as +Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had +seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take +Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs, +and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender +body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as +if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw, +wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship +with earth. + +She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each +some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing +of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now +the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its +puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was +Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language. +A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and +Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would +have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking +backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang. + +But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood +and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted +for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You +couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word +she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told +her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne +was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between +right and wrong. + +In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement, +proved more effectual than Anne. + +They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time. +It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her +parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to +Majendie, shivering with delight. + +"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my +own self, and eated it all up." + +Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very +miserable day. + +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty." + +"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all." + +She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was +naughty." + +Majendie laughed. + +"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?" + +Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy." + +Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her +mother. + +"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if +you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?" + +"I'm sorry, daddy." + +Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast. + +"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now." + +Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked. + +"Are you happy, daddy?" + +He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room. + +And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?" + +"I don't know, darling." + +"Do you think he will come back again?" + +"Darling, I don't know." + +"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?" + +"Of course, Peggy." + +"Then I'll go and tell him." + +She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head +sadly. + +"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy." + +"Why do you say that, Peggy?" + +"Because he won't come when you want him to." + +"Perhaps he's busy." + +"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on +a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and +tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy." + +And she trotted downstairs and up again. + +"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to +him?" + +That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her +mother's heart ache. + +Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that, +and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between +right and wrong. + +But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break. + +"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me." + +She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection +against the pursuing vision of her sin. + +"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind." + +But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him. +He minded ever so." + +"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and +comforted her. + +She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against +love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should +refuse to forgive her and kiss her. + +And Anne did not refuse. + +Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge +of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she +began to see? + +That was how Anne grew soft. + +Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The +sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and +flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there +came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip, +the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that +Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of. + +She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband +in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and +transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding +charm, when the child was not with her. + +And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and +desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its +frustration. + +Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided +her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew +his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from +her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of +stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that +frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays, +and eat things that disagreed with him. + +Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always +running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions +concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she +would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him. +Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable +innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the +spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the +child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She +did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry, +looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her +fill of love. + +And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing +drink, and considered that she had done her duty. + +A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in +August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache) +a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy +trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal, +burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly +Light_, in a heavenly tenor. + +Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat. + +"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing." + +"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at +Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses +to her across the room. + +Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round +Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The +child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs +struggling, and laughed for terror and delight. + +Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for +all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child." + +Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable +revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At +first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions +that brought the blood to her mother's face. + +From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say +good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne +stood linked together by the body of their child. + +And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy." + +Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her +soft lips touch his forehead without parting. + +That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously. + +"Are you not well, Walter?" + +"I've got a splitting headache." + +"You'd better take some anti-pyrine." + +"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine." + +"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent." + +"I beg your pardon." + +He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his +forehead. + +She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the +sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid +her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her. + +She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under +his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed +eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft +breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that +seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer +burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad +illness, and fear made her kind. + +"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be +very gentle with him. + +"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered. + +She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the +low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his +arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close +against his mouth, and kissed it. + +She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to +withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him +without a word. + +He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when +Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died +again under her repulse. + +Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes +with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he +come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though +Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best +dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like +the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs. +Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the +title, who had come with Mrs. Ransome--the lady who had bought more +embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie +said, to take your breath away. + +Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for +it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a +god--in case he came. + +He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing +with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should +come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come. + +The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was +alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would +remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that +he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they +began to love her. + +She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as +threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her. + +It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously +and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and +marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on +her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the +matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine +she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody +whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the +house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken +her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big +boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her +cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano +in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little +boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations +rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who +"studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and +he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second +time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen +(not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in +dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one +evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went +on her predestined way. + +For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and +after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst--Last year +Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For +each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her +soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and +driven by the wind. + +As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's +soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in +tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went +from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply +dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when +she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He +was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the +pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook +the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the +pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr. +Mumford. You could only be sorry for him. + +But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of +placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold. +Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even +when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl +could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that +was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating +phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace +and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her +face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted, +tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for +sacrifice. + +Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted +out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her +innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like +her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past. + +And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in +pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her +body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her +unique merit, what marked her from the rest. + +Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the +only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived +miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr. +Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable. + +But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a +thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie +blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That +industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums +to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to +approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in +which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied +them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under +lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her +fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to +have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and +Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a +Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of +this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week +existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train. +The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and +Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were +forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he +had not come. + +He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a +comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not +coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not +come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like +to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always +believed what she liked. + +The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would +come to-night. + +And at nine o'clock he came. + +Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind +him of the dejected, anæmic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last +September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was +lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie, +on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower +middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday +afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her +chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on +Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty +of her deportment. + +"Have you been ill?" she asked. + +"Why should I have been ill?" + +"Because you didn't come." + +"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a +chronic invalid at that rate." + +He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with +crosses in a calendar. + +"But you _were_ ill, this time, I know." + +"How do you know?" + +The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive, +burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in +its ways. + +"I know, because I saw--" she hesitated. + +"Saw what?" + +"The light in your window." + +"My window?" + +"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve +o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I +knew that you were better." + +"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill." + +"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument. + +"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long." + +"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in +the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all +night, too. That's your room." + +"No, that's my wife's room." + +Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little +girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it." +Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him. + +"That's the spare room," he said, laughing. + +"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery, +looking on the street. Fancy! That little room." + +Again she became thoughtful. So did he. + +"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?" + +"Because I saw them." + +"You can't see them." + +"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back." + +He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark; +it ended in a blind wall. + +"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?" + +He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's +face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid. + +"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching." + +"Watching?" + +"Your window." + +"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like +it. It doesn't do." + +The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I +had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I +didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And +I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not +as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?" + +"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?" + +Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there." + +"Were you 'watching'?" + +"N-no. It was an accident." + +"How did you know it was my little girl?" + +"I saw you walking with her, one Saturday, in the Park. It was an +accident--really. I was taking my work to that lady who buys from +me--Mrs. 'Anny." + +"I see." + +"You're not angry with me, Mr. Magendy?" + +"Of course not. What made you think I was?" + +"Your face. You would be angry if I followed you. But I wouldn't do such +a thing. I've never followed any one--never. And I wouldn't do it now, +not if I was paid," she protested. + +"It's all right, Maggie, it's all right." + +Maggie clasped her knees and sat thinking. She seemed to know by +intuition when it was advantageous to be silent, and when to speak. But +Majendie was thinking, too. He was wondering whether he was not being a +little too kind to Maggie; whether a little unkindness would not be a +salutary change for both of them. Why couldn't the girl marry Mr. +Mumford? He didn't want to profit by the transaction. He would have +gladly paid Mr. Mumford to marry her, and take her away. + +He put his hand over his eyes as a veil for his thoughts; and when he +took it away again, Maggie had risen and was going on soundless feet +towards the door. + +"Don't go," she said, "I'll be back in a minute." + +He flung himself back in the chair and waited. The minutes dragged. He +had wanted Maggie away; and now she had gone he wanted her back again. + +Maggie did not stay away long enough to give him time to discover how +much he wanted her. She came back, carrying a tray with cups and a +steaming coffee pot, and set it on the table. + +A fragrance of strong coffee filled the room. The service of the god had +begun. + +She stood close against his side, yet humbly, as she handed him his cup. +"It's nice and strong," she said. "Drink it. It'll do your head good." + +And she sat down opposite him, and watched him drink it. + +Maggie's watching face was luminous and tender. In her eyes there was the +look that love gives for his signal--love that, in that moment, was pure +and sweet as a mother's. She was glad to think that the coffee was +strong, and would do his head good. She had no other thought in her mind, +at that moment. + +After the coffee she brought matches and cigarettes, which she offered +shyly. Nature had given her an immortal shyness, born of her extreme +humility. + +"They're all right," she said, "Charlie smoked them." (Charlie was at +times a useful memory.) + +She struck a match and prepared to light the cigarette. This she did +gravely and efficiently, with no sign of feminine consciousness or +coquetry. It was part of the solemn evening service of the god. And, as +he smoked, the devotee retreated to her chair and watched him. + +"Maggie," he said, "supposing Mr. Mumford was to come in?" + +"He won't. Sunday's _his_ day; or would be, if I let him 'ave a day." + +"Why don't you?" + +She shook her head. "I've seen nobody." + +There was silence for five minutes. + +"Mr. Magendy--" + +"Majendie, Maggie, Majendie." + +"Mr. Mashendy--I'm beginning to be afraid." + +"What are you afraid of?" + +"What I've always told you about. That awful feeling. It's coming on +again, I think." + +"It won't come, Maggie, it won't come. Don't think about it, and it won't +come." + +He didn't understand very clearly what Maggie was talking about; but he +remembered that, last September, after her illness, she had been afraid +of something. And he remembered that he had comforted her with some such +words as these. + +"Yes," said she, "but I feel it coming." + +"Maggie, you oughtn't to live alone like this. See here, you ought to +marry. You ought to marry Mr. Mumford. Why don't you?" + +"I don't want to marry anybody. And I don't love him." + +"Well, don't think about that other thing. Don't think about it. You'll +be all right." + +"I won't think," said Maggie, and thought profoundly. + +"Mr. Majendie," she said suddenly. + +"Madam." + +"You mustn't be afraid. I shall never do anything I know you wouldn't +like me to." + +"All right. Only don't think too much about that, either." + +"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me." + +"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm +only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him." + +The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst, +and all _he_ had done for her. + +"And you're paying me back." + +She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back." + +Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on? + +There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie. + +She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet +content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no +tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no +shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own +secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as +he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the +delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her +brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the +look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour. + +As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor +darting from heart to brain. + +"I must go now, Maggie," he said. + +When he stood up, his knees shook under him. + +"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid." + +"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go." + +He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She +understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done +to drive him away? + +"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright. + +He pushed her back gently from the threshold. + +"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill." + +Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a +vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a +fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not +I as well as anybody else?" + +All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling +to him, "Why not? Why not?" + +He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors +below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond +the threshold. At Anne's door he paused. + +It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in. + +Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix. + +Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up +against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand +clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's +hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in +gold. + +His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart +stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why. + +As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of +thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep +from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or +certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better." +The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by +inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep. +Meanwhile she was terribly awake. + +She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard +him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She +heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond. +There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth. + +The next day she sent for him. + +"What is it, Edie?" he said. + +She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked, +"Are you ill?" + +He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the +night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear. + +"What is it? Tell me," she insisted. + +He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them. + +"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive _me_. It's not +headaches. It's Anne." + +"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you +know." + +"Yes. _She_'s got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die +happy." + +"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it." + +She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the +sort of thing poor Charlie used to say. + +"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been." + +"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you +would." + +"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only +_you_'ve had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done +as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth--" + +"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're assuming that I've lived +to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single +moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as +unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without +her. See?" + +"Walter--if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness +yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound +to come. She's good--" + +He assented with a groan. "Oh, much _too_ good." + +"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she +understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know +how much she understands." + +"Understands what?" + +"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again." + +"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness--you +and Peggy." + +"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the +Gardners--and God." + +"I wish God would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me." + +"Dear--if you keep true to her--He will." + +If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was +almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened. + +"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk. +You see, once they go giving me morphia"--she closed her eyes. "Just let +me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me." + +She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour +she had prayed. + +He found Anne sitting on the nursery floor, playing with Peggy. "Edie +wants you," he said, loosening Peggy's little hands as they clung about +his legs. + +"Mother must go, darling," said she. + +But all Peggy said was, "Daddy'll stay." + +He did not stay long. He had to restrain himself, to go carefully with +Peggy, lest he should help her to make her mother's heart ache. + +Anne found Nanna busied about the bed. Nanna was saying, "Is that any +easier, Miss Edie?" + +"It's heavenly, Nanna," said Edie, stifling a moan. "Oh dear, I hope in +the next world I shan't feel as if my spine were still with me, like +people when their legs are cut off." + +"Miss Edie, what an idea!" + +"Well, Nanna, you can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've +got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for +it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; +and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I +shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with me. +Run away now, please, Nanna, and shut the door." + +Nanna thought she knew why Miss Edie wanted the door shut. She, too, had +her intuitive forebodings. She was aware, the whole household was aware, +that the mistress cared more for her child than for the husband who had +given it her. Their master's life was not altogether happy. They wondered +many times how he was going to stand it. + +"Anne" said Edith, "I'm uneasy about Walter." + +"You need not be," said Anne. + +"Why? Aren't you?" + +"I know he hasn't been well lately--" + +"How can you expect him to be well when he's so unhappy?" + +Anne was silent. + +"How long is it going to last, dear? And where is it going to end?" + +"Edith, you needn't be afraid. I shall never leave him." + +That was not what Edith was afraid of, but she did not say so. + +"How can I," Anne went on, "when I believe the Church's doctrine of +marriage?" + +"Do you? Do you believe that love is a provision for the soul's +redemption of the body? or for the body's redemption of the soul?" + +"I believe that, having married Walter, whatever he is or does, I cannot +leave him without great sin." + +"Then you'll be shocked when I tell you that if your husband were a bad +man, I should be the first to implore you to leave him, though he is my +brother. Where there can be no love on either side there's no marriage, +and no sacrament. That's _my_ profane belief." + +"And when there's love on one side only?" + +"The sacrament is there, offered by the loving person, and refused by the +unloving. And that refusal, my dear child, may, if you like, be a great +sin--supposing, of course, that the love is pure and devoted. I hardly +know which is the worst sin, then, to refuse to give, or to refuse to +take it; or to take it, and then throw it away. What would you think if +Peggy hardened her little heart against you?" + +"My Peggy!" + +"Yes, your Peggy. It's the same thing. You'll see it some day. But I want +you to see it now, before it's too late." + +"Edie, if you'd only tell me where I've failed! If you're thinking of +our--our separation--" + +"I was not. But, since you _have_ mentioned it, I can't help reminding +you that you fell in love with Walter because you thought he was a saint. +And so I don't see what's to prevent you now. He's qualifying. He mayn't +be perfect; but, in some ways, a saint couldn't very well do more. Has it +never occurred to that you are indulging the virtue that comes easiest to +you, and exacting from him the virtue that comes hardest? And he has +stood the test." + +"It was his own doing--his own wish." + +"Is it? I doubt it--when he's more in love with you than he was before he +married you." + +"That's all over." + +"For you. Not for him. He's a man, as you may say, of obstinate +affections." + +"Ah, Edie--you don't know." + +"I know," said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my +scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't +scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you." + +"I know--I know you love me." + +"But I couldn't love you so much, if I didn't love Walter more." + +"You well may, Edie. He's been a good brother to you." + +"Some day you'll own he's been as good a husband as he's been a brother. +Better; for it's a more difficult post, my dear. I don't really think my +body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit." + +"What have I done? Tell me--tell me." + +"Done? Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you. What haven't you done? +There's no way in which you haven't hurt and humiliated him. I'm not +thinking of your separation--I'm thinking of the way you've treated him, +and his affection for you and Peggy. You won't let him love you. You +won't even let him love his little girl." + +"Does he say that?" + +"Would he say it? People in my peculiar position don't require to have +things said to them; they _say them_. You see, if I didn't say them now +I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten +times more disagreeable for you. It might even be very uncomfortable for +me." + +"Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious." + +"Well, if I'm not serious now, when _shall_ I be?" + +Anne smiled. "You're very like Walter." + +"Yes. He's every bit as serious as I am. And he's getting more and more +serious every day." + +"Oh, Edie, you don't understand. I--I've suffered so terribly." + +"I do understand. I've gone through it--every pang of it--and it's all +come back to me again through your suffering--and I know it's been worse +for you. I've told him so. It's because I don't want you to suffer more +that I'm saying these awful things to you." + +"Oh! _Am_ I to suffer more?" + +"I believe that's the only way your happiness can come to you--through +great suffering. I'm only afraid that the suffering may come through +Peggy, if you don't take care." + +"Peggy--" + +It was her own terror put into words. + +"Yes. That child has a terrible capacity for loving. And for her that +means suffering. She loves you. She loves her father. Do you suppose she +won't suffer when she sees? Her little heart will be torn in two between +you." + +"Oh, Edith--I cannot bear it." + +She hid her face from the anguish. + +"You needn't. That's it. It rests with you." + +"With me? If you would only tell me how." + +"I can't tell you anything. It'll come. Probably in the way you least +expect it. But--it'll come." + +"Edie, I feel as if you held us all together. And when you've gone--" + +"You mean when _it's_ gone. When it's 'gone,'" said Edie, smiling. "I +shall hold you together all the more. You needn't sigh like that." + +"Did I sigh?" + +As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith's +loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold +anything any more. + +Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained +fixed in Anne's memory: how Peggy would suffer through overmuch +loving--she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror; +and how love was a provision for the soul's redemption of the body, or +for the body's redemption of the soul. This she remembered, because she +did not understand it. + +That was in August. Before the month was out they were beginning to give +Edith morphia. + +In September Gorst came to see her for the last time. + +In October she died in her brother's arms. + +In the days that followed, it was as if her spirit, refusing to depart +from them, had rested on the sister she had loved. Spirit to spirit, +she stooped, kindling in Anne her own dedicated flame. In the white +death-chamber, and through the quiet house, the presence of Anne, moving +with a hushed footfall, was like the presence of a blessed spirit. Her +face was as a face long hidden upon the heart of peace. Her very grief +aspired; it had wings, lifting her towards her sister in her heavenly +place. + +For Anne, in the days that followed, was possessed by a great and burning +charity. Mrs. Hannay called and was taken into the white room to see +Edith. And Anne's heart went out to Mrs. Hannay, when she spoke of the +beauty and goodness of Edith; and to Lawson Hannay, when he pressed her +hand without speaking; and to Gorst, when she saw him stealing on tiptoe +from Edith's room, his face swollen and inflamed with grief. Her heart +went out to all of them, because they had loved Edith. + +And to her husband her heart went out with a tenderness born of an +immense pity and compassion. For the first three days, Majendie gave no +sign that he was shaken by his sister's death. But on the evening of the +day they buried her, Anne found him in the study, sitting in his low +chair by the fire, his head sunk, his body bowed forward over his knees, +convulsed with a nervous shivering. He started and stared at her +approach, and straightened himself suddenly. She held out her hand. He +looked at it dumbly, as if unwilling or afraid to take it. + +"My dear," she said softly. + +Then she knelt beside him, and drew his head down upon her breast, and +let it rest there. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +It was a Thursday night in October, three weeks after Edith's death. Anne +was in her room, undressing. She moved noiselessly, with many tender +precautions, for fear of waking Peggy, and for fear of destroying the +peace that possessed her own soul like heavenly sleep. It was the mystic +mood that went before prayer. + +In those three weeks Anne felt that she had been brought very near to +God. She had not known such stillness and content since the days at +Scarby that had made her life terrible. It was as if Edith's spirit in +bliss had power given it to help her sister, to draw Anne with it into +the divine presence. + +And the dead woman bound the living to each other also, as she had said. +How she bound them Anne had not realised until to-day. It was Mrs. +Elliott's day, her Thursday. Anne had spent half an hour in Thurston +Square, and had come away with a cold, unsatisfactory feeling towards +Fanny. Fanny, for the first time, had jarred on her. She had so plainly +hesitated between condolence and congratulation. She seemed to be +secretly rejoicing in Edith Majendie's death. Her manner intimated +clearly that a burden had been removed from her friend's life, and that +the time had now come for Anne to blossom out and enjoy herself. Anne had +been glad to get away from Fanny, to come back to the house in Prior +Street and to find Walter waiting for her. Fanny, in spite of her +intellectual rarity, lacked the sense that, after all, _he_ had, the +sense of Edith's spiritual perfection. Strangely, inconsistently, +incomprehensibly, he had it. He and his wife had that in common, if they +had nothing else. They were bound to each other by Edith's dear and +sacred memory, an immaterial, immortal tie. They would always share their +knowledge of her. Other people might take for granted that her terrible +illness had loosened, little by little, the bond that held them to her. +They knew that it was not so. They never found themselves declining on +the mourner's pitiful commonplaces, "Poor Edie"; "She is released"; "It's +a mercy she was taken." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant +personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness +of a strong, beneficent life. + +For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been +on the night of Edith's burial. + +And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost +in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She +forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was +unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched +her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very +high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her +spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only +continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with +him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane +the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of +Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She +could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself +that her prayers for him were answered. + +For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her +husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in +the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin. +She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of +redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in +letting go the immaterial hold by which she might have drawn him with her +into the secret shelter of the Unseen. She perceived that in those years +her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble. +She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for +herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all +mortal things. Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources +of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the +nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul. Too many +miseries cried and strove in her. She could no longer shut to her door, +and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse +and empty her spirit's house for the divine thing she desired to dwell +with her. + +And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, +into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out +her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and +found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine +pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she +had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete. At night, +when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she +seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer. There +were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of +God, the beatitude of the pure. + +After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate +sanctity. + +There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of +minute deceptions and hypocrisies. She was not deceived as to the supreme +event. She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which, +alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction. She had all +but touched the end of the saint's progress. But she was ignorant, both +of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might +again lead, her feet astray. + +Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was +entering into a sanctuary. She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her +husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her. She +accepted her blessed isolation as his gift. + +This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions. She had +gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence +of the night. + +She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her +movements. + +She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when +she heard a low knock at her door. Majendie had been detained, and was +late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed. + +Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise. He stole +on tiptoe to the child's cot, and stood there for a moment. Then he came +and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing +with her arms raised, unpinning her hair. Majendie had always admired +that attitude in Anne. It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly +feminine. Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any +dress. + +He sat looking at the quick white fingers untwisting the braid of hair. +It hung divided into three strands, still rippling with the braiding, +still dull with its folded warmth. She combed the three into one sleek +sheet that covered her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders. +Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands. +Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face +and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white. + +"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?" + +Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet +permitted it. + +"Do you mind my looking at you like this?" + +"No." + +(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.) + +She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward +over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to +brush it. + +The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its +ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the +ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and +tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a +ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went +light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and +rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net; +then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It +scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft +falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down. +With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair +rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray; +pure gold in every thread. + +Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its +faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook +him, and he looked away. + +Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her +effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one +mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his +departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the +extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go. + +"Anne," he whispered, "Anne--" + +The whisper struck fear into her. + +She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given +him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability. + +"Have you anything to say to me?" she said. + +"No." + +"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?" + +"Do you really mean it?" + +"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet." + +"And when you have said them?" + +She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face. +She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and +scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep. + +"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself." + +He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him. + +"He is good, after all," her heart said. + +But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much +for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He +remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her +and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he +would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to +go and see her. + +Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night. + +To-morrow night he would go and see her. + +And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until +December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that +Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this +time, she had not written to tell him so. + +He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come, +because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie +was good as gold again, placid and at peace. + +"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?" + +And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody +else?" + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square +blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with +their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of +Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only +raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand. +Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown +belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey +gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and +earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and +sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds. + +Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's +length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing +hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and +straight as a dyke. + +Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of +land a narrow creek. + +Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the +open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to +the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The +farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline. +Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the +east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad +bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness. + +Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path +breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie +came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often +for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very +early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven +miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In +summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness +creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him. + +This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three +years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to +live there. + +The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all +the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated +endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy. +He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, +that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and +complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time. +Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with +people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his +yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent +as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their +living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were +devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were +acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their +yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a +man who observed life dispassionately. He asked no questions and answered +none. + +It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three years +after Edith's death. Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with +Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the +field path to Three Elms Farm. A thin rain fell, blurring the distances. +The house stood humbly, under its three elms. A light was burning in one +window. Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the +click of the field gate which was his signal. When it sounded she came +down the path to meet him. She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew +down his face and kissed him. He took her arm and led her, half clinging +to him, into the house and into the lighted room. + +A fire burned brightly on the hearth. His chair was set for him beside +it, and Maggie's chair opposite. The small round table in the middle +of the room was laid for supper. Maggie had decorated walls and +chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn +leaves and ivy from the hedgerows. The room had a glad light and welcome +for him. + +As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him. +She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings: Is +he ill? Is he well? + +He was, to the outward seeing eye, superlatively well. Three years of +life lived in the open air, life lived according to the will of nature, +had given him back his outward and visible health. At thirty-nine, +Majendie had once more the strength, the firm, upright slenderness, and +the brilliance of his youth. His face was keen and brown, fined and +freshened by wind and weather. + +Maggie, waiting humbly on his mood, saw that it was propitious. + +"What cold hands," said she. "And no overcoat? You bad boy." She felt his +clothes all over to feel if they were damp. "Tired?" + +"Just a little, Maggie." + +She drew up his chair to the fire, and knelt down to unlace his boots. + +"No, Maggie, I can't let you take my boots off." + +"Yes, you can, and you will. Does _she_ ever take your boots off?" + +"Never." + +"You don't allow her?" + +"No. I don't allow her." + +"You allow _me_" said Maggie triumphantly. She was persuaded that (since +his wife was denied the joy of waiting on him) hers was the truly +desirable position. Majendie had never had the heart to enlighten her. + +She pressed his feet with her soft hands, to feel if his stockings were +damp, too. + +"There's a little hole," she cried. "I shall have to mend that to-night." + +She put cushions at his back, and sat down on the floor beside him, and +laid her head on his knee. + +"There's a sole for supper," said she, in a dreamy voice, "and a roast +chicken. And an apple tart. I made it." Maggie had always been absurdly +proud of the things that she could do. + +"Clever Maggie." + +"I made it because I thought you'd like it." + +"Kind Maggie." + +"You didn't get any of those things yesterday, or the day before, did +you?" + +She was always afraid of giving him what he had had at home. That was one +of the difficulties, she felt, of a double household. + +"I forget," he said, a little wearily, "what I had yesterday." + +Maggie noticed the weariness and said no more. + +He laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair. He could always keep +Maggie quiet by stroking her hair. She shifted herself instantly into +a position easier for his hand. She sat still, only turning to the +caressing hand, now her forehead, now the nape of her neck, now her +delicate ear. + +Maggie knew all his moods and ministered to them. She knew to-night that, +if she held her tongue, the peace she had prepared for him would sink +into him and heal him. He was not very tired. She could tell. She could +measure his weariness to a degree by the movements of his hand. When he +was tired she would seize the caressing hand and make it stop. In a few +minutes supper would be ready, and when he had had supper, she knew, it +would be time to talk. + +Majendie was grateful for her silence. He was grateful to her for many +things, for her beauty, for her sweetness, for her humility, for her love +which had given so much and asked so little. Maggie had still the modest +charm that gave to her and to her affection the illusion of a perfect +innocence. It had been heightened rather than diminished by their +intimacy. + +Somehow she had managed so that, as long as he was with her, shame was +impossible for himself or her. As long as he was with her he was wrapped +in her illusion, the illusion of innocence, of happiness, of all the +unspoken sanctities of home. He knew that whether he was or was not with +her, as long as he loved her no other man would come between him and her; +no other man would cross his threshold and stand upon his hearth. The +house he came to was holy to her. There were times, so deep was the +illusion, when he could have believed that Maggie, sitting there at his +feet, was the pure spouse, the helpmate, and Anne, in the house in Prior +Street, the unwedded, unacknowledged mistress, the distant, the secret, +the forbidden. He had never disguised from Maggie the temporary and +partial nature of the tie that bound them. But the illusion was too +strong for both of them. It was strong upon him now. + +The woman, Mrs. Pearson, came in with supper, moving round the room in +silence, devoted and discreet. + +Majendie was hungry. Maggie was unable to conceal her frank joy in seeing +him eat and drink. She ate little and talked a great deal, drawn by his +questions. + +"What have you been doing, Maggie?" + +Maggie gave an account of her innocent days, of her labours in house and +farm and garden. She loved all three, she loved her flowers and her +chickens and her rabbits, and the little young pigs. She loved all things +that had life. She was proud of her house. Her hands were always busy in +it. She had stitched all the linen for it. She had made all the +tablecloths, sofa covers and curtains, and given to them embroidered +borders. She liked to move about among all these beautiful things and +feel that they were hers. But she loved those most which Majendie had +used, or noticed, or admired. After supper she took up her old position +by his chair. + +"How long can you stay?" said she. + +"I must go to-morrow." + +"Oh, why?" + +"I've told you why, dear. It's my little girl's birthday to-morrow." + +She remembered. + +"Her birthday. How old will she be to-morrow?" + +"Seven." + +"Seven. What does she do all day long?" + +"Oh, she amuses herself. We have a garden." + +"How she would love this garden, and the flowers, and the swing, and the +chickens, and all the animals, wouldn't she?" + +"Yes. Yes." + +Somehow he didn't like Maggie to talk about his child, but he hadn't the +heart to stop her. + +"Is she as pretty as she was?" + +"Prettier." + +"And she's not a bit like you." + +"Not a bit, not a little bit." + +"I'm glad," said Maggie. + +"Why on earth are you glad?" + +"Because--I couldn't bear _her_ child to be like you." + +"You mustn't say those things, Maggie, I don't like it." + +"I won't say them. You don't mind my thinking them, do you? I can't help +thinking." + +She thought for a long time; then she got up, and came to him, and put +her arm round his neck, and bowed her head and whispered. + +"Don't whisper. I hate it. Speak out. Say what you've got to say." + +"I can't say it." + +She said it very low. + +He bent forward, freeing himself from her mouth and clinging arm. + +"No, Maggie. Never. I told you that in the beginning. You promised me you +wouldn't think of it. It's bad enough as it is." + +"What's bad enough?" + +"Everything, my child. I'm bad enough, if you like; but I'm not as bad as +all that, I can assure you." + +"You don't think _me_ bad?" + +"You know I don't. You know what I think of you. But you must learn to +see what's possible and what isn't." + +"I do see. Tell me one thing. Is it because you love _her_?" + +"We can't go into that, Maggie. Can't you understand that it may be +because I love _you_?" + +"I don't know. But I don't mind so long as I know it isn't only because +you love _her_." + +"You're not to talk about her, Maggie." + +"I know. I won't. I don't want to talk about her, I'm sure. I try not to +think about her more than I can help." + +"But you must think of her." + +"Oh--must I?" + +"At any rate, you must think of me." + +"I do think of you. I think of you from morning till night. I don't think +of anything else. I don't want anything else. I'm contented as long as +I've got you. It wasn't that." + +"What was it, Maggie?" + +"Nothing. Only--it's so awfully lonely in between, when you're not here. +That was why I asked you." + +"Poor child, poor Maggie. Is it very bad to bear?" + +"Not when I know you're coming." + +"See here--if it gets too bad to bear, we must end it." + +"End it?" + +"Yes, Maggie. _You_ must end it; you must give me up, when you're +tired--" + +"Oh no--no," she cried. + +"Give me up," he repeated, "and go back to town." + +"To Scale?" + +"Well, yes; if it's so lonely here." + +"And give you up?" + +"Yes, Maggie, you must; if you go back to Scale." + +"I shall never go back. Who could I go to? There's nobody who'd 'ave me. +I've got nobody." + +"Nobody?" + +"Nobody but you, Wallie. Nobody but you. Have you never thought of that? +Why, where should _I_ be if I was to give you up?" + +"I see, Maggie. _I_ see. _I_ see." + +Up till then he had seen nothing. But Maggie, unwise, had put her hand +through the fine web of illusion. She had seen, and made him see, the +tragedy of the truth behind it, the real nature of the tie that bound +them. It was an inconsistent tie, permanent in its impermanence, with all +its incompleteness terribly complete. He could not give her up; he had +not thought of giving her up; but neither had he thought of keeping her. + +It was all wrong. It was wrong to keep her. It would be wrong to give her +up. He was all she had. Whatever happened he could not give her up. + +And so he said, "_I_ see. _I_ see." + +"See here," said she (she had adopted some of his phrases), "when I said +there was nobody, I meant nobody I'd have anything to do with. If I went +back to Scale, there are plenty of low girls in the town who'd make +friends with me, if I'd let 'em. But I won't be seen with them. You +wouldn't have me seen with them, would you?" + +"No, Maggie, not for all the world." + +"Well, then, 'ow can you go on talking about my giving you up?" + +No. He could not give her up. There was no tie between them but their +sin, yet he could not break it. Degraded as it was, it saved him from +deeper degradation. + +He loved Anne with his whole soul, with his heart and with his body, and +he had given his body to Maggie, with as much heart as went with it. In +the world's sight he loved Maggie and was bound to Anne. In his own sight +he loved Anne and was bound to Maggie. + +It had come to that. + +He did not care to look back upon the steps by which it had come. He only +knew that, seven years ago, he had been sound and whole, a man with one +aim and one passion and one life. Now he and his life were divided, cut +clean in two by a line not to be passed or touched upon by either +sundered half. All of him that Anne had rejected he had given to Maggie. + +As far as he could judge he had acted, not grossly, not recklessly, but +with a kind of passionate deliberation. He knew he would have to pay for +it. He had not stopped to haggle with his conscience or to ask: how much? +But he was prepared to pay. + +Up to this moment his conscience had not dunned him. But now he foresaw a +season when the bills would be falling due. + +Maggie had torn the veil of illusion, and he looked for the first time +upon his sin. + +Even his conscience admitted that he had not meant it to come to that. He +had had no ancient private tendency to sin. He wanted nothing but to live +at home, happy with the wife he loved, and with his child, his children. +And poor Maggie, she too would have asked no more than to be a good wife +to the man she loved, and to be the mother of his children. + +This life with Maggie, hidden away in Three Elms Farm, in the wilds of +Holderness, it could not be called dissipation, but it was division. +Where once he had been whole he was now divided. The sane, strong +affection that should have knit body and soul together was itself broken +in two. + +And it was she, the helpmate, she who should have kept him whole, who had +caused him to be thus sundered from himself and her. + +They were all wrong, all frustrated, all incomplete. Anne, in her sublime +infidelity to earth; Maggie, turned from her own sweet use that she might +give him what Anne could not give; and he, who between them had severed +his body from his soul. + +Thus he brooded. + +And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing +the illusion. + +He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house +and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now. + +"And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked. + +"Yes. Very well." + +"And Steve--is he as good to you as ever?" + +Maggie brightened and became more communicative. + +"Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes +me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for +the old Angora rabbit." + +"Do you like going out in the boat?" + +"Yes, very much." + +"Do you like going out with him?" + +"No," said Maggie, making a little face, half of disgust and half of +derision. "No. His hands are all dirty, and he smells of fish." + +Majendie laughed. "There are drawbacks, I must own, to Steve." + +He looked at his watch, an action Maggie hated. It always suggested +finality, departure. + +"Ten o'clock, Maggie. I must be up at six to-morrow. We sail at seven." + +"At seven," echoed Maggie in despair. + +They were up at six. Maggie went with him to the creek, to see him sail. +In the garden she picked a chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole, +forgetting that he couldn't wear her token. There were so many things +he couldn't do. + +A little rain still fell through a clogging mist. They walked side by +side, treading the drenched grass, for the track was too narrow for them +both. Maggie's feet dragged, prolonging the moments. + +A white pointed sail showed through the mist, where the little yacht lay +in the river off the mouth of the creek. + +Steve was in the boat close against the creek's bank, waiting to row +Majendie to the yacht. He touched his cap to Majendie as they appeared on +the bank, but he did not look at Maggie when her gentle voice called +good-morning. + +Steve's face was close-mouthed and hard set. + +She put her hands on Majendie's shoulders and kissed him. Her cheek +against his face was pure and cold, wet with the rain. Steve did not look +at them. He never looked at them when they were together. + +Majendie dropped into the boat. Steve pushed off from the bank. Maggie +stood there watching them go. She stood till the boat reached the creek's +mouth, and Majendie turned, and raised his cap to her; stood till the +white sail moved slowly up the river and disappeared, rounding the spit +of land. + +Majendie, as he paced the deck and talked to his men of wind and weather, +turned casually, on his heel, to look at her where she stood alone in the +level immensity of the land. The world looked empty all around her. + +And he was touched with a sudden poignant realisation of her life; its +sadness, its incompleteness, its isolation. + +That was what he had brought her to. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +The rain cleared off, the mist lifted, and at nine o'clock it was a fine +day for Peggy's birthday. Even Scale, where it stretched its flat avenues +into the country, showed golden in the warm and brilliant air. + +The household in Prior Street had been up early, making preparations for +the day. Peggy had waked before it was light, to feel her presents which +lay beside her on her bed; and, by the time Majendie's sail had passed +Fawlness Point, she was up and dressed, waiting for him. + +Anne had to break it to her gently that perhaps he would not be home in +time for eight-o'clock breakfast. Then the child's mouth trembled, and +Anne comforted her, half-smiling and half-afraid. + +"Ah, Peggy, Peggy," she said, as she rocked her against her breast, "What +shall I do with you? Your little heart is too big for your little body." + +Anne's terror had not left her in three years. It was always with her +now. The child was bound to suffer. She was a little mass of throbbing +nerves, of trembling emotions. + +Yet Anne herself was happier. The three years had passed smoothly over +her. Her motherhood had laid its fine, soft, finishing touch upon her. +Her face, her body, had rounded and ripened, year after slow year, to an +abiding beauty, born of her tenderness. At thirty-five Anne Majendie had +reached the perfect moment of her physical maturity. + +Her mind was no longer harassed by anxiety about her husband. He seemed +to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by +turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had +once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the +slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She +attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual +growth begun in him at the time of his sister's death. + +She desired no change in their relations, no further understanding, no +closer intimacy. + +To Anne's mind, her husband's attitude to her was perfect. The passion +that had been her fear had left him. He waited on her hand and foot, with +humble, heart-rending devotion. He let her see that he adored her with +discretion, at a distance, as a divinely, incomprehensibly high and holy +thing. + +Her household life had simplified itself. Her days passed in noiseless, +equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after +Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with +visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening classes +for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not an hour of her day was idle. At +the end of the three years Mrs. Majendie was known in Scale by her broad +charities and by her saintly life. + +She had fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In +three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. +She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time +when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. +She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat +fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she +did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's delight in her, of all the +sweet and dangerous ministrations of their mutual vanities. Mrs. Eliott +had been uplifted by Anne's preposterously grave approval. Anne had been +ravished by her own distinction as the audience of Fanny Eliott's loftier +and profounder moods. There could be no criticism of these heights and +depths. To have depreciated Fanny Eliott's rarity by a shade would have +been to call in question her own. + +But all this had ceased long ago, when she married Walter Majendie, and +his sister became her dearest friend. Fanny Eliott had always looked on +Edith Majendie as her rival; retreating a little ostentatiously before +her formidable advance. There should have been no rivalry, for there had +been no possible ground of comparison. Neither could Edith Majendie be +said to have advanced. The charm of Edith, or rather, her pathetic claim, +was that she never could have advanced at all. To Anne's mind, from the +first, there had been no choice between Edith, lying motionless on her +sofa by the window, and Fanny at large in the drawing-rooms of her +acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her +intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into +Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while +Fanny Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement +on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. Fanny +Eliott, poor thing, still suffered by the contrast. + +Of all Anne's friends, the Gardners alone stood the test of time. She had +never had a doubt of them. They had come later into her life, after the +perishing of her great illusion. The shock had humbled her senses and +disposed her to reverence for the things of intellect. Dr. Gardner's +position, as President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, was +as a high rock to which she clung. Mrs. Gardner was dear to her for many +reasons. + +The dearness of Mrs. Gardner was significant. It showed that, thanks to +Peggy, Anne's humanisation was almost complete. + +To-day, which was Peggy's birthday, Anne's heart was light and happy. +She had planned, that, if the day were fine, the festival was to be +celebrated by a picnic to Westleydale. + +And the day was fine. Majendie had promised to be home in time to start +by the nine-fifty train. Meanwhile they waited. Peggy had helped Mary the +cook to pack the luncheon basket, and now she felt time heavy on her +little hands. + +Anne suggested that they should go upstairs and help Nanna. Nanna was in +Majendie's room, turning out his drawers. On his bed there was a pile of +suits of the year before last, put aside to be given to Anne's poor +people. When Peggy was tired of fetching and carrying, she watched her +mother turning over the clothes and sorting them into heaps. Anne's +methods were rapid and efficient. + +"Oh, mummy!" cried Peggy, "don't! You touch daddy's things as if you +didn't like them." + +"Peggy, darling, what do you mean?" + +"You're so quick." She laid her face against one of Majendie's coats and +stroked it. "Must daddy's things go away?" + +"Yes, darling. Why don't you want them to go?" + +"Because I love them. I love all his little coats and hats and shoes and +things." + +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy, you're a little sentimentalist. Go and see what +Nanna's got there." + +Nanna had given a cry of joyous discovery. "Look, ma'am," said she, "what +I've found in master's portmanteau." + +Nanna came forward, shaking out a child's frock. A frock of pure white +silk, embroidered round the neck and wrists with a deep border of +daisies, pink and white and gold. + +"Nanna!" + +"Oh, mummy, what is it?" + +Peggy touched a daisy with her soft forefinger and shrank back shyly. She +knew it was her birthday, but she did not know whether the frock had +anything to do with that, or no. + +"I wonder," said Anne, "what little girl daddy brought that for." + +"Did daddy bring it?" + +"Yes, daddy brought it. Do you think he meant it for her birthday, +Nanna?" + +"Well, m'm, he may have meant it for her birthday last year. I found it +stuffed into 'is portmanteau wot 'e took with him in the yacht a year +ago. It's bin there--poked away in the cupboard, ever since. I suppose he +bought it, meaning to give it to Miss Peggy, and put it away and forgot +all about it. See, m'm"--Nanna measured the frock against Peggy's small +figure--"it'd 'a' bin too large for her, last birthday. It'll just fit +her now, m'm." + +"Oh, Peggy!" said Anne. "She must put it on. Quick, Nanna. You shall wear +it, my pet, and surprise daddy." + +"What fun!" said Peggy. + +"_Is_n't it fun?" Anne was as gay and as happy as Peggy. She was smiling +her pretty smile. + +Peggy was solemnly arrayed in the little frock. The borders of daisies +showed like a necklace and bracelets against her white skin. + +"Well, m'm," said Nanna, "if master did forget, he knew what he was +about, at the time, anyhow. It's the very frock for her." + +"Yes. See, Peggy--it's daisies, marguerites. That's why daddy chose +it--for your little name, darling, do you see?" + +"My name," said Peggy softly, moved by the wonder and beauty of her +frock. + +"There he is, Peggy! Run down and show yourself." + +"Oh, muvver," shrieked Peggy, "it will be a surprise for daddy, won't +it?" + +She ran down. They followed, and leaned over the bannisters to listen to +the surprise. They heard Peggy's laugh as she came to the last flight of +stairs and showed herself to her father. They heard her shriek "Daddy! +daddy!" Then there was calm. + +Then Peggy's voice dropped from its high joy and broke. "Oh, daddy, are +you angry with me?" + +Anne came downstairs. Majendie had the child in his arms and was kissing +her. + +"Are you angry with me, daddy?" she repeated. + +"No, my sweetheart, no." He looked up at Anne. He was very pale, and a +sweat was on his forehead. "Who put that frock on her?" + +"I did," said Anne. + +"I think you'd better take it off again," he said quietly. + +Anne raised her eyebrows as a sign to him to look at Peggy's miserable +mouth. "Oh, let her wear it," she said. "It's her birthday." + +Majendie wiped his forehead and turned aside into the study. + +"Muvver," said Peggy, as they went hand in hand upstairs again; "do you +think daddy _really meant_ it as a surprise for _me_?" + +"I think he must have done, darling." + +"Aren't you sorry we spoiled his surprise, mummy?" + +"I don't think he minds, Peggy." + +"_I_ think he does. Why did he look angry, and say I was to take it off?" + +"Perhaps, because it's rather too nice a frock for every day." + +"My birthday isn't every day," said Peggy. + +So Peggy wore the frock that Maggie had made for her and given to +Majendie last year. He had hidden it in his portmanteau, meaning to give +it to Mrs. Ransome at Christmas. And he had thrown the portmanteau into +the darkest corner of the cupboard, and gone away and forgotten all about +it. + +And now the sight of Maggie's handiwork had given him a shock. For his +sin was heavy upon him. Every day he went in fear of discovery. Anne +would ask him where he had got that frock, and he would have to lie to +her. And it would be no use; for, sooner or later, she would know that he +had lied; and she would track Maggie down by the frock. + +He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment which was a +token and memorial of his sin. He wished he had thrown the damned thing +into the Humber. + +But Anne had no suspicion. Her face was smooth and tranquil as she came +downstairs. She was calling Peggy her "little treasure," and her eyes +were smiling as she looked at the frail, small, white and gold creature, +stepping daintily and shyly in her delicate dress. + +Peggy was buttoned into a little white coat to keep her warm; and they +set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket, and Peggy an enormous +doll. + +Peggy enjoyed the journey. When she was not talking to Majendie she was +singing a little song to keep the doll quiet, so that the time passed +very quickly both for her and him. There were other people in the +carriage, and Anne was afraid they would be annoyed at Peggy's singing. +But they seemed to like it as much as she and Majendie. Nobody was ever +annoyed with Peggy. + +In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf. It was green +underfoot and on the folding hills. Overhead it was limitless blue above +the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films +and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue. + +Majendie felt Peggy's hand tighten on his hand. Her little body was +trembling with delight. + +They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat. He looked +at her. And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she +stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she +smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile. + +Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman, +smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with +the sorrow of his sin. + +They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first +Majendie's hand, then Anne's hand, and held them together in her lap. + +"Mummy," said she, "aren't you glad that daddy came? It wouldn't be half +so nice without him, would it?" + +"No," said Anne, "it wouldn't." + +"Mummy, you don't say that as if you meant it." + +"Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it." + +"Yes, but you didn't make it sound so." + +"Peggy," said Majendie, "you're a terribly observant little person." + +"She's a little person who sometimes observes all wrong." + +"No, mummy, I don't. You never talk to daddy like you talk to me." + +"You're a little girl, dear, and daddy's a big grown-up man." + +"That's not what I mean, though. You've got a grown-up voice for me, too. +I don't mean your grown-up voice. I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as +if--as if you hadn't known him a very long time. And you talk to me as if +you'd known me--oh, ever so long. _Have_ you known me longer than you've +known daddy?" + +Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill +visible through the branches of the trees. + +"Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought +of." + +"When was I thought of, mummy?" + +"I don't know, darling." + +"Do you know, daddy?" + +"Yes, Peggy. _I_ know. You were thought of here, in this wood, under this +tree, on mummy's birthday, between eight and nine years ago." + +"Who thought of me?" + +"Ah, that's telling." + +"Who thought of me, mummy?" + +"Daddy and I, dear." + +"And you forgot, and daddy remembered." + +"Yes. I've got a rather better memory than your mother, dear." + +"You forgot my old birthday, daddy." + +"I haven't forgotten your mother's old birthday, though." + +Peggy was thinking. Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of +her thought. + +"Mummy--am I only seven?" + +"Only seven, Peggy." + +"Then," said Peggy, "you _did_ think of me before I was born. How did you +know me before I was born?" + +Anne shook her head. + +"Daddy, how did you know me before I was born?" + +"Peggy, you're a little tease." + +"You brought it on yourself, my dear. Peggy, if you'll leave off teasing +daddy, I'll tell you a story." + +"Oh!--" + +"Once upon a time" (Anne's voice was very low) "mummy had a dream. She +dreamed she was in this wood, walking along that little path--just +there--not thinking of Peggy. And when she came to this tree she saw an +angel, with big white wings. He was lying under this very tree, on this +very bit of grass, just there, where daddy's sitting. And one of his +wings was stretched out on the grass, and it was hollow like a cradle. +It was all lined with little feathers, like the inside of a swan's wing, +as soft as soft. And the other wing was stretched over it like the top of +a cradle. And inside, all among the soft little feathers, there was a +little baby girl lying, just like Peggy." + +"Oh, mummy, was it me?" + +"Sh--sh--sh! Whoever it was, the angel saw that mummy loved it, and +wanted it very much--" + +"The little baby girl?" + +"Yes. And so he took the baby and gave it to mummy, to be her own little +girl. That's how Peggy came to mummy." + +"And did he give it to daddy, too, to be his little girl?" + +"Yes," said Majendie, "I was wondering where I came in." + +"Yes. He gave it to daddy to be his little girl, too." + +"I'm glad he gave me to daddy. The angel brought me to you in the night, +like daddy brought me my big dolly. You did bring my big dolly, and put +her on my bed, didn't you, daddy? Last night?" + +Majendie was silent. + +"Daddy wasn't at home last night, Peggy." + +"Oh, daddy, where were you?" + +Majendie felt his forehead getting damp again. + +"Daddy was away on business." + +"Oh, mummy, don't you wish he'd never go away?" + +"I think it's time for lunch," said Majendie. + +They ate their lunch; and when it was ended, Majendie went to the cottage +to find water, for Peggy was thirsty. He returned, carrying water in a +pitcher, and followed by a red-cheeked, rosy little girl who brought milk +in a cup for Peggy. + +Anne remembered the cup. It was the same cup that she had drunk from +after her husband. And the child was the same child whom he had found +sitting in the grass, whom he had shown to her and taken from her arms, +whose little body, held close to hers, had unsealed in her the first +springs of her maternal passion. It all came back to her. + +The little girl beamed on Peggy with a face like a small red sun, and +Peggy conceived a sudden yearning for her companionship. It seemed that, +at the cottage, there were rabbits, and a new baby, and a litter of +puppies three days old. And all these wonders the little girl offered +to show to Peggy, if Peggy would go with her. + +Peggy begged, and went through the wood, hand in hand with the little +beaming girl. Majendie and Anne watched them out of sight. + +"Look at the two pairs of legs," said Majendie. + +Anne sighed. Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red, +lusty-legged daughter of the woods. + +"I'm not at all happy about her," said she. + +"Why not?" + +"She gets so terribly tired." + +"All children do, don't they?" + +Anne shook her head. "Not as she does. It isn't a child's healthy +tiredness. It doesn't come like that. It came on quite suddenly the other +day, after she'd been excited; and her little lips turned grey." + +"Get Gardner to look at her." + +"I'm going to. He says she ought to be more in the open air. I wish we +could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden." + +Majendie said nothing. He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden +and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from +the sea. He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it. + +"You could afford it, Walter, couldn't you, now?" + +"Of course I can afford it." + +He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the +farm. His business was doing better every year. But the double household +was a drain on his fresh resources. He could not very well afford to take +another house, and keep the farm too. He had thought of that before. He +had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving +him up. Poor Maggie! Well, he would have to manage somehow. If the worst +came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street. And he would +sell the yacht. + +"I think I shall sell the yacht," he said. + +"Oh no, you mustn't do that. You've been so well since you've had it." + +"No, it isn't necessary. I shall be better if I take more exercise." + +Peggy came back and the subject dropped. + +Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended. She was tired, so tired +that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and +carry her all the way to the station. Anne carried the doll. + +In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father's arms. She slept with her +face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast. Her +head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve. + +"Look--" he whispered. + +Anne looked. "The little lamb--" she said. + +Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping +child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an +old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret +and long-forgotten. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs. +Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession +filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the +Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and +pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and +exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights. + +But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer +and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who +now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for +thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with +her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded +the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor. + +Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled +contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was +mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore +of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging +and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface. +Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it +also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the +mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much +about it. + +Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took +refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a +secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no +longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's +drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club. + +Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's +birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon +had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart. + +"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests +arrive?" + +Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she, +"we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor." + +"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon, "about our dear Mrs. +Majendie." + +Mrs. Eliott's eyes darkened with anxiety. She clasped her hands. "Oh why? +What is it? Do you mean about the dear little girl?" + +"I know nothing about the little girl. But I hear very unpleasant things +about her husband." + +"What things?" + +The Canon's face was reticent and grim. He wished Mrs. Eliott to +understand that he was no unscrupulous purveyor of gossip; that if he +spoke, it was under constraint and severe necessity. + +"I do not," said the Canon, "usually give heed to disagreeable reports. +But I am afraid that, where there is such a dense cloud of smoke, there +must be some fire." + +"I think," said Mrs. Eliott, "perhaps they didn't get on very well +together once. But they seem to have made it up after the sister's death. +_She_ has been happier these last three years. She has been a different +woman." + +"The same woman, my dear lady, the same woman. Only a better saint. For +the last three years, they say, he has been living with another woman." + +"Oh--it's impossible. Impossible. He is away a great deal--but--" + +"He is away a great deal too often. Running up to Scarby every week in +that yacht of his. In with the Ransomes and all that disreputable set." + +"Is Lady Cayley in Scale?" + +"Lady Cayley is at Scarby." + +"Do you mean to say--" + +"I mean," said the Canon, rising, "to say nothing." + +Mrs. Eliott detained him with her eyes of anguish. + +"Canon Wharton--do you think she knows?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +The Canon never told. He was far too clever. + +Mrs. Eliott wandered to Miss Proctor. + +"Do you know," said Miss Proctor, searching Mrs. Eliott's face with an +inquisitive gaze, "how our friends, the Majendies, are getting on?" + +"Oh, as usual. I see very little of her now. Anne is quite taken up with +her little girl and with her good works." + +"Oh! That," said Miss Proctor, "was a most unsuitable marriage." + +It was five o'clock. The Canon and Miss Proctor had drunk their two +cups of tea and departed. Mrs. Pooley had arrived soon after four; +she lingered, to talk a little more about the thought-power and the +mind-control. Mrs. Pooley was convinced that she could make things +happen. That they were, in fact, happening. But Mrs. Eliott was no longer +interested. + +Mrs. Pooley, too, departed, feeling that dear Fanny's Thursday had been a +disappointment. She had been quite unable to sustain the conversation at +its usual height. + +Mrs. Pooley indubitably gone, Mrs. Eliott wandered down to Johnson in his +study. There, in perfect confidence, she revealed to him the Canon's +revelations. + +Johnson betrayed no surprise. That story had been going the round of his +club for the last two years. + +"What will Anne do?" said Mrs. Eliott, "when she finds out?" + +"I don't suppose she'll do anything." + +"Will she get a separation, do you think?" + +"How can I tell you?" + +"I wonder if she knows." + +"She's not likely to tell you, if she does." + +"She's bound to know, sooner or later. I wonder if one ought to prepare +her?" + +"Prepare her for what?" + +"The shock of it. I'm afraid of her hearing in some horrid way. It would +be so awful, if she didn't know." + +"It can't be pleasant, any way, my dear." + +"Do advise me, Johnson. Ought I or ought I not to tell her?" + +Mr. Eliott's face told how his nature shrank from the agony of decision. +But he was touched by her distress. + +"Certainly not. Much better let well alone." + +"If I were only sure that it _was_ well I was letting alone." + +"Can't be sure of anything. Give it the benefit of the doubt." + +"Yes--but if you were I?" + +"If I were you I should say nothing." + +"That only means that I should say nothing if I were you. But I'm not." + +"Be thankful, my dear, at any rate, for that." + +He took up a book, _The Search for Stellar Parallaxes_, a book that he +understood and that his wife could not understand. That book was the sole +refuge open to him when pressed for an opinion. He knew that, when she +saw him reading it, she would realise that he was her intellectual +master. + +The front doorbell announced the arrival of another caller. + +She went away, wondering, as he meant she should, whether he were so very +undecided, after all. Certainly his indecisions closed a subject more +effectually than other people's verdicts. + +She found Anne in the empty, half-dark drawing-room waiting for her. She +had chosen the darkest corner, and the darkest hour. + +"Fanny," she said, and her voice trembled, "are you alone? Can I speak to +you a moment?" + +"Yes, dear, yes. Just let me leave word with Mason that I'm not at home. +But no one will come now." + +In the interval she heard Anne struggling with the sob that had choked +her voice. She felt that the decision had been made for her. The terrible +task had been taken out of her hands. Anne knew. + +She sat down beside her friend and put her hand on her shoulder. In that +moment poor Fanny's intellectual vanities dropped from her, like an +inappropriate garment, and she became pure woman. She forgot Anne's +recent disaffection and her coldness, she forgot the years that had +separated them, and remembered only the time when Anne was the girlfriend +who had loved her, and had come to her in all her griefs, and had made +her house her home. + +"What is it, dear?" she murmured. + +Anne felt for her hand and pressed it. She tried to speak, but no words +would come. + +"Of course," thought Mrs. Eliott, "she cannot tell me. But she knows I +know." + +"My dear," she said, "can I or Johnson help you?" + +Anne shook her head; but she pressed her friend's hand tighter. + +Wondering what she could do or say to help her, Mrs. Eliott resolved to +take Anne's knowledge for granted, and act upon it. + +"If there's trouble, dear, will you come to us? We want you to look on +our house as a refuge, any hour of the day or night." + +Anne stared at her friend. There was something ominous and dismaying in +her solemn tenderness, and it roused Anne to wonder, even in her grief. + +"You cannot help me, dear," she said. "No one can. Yet I had to come to +you and tell you--" + +"Tell me everything," said Mrs. Eliott, "if you can." + +Anne tried to steady her voice to tell her, and failed. Then Fanny had an +inspiration. She felt that she must divert Anne's thoughts from the grief +that made her dumb, and get her to talk naturally of other things. + +"How's Peggy?" said she. She knew it would be good to remind her that, +whatever happened, she had still the child. + +But at that question, Anne released Mrs. Eliott's hand, and laid her head +back upon the cushion and cried. + +"Dear," whispered Mrs. Eliott, with her inspiration full upon her, "you +will always have _her_." + +Then Anne sat up in her corner, and put away her tears, and controlled +herself to speak. + +"Fanny," she said, "Dr. Gardner has seen her. He says I shall not have +her very long. Perhaps--a few years--if we take the very greatest +care--" + +"Oh, my dear! What is it?" + +"It's her heart. I thought it was her spine, because of Edie. But it +isn't. She has valvular disease. Oh, Fanny, I didn't think a little child +could have it." + +"Nor I," said Mrs. Eliott, shocked into a great calm. "But surely--if you +take care--" + +"No. He gives no hope. He only says a few years, if we leave Scale and +take her into the country. She must never be overtired, never excited. We +must never vex her. He says one violent crying fit might kill her. And +she cries so easily. She cries sometimes till she's sick." + +Mrs. Eliott's face had grown white; she trembled, and was dumb before the +anguish of Anne's face. + +But it was Anne who rose, and put her arms about the childless woman, and +kissed and comforted her. + +It was as if she had said: Thank God you never had one. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached +Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and +conflicting emotions. + +She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just +asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs. +Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good +deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands. + +Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and +the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering, +vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted +to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept +feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm. + +She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well +give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she +wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had +stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was +he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear. + +At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since +her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to +prove that it was not so. + +And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a +dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that +it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She +trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground, +the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a +creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman +of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame. + +Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two +little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could +possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant +virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than +Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind, +thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of +human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and, +when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother +about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He +could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No, +she couldn't get any more out of him than that. + +Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had +her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue. +She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end, +at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear +fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago. + +Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that +start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's +handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little +embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of +destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long +trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the +embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and +it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion. +Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at +perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared +together. + +Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself +from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face +with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down +on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation +calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the +facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage. + +Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was +not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in +which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the +beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah +had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive +propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a +deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible +lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her +youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each +bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the +dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh, +that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of +exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling, +and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious +triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship, +and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering +in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still +coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure. + +It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion +to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing. +He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who +saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him +conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been. + +Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the +sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her +sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all +the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may +as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for +years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she +must take steps to save her reputation. + +The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight +to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the +somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She +loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She +wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced, +high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had +consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed +by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife. + +She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all +about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She +divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old +intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him +out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered, +would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him? + +Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to +say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the +more she wondered, the more she desired to know. + +She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she +could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends +mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs +and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house +in Prior Street. + +Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile. +Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not +attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take +for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs. +Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral +prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable +moral effect. + +She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social +intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone. + +She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with +strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful +toilette. + +At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She +restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful, +flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge +she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners +of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That +saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and +belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in +an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue +cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler +still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in +form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness. + +Nobody could have possessed a more irreproachable appearance than Lady +Cayley when she set out for Prior Street. + +At the door she gave neither name nor card. She announced herself as a +lady who desired to see Mrs. Majendie for a moment on important business. + +Kate wondered a little, and admitted her. Ladies did call sometimes on +important business, ladies who approached Mrs. Majendie on missions of +charity; and these did not always give their names. + +Anne was upstairs in the nursery, superintending the packing of Peggy's +little trunk. She was taking her away to-morrow to the seaside, by Dr. +Gardner's orders. She supposed that the nameless lady would be some +earnest, beneficent person connected with a case for her Rescue +Committee, who might have excellent reasons for not announcing herself +by name. + +And, at first, coming into the low lit drawing-room, she did not +recognise her visitor. She advanced innocently, in her perfect manner, +with a charming smile and an appropriate apology. + +The smile died with a sudden rigour of repulsion. She paused before +seating herself, as an intimation that the occasion was not one that +could be trusted to explain itself. Lady Cayley rose to it. + +"Forgive me for calling at this unconventional hour Mrs. Majendie." + +Mrs. Majendie's silence implied that she could not forgive her for +calling at any hour. Lady Cayley smiled inimitably. + +"I wanted to find you at home." + +"You did not give me your name Lady Cayley." + +Their eyes crossed like swords before the duel. + +"I didn't, Mrs. Majendie, _because_ I wanted to find you at home. I can't +help being unconventional--" + +Mrs. Majendie raised her eyebrows. + +"It's my nature." + +Mrs. Majendie dropped her eyelids, as much as to say that the nature of +Lady Cayley did not interest her. + +"--And I've come on a most unconventional errand." + +"Do you mean an unpleasant one?" + +"I'm afraid I do, rather. And it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for +you. Have you any idea, Mrs. Majendie, why I've been obliged to come? +It'll make it easier for me if you have." + +"I assure you I have none. I cannot conceive why you have come, nor how I +can make anything easier for you." + +"I think I mean it would have made it easier for you." + +"For me?" + +"Well--it would have spared you some painful explanations." Sarah felt +herself sincere. She really desired to spare Mrs. Majendie. The part +which she had rehearsed with such ease in her own bedroom was impossible +in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room. She was charmed by the spirit of the +place, constrained by its suggestion of fair observances, high decencies, +and social suavities. She could not sit there and tell Mrs. Majendie that +her husband had been unfaithful to her. You do not say these things. And +so subdued was Sarah that she found a certain relief in the reflection +that, by clearing herself, she would clear Majendie. + +"I don't in the least know what you want to say to me," said Mrs. +Majendie. "But I would rather take everything for granted than have any +explanations." + +"If I thought you would take my innocence for granted--" + +"Your innocence? I should be a bad judge of it, Lady Cayley." + +"Quite so." Lady Cayley smiled again, and again inimitably. (It was +extraordinary, the things _she_ took for granted.) "That's why I've come +to explain." + +"One moment. Perhaps I am mistaken. But, if you are referring to--to what +happened in the past, there need be no explanation. I have put all that +out of my mind now. I have heard that you, too, have left it far behind +you; and I am willing to believe it. There is nothing more to be said." + +There was such a sweetness and dignity in Mrs. Majendie's voice and +manner that Lady Cayley was further moved to compete in dignity and +sweetness. She suppressed the smile that ignored so much and took so much +for granted. + +"Unfortunately a great deal more _has_ been said. Your husband is an +intimate friend of my sister, Mrs. Ransome, as of course you know." + +Mrs. Majendie's face denied all knowledge of the intimacy. + +"I might have met him at her house a hundred times, but, I assure you, +Mrs. Majendie, that, since his marriage, I have not met him more than +twice, anywhere. The first time was at the Hannays'. You were there. +You saw all that passed between us." + +"Well?" + +"The second time was at the Hannays', too. Mrs. Hannay was with us all +the time. What do you suppose he talked to me about? His child. He talked +about nothing else." + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Majendie coldly, "there was nothing else to talk +about." + +"No--but it was so dear and naïf of him." She pondered on his naïveté +with down-dropped eyes whose lids sheltered the irresponsibly hilarious +blue. + +"He talked about his child--your child--to _me_. I hadn't seen him for +two years, and that's all he could talk about. _I_ had to sit and listen +to _that_." + +"It wouldn't hurt you, Lady Cayley." + +"It didn't--and I'm sure the little girl is charming--only--it was so +delicious of your husband, don't you see?" + +Her face curled all over with its soft and sensual smile. + +"If we'd been two babes unborn there couldn't have been a more innocent +conversation." + +"Well?" + +"_Well_, since that night we haven't seen each other for more than five +years. Ask him if it isn't true. Ask Mrs. Hannay--" + +"Lady Cayley, I do not doubt your word--nor my husband's honour. I can't +think why you're giving yourself all this trouble." + +"Why, because they're saying _now_--" + +Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what +people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say." + +"It isn't likely they'd say it to you." + +"Then why should _you_ say it to me?" + +"Because it concerns my reputation." + +"Forgive me, but--your reputation does not concern me." + +"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?" + +"My husband's reputation can take care of itself." + +"Not in Scale." + +"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never +pay any attention to it." + +"That's all very well--but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when +it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for +the last three years--" + +Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this +was not the first time she had heard that rumour. + +"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it." + +"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the +first." + +"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last." + +"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me." + +"No. But I know my husband." + +"So do I." + +"Not _now_" said Mrs. Majendie quietly. + +Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the +occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost +suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to +his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places +by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her +attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If _she_ didn't know +him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to +spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. +She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude. + +Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to +wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to +unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman +who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her +husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing +more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie. + +"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable +impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little +girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a +rather larger experience of men--" + +Mrs. Majendie cut her short. + +"I do not want to hear anything about your experience." + +"Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell +you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than +your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from +yours." + +"That I can well believe." + +"You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My +experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see +one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that +you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie +was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me +and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's +gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it." + +Anne's lips turned white, but their muscles never moved. And the woman +who watched her wondered in what circumstances Mrs. Majendie would +display emotion, if she did not display it now. + +"What right have you to say these things to me?" + +"I've a right to say a good deal more. Your husband was very fond of me. +He would have married me if his friends hadn't come and bullied me to +give him up for the good of his morals. I loved him--" She suggested by +an adroit shrug of her shoulders that her love was a thing that Mrs. +Majendie could either take for granted or ignore. She didn't expect her +to understand it--"And I gave him up. I'm not a cold-blooded woman; and +it was pretty hard for me. But I did it. And" (she faced her) "what was +the good of it? Which of us has been the best for his morals? You or me? +He lived with me two years, and he married you, and everybody said how +virtuous and proper he was. Well, he's been married to you for nine +years, and he's been living with another woman for the last three." + +She had not meant to say it; for (in the presence of the social +sanctities) you do not say these things. But flesh and blood are stronger +than all the social sanctities; and flesh and blood had risen and claimed +their old dominion over Sarah. The unspeakable depths in her had been +stirred by her vision of the things that might have been. She was filled +with a passionate hatred of the purity which had captured Majendie, and +drawn him from her, and made her seem vile in his sight. She rejoiced +in her power to crush it, to confront it with the proof of its own +futility. + +"I do not believe it," said Mrs. Majendie. + +"Of course you don't believe it. You're a good woman." She shook her +meditative head. "The sort of woman who can live with a man for nine +years without seeing what he's like. If you'd understood your husband as +well as I do, you'd have known that he couldn't run his life on your +lines for six months, let alone nine years." + +Mrs. Majendie's chin rose, as if she were lifting her face above the +reach of the hand that had tried to strike it. Her voice throbbed on one +deep monotonous note. + +"I do not believe a word of what you say. And I cannot think what your +motive is in saying it." + +"Don't worry about my motive. It ought to be pretty clear. Let me tell +you--you can bring your husband back to-morrow, and you can keep him to +the end of time, if you choose, Mrs. Majendie. Or you can lose him +altogether. And you will, if you go on as you're doing. If I were you, +I should make up my mind whether it's good enough. I shouldn't think it +was, myself." + +Mrs. Majendie was silent. She tried to think of some word that would end +the intolerable interview. Her lips parted to speak, but her thoughts +died in her brain unborn. + +She felt her face turning white under the woman's face; it hypnotised +her; it held her dumb. + +"Don't you worry," said Lady Cayley soothingly. "You can get your husband +back from that woman to-morrow, if you choose." She smiled. "Do you see +my motive now?" + +Lady Cayley had not seen it; but she had seen herself for one beautiful +moment as the benignant and inspired conciliator. She desired Mrs. +Majendie to see her so. She had gratified her more generous instincts in +giving the unfortunate lady "the straight tip." She knew, perfectly well, +that Mrs. Majendie wouldn't take it. She knew, all the time, that +whatever else her revelation did, it would not move Mrs. Majendie to +charm her husband back. She could not say precisely what it would do. +Used to live solely in the voluptuous moment, she had no sense of drama +beyond the scene she played in. + +"Your motive," said Mrs. Majendie, "is of no importance. No motive could +excuse you." + +"You think not." She rose and looked down on the motionless woman. "I've +told you the truth, Mrs. Majendie, because, sooner or later, you'd have +had to know it; and other people would have told you worse things that +aren't true. You can take it from me that there's nothing more to tell. +I've told you the worst." + +"You've told me, and I do not believe it." + +"You'd better believe it. But, if you really don't, you can ask your +husband. Ask him where he goes to every week in that yacht of his. Ask +him what's become of Maggie Forrest, the pretty work-girl who made the +embroidered frock for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. Tell him you want one +like it for your little girl; and see what he looks like." + +Anne rose too. Her faint white face frightened Lady Cayley. She had +wondered how Mrs. Majendie would look if she told her the truth about her +husband. Now she knew. + +"My dear lady," said she, "what on earth did you expect?" + +Anne went blindly towards the chimney-piece where the bell was. Lady +Cayley also turned. She meant to go, but not just yet. + +"One moment, Mrs. Majendie, please, before you turn me out. I wouldn't +break my heart about it, if I were you. He might have done worse things." + +"He has done nothing." + +"Well--not much. He has done what I've told you. But, after all, what's +that?" + +"Nothing to you, Lady Cayley, certainly," said Anne, as she rang the +bell. + +She moved slowly towards the door. Lady Cayley followed to the threshold, +and laid her hand delicately on the jamb of the door as Mrs. Majendie +opened it. She raised to her set face the tender eyes of a suppliant. + +"Mrs. Majendie," said she, "don't be hard on poor Wallie. He's never been +hard on you. He might have been." The latch sprang to under her gentle +pressure. "Look at it this way. He has kept all his marriage vows--except +one. You've broken all yours--except one. None of your friends will tell +you that. That's why _I_ tell you. Because I'm not a good woman, and I +don't count." + +She moved her hand from the door. It opened wide, and Lady Cayley walked +serenely out. + +She had said her say. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +Anne sat in her chair by the fireside, very still. She had turned out the +light, for it hurt her eyes and made her head ache. She had felt very +weak, and her knees shook under her as she crossed the room. Beyond that +she felt nothing, no amazement, no sorrow, no anger, nor any sort of +pang. If she had been aware of the trembling of her body, she would have +attributed it to the agitation of a disagreeable encounter. She shivered. +She thought there was a draught somewhere; but she did not rouse herself +to shut the window. + +At eight o'clock a telegram from Majendie was brought to her. She was not +to wait dinner. He would not be home that night. She gave the message in +a calm voice, and told Kate not to send up dinner. She had a bad headache +and could not eat anything. + +Kate had stood by waiting timidly. She had had a sense of things +happening. Now she retired with curiosity relieved. Kate was used to her +mistress's bad headaches. A headache needed no explanation. It explained +everything. + +Anne picked up the telegram and read it over again. Every week, for +nearly three years, she had received these messages. They had always been +sent from the same post office in Scale, and the words had always been +the same: "Don't wait. May not be home to-night." + +To-night the telegram struck her as a new thing. It stood for something +new. But all the other telegrams had meant the same thing. Not a new +thing. A thing that had been going on for three years; four, five, six +years, for all she knew. It was six years since their separation; and +that had been his wish. + +She had always known it; and she had always put her knowledge away from +her, tried not to know more. Her friends had known it too. Canon Wharton, +and the Gardners, and Fanny. It all came back to her, the words, and the +looks that had told her more than any words, signs that she had often +wondered at and refused to understand. They had known all the depths of +it. It was only the other day that Fanny had offered her house to her as +a refuge from her own house in its shame. Fanny had supposed that it must +come to that. + +God knew she had been loyal to him in the beginning. She had closed her +eyes. She had forbidden her senses to take evidence against him. She had +been loyal all through, loyal to the very end. She had lied for him. If, +indeed, she _had_ lied. In denying Lady Cayley's statements, she had +denied her right to make them, that was all. + +Her mind, active now, went backwards and forwards over the chain of +evidence, testing each link in turn. All held. It was all true. She had +always known it. + +Then she remembered that she and Peggy would be going away to-morrow. +That was well. It was the best thing she could do. Later on, when they +were home again, it would be time enough to make up her mind as to what +she could do. If there was anything to be done. + +Until then she would not see him. They would be gone to-morrow before he +could come home. Unless he saw them off at the station. She would avoid +that by taking an earlier train. Then she would write to him. No; she +would not write. What they would have to say to each other must be said +face to face. She did not know what she would say. + +She dragged herself upstairs to the nursery, where the packing had been +begun. The room was empty. Nanna had gone down to her supper. + +Anne's heart melted. Peggy had been playing at packing. The little lamb +had gathered together on the table a heap of her beloved toys, things +which it would have broken her heart to part from. + +Her little trunk lay open on the floor, packed already. The embroidered +frock lay uppermost, carefully folded, not to be crushed. At the sight of +it Anne's brain flared in anger. + +A bright fire burned in the grate. She picked up the frock; she took a +pair of scissors and cut it in several places at the neck, then tore it +to pieces with strong, determined hands. She threw the tatters on the +fire; she watched them consume; she raked out their ashes with the tongs, +and tore them again. Then she packed Peggy's toys tenderly in the little +trunk, her heart melting over them. She closed the lid of the trunk, +strapped it, and turned the key in the lock. + +Then, crawling on slow, quiet feet, she went to bed. Undressing vexed +her. She, once so careful and punctilious, slipped her clothes like a +tired Magdalen, and let them fall from her and lie where they fell. Her +nightgown gaped unbuttoned at her throat. Her long hair lay scattered on +her pillow, unbrushed, unbraided. Her white face stared to the ceiling. +She was too spent to pray. + +When she lay down, reality gripped her. And, with it, her imagination +rose up, a thing no longer crude, but full-grown, large-eyed, and +powerful. It possessed itself of her tragedy. She had lain thus, nearly +nine years ago, in that room at Scarby, thinking terrible thoughts. Now +she saw terrible things. + +Peggy stirred in her sleep, and crept from her cot into her mother's bed. + +"Mummy, I'm so frightened." + +"What is it, darling? Have you had a little dream?" + +"No. Mummy, let me stay in your bed." + +Anne let her stay, glad of the comfort of the little warm body, and +afraid to vex the child. She drew the blankets round her. "There," she +said, "go to sleep, pet." + +But Peggy was in no mind to sleep. + +"Mummy, your hair's all loose," she said; and her fingers began playing +with her mother's hair. + +"Mummy, where's daddy? Is he in his little bed?" + +"He's away, darling. Go to sleep." + +"Why does he go away? Is he coming back again?" + +"Yes, darling." Anne's voice shook. + +"Mummy, did you cry when Auntie Edie went away?" + +Anne kissed her. + +"Auntie Edie's dead." + +"Lie still, darling, and let mother go to sleep." + +Peggy lay still, and Anne went on thinking. + +There was nothing to be done. She would have to take him back again, +always. Whatever shame he dragged her through, she must take him back +again, for the child's sake. + +Suddenly she remembered Peggy's birthday. It was only last week. Surely +she had not known then. She must have forgotten for a time. + +Then tenderness came, and with it an intolerable anguish. She was smitten +and was melted; she was torn and melted again. Her throat was shaken, +convulsed; then her bosom, then her whole body. She locked her teeth, +lest her sobs should break through and wake the child. + +She lay thus tormented, till a memory, sharper than imagination, stung +her. She saw her husband carrying the sleeping child, and his face +bending over her with that look of love. She closed her eyes, and let the +tears rain down her hot cheeks and fall upon her breast and in her hair. +She tried to stifle the sobs that strangled her, and she choked. That +instant the child's lips were on her face, tasting her tears. + +"Oh, mummy, you're crying." + +"No, my pet. Go to sleep." + +"Why are you crying?" + +Anne made no sound; and Peggy cried out in terror. + +"Mummy--is daddy dead?" + +Anne folded her in her arms. + +"No, my pet, no." + +"He is, mummy, I know he is. Daddy! Daddy!" + +If Majendie had been in the house she would have carried the child into +his room, and shown him to her, and relieved her of her terror. She had +done that once before when she had cried for him. + +But now Peggy cried persistently, vehemently; not loud, but in an agony +that tore and tortured her as she had seen her mother torn and tortured. +She cried till she was sick; and still her sobs shook her, with a sharp +mechanical jerk that would not cease. + +Gradually she grew drowsy and fell asleep. + +All night Anne lay awake beside her, driven to the edge of the bed, that +she might give breathing space to the little body that pushed, closer and +closer, to the warm place she made. + +Towards dawn Peggy sighed three times, and stretched her limbs, as if +awakening out of her sleep. + +Then Anne turned, and laid her hands on the dead body of her child. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +The yacht had lain all night in Fawlness creek. Majendie had slept on +board. He had sent Steve up to the farm with a message for Maggie. He had +told her not to expect him that night. He would call and see her very +early in the morning. That would prepare her for the end. In the morning +he would call and say good-bye to her. + +He had taken that resolution on the night when Gardner had told him about +Peggy. + +He did not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of +the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water +against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; +the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the +reeds and grasses of the creek. + +All night he thought of Peggy, who would not live, who was the child of +her father's passion and her mother's grief. + +At dawn he got up. It was a perfect day, with the promise of warmth in +it. Over land and water the white mist was lifting and drifting, +eastwards towards the risen sun. Inland, over the five fields, the drops +of fallen mist glittered on the grass. The Farm, guarded by its three +elms, showed clear, and red, and still, as if painted under an unchanging +light. A few leaves, loosened by the damp, were falling with a shivering +sound against the house wall, and lay where they fell, yellow on the +red-brick path. + +Maggie was not at the garden gate. She sat crouched inside, by the +fender, kindling a fire. Tea had been made and was standing on the table. +She was waiting. + +She rose, with a faint cry, as Majendie entered. She put her arms on his +shoulders in her old way. He loosened her hands gently and held her by +them, keeping her from him at arm's length. Her hands were cold, her +eyes had foreknowledge of the end; but, moved by his touch, her mouth +curled unaware and shaped itself for kissing. + +He did not kiss her. And she knew. + +Upstairs in the bedroom overhead, Steve and his mother moved heavily. +There was a sound of drawers opening and shutting, then a grating sound. +Something was being dragged from under the bed. Maggie knew that they +were packing Majendie's portmanteau with the things he had left behind +him. + +They stood together by the hearth, where the fire kindled feebly. He +thrust out his foot, and struck the woodpile; it fell and put out the +flame that was struggling to be born. + +"I'm sorry, Maggie," he said. + +Maggie stooped and built up the pile again and kindled it. She knelt +there, patient and humble, waiting for the fire to burn. + +He did not know whether he was going to have trouble with her. He was +afraid of her tenderness. + +"Why didn't you come last night?" she said. + +"I couldn't." + +She looked at him with eyes that said, "That is not true." + +"You couldn't?" + +"I couldn't." + +"You came last week." + +"Last week--yes. But since then things have happened, do you see?" + +"Things have happened," she repeated, under her breath. + +"Yes. My little girl is very ill." + +"Peggy?" she cried, and covered her face with her hands. Then with her +hands she made a gesture that swept calamity aside. Maggie would only +believe what she wanted. + +"She will get better," she said. + +"Perhaps. But I must be with my wife." + +"You weren't with her last night," said Maggie. "You could have come +then." + +"No, Maggie, I couldn't." + +"D'you mean--because of the little girl?" + +"Yes." + +"I see," she said softly. She had understood. + +"She will get better," she said, "and then you can come again." + +"No. I've told you. I must be with my wife." + +"I thought--" said Maggie. + +"Never mind what you thought," he said with a quick, fierce impatience. + +"Are you fond of her?" she asked suddenly. + +"You know I am," he said; and his voice was kind again. "You've known it +all the time. I told you that in the beginning." + +"But--since then," said Maggie, "you've been fond of me, haven't you?" + +"It's not the same thing. I've told you that, too, a great many times. +I don't want to talk about it. It's different." + +"How is it different?" + +"I can't tell you." + +"You mean--it's different because I'm not good." + +"No, my child, I'm afraid it's different because I'm bad. That's as near +as we can get to it." + +She shook her head in persistent, obstinate negation. + +"See here, Maggie, we must end it. We can't go on like this any more. We +must give it up." + +"I can't," she moaned. "Don't ask me to do that, Wallie dear. Don't ask +me." + +"I must, Maggie. _I_ must give it up. I told you, dear, before we took +this place, that it must end, sooner or later, that it couldn't last very +long. Don't you remember?" + +"Yes--I remember." + +"And you promised me, didn't you, that when the time came, you +wouldn't--" + +"I know. I said I wouldn't make a fuss." + +"Well, dear, we've got to end it now. I only came to talk it over with +you. There'll have to be arrangements." + +"I know. I've got to clear out of this." + +She said it sadly, without passion and without resentment. + +"No," he said, "not if you'd rather stay. Do you like the farm, Maggie?" + +"I love it." + +"Do you? I was afraid you didn't. I thought you hated the country." + +"I love it. I love it." + +"Oh, well then, you shan't leave it. I'll keep on the farm for you. And, +see here, don't worry about things. I'll look after you, all your life, +dear." + +"Look after me?" Her face brightened, "Like you used to?" + +"Provide for you." + +"Oh!" she cried. "_That_! I don't want to be provided for. I won't have +it. I'd rather be let alone and die." + +"Maggie, I know it's hard on you. Don't make it harder. Don't make it +hard for me." + +"You?" she sobbed. + +"Yes, me. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. I can't do the right thing, +whatever I do. It's wrong to stay with you. It's wrong, it's brutally +wrong to leave you. But that's what I've got to do." + +"You said--you only said--just now--you'd got to end it." + +"That's it. I've got to end it." + +She stood up flaming. + +"End it then. End it this minute. Give up the farm. Send me away. I'll go +anywhere you tell me. Only don't say you won't come and see me." + +"See you? Don't you understand, Maggie, that seeing you is what I've got +to give up? The other things don't matter." + +"Ah," she cried, "it's you who don't understand. I mean--I mean--see me +like you used to. That's all I want, Wallie. Only just to see you. That +wouldn't be awful, would it? There wouldn't be any sin in that?" + +Sin? It was the first time she had ever said the word. The first time, he +imagined, she had formed the thought. + +"Poor little girl," he said. "No, no, dear, it wouldn't do. It sounds +simple, but it isn't." + +"But," she said, bewildered, "I love you." + +He smiled. "That's why, Maggie, that's why. You've been very sweet and +very good to me. And that's why I mustn't see you. That's how you make it +hard for me." + +Maggie sat down and put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her +hands. + +"Will you give me some tea?" he said abruptly. + +She rose. + +"It's all stewed. I'll make fresh." + +"No. That'll do. I can't wait." + +She gave him his tea. Before he tasted it he got up and poured out a cup +for her. She drank a little at his bidding, then pushed the cup from her, +choking. She sat, not looking at him, but looking away, through the +window, across the garden and the fields. + +"I must go now," he said. "Don't come with me." + +She started to her feet. + +"Ah, let me come." + +"Better not. Much better not." + +"I must," she said. + +They set out along the field-track. Steve, carrying his master's luggage, +went in front, at a little distance. He didn't want to see them, still +less to hear them speak. + +But they did not speak. + +At the creek's bank Steve was ready with the boat. + +Majendie took Maggie's hand and pressed it. She flung herself on him, and +he had to loose her hold by main force. She swayed, clutching at him to +steady herself. He heard Steve groan. He put his hand on her shoulder, +and kept it there a moment, till she stood firm. Her eyes, fixed on his, +struck tears from them, tears that cut their way like knives under his +eyelids. + +Her body ceased swaying. He felt it grow rigid under his hand. + +Then he went from her and stepped into the boat. She stood still, looking +after him, pressing one hand against her breast, as if to keep down its +heaving. + +Steve pushed off from the bank, and rowed towards the creek's mouth. And +as he rowed, he turned his head over his right shoulder, away from the +shore where Maggie stood with her hand upon her breast. + +Majendie did not look back. Neither he nor Steve saw that, as they neared +the mouth of the creek, Maggie had turned, and was going rapidly across +the field, towards the far side of the spit of land where the yacht lay +moored out of the current. As they had to round the point, her way by +land was shorter than theirs by water. + +When they rounded the point they saw her standing on the low inner shore, +watching for them. + +She stood on the bank, just above the belt of silt and sand that divided +it from the river. The two men turned for a moment, and watched her from +the yacht's deck. She waited till the big mainsail went up, and the +yacht's head swung round and pointed up stream. Then she began to run +fast along the shore, close to the river. + +At that sight Majendie turned away and set his face toward the +Lincolnshire side. + +He was startled by an oath from Steve and a growl from Steve's father at +the wheel. "Eh--the--little--!" At the same instant the yacht was pulled +suddenly inshore and her boom swung violently round. + +Steve and the boatswain rushed to the ropes and began hauling down the +mainsail. + +"What the devil are you doing there?" shouted Majendie. But no one +answered him. + +When the sail came down he saw. + +"My God," he cried, "she's going in." + +Old Pearson, at the wheel, spat quietly over the yacht's side. "Not she," +said old Pearson. "She's too much afraid o' cold water." + +Maggie was down on the lower bank close to the edge of the river. +Majendie saw her putting her feet in the water and drawing them out +again, first one foot, and then the other. Then she ran a little way, +very fast, like a thing hunted. She stumbled on the slippery, slanting +ground, fell, picked herself up again, and ran. Then she stood still and +tried the water again, first one foot and then the other, desperate, +terrified, determined. She was afraid of life and death. + +The belt of sand sloped gently, and the river was shallow for a few feet +from the shore. She was safe unless she threw herself in. + +Majendie and Steve rushed together for the boat. As Majendie pushed +against him at the gangway, Steve shook him off. There was a brief +struggle. Old Pearson left the wheel to the boatswain and crossed to the +gangway, where the two men still struggled. He put his hand on his +master's sleeve. + +"Excuse me, sir, you'd best stay where you are." + +He stayed. + +The captain went to the wheel again, and the boatswain to the boat. +Majendie stood stock-still by the gangway. His hands were clenched in his +pockets: his face was drawn and white. The captain slewed round upon him +a small vigilant eye. "You'd best leave her to Steve, sir. He's a good +lad and he'll look after 'er. He'd give his 'ead to marry her. Only she +wuddn't look at 'im." + +Majendie said nothing. And the captain continued his consolation. + +"_She's_ only trying it on, sir," said he. "_I_ know 'em. She'll do nowt. +She'll do nubbut wet 'er feet. She's afeard o' cold water." + +But before the boat could put off, Maggie was in again. This time her +feet struck a shelf of hard mud. She slipped, rolled sideways, and lay, +half in and half out of the water. There she stayed till the boat reached +her. + +Majendie saw Steve lift her and carry her to the upper bank. He saw +Maggie struggle from his arms and beat him off. Then he saw Steve seize +her by force, and drag her back, over the fields, towards Three Elms +Farm. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +Majendie landed at the pier and went straight to the office. There he +found a telegram from Anne telling him of his child's death. + +He went to the house. The old nurse opened the door for him. She was +weeping bitterly. He asked for Anne, and was told that she was lying down +and could not see him. It was Nanna who told him how Peggy died, and all +the things he had to know. When she left him, he shut himself up alone in +his study for the first hour of his grief. He wanted to go to Anne; but +he was too deeply stupefied to wonder why she would not see him. + +Later they met. + +He knew by his first glance at her face that he must not speak to her of +the dead child. He could understand that. He was even glad of it. In this +she was like him, that deep feeling left her dumb. And yet, there was a +difference. It was that he could not speak, and she, he felt, would not. + +There were things that had to be done. He did them all, sparing her as +much as possible. Once or twice she had to be consulted. She gave him a +fact, or an opinion, in a brief methodic manner that set him at a +distance from her sacred sorrow. She had betrayed more emotion in +speaking to Dr. Gardner. + +But for these things they went through their first day in silence, like +people who respect each other's grief too profoundly for any speech. + +In the evening they sat together in the drawing-room. There was nothing +more to do. + +Then he spoke. He asked to see Peggy. His voice was so low that she did +not hear him. + +"What did you say, Walter?" + +He had to say it again. "Where is she? Can I see her?" + +His voice was still low, and it was thick and uncertain, but this time +she understood. + +"In Edie's room," she said. "Nanna has the key." + +She did not go with him. + +When he came back to her she was still cold and torpid. He could +understand that her grief had frozen her. + +At night she parted from him without a word. + +So the days went on. + +Sometimes he would sit in the study by himself for a little while. His +racked nerves were soothed by solitude. Then he would think of the woman +upstairs in the drawing-room, sitting alone. And he would go to her. She +did not send him away. She did not leave him. She did nothing. She said +nothing. + +He began to be afraid. It would do her good, he said to himself, if she +could cry. He wondered whether it was wise to leave her to her terrible +torpor; whether he ought to speak to her. But he could not. + +Yet she was kind to him for all her coldness. Once, when his grief was +heaviest upon him, he thought she looked at him with anxiety, with pity. +She came to him once, where he sat downstairs, alone. But though she +came to him, she still kept him from her. And she would not go with him +into the room where Peggy lay. + +Now and then he wondered if she knew. He was not certain. He put the +thought away from him. He was sure that for nearly three years she had +not known anything. She had not known anything as long as she had had the +child, when her knowing would not, he thought, have mattered half so +much. It would be horrible if she knew now. And yet sometimes her eyes +seemed to say to him: "Why not now? When nothing matters." + +On the night before the funeral, the night they closed the coffin, he +came to her where she sat upstairs alone. He put his hand on her shoulder +and spoke her name. She shrank from him with a low cry. And again he +wondered if she knew. + +The day after the funeral she told him that she was going away for a +month with Mrs. Gardner. + +He said he was glad to hear it. It would do her good. It was the best +thing she could do. + +He had meant to take her away himself. She knew it. Yet she had arranged +to go with Mrs. Gardner. + +Then he was certain that she knew. + +She went, with Mrs. Gardner, the next day. He and Dr. Gardner saw them +off at the station. He thanked Mrs. Gardner for her kindness, wondering +if she knew. The little woman had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand +and tried to speak to him, and broke down. He gathered that, whatever +Anne knew, her friend knew nothing. + +The doctor was inscrutable. He might or he might not know. If he did, +he would keep his knowledge to himself. They walked together from the +station, and the doctor talked about the weather and the municipal +elections. + +Anne was to be away a month. Majendie wrote to her every week and +received, every week, a precise, formal little letter in reply. She told +him, every week, of an improvement in her own health, and appeared +solicitous for his. + +While she was away, he saw a great deal of the Hannays and of Gorst. When +he was not with the Hannays, Gorst was with him. Gorst was punctilious, +but a little shy in his inquiries for Mrs. Majendie. The Hannays made no +allusion to her beyond what decency demanded. They evidently regarded her +as a painful subject. + +About a week before the day fixed for Anne's return, the firm of Hannay & +Majendie had occasion to consult its solicitor about a mortgage on some +office buildings. Price was excited and assiduous. Excited and assiduous, +Hannay thought, beyond all proportion to the trivial affair. Hannay +noticed that Price took a peculiar and almost morbid interest in the +junior partner. His manner set Hannay thinking. It suggested the legal +instinct scenting the divorce-court from afar. + +He spoke of it to Mrs. Hannay. + +"Do you think she knows?" said Mrs. Hannay. + +"Of course she does. Or why should she leave him, at a time when most +people stick to each other if they've never stuck before?" + +"Do you think she'll try for a separation?" + +"No, I don't." + +"I do," said Mrs. Hannay. "Now that the dear little girl's gone." + +"Not she. She won't let him off as easily as all that. She'll think of +the other woman. And she'll live with him and punish him for ever." + +He paused pondering. Then he delivered himself of that which was within +him, his idea of Anne. + +"I always said she was a she-dog in the manger." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Anne was not expected home before the middle of November. She wrote to +her husband, fixing Saturday for the day of her return. + +Majendie, therefore, was surprised to find her luggage in the hall when +he entered the house at six o'clock on Friday evening. Nanna had +evidently been waiting for the sound of his latchkey. She hurried to +intercept him. + +"The mistress has come home, sir," she said. + +"Has she? I hope you've got things comfortable for her." + +"Yes, sir. We had a telegram this afternoon. She said she would like to +see you in the study, sir, as soon as you came in." + +He went at once into the study. Anne was sitting there in her chair by +the hearth. Her hat and jacket were thrown on the writing-table that +stood near in the middle of the room. She rose as he came in, but made no +advance to meet him. He stood still for a moment by the closed door, and +they held each other with their eyes. + +"I didn't expect you till to-morrow." + +"I sent a telegram," she said. + +"If you'd sent it to the office I'd have met you." + +"I didn't want anybody to meet me." + +He felt that her words had some reference to their loss, and to the +sadness of her home-coming. A sigh broke from him; but he was unaware +that he had sighed. + +He sat down, not in his accustomed seat by the hearth, opposite to hers, +but in a nearer chair by the writing-table. He saw that she had been +writing letters. He pushed them away and turned his chair round so as to +face her. His heart ached looking at her. + +There were deep lines on her forehead; and she was very pale, even her +small close mouth had no colour in it. She kept her sad eyes half hidden +under their drooping lids. Her lips were tightly compressed, her narrow +nostrils white and pinched. It was a face in which all the doors of life +were closing; where the inner life went on tensely, secretly, behind the +closing doors. + +"Well," he said, "I'm very glad you've come back." + +"Walter--have you any idea why I went away?" + +"Why you went? Obviously, it was the best thing you could do." + +"It was the only thing I could do. And I am glad I did it. My mind has +become clearer." + +"_I_ see. I thought it would." + +"It would not have been clear if I had stayed." + +"No," he said vaguely, "of course it wouldn't." + +"I've seen," she continued, "that there is nothing for me but to come +back. It is the right thing." + +"Did you doubt it?" + +"Yes. I even doubted whether it were possible--whether, in the +circumstances, I could bear to come back, to stay--" + +"Do you mean--to--the house?" + +"No. I mean--to you." + +He turned away. "I understand," he said. "So it came to that?" + +"Yes. It came to that. I've been here three hours; and up to the last +hour, I was not sure whether I would not pack the rest of my things and +go away. I had written a letter to you. There it is, under your arm." + +"Am I to read it?" + +"Yes." + +He turned his back on her, and read the letter. + +"I see. You say here you want a separation. If you want it you shall have +it. But hadn't you better hear what I have to say, _first_?" + +"I've come back for that. What have you to say?" + +He bowed his head upon his breast. + +"Not very much, I'm afraid. Except that I'm sorry--and ashamed of +myself--and--I ask your forgiveness. What more can I say?" + +"What more indeed? I'm to understand, then, that everything I was told is +true?" + +"It _was_ true." + +"And is not now?" + +"No. Whoever told you, omitted to tell you that." + +"You mean you have given up living with this woman?" + +"Yes. If you call it living with her." + +"You have given it up--for how long?" + +"About five weeks." His voice was almost inaudible. + +She winced. Five weeks back brought her to the date of Peggy's death. + +"I dare say," she said. "You could hardly--have done less in the +circumstances." + +"Anne," he said. "I gave it up--I broke it off--before that. I--I broke +with her that morning--before I heard." + +"You were away that night." + +"I was not with her." + +"Well--And it was going on, all the time, for three years before that?" + +"Yes." + +"Ever since your sister's death?" + +He did not answer. + +"Ever since Edie died," she repeated, as if to herself rather than to +him. + +"Not quite. Why don't you say--since you sent me away?" + +"When did I ever send you away?" + +"That night. When I came to you." + +She remembered. + +"Then? Walter, that is unforgivable. To bring up a little thing like +that--" + +"You call it a little thing? A little thing?" + +"I had forgotten it. And for you to remember it all these years--and to +cast it up against me--_now_--" + +"I haven't cast anything up against you." + +"You implied you held me responsible for your sin." + +"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that." + +Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis. + +He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it. +Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough +of it." + +"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had +forgotten my promise." + +"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold +you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not." + +"I can never have my promise back--I made it to Edie." + +"To Edie?" + +"Yes. A short time before she died." + +His face brightened. + +"What did you promise her?" he said softly. + +"That I would never leave you." + +"Did she make you promise not to?" + +"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it +possible." + +"But _you_ did?" + +"I thought it possible--yes." + +"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause." + +"I did not know that." + +"Do you mean that you suspected me--then?" + +"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts." + +"You suspected?" + +"I didn't know." + +"And--afterwards--did you suspect anything?" + +"No. I never suspected anything--afterwards." + +"I see. You suspected me when you had no cause. And when I gave you cause +you suspected nothing. I must say you are a very extraordinary woman." + +"I didn't know," she answered. + +"Who told you? Or must I not ask that?" + +"I cannot tell you. I would rather not. I was not told much. And there +are some things that I have a right to know." + +"Well--" + +"Who is this woman?--the girl you've been living with?" + +"I've no right to tell you--that. Why do you want to know? It's all +over." + +"I must know, Walter. I have a reason." + +"Can you give me your reason?" + +"Yes. I want to help her." + +"You would--really--help her?" + +"If I can. It is my duty." + +"It isn't in the least your duty." + +"And I want to help you. That also is my duty. I want to undo, as far as +possible, the consequences of your sin. We cannot let the girl suffer." + +Majendie was moved by her charity. He had not looked for charity from +Anne. + +"If you will give me her name, and tell me where to find her, I will see +that she is provided for." + +"She is provided for." + +"How?" + +"I am keeping on the house for her." + +Anne's face flushed. + +"What house?" + +"A farm, out in the country." + +"That house is yours? You were living with her there?" + +"Yes." + +Her face hardened. She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have +gone into the country to get strong. + +He was tortured by the same thought. Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat +and rosy in the pure air of Holderness. Peggy had died in Scale. + +In her bitterness she turned on him. + +"And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?" + +"My word. Isn't that sufficient?" + +"I don't know, Walter. It would have been once. It isn't now. What proof +have I of your honour?" + +"My--" + +"I beg your pardon. I forgot. A man's honour and a woman's honour are two +very different things." + +"They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not +mentioned." + +"I will try to take it for granted. You must forgive my having mentioned +it. There is one thing I must know. Has she--that woman--any children?" + +"She has none." + +Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness +of intense constraint. But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had +sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of +committees. Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the +beating of her heart. Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long, +deep breath of relief. + +"And you propose to keep on this house for her?" she said calmly. + +"Yes. She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after." + +"Who will look after her?" + +"The Pearsons. They're people I can trust." + +"And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?" + +"I _must_ make her a small allowance." + +"That is a very unwise arrangement. Whatever help is given her had much +better come from me." + +"From _you_?" + +"From a woman. It will be the best safeguard for the girl." + +He saw her drift and smiled. + +"Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?" + +"It's my duty--my work." + +"Your work?" + +"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the +last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered +through my husband's fault." + +"What do you want to do with her?" + +"I want, if possible, to reclaim her." + +He smiled again. + +"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?" + +"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her." + +"And so you want to reclaim her?" + +"I do, indeed." + +"You couldn't reclaim her." + +"She is very young, isn't she?" + +"N--no--She's eight--and--twenty." + +"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that--and bad--" + +"Bad? Bad?" + +He rose and looked down on her in anger. + +"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady, +but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and +kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever +met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was +absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she +possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you +blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought +for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk +of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous +committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and +shut up in one of your beastly institutions! No. On the whole, I think +she'll be better off if you leave her to me." + +"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think +her perfect." + +"She _was_ perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't +very well do more." + +"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin." + +"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?" + +"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can +you defend yourself, Walter?" + +He was silent. + +"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. _That_ you +would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?" + +"My sin against her was not caring for her. _You_ needn't call me to +account for it." + +"I am to believe that you did not care for her?" + +"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing, +and I left her like a brute." + +"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?" + +"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same +reason. And she knew it." + +"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman, +because you cared for me?" + +"For no earthly reason except that." + +"You deceived me--you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three +years--and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of +her--and I am to believe that you cared for me!" + +"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I +wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You +mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but +that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married +you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but +you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six +years--can you say that I put another woman in your place?" + +She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a +hopeless, helpless gesture. + +"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it +was wrong." + +"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the +beginning. How are we going to make it right?" + +"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best." + +"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?" + +"I have told you that I am not going to leave you." + +"We are to go on, then, as we did before?" + +"Yes--as far as possible." + +"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't +you see _now_ that it's all wrong?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?" + +"Does it rest with me?" + +"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it. +What is your notion of the best?" + +"I don't know, Walter." + +"I _must_ know. You say you'll take me back--you'll never leave me. What +are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for +me, dear. It was bad for both of us." + +She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went +to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity. + +"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep +straight. You needn't be afraid. Only--See here. There's no reason why +you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring +for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie. +You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along. +There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up--" + +"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for." + +"I know--I know. But still--we mightn't be so unhappy--perhaps, in +time--And if we had children--" + +"Never," she cried sharply, "never!" + +He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she +drew back, flinching. + +"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me." + +"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation--of your +sin--three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken +you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought +to have." + +She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her +face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him. + +"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything." + +"I have never compelled you, as you know." + +"I know. I know you have been good in that way." + +"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?" + +"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will +not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it +will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself. +To save some other woman, perhaps--" + +"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I +appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms. +I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are +trying to tell me is that you do not care for me." + +She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I +do not care for you. Not in that way." + +He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any +way--your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that. +I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all." + +Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if +trying to see the truth inside herself. + +"No--no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there +is _no_ way in which I can care for you again. Or--well--I can care +perhaps--I'm caring now--but--" + +"I see. You do not love me." + +She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and--I do not love you." + +"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said." + +"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you." + +"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping +things from me." + +"I had meant to spare you." + +At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me." + +She still hesitated. + +"What is it?" + +She spoke low. + +"If you had been here--that night--Peggy would not have died." + +He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly. + +"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for +you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were +not dead." + +She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain. + +He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for +her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compassion. + +"Why have you told me this?" he said. + +"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when +nothing else will." + +"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?" + +Anne closed her eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +He did not know whether he believed what she had said, nor whether she +believed it herself, neither could he understand her motive in saying it. + +At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from +time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must +have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could +bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he +knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she +the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be +responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that +could have made him charge her with it. + +Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty +of the blow had brutalised his imagination. + +He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed +on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in +his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into +the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey, +measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become +necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of +Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted. + +He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and +cleared it. + +He went back into the study and began to think. He remained thinking for +some time, consecutively, and with great lucidity. He asked himself what +he was to do now, and he saw clearly that he could do nothing. If Anne +had been a passionate woman, hurling her words in a fury of fierce grief, +he would have thought no more of it. If she had been the tender, tearful +sort, dropping words in a weak, helpless misery, he would have thought +no more of it. He could imagine poor little Maggie saying a thing like +that, not knowing what she said. If it had been poor little Maggie he +could have drawn her to him and comforted her, and reasoned with her till +he had made her see the senselessness of her idea. Maggie would have +listened to reason--his reason. Anne never would. + +She had been cold and slow, and implacably deliberate. It was not blind +instinct, but illuminated reason that had told her what to say and when +to say it. Nothing he could ever do or say would make her take back her +words. And if she took back her words, her thought would remain +indestructible. She would never give it up; she would never approach him +without it; she would never forget that it was there. It would always +rise up between them, unburied, unappeased. + +His brain swam and clouded again. He went again to the dining-room and +drank more whiskey. Kate was in the dining-room and she saw him drinking. +He saw Kate looking at him; but he didn't care. He was past caring for +what anybody might think of him. + +His brain was clearer than ever now. He realised Anne's omnipotence to +harm him. He saw the hard, imperishable divinity in her. His wife was a +spiritual woman. He had not always known what that meant. But he knew +now; and now for the first time in his life he judged her. For the first +time in his life his heart rose in a savage revolt against her power. + +His head grew hot. The air of the study was stifling. He opened the +window and went out into the cool, dark garden. He paced up and down, +heedless of where he trod, trampling the flowerless plants down into +their black beds. At the end of the path a little circle of white stones +glimmered in the dark. That was Peggy's garden. + +An agony of love and grief shook him as he thought of the dead child. + +He thought, with his hot brain, of Anne, and his anger flared like hate. +It was through the child that she had always struck him. She was a fool +to refuse to have more children, to sacrifice her boundless opportunities +to strike. + +There was a light in the upper window. He thought of Maggie, walking up +and down in the back alley behind the garden, watching the lights of his +house burning to the dawn. The little thing had loved him. She had given +him all she had to give; and he had given her nothing. He had compelled +her to live childless; and he had cast her off. She had been sacrificed +to his passion, and to his wife's coldness. + +Up there he could see Anne's large shadow moving on the lighted +window-blind. She was dressing for dinner. + +Kate was standing on the step, looking for him. As he came to the study +window he saw Nanna behind her, going out of the room. His servants had +been watching him. Kate was frightened. Her voice fluttered in her throat +as she told him dinner was served. + +He sat opposite his wife, with the little oblong table between them. +Twice, sometimes three times a day, as long as they both lived, they +would have to sit like that, separated, hostile, horribly conscious of +each other. + +Anne talked about the Gardners, and he stared at her stupidly, with eyes +that were like heavy burning balls under his aching forehead. He ate +little and drank a good deal. Half an hour after dinner he followed her +to the drawing-room, dazed, not knowing clearly where he went. + +Anne was seated at her writing-table. The place was strewn with papers. +She was absorbed in the business of her committee, working off five weeks +of correspondence in arrears. + +He lay on the sofa and dozed, and she took no notice of him. He left the +room, and she did not hear him go out. + +He went to the Hannays. They were out. He went on to the Ransomes and +found them there. He found Canon Wharton there, too, drinking whiskey and +soda. + +"Here's Wallie," some one said. Mrs. Hannay (it _was_ Mrs. Hannay) gave a +cry of delight, and made a little rush at him which confused him. Ransome +poured out more whiskey, and gave it to him and to the Canon. The Canon +drank peg for peg with them, while he eyed Majendie austerely. He used to +drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, in the days when Hannay drank; now +he drank peg for peg with Majendie, eyeing him austerely. + +Then the Hannays came between them. They closed round Majendie and hemmed +him in a corner, and kept him there talking to him. He had no clear idea +what they were saying or what he was saying to them; but their voices +were kind and they soothed him. Dick Ransome brought him more whiskey. He +refused it. He had a sort of idea that he had had enough, rather more, in +fact, than was quite good for him; and ladies were in the room. Ransome +pressed him, and Lawson Hannay said something to Ransome; he couldn't +tell what. He was getting drowsy and disinclined to answer when people +spoke to him. He wished they would let him alone. + +Lawson Hannay put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come along with +us, Wallie," and he wished Lawson Hannay would let him alone. Mrs. Hannay +came and stooped over him and whispered things in his ear, and he tried +to rouse himself so far as to stare into her face and try to understand +what she was saying. + +She was saying, "Wallie, get up--Come with us, Wallie, dear." And she +laid her hand on his arm. He took her hand in his, and pressed it, and +let it drop. + +Then Ransome said, "Why can't you let the poor chap alone? Let him stay +if he likes." + +That was what he wanted. Ransome knew what he wanted--to be let alone. + +He didn't see the Hannays go. The only thing he saw distinctly was the +Canon's large grey face, and the eyes in it fixed unpleasantly on him. He +wished the Canon would let him alone. + +He was getting really _too_ sleepy. He would have to rouse himself +presently and go. With a tremendous effort he dragged himself up and +went. Ransome walked with him to the club and left him there. + +The club-room was in an hotel opposite the pier. He could get a bedroom +there for the night; and when the night was over he would be able to +think what he would do. He couldn't go back to Prior Street as he was. He +was too sleepy to know very much about it, but he knew that. He knew, +too, that something had happened which might make it impossible for him +to go back at all. + +Ransome had told the manager of the hotel to take care of him. Every now +and then the manager came and looked at him; and then the drowsiness +lifted from his brain with a jerk, and he knew that something horrible +had happened. That was why they kept on looking at him. + +At last he dragged himself to his room. He rang the bell and ordered +more whiskey. This time he drank, not for lucidity, but for blessed +drunkenness, for kind sleep and pitiful oblivion. + +He slept on far into the morning and woke with a headache. At twelve +Hannay and Ransome called for him. It was a fine warm day with a +southerly wind blowing and sails on the river. Ransome's yacht lay off +the pier, with Mrs. Ransome in it. The sails were going up in Ransome's +yacht. Hannay's yacht rocked beside it. Dick took Majendie by the arm. +Dick, outside in the morning light, looked paler and puffier than ever, +but his eyes were kind. He had an idea. Dick's idea was that Majendie +should run up with him and Mrs. Ransome to Scarby for the week-end. +Hannay looked troubled as Dick unfolded his idea. + +"I wouldn't go, old man," said he, "with that head of yours." + +Dick stared. "Head? Just the thing for his head," said Dick. "It'll do +him all the good in the world." + +Hannay took Dick aside. "No, it won't. It won't do him any good at all." + +"I say, you know, I don't know what you're driving at, but you might let +the poor chap have a little peace. Come along, Majendie." + +Majendie sent a telegram to Prior Street and went. + +The wind blew away his headache and put its own strong, violent, gusty +life into him. He felt agreeably excited as he paced the slanting deck. +He stayed there in the wind. + +Downstairs in the cabin the Ransomes were quarrelling. + +"What on earth," said she, "possessed you to bring him?" + +"And why not?" + +"Because of Sarah." + +"What's she got to do with it?" + +"Well, you don't want them to meet again, do you?" + +Dick made his face a puffy blank. "Why the devil shouldn't they?" said +he. + +"Well, you know the trouble he's had with his wife already about Sarah." + +"It wasn't about Sarah. It was another woman altogether!" + +"I know that. But she was the beginning of it." + +"Let her be the end of it, then. If you're thinking of _him_. The sooner +that wife of his gets a separation the better it'll be for him." + +"And you want my sister to be mixed up in _that_?" + +Mrs. Ransome began to cry. + +"She can't be mixed up in it. He's past caring for Sarah, poor old girl." + +"She isn't past caring for him. She isn't past anything," sobbed Mrs. +Ransome. + +"Don't be a fool, Topsy. There isn't any harm in poor old Toodles. +Majendie's a jolly sight safer with Toodles, I can tell you, than he is +with that wife of his." + +"Has she come home, then?" + +"She came yesterday afternoon. You saw what he was like last night. If +I'd left him to himself this morning he'd have drunk himself into a fit. +When a sober--a fantastically sober man does that--" + +"What does it mean?" + +"It generally means that he's in a pretty bad way. And," added Dick +pensively, "they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman." + +All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +It was nine o'clock on Sunday evening. Majendie was in Scarby, in the +hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their +honeymoon. + +Lady Cayley was with him. She was with him in the sitting-room which had +been his and Anne's. They were by themselves. The Ransomes were dining +with friends in another quarter of the town. He had accepted Sarah's +invitation to dine with her alone. + +The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with +them. He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes. They had been +irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them. He had +told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could +hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome. Then he had explained gently that he had +had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably, +and that he wished they would leave him alone. It was all he wanted. Then +they had left him alone, with Sarah. He was glad to be with her. She was +the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let +alone. + +She had been with him all day. She had sat beside him on the deck of the +yacht as they cruised up and down the coast till sunset. Afterwards, when +the Ransomes' friends had trooped in, one after another, and filled the +sitting-room with insufferable sounds, she had taken him into a quiet +corner and kept him there. He had felt grateful to her for that. + +She had been angelic to him during dinner. She had let him eat as little +and drink as much as he pleased. And she had hardly spoken to him. She +had wrapped him in a heavenly silence. Only from time to time, out of the +divine silence, her woman's voice had dropped between them, soothing and +pleasantly indistinct. He had been drinking hard all day. He had been +excited, intolerably excited; and she soothed him. He was aware of her +chiefly as a large, benignant presence, maternal and protecting. + +His brain felt brittle, but extraordinarily clear, luminous, transparent, +the delicate centre of monstrous and destructive energies. It burned +behind his eyeballs like a fire. His eyes were hot with it, the pupils +strained, distended, gorged with light. + +This monstrous brain of his originated nothing, but ideas presented to +it became monstrous, too. And their immensity roused no sense of the +incredible. + +The table had been cleared of everything but coffee-cups, glasses, and +wine. They still sat facing each other. Sarah had her arms on the table, +propping her chin up with her clenched hands. Her head was tilted back +slightly, in a way that was familiar to him; so that she looked at him +from under the worn and wrinkled white lids of her eyes. And as she +looked at him she smiled slightly; and the smile was familiar, too. + +And he sat opposite her, with his chin sunk on his breast. His bright, +dark, distended eyes seemed to strain upwards towards her, under the +weight of his flushed forehead. + +"Well, Wallie," she said, "I didn't get married, you see, after all." + +"Married--married? Why didn't you?" + +"I never meant to. I only wanted you to think it." + +"Why? Why did you want me to think it?" + +He was no longer disinclined to talk. Though his brain lacked +spontaneity, it responded appropriately to suggestion. + +"I didn't want you to think something else." + +"What? What should I think?" + +His voice was thick and rapid, his eyes burned. + +"That you'd made a mess of my life, my dear." + +"When did I make a mess of your life?" + +"Never mind when. I _might_ have married, only I didn't. That's the +difference between me and you." + +"And that's how I made a mess of your life, is it? I haven't made a +furious success of my own, have I?" + +"I wouldn't have brought it up against you, if you had. The awful thing +was to stand by, and see you make a sinful muddle of it" + +"A sinful muddle?" + +"Yes. That's what it's been. A sinful muddle." + +"Which is worse, d'you think, a sinful muddle? or a muddling sin?" + +"Oh, don't ask me, my dear. I can't see any difference." + +"My God--nor I!" + +"There's no good talking. You're so obstinate, Wallie, that I believe, if +you could live your life over again, you'd do just the same." + +"I would, probably. Just the same." + +"There's nothing you'd alter?" + +"Nothing. Except one thing." + +"What thing?" + +"Never mind what." + +"I don't mind, if the one thing wasn't _me_--was it?" + +He did not answer. + +"Was it?" she insisted, turning the full blue blaze of her eyes on him. + +He started. "Of course it wasn't. You don't suppose I'd have said so if +it had been, do you?" + +"A-ah! So, if you could live your life over again, you wouldn't turn me +out of it? I didn't take up much room, did I? Only two years." + +"Two years?" + +"That was all. And you'd let me stay in for my two poor little years. +Well, that's something. It's a great deal. It's more than some women +get." + +"Yes. More than some women get." + +"Poor Wallie. I'm afraid you wouldn't live your life again." + +"No. I wouldn't." + +"I would. I'd live mine, horrors and all. Just for those two little +years. I say, if we'd keep each other in for those two years, we needn't +turn each other out now, need we?" + +"Oh no, oh no." + +His brain followed her lead, originating nothing. + +"See here," she said, "if I come in--" + +"Yes, yes," he said vaguely. + +He was bending forward now, with his hands clasped on the table. She +stretched out her beautiful white arms and covered his hands with hers, +and held them. Her eyes were full-orbed, luminous, and tender. They held +him, too. + +"I come in on my own terms, this time, not yours." + +"Oh, of course." + +"I mean I can't come in on the same terms as before. All that was over +nine years ago, when you married. You and I are older. We have had +experience. We've suffered horribly. We know." + +"What do we know?" + +She let go his hands. + +"At least we know the limits--the lines we must draw. Fifteen years ago +we didn't know anything, either of us. We were innocents. You were an +innocent when you left me, when you married." + +"When I married?" + +"Yes, when you married. You were a blessed innocent, or you couldn't have +done it. You married a good woman." + +"I know." + +"So do I. Well, I've given one or two men a pretty bad time, but you may +write it on my tombstone that I never hurt another woman." + +"Of course you haven't." + +"And I'm not going to hurt your wife, remember." + +"I'm stupid, I don't think I understand." + +"Can't you understand that I'm not going to make trouble between you and +her?" + +"Me? And her?" + +"You and her. You've come back to me as my friend. We'll be better +friends if you understand that, whatever I let you do, dear, I'm not +going to let you make love to me." + +She drew herself back and faced him with her resolution. + +She knew the man with whom she had to deal. His soul must be off its +guard before she could have any power over his body. In presenting +herself as unattainable she would make herself desired. She would bring +him back. + +She knew what fires he had passed through on his way to her. She saw that +she could not bring him back by playing poor, tender Maggie's part. She +could not move him by appearing as the woman she once was, by falling at +his feet as she had once fallen. This time, it was he who must fall at +hers. + +Anne Majendie had held her empire, and had made herself for ever +desirable, by six years of systematic torturings and deceptions and +denials, by all the infidelities of the saint in love with her own +sanctity. The woman who was to bring him back now would have to borrow +for a moment a little of Anne Majendie's spiritual splendour. She saw by +his flaming face that she had suggested the thing she had forbidden. + +"You think," said she, "there isn't any danger? I don't say there is. But +if there was, you'd never see it. You'd never think of it. You'd be up to +your neck in it before you knew where you were." + +He moved impatiently. "At any rate I know where I am now." + +"And I," said she, in response to his movement, "mean that you shall stay +there." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. You'd like to know what +right I have to say these things to you." + +"Well--I'm awfully stupid--" + +"I earned the right fifteen years ago. When a woman gives a man all she +has to give, and gets nothing, there are very few things she hasn't a +right to say to him." + +"I've no doubt you earned your right." + +"I'm not reproaching you, dear. I'm simply justifying the plainness of my +speech." + +He stared at her, but he did not answer. + +"Don't think me hard," said she. "I'm saying these things because I care +for you. Because--" She rose, and flung her arms out with a passionate +gesture towards him. "Oh, my dear--my heart aches for you so that I can't +bear it." + +She came over to where he sat staring at her, staring half stupefied, +half inflamed. She stood beside him, and passed her hand lightly over his +hair. + +"I only want to help you." + +"You can't help me." + +"I know I can't. I can only say hard things to you." + +She stooped, and her lips swept his hair. For a moment love gave her back +her beauty and the enchantment of her youth; it illuminated the house of +flesh it dwelt in and inspired. And yet she could not reach him. His soul +was on its guard. + +"You've come back," she whispered. "You've come back. But you never came +till you were driven. That's how I thought you'd come. When you were +driven. When there was nobody but me." + +He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his +thick and swift sensations. + +"What have you done that you should have to pay so?" + +"What have I done?" + +"Or I?" she said. + +He did not hear her. There was another sound in his ears. + +Her voice ceased. Her eyes only called to him. He pushed back his chair +and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his +face from her. She knelt down beside him. Her voice was like a warm wind +in his ears. He groaned. She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her +shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face. + +At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and +her. He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain. When she +clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did, +thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung +from her a cry of pain and anger. + +But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were +heavy weights binding him to the floor. He had a sensation of intolerable +sickness; then a pain beat like a hammer on one side of his head. He +staggered, and fell, headlong, at her feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + +Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday +night. The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the +sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion. She had always +had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser, +expert in the business of societies and committees. + +In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the +house, and that he did not return to it. + +In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a +grave face, and took her into Majendie's room. Nanna pointed out to her +that his bed had not been slept in. Anne's heart sank. Later on, the +telegram he sent explained his absence. She supposed that he had slept +at the Ransomes' or the Hannays', and she thought no more of it. The +business of the day again absorbed her. + +In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her. It was the recognised visit +of condolence, delayed till her return. In his manner with Mrs. Majendie +there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk +whiskey with Mrs. Majendie's husband the night before. His manner was +reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender. He abstained from all the +commonplaces of consolation. He did not speak of the dead child; but +reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her +to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and +call her blessed. He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her +ended, had in reality only just begun. He said that, if great natures +were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also +dedicated to great uses. Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and +perfect training. + +He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled. + +On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls. In the afternoon +she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith's and Peggy's +graves lay side by side. In the evening she went again to All Souls. + +The church services were now the only link left between her soul and +God. She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these +consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most +private personal possession. + +For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from +the Unseen. She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in +surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual +world. She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had +been taken from her. She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the +heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing. She had +still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith. Therefore she +occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours +that waited for her as their prey. + +It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless. For then she +thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse +than dead. + +She had one terrible consolation. She had once doubted the justice of her +attitude to him. Now she was sure. Her justification was complete. + +She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the +drawing-room that overlooked the street. + +About ten o'clock she heard a cab drive up to the door. + +She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when +Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished +to speak to her at once. + +Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the +fireplace. He did not come forward to meet her. His rosy, sensual face +was curiously set. As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed +again in a firm fold. + +He pressed her hand without speaking. His heaviness and immobility +alarmed her. + +"What is it?" she asked. + +Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and +suffocated it. + +"I've come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie." + +"Tell me," she whispered. + +"Walter is ill--very dangerously ill." + +"He is dead." + +The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling. She +felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the +doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting. + +"No. He is not dead." + +Her heart beat again. + +"He's dying, then." + +"They don't know." + +"Where is he?" + +"At Scarby." + +"Scarby? How much time have I?" + +"There's a train at ten-twenty. Can you be ready in five--seven minutes?" + +"Yes." + +She rang the bell. + +"Tell Kate where to send my things," she said as she left the room. Her +mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her +lips, or a single motion of her feet. She came back in five minutes, +ready to start. + +"What is it?" she said as they drove to the station. + +"Hæmorrhage of the brain." + +"The brain?" + +"Apoplexy." + +"Is he unconscious?" + +"Yes." + +She closed her eyes. + +"He will not know me," she said. + +Hannay was silent. She lay back and kept her eyes closed. + +A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station. The driver +reined in his horse. She opened her eyes in terror. + +"We shall miss the train--if we stop." + +"No, no, we've plenty of time." + +They waited. + +"Oh, tell him to drive round the other way." + +"We shall miss the train if we do _that_." + +"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn--up there." + +The van turned into a side street, and they drove on. + +The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes +before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had +it to themselves. + +The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby. + +A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered. She had +brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees +and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close. +She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was +sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he +spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief +made her passive now. + +Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered +his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped +that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the +relief of tears. + +But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn +behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was +help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station. + +As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which +is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny. + +A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see +her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken +her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the +woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley. + +She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She +wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband. + +She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He +lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush +on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and +one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side. + +His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a +deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket. +A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave +place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it. + +The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the +wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was +paralysed. + +And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and +holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear +the weight of it. + +Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the +nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him. + +After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her +husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment. +Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of +trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as +if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the +sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and +creaseless. + +He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that. + +She saw that he wore a clean white nightshirt of coarse cotton. It must +have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have +come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must +have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about +him was very white and clean. She was glad. + +She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from +him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at +him, to see, her hands touching him. + +A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that +there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his +hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She +must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up +and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went +back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her +meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could +only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat +there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting +and watching. + +Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning, +came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed +to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought +a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the +pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne +and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to +Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking +together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear +of what he would say to her presently. + +He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There +is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he +was going to say "There is no hope." + +"Will he get better?" she said. + +"I cannot tell you." + +The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with +the case. + +"It's impossible to say. He _may_ get better. He may even get well. But +I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that." + +"You can give _no_ hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real +thought. + +"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not--exclusively--in +favour of recovery." + +"The chances?" + +"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she +were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes assured him that she +could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's +a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get +well--perfectly well." + +"And if it does not absorb?" + +"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may +be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other. +But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely." + +She pictured it. + +"Ah--but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?" + +"Well--there may be further lesions--in which case--" + +"He will die?" + +"He may die. He may die any moment." + +She accepted it, abandoning hope. + +"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?" + +"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it +is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two +things in his favour. He has evidently a sound constitution. And he has +lived--up till now--Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate +life. That is so?" + +"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always--always. Why?" + +The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's +face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not +bear. + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no _why_, of course. That is in his +favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which +would predispose to the attack." + +"Would a shock--predispose him?" + +"A shock?" + +"Any very strong emotion--" + +"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he--that +you--had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?" + +"A month--nearly five weeks." + +"Ah--so long ago as that? No, I think it would hardly be likely. If there +had been any recent violent emotion--" + +"It would account for it?" + +"Yes, yes, it might account for it." + +"Thank you." + +He was touched by her look of agony. "If there is anything else I can--" + +"No. Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know." + +She went back into the sick-room. She stayed there all evening, and they +brought her food to her there. She stayed, watching for the sign of +consciousness that would give hope. But there was no sign. + +The nurse went to bed at nine o'clock. Anne had insisted on sitting up +that night. Hannay slept in the next room, on a sofa, within call. + +When they had left her alone with her husband, she knelt down beside his +bedside and prayed. And as she knelt, with her bowed head near to that +body sleeping its strange and terrible sleep, she remembered nothing but +that she had once loved him; she was certain of nothing but that she +loved him still. His body was once more dear and sacred to her as in her +bridal hour. She did not ask herself whether it were paying the penalty +of its sin; her compassion had purged him of his sin. She had no memory +for the past. It seemed to her that all her life and all her suffering +were crowded into this one hour while she prayed that his soul might come +back and speak to her, and that his body might not die. The hour trampled +under it that other hour when she had knelt by the loathed bridal bed, +wrestling for her own spiritual life. She had no life of her own to pray +for now. She prayed only that he might live. + +And though she knew not whether her prayer were answered she knew that it +was heard. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + +It was the evening of the third day. There was no change in Majendie. + +Dr. Gardner had been sent for. He had come and gone. He had confirmed the +Scarby doctor's opinion, with a private leaning to the side of hope. +Hannay, who had waited to hear his verdict, was going back to Scale +early the next morning. Mrs. Majendie had been in her husband's room all +day, and he had seen little of her. + +He was sitting alone by the fire after dinner, trying to read a paper, +when she came in. Her approach was so gentle that he was unaware of it +till she stood beside him. He started to his feet, mumbling an apology +for his bewilderment. He pulled up an arm-chair to the fire for her, +wandered uneasily about the room for a minute or two, and would have left +it, had she not called him back to her. + +"Don't go, Mr. Hannay. I want to speak to you." + +He turned, with an air of frustrated evasion, and remained, a supremely +uncomfortable presence. + +"Have you time?" she asked. + +"Plenty. All my time is at your disposal." + +"You have been very kind--" + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie--" + +"I want you to be kinder still. I want you to tell me the truth." + +"The truth--" Hannay tried to tighten his loose face into an expression +of judicial reserve. + +"Yes, the truth. There's no kindness in keeping things from me." + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie, I'm keeping nothing from you, I assure you. The +doctors have told me no more than they have told you." + +"I know. It's not that." + +"What is it that's troubling you?" + +"Did you see Walter before he came here?" + +"Yes." + +"Did you see him on Friday night?" + +"Yes." + +"Was he perfectly well then?" + +"Er--yes--he was well. Quite well." + +Anne turned her sorrowful eyes upon him. + +"No. There was something wrong. What was it?" + +"If there was he didn't tell me." + +"No. He wouldn't. Why did you hesitate just now?" + +"Did I hesitate?" + +"When I asked you if he was well." + +"I thought you meant did I notice any signs of his illness coming on. I +didn't. But of course, as you know, he was very much shaken by---by your +little girl's death." + +"You noticed that while I was away?" + +"Y-es. But I certainly noticed it more on the night you were speaking +of." + +"You would have said, then, that he must have received a severe shock?" + +"Certainly--certainly I would." + +Hannay responded quite cheerfully in his immense relief. + +It was what they were all trying for, to make poor Mrs. Majendie believe +that her husband's illness was to be attributed solely to the shock of +the child's death. + +"Do you think that shock could have had anything to do with his illness?" + +"Of course I do. At least, I should say it was indirectly responsible for +it." + +She put her hand up to hide her face. He saw that in some way +incomprehensible to him, so far from shielding her, he had struck a blow. + +"Dr. Gardner told you that much," said he. He felt easier, somehow, in +halving the responsibility with Gardner. + +"Yes. He told me that. But he had not seen him since October. You saw him +on Friday, the day I came home." + +Hannay was confirmed in his suspicion that on Friday there had been a +scene. He now saw that Mrs. Majendie was tortured by the remembrance of +her part in it. + +"Oh well," he said consolingly. "He hadn't been himself for a long time +before that." + +"I know. I know. That only makes it worse." + +She wept slowly, silently, then stopped suddenly and held herself in a +restraint that was ten times more pitiful to see. Hannay was unspeakably +distressed. + +"Perhaps," said he, "if you could tell me what's on your mind, I might be +able to relieve you." + +She shook her head. + +"Come," he said kindly, "what is it, really? What do you imagine makes it +worse?" + +"I said something to him that I didn't mean." + +"Of course you did," said Hannay, smiling cheerfully. "We all say things +to each other that we don't mean. That wouldn't hurt him." + +"But it did. I told him he was responsible for Peggy's death. I didn't +know what I was saying. I let him think he killed her." + +"He wouldn't think it." + +"He did. There was nothing else he could think. If he dies I shall have +killed him." + +"You will have done nothing of the sort. He wouldn't think twice about +what a woman said in her anger or her grief. He wouldn't believe it. He's +got too much sense. You can put that idea out of your head for ever." + +"I cannot put it out. I had to tell you--lest you should think--" + +"Lest I should think--what?" + +"That it was something else that caused his illness." + +"But, my dear lady--it _was_ something else. I haven't a doubt about it." + +"I know what you mean," she said quickly. "He had been drinking--poor +dear." + +"How do you know that?" + +"The doctor asked me. He asked me if he had been in the habit of taking +too much." + +Hannay heaved a deep sigh of discomfort and disappointment. + +"It's no good," said she, "trying to keep things from me. And there's +another thing that I must know." + +"You're distressing yourself most needlessly. There is nothing more to +know." + +"I know that woman was here. I do not know whether he came here to meet +her." + +"Ah well--that I can assure you he did not." + +"Still--he must have met her. She was here." + +"How do you know that she was here?" + +"You saw her yourself, coming out of the hotel. You were horrified, and +you pulled me back so that I shouldn't see her." + +"There's nothing in that, nothing whatever." + +"If you'd seen your own face, Mr. Hannay, you would have said there was +everything in it." + +"My face, dear Mrs. Majendie, does not prove that they met. Or that there +was any reason why they shouldn't meet. It only proves my fear lest Lady +Cayley should stop and speak to you. A thing she wouldn't be very likely +to do if they had met--as you suppose." + +"There is nothing that woman wouldn't do." + +"She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that." + +"I don't know." + +"No. You don't know. So you're bound to give her the benefit of the +doubt. I advise you to do it. For your own peace of mind's sake. And for +your husband's sake." + +"It was for his sake that I asked you for the truth. Because--" + +"You wanted me to clear him?" + +"Yes. Or to tell me if there is anything I should forgive." + +"I can assure you he didn't come here to see Sarah Cayley. As to +forgiveness--you haven't got to forgive him that; and if you only +understood, you'd find that there was precious little you ever had to +forgive." + +"If I only understood. You think I don't understand, even yet?" + +"I'm sure you don't. You never did." + +"I would give everything if I could understand now." + +"Yes, if you could. But can you?" + +"I've tried very hard. I've prayed to God to make me understand." + +Poor Hannay was embarrassed at the name of God. He fell to contemplating +his waistcoat buttons in profound abstraction for a while. Then he spoke. + +"Look here, Mrs. Majendie. Poor Walter always said you were much too good +for him. If you'll pardon my saying so, I never believed that until now. +Now, upon my soul, I do believe it. And I believe that's where the +trouble's been all along. There are things about a man that a woman like +you cannot understand. She doesn't try to understand them. She doesn't +want to. She'd die rather than know. So--well--the whole thing's wrapped +up in mystery, and she thinks it's something awful and iniquitous, +something incomprehensible." + +"Yes. If she thinks about it at all." + +"My dear lady, very often she thinks about it a great deal more than is +good for her, and she thinks wrong. She's bound to, being what she is. +Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there's certain to +be trouble." + +He paused, pondering. "My wife's a dear, good, little woman," he said +presently; "she's the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare +say to outsiders, she's a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I +don't call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn't a good +man at all before she married me. D'you mind my talking about myself like +this?" + +"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don't think I do." + +"You do, I'm afraid. I don't much like it myself. But, you see, I'm +trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn't you?" + +"Yes. I want to understand." + +"Well, then, I'm not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I'd no +more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would +of committing a murder. But, if she'd been 'too good' for me, there's +no knowing what I mightn't have done. D'you see?" + +"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband +left me." + +"Your fault? No. It was hardly your _fault_, Mrs. Majendie." + +He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away +with the idea that--that this sort of thing is so tremendously important +to us. It isn't. It isn't." + +"Then why behave as if it were?" + +"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married +and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't +happy--but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The +ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to--his business, +his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are _the_ +important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up +his time." + +"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count." + +"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the +woman may _be_ his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it +certainly was so." + +Her face quivered. + +"Of course," he said, "what beats you is--how a man can love his wife +with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her." + +"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once, +long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand." + +"Well--well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are +brutes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about Walter." + +"Yes. We're talking about Walter." + +"And Walter is my dearest friend, so dear that I hardly know how to talk +to you about him." + +"Try," she said. + +"Well, I suppose I know more about him than anybody else. And I never +knew a man freer from any weakness for women. He was always so awfully +sorry for them, don't you know. Sarah Cayley could never have fastened +herself on him if he hadn't been sorry for her. No more could that +girl--Maggie Forrest." + +"How did he come to know her?" + +"Oh, some fellow he knew had behaved pretty badly to her, and Walter had +been paying for her keep, years before there was anything between them. +She got dependent on him, and he on her. We are pathetically dependent +creatures, Mrs. Majendie." + +"What was she like?" + +"She? Oh, a soft, simple, clinging little thing. And instead of shaking +her off, he let her cling. That's how it all began. Then, of course, the +rest followed. I'm not excusing him, mind you. Only--" Poor Hannay became +shy and unhappy. He hid his face in his hands and lifted it from them, +red, as if with shame. "The fact is," he said, "I'm a clumsy fellow, Mrs. +Majendie. I want to help you, but I'm afraid of hurting you." + +"Nothing can hurt me now." + +"Well--" He pondered again. "If you want to get down to the root of it, +it's as simple as hunger and thirst." + +"Hunger and thirst," she murmured. + +"It's what I've been trying to tell you. When you're not thirsty you +don't think about drinking. When you are thirsty, you do. When you're +driven mad with thirst, you think of nothing else. And sometimes--not +always--when you can't get clean water, you drink water that's--not +so clean. Though you may be very particular. Walter was--morally--the +most particular man I ever knew." + +"I know. I know." + +"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he'll be. And +supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he +goes out, some kind person offers him a drink--can you blame him very +much if, some day, he takes it?" + +"No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him. + +"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know _why_ I'm saying all +this." + +"To help me," she said humbly. + +"And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he's going to live or +die. And I've told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn't have +to judge him harshly, and if he doesn't die, you may feel that he's--he's +given back to you. D'you see?" + +"Yes, I see," she said softly. + +She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected. +She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him +coarse in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any +existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any +good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an +instant. Now she knew. + +She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that +her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now +she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He +had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the +gentlest woman could not have been more kind. + +She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration. +"Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to +me." + +She took up her third night's watch. + +The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her +own punctual sleep. + +There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the +sightless eyes. + +Anne sat by her husband's side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the +life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that +she had no right to touch him. + +She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she +had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her, +and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she +had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity +for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had +been merciless where she owed most mercy. + +Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and +that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the +same view of her. They had all told her the same thing. + +She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband's ruin. + +Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had +done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible +side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that +was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it +with him. + +Where she had wronged him most had been in the pitiless refusals of her +soul. And even there she had wronged him less by the things she had +refused to give than by the things that she had refused to take. There +were sanctities and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and +half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had +shut her eyes that she might justify herself. + +Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of +herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride. + +And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened +to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little +child's voice, nor to the voice of God in her own heart. Then, that she +might be humbled, she had had to take God's message from the persons +whom she had most detested and despised. + +She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted +by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs. +Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had +been, by her share of that one godlike thing. + +She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and +blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as +things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the +hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner +uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come +near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known. + +And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and +humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew. + +Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's +redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the +soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of +the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going +upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the +spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way. + +It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known +it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over +again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more +turning back. + +She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and +tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw +love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and +into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality. +She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not +been proven in the house of flesh. + +She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away +from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here. + +And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down +under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a +sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life. She saw what they +might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of +herself and him. She thought of his patience, his chivalry and +forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child. + +God had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him. God had +given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped, +she had not protected him. + +God had dealt justly with her. She had loved God; but God had rejected a +love that was owing to her husband. Looking back, she saw that she had +been nearest to God in the days when she had been nearest to her husband. +The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from God. +And she had not seen it. + +All the love that was in her she had given to her child. Her child had +been born that she might see that the love which was given to her was +holy; and she had not seen it. So God had taken her child from her that +she might see. + +And seeing that, she saw herself aright. That passion of motherhood was +not all the love that was in her. The love that was in her had sprung up, +full-grown, in a single night. And it had grown to the stature of the +diviner love she saw. And as she felt that great springing up of love, +with all its strong endurances and charities, she saw herself redeemed by +her husband's sin. + +There she paused, trembling. It was a great and terrible mystery, that +the sin of his body should be the saving of her soul. And as she thought +of the price paid for her, she humbled herself once more in her shame. + +She was no longer afraid that he would die. Something told her that he +would live, that he would be given back to her. She dared not think how. +He might be given back paralysed, helpless, and with a ruined mind. Her +punishment might be the continual reproach of his presence, her only +consolation the tending of the body she had tortured, humiliated, and +destroyed. She prayed God to be merciful and spare her that. + +And on the morning of the fifth day Majendie woke from his terrible +sleep. He could see light. Towards evening his breathing softened and +grew soundless. And on the dawn of the sixth day he called her name, +"Nancy." + +Then she knew that for a little time he would be given back to her. And, +as she nursed him, love in her moved with a new ardour and a new +surrender. For more than seven years her pulses had been proof against +his passion and his strength. Now, at the touch of his helpless body, +they stirred with a strange, adoring tenderness. But as yet she went +humbly, in her fear of the punishment that might be measured to her. She +told herself it was enough that he was aware of her, of her touch, of her +voice, of her face as it bent over him. She hushed the new-born hope in +her heart, lest its cry should wake the angel of the divine retribution. + +Then, week by week, slowly, a little joy came to her, as she saw the +gradual return of power to the paralysed body and clearness to the +flooded brain. She wondered, when he would begin to remember, whether +her face would recall to him their last interview, her cruelty, her +repudiation. + +At last she knew that he remembered. She dared not ask herself "How +much?" It was borne in on her that it was this way that her punishment +would come. + +For, as he gradually recovered, his manner to her became more +constrained; notwithstanding his helpless dependence on her. He was shy +and humble; grateful for the things she did for him; grateful with a +heart-rending, pitiful surprise. It was as if he had looked to come back +to the heartless woman he had known, and was puzzled at finding another +woman in her place. + +As the weeks wore on, and her hands had less to do for him, she felt that +his awakened spirit guarded itself from her, fenced itself more and more +with that inviolable constraint. And she bowed her head to the +punishment. + +When he was well enough to be moved she took him to the south coast. +There he recovered power rapidly. By the end of February he showed no +trace of his terrible illness. + +They were to return to Scale in the beginning of March. + +Then, at their home-coming, she would know whether he remembered. There +would be things that they would have to say to each other. + +Sometimes she thought that she could never say them; that her life was +secure only within some pure, charmed circle of inviolate silence; that +her wisdom lay in simply trusting him to understand her. She _could_ +trust him. After all, she had been most marvellously "let off"; she had +not had to pay the extreme penalty; she had been allowed, oh, divinely +allowed, to prove her love for him. He could not doubt it now; it +possessed her, body and soul; it was manifest to him in her eyes, and +in her voice, and in the service of her hands. + +And if he said nothing, surely it would mean that he, too, trusted her to +understand. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +They had come back. They had spent their first evening together in the +house in Prior Street. Anne had dreaded the return; for the house +remembered its sad secrets. She had dreaded it more on her husband's +account than on her own. + +She had passed before him through the doorway of the study; and her heart +had ached as she thought that it was in that room that she had struck at +him and put him from her. As he entered, she had turned, and closed the +door behind them, and lifted her face to his and kissed him. He had +looked at her with his kind, sad smile, but he had said nothing. All that +evening they had sat by their hearth, silent as watchers by the dead. + +From time to time she had been aware of his eyes resting on her in their +profound and tragic scrutiny. She had been reminded then of the things +that yet remained unsaid. + +At night he had risen at her signal; and she had waited while he put the +light out; and he had followed her upstairs. At her door she had stopped, +and kissed him, and said good-night, and she had turned her head to look +after him as he went. Surely, she had thought, he will come back and +speak to me. + +And now she was still waiting after her undressing. She said to herself, +"We have come home. But he will not come to me. He has nothing to say to +me. There is nothing that can be said. If I could only speak to him." + +She longed to go to him, to kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive her +and take her back again, as if it had been she who had sinned. But she +could not. + +She stood for a moment before the couch at the foot of the bed, ready to +slip off her long white dressing-gown. She paused. Her eyes rested on the +silver crucifix, the beloved symbol of redemption. She remembered how he +had given it to her. She had not understood him even then; but she +understood him now. She longed to tell him that she understood. But she +could not. + +She turned suddenly as she heard his low knock at her door. She had been +afraid to hear it once; now it made her heart beat hard with longing and +another fear. He came in. He stood by the closed door, gazing at her with +the dumb look that she knew. + +She went to meet him, with her hands out-stretched to him, her face +glowing. + +"Oh, my dear," she said, "you've come back to me. You've come back." + +He looked down on her with miserable eyes. She put her arms about him. +His face darkened and was stern to her. He held her by her arms and put +her from him, and she trembled in all her body, humiliated and rebuked. + +"No. Not that," he said. "Not now. I can't ask you to take me back now." + +"Need you ask me--now?" + +"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know. Darling, you don't +know." + +At the word of love she turned to him, beseeching him with her tender +eyes. + +"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you." + +She sat down on the couch, and made room for him beside her. + +"I don't want," she said, "to know more than I do." + +"I'm afraid you must know. When you do know you won't talk about taking +me back." + +"I have taken you back." + +"Not yet. I'd no business to come back at all, without telling you." + +"Tell me, then," she said. + +"I can't. I don't know how." + +She put her hand on his. + +"Don't," he said, "don't. I'd rather you didn't touch me." + +She looked at him and smiled, and her smile cut him to the heart. + +"Walter," she said, "are you afraid of me?" + +"Yes." + +"You needn't be." + +"I am. I'm afraid of your goodness." + +She smiled again. + +"Do you think I'm good?" + +"I know you are." + +"You don't know how you're hurting me." + +"I've always hurt you. And I'm going to hurt you more." + +"You only hurt me when you talk about my goodness. I'm not good. I never +was. And I never can be, dear, if you're afraid of me. What is it that I +_must know_?" + +His voice sank. + +"I've been unfaithful to you. Again." + +"With whom?" she whispered. + +"I can't tell you. Only--it wasn't Maggie." + +"When was it?" + +"I think it was that Sunday--at Scarby." + +"Why do you say you think?" she said gently. "Don't you know?" + +"No. I don't know much about it. I didn't know what I was doing." + +"You can't remember?" + +"No. I can't remember." + +"Then--are you sure you _were_--?" + +"Yes. I think so. I don't know. That's the horrible part of it. I don't +know, I can't remember anything about it. I must have been drinking." + +She took his hand in hers again. "Walter, dear, don't think about it. +Don't think it was possible. Just put it all out of your head and forget +about it." + +"How can I when I don't know?" He rose. "See here--I oughtn't to look at +you--I oughtn't to touch you--I oughtn't to live with you, as long as I +don't know. You don't know, either." + +"No," she said quietly. "I don't know. Does that matter so very much when +I understand?" + +"Ah, if you could understand. But you never could." + +"I do. Supposing I had known, do you think I should not have forgiven +you?" + +"I'm certain you wouldn't. You couldn't. Not that." + +"But," she said, "I did know." + +His mouth twitched. His eyelids dropped before her gaze. + +"At least," she said, "I thought--" + +"You thought _that_?" + +"Yes." + +"What made you think it?" + +"I saw her there." + +"You saw her? You thought that, and yet--you would have let me come back +to you?" + +"Yes. I thought that." + +As he stood before her, shamed, and uncertain, and unhappy, the new +soul that had been born in her pleaded for him and assured her of his +innocence. + +"But," she said again, "I do not think it now." + +"You--you don't believe it?" + +"No. I believe in you." + +"You believe in me? After everything?" + +"After everything." + +"And you would have forgiven me that?" + +"I did forgive you. I forgave you all the time I thought it. There's +nothing that I wouldn't forgive you now. You know it." + +"I thought you might forgive me. But I never thought you'd let me come +back--after that." + +"You haven't. You haven't. You never left me. It's I who have come back +to you." + +"Nancy--" he whispered. + +"It's I who need forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me." + +"Forgive you? You?" + +"Yes, me." + +Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession. + +"I was unfaithful to you." + +"You don't know what you're saying, dear. You couldn't have been +unfaithful to me." + +"If I had been, would you have forgiven me?" + +He looked at her a long time. + +"Yes," he said simply. + +"You could have forgiven me that?" + +"I could have forgiven you anything." + +She knew it. There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity. "Well," she +said, "you have worse things to forgive me." + +"What have I to forgive?" + +"Everything. If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have +had to ask for forgiveness now." + +"Perhaps not, Nancy. But that wasn't your fault." + +"It was my fault. It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end." + +"No, no." + +"Yes, yes. Mr. Hannay knew that. He told me so." + +"When?" + +"At Scarby." + +Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart. + +"He was a brute," he said, "to tell you that." + +"He wasn't. He was kind. He knew." + +"What did he know?" + +"That I would rather think that I was bad than that you were." + +"And would you?" + +"Yes I would--now. Mr. Hannay spared me all he could. He didn't tell me +that if you had died at Scarby it would have been my fault. But it would +have been." + +He groaned. + +"Darling--you couldn't say that if you knew anything about it." + +"I know all about it." + +He shook his head. + +"Listen, Walter. You've been unfaithful to me--once, years after I gave +you cause. I've been unfaithful to you ever since I married you. And your +unfaithfulness was nothing to mine. A woman once told me that. She said +you'd only broken one of your marriage vows, and I had broken all of +them, except one. It was true." + +"Who said that to you?" + +"Never mind who. It needed saying. It was true. I sinned against the +light. I knew what you were. You were good and you loved me. You were +unhappy through loving me, and I shut my eyes to it. I've done more harm +to you than that poor girl--Maggie. You would never have gone to her if I +hadn't driven you. You loved me." + +"Yes, I loved you." + +She turned to him again; and her eyes searched his for absolution. "I +didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand." + +"No. A woman doesn't, dear. Not when she's as good as you." + +At that a sob shook her. In the passion of her abasement she had cast off +all her beautiful spiritual apparel. Now she would have laid down her +crown, her purity, at his feet. + +"I thought I was so good. And I sinned against my husband more that he +ever sinned against me." + +He took her hands and tried to draw her to him, but she broke away, and +slid to the floor and knelt there, bowing her head upon his knee. Her +hair fell, loosened, upon her shoulders, veiling her. + +He stooped and raised her. His hand smoothed back the hair that hid her +face. Her eyes were closed. + +Her drenched eyelids felt his lips upon them. They opened; and in her +eyes he saw love risen to immortality through mortal tears. She looked at +him, and she knew him as she knew her own soul. + + +The End + + + + + +By MAY SINCLAIR + +THE HELPMATE + +_The Literary Digest_ says: "The novels of May Sinclair make waste paper +of most of the fiction of a season." This new story, the first written +since "The Divine Fire," will strengthen the author's reputation. +It has been serialized in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and _The New York Sun_ +says of an early instalment: + +"Miss Sinclair's new novel, 'The Helpmate,' is attracting much attention. +It is a miniature painting of delicacy and skill, reproducing few +characters in a small space, with fine sincerity,--the invalid sister, +the man with a past, and the wife with strict convictions. The riddle is +to find which one of the women is the helpmate. In the vital situation +thus far developed the sister is leading in the race." + +As the plot develops the canvas is filled in with other characters as +finely drawn. The story grips the reader. Lovers of good literature and +of a good story will delight in its development. + + +THE DIVINE FIRE + +The story of the regeneration of a London poet and the degeneration of a +London critic. 15th printing. + + +MARY MOSS in the _Atlantic Monthly_: "Certain it is that in all +our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 'The Divine +Fire,' nothing even remotely approaching the same class." + + +AUDREY CRAVEN + +The story of a pretty little woman with the soul of a spoiled child, who +had a fatal fascination for most men. + +_Literary Digest_: "Humor is of the spontaneous sort and rings true, and +the lancet of her wit and epigram, tho keen, is never cruel.... An author +whose novels may be said to make waste paper of most of the fiction of a +season." + + +SUPERSEDED + +The story of two highly contrasted teachers in a girls' school. + +_New York Sun_: "It makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little +English woman may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen." + + +THE TYSONS + +(MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON) + +_Chicago Record-Herald_: "Maintains a clinging grip upon the +mind and senses, compelling one to acknowledge the author's +genius." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE*** + + +******* This file should be named 17867-8.txt or 17867-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/6/17867 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Helpmate</p> +<p>Author: May Sinclair</p> +<p>Release Date: February 26, 2006 [eBook #17867]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net/)</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> + +<h1>THE HELPMATE</h1> + +<h2>BY MAY SINCLAIR</h2> + +<h3>AUTHOR OF "THE DIVINE FIRE," "SUPERSEDED," "AUDREY CRAVEN," ETC.</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h4>NEW YORK<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY<br /> +1907</h4> + +<h4>THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS<br /> +RAHWAY, N.J.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<p> + +<a href="#BOOK_I">BOOK I</a><br /><br /> + +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#BOOK_II">BOOK II</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#BOOK_III">BOOK III</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">CHAPTER XXXV</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">CHAPTER XXXVI</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVII">CHAPTER XXXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVIII">CHAPTER XXXVIII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIX">CHAPTER XXXIX</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XL">CHAPTER XL</a><br /><br /> +<a href="#By_MAY_SINCLAIR">By MAY SINCLAIR</a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"></a>BOOK I</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + + +<p>It was four o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Walter Majendie still lay on +the extreme edge of the bed, with her face turned to the dim line of sea +discernible through the open window of the hotel bedroom.</p> + +<p>Since midnight, when she had gone to bed, she had lain in that +uncomfortable position, motionless, irremediably awake. Mrs. Walter +Majendie was thinking.</p> + +<p>At first the night had gone by her unperceived, black and timeless. Now +she could measure time by the dull progress of the dawn among the objects +in the room. A slow, unhappy thing, born between featureless grey cloud +and sea, it had travelled from the window, shimmered in the watery square +of the looking-glass, and was feeling for the chair where her husband had +laid his clothes down last night. He had thought she was asleep, and had +gone through his undressing noiselessly, with movements of angelic and +elaborate gentleness that well-nigh disarmed her thought. He was sleeping +now. She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing. Only the +other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and +heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine +unconsciousness of sleep. The childlike, huddled posture of the sleeper +had then stirred her heart to an unimaginable tenderness.</p> + +<p>Now she had got to think, to adjust a new and devastating idea to a +beloved and divine belief.</p> + +<p>Somewhere in the quiet town a church clock clanged to the dawn, and the +sleeper stretched himself. The five hours' torture of her thinking wrung +a low sob from the woman at his side.</p> + +<p>He woke. His hand searched for her hand. At his touch she drew it away, +and moved from under her cramped shoulder the thick, warm braid of her +hair. It tossed a gleam of pale gold to the risen light. She felt his +drowsy, affectionate fingers pressing and smoothing the springy bosses of +the braid.</p> + +<p>The caress kindled her dull thoughts to a point of flame. She sat up and +twisted the offending braid into a rigid coil.</p> + +<p>"Walter," she said, "<i>who</i> is Lady Cayley?"</p> + +<p>She noticed that the name waked him.</p> + +<p>"Does it matter now? Can't you forget her?"</p> + +<p>"Forget her? I know nothing about her. I want to know."</p> + +<p>"Haven't you been told everything that was necessary?"</p> + +<p>"I've been told nothing. It was what I heard."</p> + +<p>There was a terrible stillness about him. Only his breath came and went +unsteadily, shaken by the beating of his heart.</p> + +<p>She quieted her own heart to listen to it; as if she could gather from +such involuntary motions the thing she had to know.</p> + +<p>"I know," she said, "I oughtn't to have heard it. And I can't believe +it,—I don't, really."</p> + +<p>"Poor child! What is it that you don't believe?"</p> + +<p>His calm, assured tones had the force of a denial.</p> + +<p>"Walter—if you'd only say it isn't true—"</p> + +<p>"What Edith told you?"</p> + +<p>"Edith? Your sister? No; about that woman—that you—that she—"</p> + +<p>"Why are you bringing all that up again, at this unearthly hour?"</p> + +<p>"Then," she said coldly, "it <i>is</i> true."</p> + +<p>His silence lay between them like a sword.</p> + +<p>She had rehearsed this scene many times in the five hours; but she had +not prepared herself for this. Her dread had been held captive by her +belief, her triumphant anticipation of Majendie's denial.</p> + +<p>Presently he spoke; and his voice was strange to her as the voice of +another man.</p> + +<p>"Anne," he said, "didn't she tell you? It was before I knew you. And it +was the only time."</p> + +<p>"Don't speak to me," she cried with a sudden passion, and lay shuddering.</p> + +<p>She rose, slipped from the bed, and went to a chair that stood by the +open window. There she sat, with her back to the bed, and her eyes +staring over the grey parade and out to the eastern sea.</p> + +<p>"Anne," said her husband, "what are you doing there?"</p> + +<p>Anne made no answer.</p> + +<p>"Come back to bed; you'll catch cold."</p> + +<p>He waited.</p> + +<p>"How long are you going to sit there in that draught?"</p> + +<p>She sat on, upright, immovable, in her thin nightgown, raked by the keen +air of the dawn. Majendie raised himself on his elbow. He could just see +her where she glimmered, and her braid of hair, uncoiled, hanging to her +waist. Up till now he had been profoundly unhappy and ashamed, but +something in the unconquerable obstinacy of her attitude appealed to the +devil that lived in him, a devil of untimely and disastrous humour. The +right thing, he felt, was not to appear as angry as he was. He sat up on +his pillow, and began to talk to her with genial informality.</p> + +<p>"See here,—I suppose you want an explanation. But don't you think we'd +better wait until we're up? Up and dressed, I mean. I can't talk +seriously before I've had a bath and—and brushed my hair. You see, +you've taken rather an unfair advantage of me by getting out of bed." +(He paused for an answer, and still no answer came.)—"Don't imagine I'm +ignobly lying down all the time, wrapped in a blanket. I'm sitting on my +pillow. I know there's any amount to be said. But how do you suppose I'm +going to say it if I've got to stay here, all curled up like a blessed +Buddha, and you're planted away over there like a monument of all the +Christian virtues? Are you coming back to bed, or are you not?"</p> + +<p>She shivered. To her mind his flippancy, appalling in the circumstances, +sufficiently revealed the man he was. The man she had known and married +had never existed. For she had married Walter Majendie believing him to +be good. The belief had been so rooted in her that nothing but his own +words or his own silence could have cast it out. She had loved Walter +Majendie; but it was another man who called to her, and she would not +listen to him. She felt that she could never go back to that man, never +sit in the same room, or live in the same house with him again. She would +have to make up her mind what she would do, eventually. Meanwhile, to get +away from him, to sit there in the cold, inflexible, insensitive, to +obtain a sort of spiritual divorce from him, while she martyrised her +body which was wedded to him, that was the young, despotic instinct she +obeyed.</p> + +<p>"If you won't come," he said, "I suppose it only remains for me to go."</p> + +<p>He got up, took Anne's cloak from the door where it hung, and put it +tenderly about her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Whatever happens or unhappens," he said, "we must be dressed."</p> + +<p>He found her slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back +and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that +Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an +insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable +nervousness. Anne, not recognising the utterance of his helpless +humanity, put that laugh down to the account of the devil that had +insulted her. Her heart grew harder.</p> + +<p>"I am clothed, and in my right mind," said Majendie, standing before her +with his hand on the window sill.</p> + +<p>She looked up at him, at the face she knew, the face that (oddly, it +seemed to her) had not changed to suit her new conception of him, that +maintained its protest. She had loved everything about him, from the +dark, curling hair of his head to his well-finished feet; she had loved +his slender, virile body, and the clean red and brown of his face, the +strong jaw and the mouth that, hidden under the short moustache, she +divined only to be no less strong. More than these things she had loved +his eyes, the dark, bright dwelling-places of the "goodness" she had +loved best of all in him. Used to smiling as they looked at her, they +smiled even now.</p> + +<p>"If you'll take my advice," he said, "you'll go back to your warm bed. +You shall have the whole place to yourself."</p> + +<p>And with that he left her.</p> + +<p>She rose, went to the bed, arranged the turned-back blanket so as to hide +the place where he had lain, and slid on to her knees, supporting herself +by the bedside.</p> + +<p>Never before had Anne hurled herself into the heavenly places in +turbulence and disarray. It had been her wont to come, punctual to some +holy, foreappointed hour, with firm hands folded, with a back that, even +in bowing, preserved its pride; with meek eyes, close-lidded; with +breathing hushed for the calm passage of her prayer; herself marshalling +the procession of her dedicated thoughts, virgins all, veiled even before +their God.</p> + +<p>Now she precipitated herself with clutching hands thrown out before her; +with hot eyes that drank the tears of their own passion; with the shamed +back and panting mouth of a Magdalen; with memories that scattered the +veiled procession of the Prayers. They fled before her, the Prayers, in a +gleaming tumult, a rout of heavenly wings that obscured her heaven. When +they had vanished a sudden vagueness came upon her.</p> + +<p>And then it seemed that the storm that had gone over her had rolled her +mind out before her, like a sheet of white-hot iron. There was a record +on it, newly traced, of things that passion makes indiscernible under its +consuming and aspiring flame. Now, at the falling of the flame, the faint +characters flashed into sight upon the blank, running in waves, as when +hot iron changes from white to sullen red. Anne felt that her union with +Majendie had made her one with that other woman, that she shared her +memory and her shame. For Majendie's sake she loathed her womanhood that +was yesterday as sacred to her as her soul. Through him she had conceived +a thing hitherto unknown to her, a passionate consciousness and hatred of +her body. She hated the hands that had held him, the feet that had gone +with him, the lips that had touched him, the eyes that had looked at him +to love him. Him she detested, not so much on his own account, as because +he had made her detestable to herself.</p> + +<p>Her eyes wandered round the room. Its alien aspect was becoming +transformed for her, like a scene on a tragic stage. The light had +established itself in the windows and pier-glasses. The wall-paper was +flushing in its own pink dawn. And the roses bloomed again on the grey +ground of the bed-curtains. These things had become familiar, even dear, +through their three days' association with her happy bridals. Now the +room and everything in it seemed to have been created for all time to be +the accomplices and ministers of her degradation. They were well +acquainted with her and it; they held foreknowledge of her, as the +pier-glass held her dishonoured and dishevelled image.</p> + +<p>She thought of her dead father's house, the ivy-coated Deanery in the +south, and of the small white bedroom, a girl's bedroom that had once +known her and would never know her again. She thought of her father and +mother, and was glad that they were dead. Once she wondered why their +death had been God's will. Now she saw very clearly why. But why she +herself should have been sent upon this road, of all roads of suffering, +was more than Anne could see.</p> + +<p>She, whose nature revolted against the despotically human, had schooled +herself into submission to the divine. Her sense of being supremely +guided and protected had, before now, enabled her to act with decision +in turbulent and uncertain situations of another sort. Where other people +writhed or vacillated, Anne had held on her course, uplifted, +unimpassioned, and resigned. Now she was driven hither and thither, +she sank to the very dust and turned in it, she saw no way before her, +neither her own way nor God's way.</p> + +<p>Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless. If her +husband's body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood +beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his +spirit. But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her love, love +that had already given itself over, too weak to struggle against +dissolution, it was as if she had seen some horrible reversal of the +law of death, spirit returning to earth, the incorruptible putting on +corruption.</p> + +<p>Not only was her house of life made desolate; it was defiled. Dumb and +ashamed, she abandoned herself like a child to the arms of God, too +agonised to pray.</p> + +<p>An hour passed.</p> + +<p>Then slowly, as she knelt, the religious instinct regained possession of +her. It was as if her soul had been flung adrift, had gone out with the +ebb of the spiritual sea, and now rocked, poised, waiting for the turn of +the immortal tide.</p> + +<p>Her lips parted, almost mechanically, in the utterance of the divine +name. Aware of that first motion of her soul, she gathered herself +together, and concentrated her will upon some familiar prayer for +guidance. For a little while she prayed thus, grasping at old shadowy +forms of petition as they went by her, lifting her sunken mind by main +force from stupefaction; and then, it was as if the urging, steadying +will withdrew, and her soul, at some heavenly signal, moved on alone into +the place of peace.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + + +<p>It was broad daylight outside. A man was putting out the lights one by +one along the cold little grey parade. A figure, walking slowly, with +down-bent head, was approaching the hotel from the pier. Anne recognised +it as that of her husband. Both sights reminded her that her life had to +be begun all over again, and to go on.</p> + +<p>Another hour passed. Majendie had sent up a waitress with breakfast to +her room. He was always thoughtful for her comfort. It did not occur to +her to wonder what significance there might be in his thus keeping away +from her, or what attitude toward her he would now be inclined to take. +She would not have admitted that he had a right to any attitude at all. +It was for her, as the profoundly injured person, to decide as to the new +disposal of their relations.</p> + +<p>She was very clear about her grievance. The facts, that her husband had +been pointed at in the public drawing-room of their hotel; that the +terrible statement she had overheard had been made and received casually; +that he had assumed, no less casually, her knowledge of the thing, all +bore but one interpretation: that Walter Majendie and the scandal he had +figured in were alike notorious. The marvel was that, staying in the town +where he lived and was known, she herself had not heard of it before. A +peculiarly ugly thought visited her. Was it possible that Scarby was the +very place where the scandal had occurred?</p> + +<p>She remembered now that, when she had first proposed that watering-place +for their honeymoon, he had objected on the ground that Scarby was full +of people whom he knew. Besides, he had said, she wouldn't like it. But +whether she would like it or not, Anne, who had her bridal dignity to +maintain, considered that in the matter of her honeymoon his wishes +should give way to hers. She was inclined to measure the extent of his +devotion by that test. Scarby, she said, was not full of people who knew +<i>her</i>. Anne had been insistent and Majendie passive, as he was in most +unimportant matters, reserving his energies for supremely decisive +moments.</p> + +<p>Anne, bearing her belief in Majendie in her innocent breast, failed at +first to connect her husband with the remarkable intimations that passed +between the two newcomers gossiping in the drawing-room before dinner. +They, for their part, had no clue linking the unapproachably strange lady +on the neighbouring sofa with the hero of their tale. The case, they +said, was "infamous." At that point Majendie had put an end to his own +history and his wife's uncertainty by entering the room. Three words and +a look, observed by Anne, had established his identity.</p> + +<p>Her mind was steadied by its inalienable possession of the facts. She had +returned through prayer to her normal mood of religious resignation. She +tried to support herself further by a chain of reasoning. If all things +were divinely ordered, this sorrow also was the will of God. It was the +burden she was appointed to take up and bear.</p> + +<p>She bathed and dressed herself for the day. She felt so strange +to herself in these familiar processes that, standing before the +looking-glass, she was curious to observe what manner of woman she had +become. The inner upheaval had been so profound that she was surprised +to find so little record of it in her outward seeming.</p> + +<p>Anne was a woman whose beauty was a thing of general effect, and the +general effect remained uninjured. Nature had bestowed on her a body +strongly made and superbly fashioned. Having framed her well, she +coloured her but faintly. She had given her eyes of a light thick grey. +Her eyebrows, her lashes, and her hair were of a pale gold that had ashen +undershades in it. They all but matched a skin honey-white with that +even, sombre, untransparent tone that belongs to a temperament at once +bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the +significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the +forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the +slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a +hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in +modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with +the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself +she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the thin +rose of the upper lip, foreshortened it, and gave to its low arc the +emphasis of a curve, the vivacity of a dimple (Anne's under lip was +straight as the tense string of a bow). When she spoke or smiled Anne's +mole seemed literally to catch up her lip against its will, on purpose to +show the small white teeth below. Majendie loved Anne's mole. It was that +one charming and emphatic fault in her face, he said, that made it human. +But Anne was ashamed of it.</p> + +<p>She surveyed her own reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went +through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the +back of her irreproachable coat, arranging her delicate laces with a +deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in +that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie +admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he +could have seen in her—after Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's personality +she had not permitted herself so much as to guess. Enough that the woman +was notorious—infamous.</p> + +<p>There was a knock at the door, the low knock she had come to know, and +Majendie entered in obedience to her faint call.</p> + +<p>The hours had changed him, given his bright face a tragic, submissive +look, as of a man whipped and hounded to her feet.</p> + +<p>He glanced first at the tray, to see if she had eaten her breakfast.</p> + +<p>"There are some things I should like to say to you, with your permission. +But I think we can discuss them better out of doors."</p> + +<p>He looked round the disordered room. The associations of the place were +evidently as painful to him as they were to her.</p> + +<p>They went out. The parade was deserted at that early hour, and they found +an empty seat at the far end of it.</p> + +<p>"I, too," she said, "have things that I should like to say."</p> + +<p>He looked at her gravely.</p> + +<p>"Will you allow me to say mine first?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly; but I warn you, they will make no difference."</p> + +<p>"To you, possibly not. They make all the difference to me. I'm not going +to attempt to defend myself. I can see the whole thing from your point of +view. I've been thinking it over. Didn't you say that what you heard you +had not heard from Edith?"</p> + +<p>"From Edith? Never!"</p> + +<p>"When did you hear it, then?"</p> + +<p>"Yesterday afternoon."</p> + +<p>"From some one in the hotel?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"From whom? Not that it matters."</p> + +<p>"From those women who came yesterday. I didn't know whom they were +talking about. They were talking quite loud. They didn't know who I was."</p> + +<p>"You say you didn't know whom they were talking about?"</p> + +<p>"Not at first—not till you came in. Then I knew."</p> + +<p>"I see. That was the first time you had heard of it?"</p> + +<p>Her lips parted in assent, but her voice died under the torture.</p> + +<p>"Then," he said, "I am profoundly sorry. If I had realised that, I would +not have spoken to you as I did."</p> + +<p>The memory of it stung her.</p> + +<p>"That," she said, "was—in any circumstances—unpardonable."</p> + +<p>"I know it was. And I repeat, I am profoundly sorry. But, you see, I +thought you knew all the time, and that you had consented to forget it. +And I thought, don't you know, it was—well, rather hard on me to have it +all raked up again like that. Now I see how very hard it was on you, +dear. Your not knowing makes all the difference."</p> + +<p>"It does indeed. If I <i>had</i> known——"</p> + +<p>"I understand. You wouldn't have married me?"</p> + +<p>"I should not."</p> + +<p>"Dear—do you suppose I didn't know that?"</p> + +<p>"I know nothing."</p> + +<p>"Do you remember the day I asked you why you cared for me, and you said +it was because you knew I was good?"</p> + +<p>Her lip trembled.</p> + +<p>"And of course I know it's been an awful shock to you to discover +that—I—was <i>not</i> so good."</p> + +<p>She turned away her face.</p> + +<p>"But I never meant you to discover it. Not for yourself, like this. I +couldn't have forgiven myself—after what you told me. I meant to have +told you myself—that evening—but my poor little sister promised me that +she would. She said it would be easier for you to hear it from her. Of +course I believed her. There <i>were</i> things she could say that I +couldn't."</p> + +<p>"She never said a word."</p> + +<p>"Are you sure?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly. Except—yes—she <i>did</i> say——"</p> + +<p>It was coming back to her now.</p> + +<p>"Do you mind telling me exactly what she said?"</p> + +<p>"N—no. She made me promise that if I ever found things in you that I +didn't understand, or that I didn't like——"</p> + +<p>"Well—what did she make you promise?"</p> + +<p>"That I wouldn't be hard on you. Because, she said, you'd had such a +miserable life."</p> + +<p>"Poor Edith! So that was the nearest she could get to it. Things you +didn't understand and didn't like!"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know what she meant."</p> + +<p>"Of course you didn't. Who could? But I'm sorry to say that Edith made me +pretty well believe you did."</p> + +<p>He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister's +strange duplicity. Apparently he gave it up.</p> + +<p>"You can't be a brute to a poor little woman with a bad spine," said he; +"but I'm not going to forgive Edith for that."</p> + +<p>Anne flamed through her pallor. "For what?" she said. "For not having had +more courage than yourself? Think what you put on her."</p> + +<p>"I didn't. She took it on herself. Edith's got courage enough for +anybody. She would never admit that her spine released her from all moral +obligations. But I suppose she meant well."</p> + +<p>The spirit of the grey, cold morning seemed to have settled upon Anne. +She gazed sternly out over the eastern sea. Preoccupied with what he +considered Edith's perfidy, he failed to understand his wife's silence +and her mood.</p> + +<p>"Edith's very fond of you. You won't let this make any difference between +you and her?"</p> + +<p>"Between her and me it can make no difference. I am very fond of Edith."</p> + +<p>"But the fact remains that you married me under false pretences? Is that +what you mean?"</p> + +<p>"You may certainly put it that way."</p> + +<p>"I understand your point of view completely. I wish you could understand +mine. When Edith said there were things she could have told you that I +couldn't, she meant that there were extenuating circumstances."</p> + +<p>"They would have made no difference."</p> + +<p>"Excuse me, they make all the difference. But, of course, there's no +extenuation for deception. Therefore, if you insist on putting it that +way—if—if it has made the whole thing intolerable to you, it seems to +me that perhaps I ought, don't you know, to release you from your +obligations——"</p> + +<p>She looked at him. She knew that he had understood the meaning and the +depth of her repugnance. She did not know that such understanding is +rare in the circumstances, nor could she see that in itself it was a +revelation of a certain capacity for the "goodness" she had once believed +in. But she did see that she was being treated with a delicacy and +consideration she had not expected of this man with the strange devil. +It touched her in spite of her repugnance. It made her own that she had +expected nothing short of it until yesterday.</p> + +<p>"<i>Do</i> you insist?" he went on. "After what I've told you?"</p> + +<p>"After what you've told me—no. I'm ready to believe that you did not +mean to deceive me."</p> + +<p>"Doesn't that make any difference?" he asked tenderly.</p> + +<p>"Yes. It makes some difference—in my judgment of you."</p> + +<p>"You mean you're not—as Edith would say—going to be too hard on me?"</p> + +<p>"I hope," said Anne, "I should never be too hard on any one."</p> + +<p>"Then," he inquired, eager to be released from the strain of a most +insupportable situation, "what are we going to do next?"</p> + +<p>He had assumed that the supreme issue had been decided by a polite +evasion; and his question had been innocent of all momentous meaning. He +merely wished to know how they were going to spend the day that was +before them, since they had to spend days, and spend them together. But +Anne's tense mind contemplated nothing short of the supreme issue that, +for her, was not to be evaded, nor yet to be decided hastily.</p> + +<p>"Will you leave me alone," she said, "to think it over? Will you give me +three hours?"</p> + +<p>He stared and turned pale; for, this time, he understood.</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he said coldly, rising and taking out his watch. "It's +twelve now."</p> + +<p>"At three, then?"</p> + +<p>They met at three o'clock. Anne had spent one hour of bewilderment out of +doors, two hours of hard praying and harder thinking in her room.</p> + +<p>Her mind was made up. However notorious her husband had been, between him +and her there was to be no open rupture. She was not going to leave him, +to appeal to him for a separation, to deny him any right. Not that she +was moved by a profound veneration for the legal claim. Marriage was to +her a matter of religion even more than of law. And though, at the +moment, she could no longer discern its sacramental significance through +the degraded aspect it now wore for her, she surrendered on the religious +ground. The surrender would be a martyrdom. She was called upon to lay +down her will, but not to subdue the deep repugnance of her soul.</p> + +<p>Protection lay for her in Walter's chivalry, as she well knew. But she +would not claim it. Chastened and humbled, she would take up her wedded +life again. There was no vow that she would not keep, no duty she would +not fulfil. And she would remain in her place of peace, building up +between them the ramparts of the spiritual life.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile she gave him credit for his attitude.</p> + +<p>"Things can never be as they were between us," she said. "That you cannot +expect. But—"</p> + +<p>He listened with his eyes fixed on hers, accepting from her his destiny. +She reddened.</p> + +<p>"It was good of you to offer to release me—" He spared her.</p> + +<p>"Are you not going to hold me to it, then?"</p> + +<p>"I am not." She paused, and then forced herself to it. "I will try to be +a good wife to you."</p> + +<p>"Thank you."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + + +<p>It was impossible for them to stay any longer at Scarby. The place was +haunted by the presence and the voice of scandalous rumour. Anne had the +horrible idea that it had been also a haunt of Lady Cayley, of the infamy +itself.</p> + +<p>The week-old honeymoon looked at them out of its clouds with such an +aged, sinister, and disastrous aspect that they resolved to get away from +it. For the sake of appearances, they spent another week of aimless +wandering on the East coast, before returning to the town where an +unintelligible fate had decided that Majendie should have a business he +detested, and a house.</p> + +<p>Anne had once asked herself what she would do if she were told that +she would have to spend all her life in Scale on Humber. Scale is +prevailingly, conspicuously commercial. It is not beautiful. Its streets +are squalidly flat, its houses meanly rectangular. The colouring of Scale +is thought by some to be peculiarly abominable. It is built in brown, +paved and pillared in unclean grey. Its rivers and dykes run brown under +a grey northeastern sky.</p> + +<p>Once a year it yields reluctantly to strange passion, and Spring is +born in Scale; born in tortures almost human, a relentless immortality +struggling with visible corruption. The wonder is that it should be born +at all.</p> + +<p>To-day, the day of their return, the March wind had swept the streets +clean, and the evening had secret gold and sharp silver in its grey. Anne +remembered how, only last year, she had looked upon such a spring on the +day when she guessed for the first time that Walter cared for her. She +was not highly endowed with imagination; still, even she had felt dimly, +and for once in her life, that sense of mortal tenderness and divine +uplifting which is the message of Spring to all lovers.</p> + +<p>But that emotion, which had had its momentary intensity for Anne +Fletcher, was over and done with for Anne Majendie. Like some mourner for +whom superb weather has been provided on the funeral day of his beloved, +she felt in this young, wantoning, unsympathetic Spring the immortal +cruelty and irony of Nature. She was bearing her own heart to its burial; +and each street that they passed, as the slow cab rattled heavily on its +way from the station, was a stage in the intolerable progress; it brought +her a little nearer to the grave.</p> + +<p>From her companion's respectful silence she gathered that, though lost +to the extreme funereal significance of their journey, he was not +indifferent; he shared to some extent her mourning mood. She was grateful +for that silence of his, because it justified her own.</p> + +<p>They were both, by their temperaments, absurdly and diversely, +almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very +worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble. +Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all +lives passed between walls that protect them from the world. At +seven-and-twenty she was a girl, with a girl's indestructible innocence. +She had not yet felt within her the springs of her own womanhood. +Marriage had not touched the spirit, which had kept itself apart even +from her happiness, in the days that were given her to be happy in. Her +suffering was like a child's, and her attitude to it bitterly immature. +It bounded her; it annihilated the intellectual form of time, +obliterating the past, and intercepting any view of a future. Only, +unlike a child, and unlike Majendie, she lacked the power of the +rebound to joy.</p> + +<p>"Dear," said her husband anxiously, as the cab drew up at the door of the +house in Prior Street, "have you realised that poor Edith is probably +preparing to receive us with glee? Do you think you could manage to look +a little less unhappy?"</p> + +<p>The words were a shock to her, but they did her the service of a shock +by recalling her to the realities outside herself. All the courtesies +and kindnesses she owed to those about her insisted that her bridal +home-coming must lack no sign of grace. She forced a smile.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry. I didn't know I was looking particularly unhappy."</p> + +<p>It struck her that Walter was not looking by any means too happy himself.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter; only, we don't want to dash her down, first thing, do +we?"</p> + +<p>"No—no. Dear Edith. And there's Nanna—how sweet of her—and Kate, and +Mary, too."</p> + +<p>The old nurse stood on the doorstep to welcome them; her fellow-servants +were behind her, smiling, at the door. Interested faces appeared at the +windows of the house opposite. At the moment of alighting Anne was aware +that the eyes of many people were upon them, and she was thankful that +she had married a man whose self-possession, at any rate, she could rely +on. Majendie's manner was perfect. He avoided both the bridegroom's +offensive assiduity and his no less offensive affectation of +indifference. It had occurred to him that, in the circumstances, Anne +might find it peculiarly disagreeable to be stared at.</p> + +<p>"Look at Nanna," he whispered, to distract her attention. "There's no +doubt about her being glad to see you."</p> + +<p>Nanna grasped the hands held out to her, hanging her head on one side, +and smiling her tremorous, bashful smile. The other two, Kate and Mary, +came forward, affectionate, but more self-contained. Anne realised with a +curious surprise that she was coming back to a household that she knew, +that knew her and loved her. In the last week she had forgotten Prior +Street.</p> + +<p>Majendie watched her anxiously. But she, too, had qualities which could +be relied on. As she passed into the house she had held her head high, +with an air of flinging back the tragic gloom like a veil from her face. +She was not a woman to trail a tragedy up and down the staircase. Above +all, he could trust her trained loyalty to convention.</p> + +<p>The servants threw open two doors on the ground floor, and stood back +expectant. On such an occasion it was proper to look pleased and to give +praise. Anne was fine in her observance of each propriety as she looked +into the rooms prepared for her. The house in Prior Street had not lost +its simple old-world look in beautifying itself for the bride. It had put +on new blinds and clean paint, and the smell of spring flowers was +everywhere. The rest was familiar. She had told Majendie that she liked +the old things best. They appealed to her sense of the fit and the +refined; they were signs of good taste and good breeding in her husband's +family and in himself. The house was a survival, a protest against the +terrible all-invading soul of Scale on Humber.</p> + +<p>For another reason, which she could not yet analyse, Anne was glad that +nothing had been changed for her coming. It was as if she felt that it +would have been hard on Majendie if he had been put to much expense in +renovating his house for a woman in whom the spirit of the bride had +perished. The house in Prior Street was only a place for her body to +dwell in, for her soul to hide in, only walls around walls, the shell +of the shell.</p> + +<p>She turned to her husband with a smile that flashed defiance to the +invading pathos of her state. Majendie's eyes brightened with hope, +beholding her admirable behaviour. He had always thoroughly approved of +Anne.</p> + +<p>Upstairs, in the room that was her own, poor Edith (the cause, as he +felt, of their calamity) had indeed prepared for them with joy.</p> + +<p>Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her, +as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured +spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little +while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The +flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave +to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into +vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its +temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched +them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped on her cushions, had +acquired a dominant yet passionless presence, as of some regal woman of +the earth surrendered to a heavenly empire. You could see that, however +sanctified by suffering, Edith had still a placid mundane pleasure in her +white wrapper of woollen gauze, and in her long lace scarf. She wore them +with an appearance of being dressed appropriately for a superb occasion.</p> + +<p>The sign of her delicacy was in her hands, smoothed and wasted with +inactivity. Yet they had an energy of their own. The hands and the weak, +slender arms had a surprising way of leaping up to draw to her all +beloved persons who bent above her couch. They leapt now to her brother +and his wife, and sank, fatigued with their effort. Two frail, nervous +hands embraced Majendie's, till one of them let go, as she remembered +Anne, and held her, too.</p> + +<p>Anne had been vexed, and Majendie angry with her; but anger and vexation +could not live in sight of the pure, tremulous, eager soul of love that +looked at them out of Edith's eyes.</p> + +<p>"What a skimpy honeymoon you've had," she said. "Why did you go and cut +it short like that? Was it just because of me?"</p> + +<p>In one sense it was because of her. Anne was helpless before her +question; but Majendie rose to it.</p> + +<p>"I say—the conceit of her! No, it wasn't just because of you. Anne +agreed with me about Scarby. And we're not cutting our honeymoon short, +we're spinning it out. We're going to have another one, some day, in a +nicer place."</p> + +<p>"Anne didn't like Scarby, after all?"</p> + +<p>"No, I knew she wouldn't. And she lived to own that I was right."</p> + +<p>"That," said Edith, laughing, "was a bad beginning. If I'd been you, +Anne, whether I was right or not, I'd never have owned that <i>he</i> was."</p> + +<p>"Anne," said Majendie, "is never anything but just. And this time she was +generous."</p> + +<p>Edith's hand was on the sleeve of Majendie's coat, caressing it. She +looked up at Anne.</p> + +<p>"And what," said she, "do you think of my little brother, on the whole?"</p> + +<p>"I think he says a great many things he doesn't mean."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you've found that out, have you? What else have you discovered?"</p> + +<p>The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her tragedy.</p> + +<p>"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?"</p> + +<p>Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue, +withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the +movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested +there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself.</p> + +<p>At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad +assumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon Nanna +as she came in with the tea-tray.</p> + +<p>Nanna was sly and shy and ceremonial in her bearing, but under it there +lurked the privileged audacity of the old servant, and (as poor Majendie +perceived) the secret, terrifying gaiety of the hymeneal devotee. The +faint sound of giggling on the staircase penetrated to the room. It was +evident that Nanna was preparing some horrid and tremendous rite.</p> + +<p>She set her tray in its place by Edith's couch, and cleared a side table +which she had drawn into a central and conspicuous position. The three, +as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of what +Nanna had in hand.</p> + +<p>She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned, +herself in jubilee let loose. She carried an enormous plate, and on the +plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a +little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown. She +stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly.</p> + +<p>The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing. Nanna, +listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an appreciation +too profound for utterance.</p> + +<p>They looked at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling +yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and +of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed +its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like +innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and +formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding +symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves +in her companions' minds as one vast sensation of discomfort.</p> + +<p>As usual when he was embarrassed, Majendie laughed.</p> + +<p>"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous +thing. <i>Must</i> we eat it?"</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I can—possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her +sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache.</p> + +<p>"Let's all eat it—and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of +fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and +buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that +Nanna will dig it up again?"</p> + +<p>Anne turned white over her tea, pleaded her headache, and begged to be +taken to her room. Majendie took her there.</p> + +<p>"Isn't Anne well?" asked Edith anxiously, when he came back.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's nothing. She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake +finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man. +Let's ring for Nanna to take it away."</p> + +<p>He rang. When Nanna appeared Edith was eating her crumbs ostentatiously, +as if unwilling to leave the last of a delicious thing.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Nanna," said she, "that's a heavenly wedding-cake!"</p> + +<p>Majendie was reminded of the habitual tender perfidy of that saint, his +sister. She was always lying to make other people happy, saying that she +had everything she wanted, when she hadn't, and that her spine didn't +hurt her, when it did. When Edith was too exhausted to lie, she would +look at you and smile, with the sweat of her torture on her forehead. He +knew Edith, and wondered how far she had lied to Anne, and what she had +done it for. He had a good mind to ask her; but he shrank from "dashing +her down the first day."</p> + +<p>But Edith herself dashed everything down the first five minutes. There +was nothing that <i>she</i> shrank from.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry for poor Anne," said she; "but it's nice to get you all to +myself again. Just for once. Only for once. I'm not jealous."</p> + +<p>He smiled, and stroked her hair.</p> + +<p>"I was jealous—oh, furiously jealous, just at first, for five minutes. +But I got over it. It was so undignified."</p> + +<p>"It didn't show, dear."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean it to. It wouldn't have been pretty. And now, it's all +over and I like Anne. But I don't like her as much as you."</p> + +<p>"You must like her more," he said gravely. "She'll need it—badly."</p> + +<p>Edith looked at him. "How can she need it badly, when she has you?"</p> + +<p>"You're a good woman, and I'm a mere mortal man. She's found that out +already, and she doesn't like it."</p> + +<p>"Wallie, <i>dear</i>, what do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean exactly what I say. She's found it out. She's found <i>me</i> out. +She's found everything out."</p> + +<p>"Found out? But how?"</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter how. Edie, why didn't you tell her? You said you +would."</p> + +<p>"Yes—I said I would."</p> + +<p>"And you told me you had."</p> + +<p>"No. I didn't tell you I had."</p> + +<p>"What did you tell me, then?"</p> + +<p>"I told you there was nothing to be afraid of, that it was all right."</p> + +<p>"And of course I thought you'd told her."</p> + +<p>"If I had told her it wouldn't have been all right; for she wouldn't have +married you."</p> + +<p>Majendie scowled, and Edith went on calmly.</p> + +<p>"I knew that—she as good as told me so—and I knew <i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well—what if she hadn't married me?"</p> + +<p>"That would have been very bad for both of you. Especially for you."</p> + +<p>"For me? And how do you know this isn't going to be worse? For both of +us. It's generally better to be straight, and face facts, however +disagreeable. Especially when everybody knows that you've got a skeleton +in your cupboard."</p> + +<p>"Anne didn't, and she was so afraid of skeletons."</p> + +<p>"All the more reason why you should have hauled the horrid thing out and +let her have a good look at it. She mightn't have been afraid of it then. +Now she's convinced it's a fifty times worse skeleton than it is."</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't have lived with it in the house, dear. She said so."</p> + +<p>"But I thought you never told her?"</p> + +<p>"She was talking about somebody else's skeleton, dear."</p> + +<p>"Oh, somebody else's, that's a very different thing."</p> + +<p>"She meant—if she'd been the woman. I was testing her, to see how she'd +take it. Do you think I was very wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Well, frankly, dear, I cannot say you were very wise."</p> + +<p>"I wonder——"</p> + +<p>She lay back wondering. Doubt of her wisdom shook her through all her +tender being. She had been so sure.</p> + +<p>"How would you have liked it," said she, "if Anne had given you up and +gone away, and you'd never seen her again?"</p> + +<p>His face said plainly that he wouldn't have liked it at all.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's what she'd have done. And I wanted her to stay and marry +you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but with her eyes open."</p> + +<p>She shook her head, the head that would have been so wise for him.</p> + +<p>"No," said she. "Anne's one of those people who see best with their eyes +shut."</p> + +<p>"Well, they're open enough now in all conscience. But there's one thing +she hasn't found out. She doesn't know how it happened. Can you tell her? +<i>I</i> can't. I told her there were extenuating circumstances; but of +course I couldn't go into them."</p> + +<p>"What did she say?"</p> + +<p>"She said no circumstances could extenuate facts."</p> + +<p>"I can hear her saying it."</p> + +<p>"I understand her state of mind," said Majendie. "She couldn't see the +circumstances for the facts."</p> + +<p>"Our Anne is but young. In ten years' time she won't be able to see the +facts for the circumstances."</p> + +<p>"Well—will you tell her?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I will."</p> + +<p>"Make her see that I'm not necessarily an utter brute just because I——"</p> + +<p>"I'll make her see everything."</p> + +<p>"Forgive me for bothering you."</p> + +<p>"Dear—forgive me for breaking my promise and deceiving you."</p> + +<p>He bent to her weak arms.</p> + +<p>"I believe," she whispered, "the end will yet justify the means."</p> + +<p>"Oh—the end."</p> + +<p>He didn't see it; but he was convinced that there could hardly be a worse +beginning.</p> + +<p>He went upstairs, where Anne lay in the agonies of her bilious attack. He +found comfort, rather than gave it, by holding handkerchiefs steeped in +eau-de-Cologne to her forehead. It gratified him to find that she would +let him do it without shrinking from his touch.</p> + +<p>But Anne was past that.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + + +<p>For once in his life Majendie was glad that he had a business. Shipping +(he was a ship-owner) was a distraction from the miserable problem that +weighed on him at home.</p> + +<p>Anne's morning face was cold to him. She lay crushed in her bed. She had +had a bad night, and he knew himself to be the cause of it.</p> + +<p>His pity for her hurt like passion.</p> + +<p>"How is she?" asked Edith, as he came into her room before going to the +office.</p> + +<p>"She's a wreck," he said, "a ruin. She's had an awful night. Be kind to +her, Edie."</p> + +<p>Edie was very kind. But she said to herself that if Anne was a ruin that +was not at all a bad thing.</p> + +<p>Edith Majendie was a loving but shrewd observer of the people of her +world. Lying on her back she saw them at an unusual angle, almost as if +they moved on a plane invisible to persons who go about upright on their +legs. The four walls of her room concentrated her vision in bounding it. +She saw few women and fewer men, but she saw them apart from those +superficial activities which distract and darken judgment. Faces that +she was obliged to see bending over her had another aspect for Edith than +that which they presented to the world at large. Anne Majendie, who had +come so near to Edith, had always put a certain distance between herself +and her other friends. While they were chiefly impressed with her superb +superiority, and saw her forever standing on a pedestal, Edith declared +that she knew nothing of Anne's austere and impressive attributes. She +protested against anything so dreary as the other people's view of her. +They and their absurd pedestals! She refused to regard her sister-in-law +as an established solemnity, eminent and lonely in the scene. Pedestals +were all very well at a proper distance, but at a close view they were +foreshortening to the human figure. Other people might like to see more +pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they +didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter.</p> + +<p>If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with +her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for +Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you +traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause +of all Anne's troubles.</p> + +<p>That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever +obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. She knew that it was her spine +that had kept her brother from marrying all those years. He couldn't +leave her alone with it, neither could he ask any woman to share the +house inhabited, pervaded, dominated by it. Unsafeguarded by marriage, he +had fallen into evil hands. To Edith, who had plenty of leisure for +reflection, all this had become terribly clear.</p> + +<p>Then Anne had come, the strong woman who could bear Walter's burden for +him. She had been jealous of Anne at first, for five minutes. Then she +had blessed her.</p> + +<p>But Edith, as she had told her brother, was not a fool. And all the time, +while her heart leapt to the image of Anne in her dearness and sweetness, +her brain saw perfectly well that her sister-in-law had not been free +from the sin of pride (that came, said Edith, of standing on a pedestal. +It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at +any rate, where you were).</p> + +<p>Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a +woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you +to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to +disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him.</p> + +<p>Anne owned herself baffled.</p> + +<p>Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness, +by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her +ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health. +As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man +she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen +his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling +her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in +the house in Prior Street before her memories assailed her. Her new and +detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him. +The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile +them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected +by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence +were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her +memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her, +her conscience resisted and rose against them both.</p> + +<p>Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs +she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening. +She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's +home-coming.</p> + +<p>To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She +could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept +that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, +and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at +from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong +space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had +planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many +thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But +something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As +Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended +knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to +them.</p> + +<p>To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of +that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious +of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that +way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it +did not appeal to her in any way at all.</p> + +<p>"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of +mine—of yours, I mean."</p> + +<p>"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not +jealous."</p> + +<p>"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't +garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache."</p> + +<p>"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.</p> + +<p>Her calmness irritated Edith.</p> + +<p>"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!"</p> + +<p>Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for.</p> + +<p>"You know, you used to think so, too."</p> + +<p>"Of course I did," said Anne evasively.</p> + +<p>"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>have</i> married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that."</p> + +<p>"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying—mere marrying—may be a +great deal—about as much as many men have a right to ask."</p> + +<p>"Hasn't every man a right to ask for—what shall I say—a little +understanding—from the woman he cares for?"</p> + +<p>"Edith, what has he told you?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself."</p> + +<p>"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?"</p> + +<p>"Did he pose as <i>l'homme incompris</i>? No, he didn't."</p> + +<p>"Still—he told you," Anne insisted.</p> + +<p>"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to +her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand."</p> + +<p>"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring. +I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook.</p> + +<p>"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he +is."</p> + +<p>"I know what he was—what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with +what he is."</p> + +<p>"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him +something too bad for words?"</p> + +<p>Anne broke down weakly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?"</p> + +<p>"What? That Wallie was bad?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything."</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It +wouldn't have been true."</p> + +<p>"He says himself that everything was true."</p> + +<p>"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know +the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell +you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left +it to me; he said I was to tell you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me."</p> + +<p>"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose +for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?"</p> + +<p>"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible +part of it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But <i>I</i> knew all right. He never kept +anything from me, not for long."</p> + +<p>"But, Edith—how <i>could</i> he? How <i>could</i> he? When the woman—Lady +Cayley—She was <i>bad</i>, wasn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them—worse. You know she was +divorced?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know."</p> + +<p>"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were +several others—four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a +mere drop in her ocean."</p> + +<p>Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her.</p> + +<p>"But," said she, "he was in it."</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, he was in it. The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the +others. But it couldn't keep him. He couldn't live in it, like them."</p> + +<p>"But how did she get hold of him?"</p> + +<p>"She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry."</p> + +<p>(His chivalry—she knew it.)</p> + +<p>"It's what happens, over and over again. He thought her a vilely injured +woman. He may have thought her good. He certainly thought her pathetic. +It was the pathos that did it."</p> + +<p>"That—did—it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Did it. She hurled herself at his head—at his knees—at his +feet—-till he <i>had</i> to lift her. And that's how it happened."</p> + +<p>Anne's spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening.</p> + +<p>"I know it oughtn't to have happened. I know Walter wasn't the holy saint +he ought to have been. But oh, he was a martyr!" She paused. "And—he was +very young."</p> + +<p>"Edith—when was it?"</p> + +<p>"Seven years ago."</p> + +<p>Anne pondered. The seven years helped to purify him. Every day helped +that threw the horror further back in time—separated it from her. If—if +he had not been steeped too long in it. She wanted to know <i>how</i> long, +but she was afraid to ask; afraid lest it should be brought nearer to her +than she could bear. Edith saw her fear.</p> + +<p>"It lasted two years. It was all my fault."</p> + +<p>"Your fault?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, my fault. Because of my horrid spine. You see, it kept him from +marrying."</p> + +<p>"Well, but—"</p> + +<p>"Well, but it couldn't have happened if he had married. How <i>could</i> it? +How could it have happened if you had been there? You would have saved +him."</p> + +<p>She paused on that note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was +a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the +dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of brooding, +mystic harmonies.</p> + +<p>"You would have saved him."</p> + +<p>Anne saw herself for one moment as his guardian angel, her mission +frustrated through a flaw of time. That vision was dashed by another, +herself as the ideal, the star he should have looked to before its dawn, +herself dishonoured by his young haste, his passion, his failure to +foresee.</p> + +<p>"He should have waited for me."</p> + +<p>"Did you wait for him?"</p> + +<p>A quick flush pulsed through the whiteness of Anne's face. She looked +back seven years to her girlhood in the southern Deanery, her home. She +had another vision, a vision of a Minor Canon, whom she had loved with +the pure worship of her youth, a love of which somehow she was now +ashamed. Ashamed, though it had then seemed to her so spiritual. Her dead +parents had desired the marriage, but neither she nor they had the power +to bring it about.</p> + +<p>Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a +venture.</p> + +<p>"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can +say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'"</p> + +<p>"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to +marry him."</p> + +<p>For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased +to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a +disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed +of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one +and Lady Cayley?</p> + +<p>"Edith," she said suddenly, "did you ever see her?"</p> + +<p>"Never," said Edith emphatically.</p> + +<p>"You don't know what she was like?"</p> + +<p>"I don't. I never wanted to. I dare say there are people in Scale who +could tell you all about her, only I wouldn't inquire if I were you."</p> + +<p>"Did it happen at Scarby?" She was determined to know the worst.</p> + +<p>"I believe so."</p> + +<p>"Oh—why did I ever go there?"</p> + +<p>"He didn't want you to. That was why."</p> + +<p>"Where is she now?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody knows. She might be anywhere."</p> + +<p>"Not here?"</p> + +<p>"No, not here. My dear, you mustn't get her on your nerves."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid of meeting her."</p> + +<p>"It isn't likely that you ever will. She isn't the sort one does +meet—now, poor thing."</p> + +<p>"Who was she?"</p> + +<p>"The wife of Sir Andrew Cayley, a tallow-chandler."</p> + +<p>"Oh, how did Walter ever—"</p> + +<p>"My dear, one meets all sorts of funny people in Scale. He was a very +wealthy tallow-chandler. Besides, it wasn't he that Walter did meet, +naturally."</p> + +<p>"How can you joke about it? It makes me sick to think of it."</p> + +<p>"It made me sick enough once, dear. But I don't think of it."</p> + +<p>"I can't help thinking of it."</p> + +<p>"Well, whenever you do, when it does come over you—it will, +sometimes—think of what Walter's life was before he knew you. Everything +was spoiled for him because of me. He was sent to a place he detested +because of me; put into an office which he loathed, shut up here in this +hateful house, because of me. And he was good to me, good and dear. Even +at the worst he hardly ever left me if he thought I wanted him—not even +to go to <i>her</i>. But he was young, and it was an awful life for him; you +don't know how awful. It would have been bad enough for a woman. It was +intolerable for a man. I was worse then than I am now. I was horribly +fretful, and I worried him. I think I drove him to her—I know I did. He +had to get away from it sometimes. Won't you think of that?"</p> + +<p>"I'll try to think of it."</p> + +<p>"And it won't make you not like him?"</p> + +<p>"My dear, I liked him first for your sake, then I liked you for his, now +I suppose I must like him for yours again."</p> + +<p>"No—for his own sake."</p> + +<p>"Does it matter which?"</p> + +<p>"Not much—so long as you like him. He really is angelic, though you +mayn't think it."</p> + +<p>"I think you are."</p> + +<p>Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew +with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that +hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her +likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature +not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne, +a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers +sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing +in her hair.</p> + +<p>"You're a saint," said Edith.</p> + +<p>"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery.</p> + +<p>"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with +me."</p> + +<p>Whereupon Anne kissed her.</p> + +<p>"And I may tell Walter what you've said?"</p> + +<p>It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would +shrink from telling him.</p> + +<p>Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They +returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was +burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an +arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there.</p> + +<p>His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that +room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together. +She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when +Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always +in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine +devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of +the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been +hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She +felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith, +it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his +goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in +Anne.</p> + +<p>It came over her now with a fresh shock, how very little, after all, she +had known of him. It was through Edith that she really knew him. And yet +it was impossible that Edith could have absorbed him utterly. Anne had +not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that +Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least. What +remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must +partially reveal.</p> + +<p>She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about +her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and +his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings +with the outer world. Now she rose and went round the room, searching for +its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old. +If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used +it, how little he had been able to call anything his own. The things in +it had no comfortable look of service. He could not have smoked there +much, the curtains were too innocent. He could not have sat in that +arm-chair much, the surface was too smooth. He could not have come there +much at any time, for, though the carpet was faded, there was no +well-worn passage from the threshold to the hearth. As far as she could +make out he came there for no earthly purpose but to change his boots +before going upstairs to Edith.</p> + +<p>The bookcase told the same story. It held histories and standard works +inherited from Majendie's father; the works of Dickens, and Thackeray, +and Hardy, read over and over again in the days when he had time for +reading; several poets whom, by his own confession, he could not have +read in any circumstances. One Meredith, partly uncut, testified to an +honest effort and a baulked accomplishment. On a shelf apart stood the +books that he had loved when he was a boy, the Annuals, the tales of +travel and adventure, and one or two school prizes gorgeously bound.</p> + +<p>As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence +appealed to her comprehension and compassion.</p> + +<p>She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition. Instead of being +sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early +support himself. He had supported himself. And he had stuck to the +business that he might the better support Edith.</p> + +<p>She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness.</p> + +<p>She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she +had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day. +It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had +answered: "Because you are good. You always have been good."</p> + +<p>And he had said (how it came back to her!), "And if I hadn't always? +Wouldn't you have cared then?"</p> + +<p>She had answered, "I would have cared, but I couldn't marry you."</p> + +<p>And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping +his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment. She had +wondered what had come over him.</p> + +<p>Now she knew. He had not been good. And she had married him.</p> + +<p>At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung +her, and again she trampled them down.</p> + +<p>She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that +her knowledge of him had laid low. She told herself that, after all, much +remained. She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his +goodness. He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other +woman who could have borne his burden half so well. Edith was too sweet +to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed. In +marrying Walter she would lift half the weight. Anne was strong, and she +glorified in her strength. That was what she was there for.</p> + +<p>How much more was she prepared to do? Keeping his house was nothing; +Nanna had always kept it well. Caring for Edith was nothing; she could +not help but care for her. She had promised Walter that she would be a +good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her +spiritual life apart.</p> + +<p>Was that being a good wife to him? To divorce her soul, her best self, +from him? If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere +material tie, what would she make of herself? Of him?</p> + +<p>It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than +that. She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never +would have appreciated <i>her</i>. That other woman didn't count; she had +thrust herself on him. When it came to choosing, he had chosen a +spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.) +And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter's choice was really +God's will. God's hand had led him to her.</p> + +<p>It had been a blow to Anne's pride to realise that she had +married—spiritually—beneath her. Her pride now recovered wonderfully, +seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself +superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's +poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give +than to receive.</p> + +<p>Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not +be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had +meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband +with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen +again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it +could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme.</p> + +<p>But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring +herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual +state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some +satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the +sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with +nervous trepidation.</p> + +<p>He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of +comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more +formidable question than, "How's your headache?"</p> + +<p>"Better, thank you."</p> + +<p>"That's all right."</p> + +<p>He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable +thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had +recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne, +tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was +disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance. +She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more cause to.</p> + +<p>"Do you mind my smoking? Say if you really do."</p> + +<p>She really did, but she forbore to say so. Forbearance henceforth was to +be part of her discipline.</p> + +<p>He smoked contentedly, with half-closed eyes; and when he talked, he +talked of the garden and of bulbs.</p> + +<p>Of bulbs, after what he had discussed with Edith upstairs. She would +rather that he had asked his question, forced her to the issue. That at +least would have shown some comprehension of her state. But he had taken +the issue for granted, refused to face the immensity of it all. She had +had her first taste of sacrificial flames, and her spirit was prepared to +go through fire to reach him. And he presented himself as already folded +and protected; satisfied with some inferior and independent secret of his +own.</p> + +<p>She felt that a little perturbation would have become him more than that +impenetrable peace.</p> + +<p>It would make it so difficult to raise him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + + +<p>The bell of St. Saviour's had ceased. Over the open market-place the air +throbbed with a thousand pulses from the dying heart of sound. The great +grey body of the Church was still; tower and couchant nave watched in +their monstrous, motionless dominion, till the music stirred in them like +a triumphant soul.</p> + +<p>As they hurried over the open market-place, Anne realised with some +annoyance that she was late again for the Wednesday evening service. She +dearly loved punctuality and order, and disliked to be either checked or +hastened in her superb movements. She disliked to be late for anything. +Above all she disliked standing on a mat outside a closed church door, in +the middle of a General Confession, trying to surrender her spirit to the +spirit of prayer, while Walter lingered, murmuring profane urbanities +that claimed her as his own.</p> + +<p>He had perceived what he called her innocent design, her transparent +effort to lead him to her heavenly heights. He had lent himself to +it, tenderly, gravely, as he would have lent himself to a child's +heart-rending play. He could not profess to follow the workings of his +wife's mind, but he did understand her point of view. She had been "let +in" for something she had not expected, and he was bound to make it up +to her.</p> + +<p>There had been a week of concessions, crowned by his appearance at St. +Saviour's.</p> + +<p>But that was on a Sunday. This was Wednesday, and he drew the line at +Wednesdays.</p> + +<p>Oh yes, he saw her drift. He knew that what she expected of him was +incessant penitence. But, after all, it was difficult to feel much +abasement for a fault committed quite a number of years ago and +sufficiently repented of at the time. He had settled his account, and +it was hard that he should be made to pay twice over. To-night his mood +was strangely out of harmony with Lent.</p> + +<p>Anne slackened her pace to intimate as much to him. Whereupon he lapsed +into strange and disturbing legends of his childhood. He told her he had +early weaned himself from the love of Lenten Services, observing their +effect upon the unfortunate lady, his aunt, who had brought him up. +Punctually at twelve o'clock on Palm Sunday, he said, the poor soul, +exhausted with her endeavours after the Christian life, would fly into +a passion, and punctually would rise from it at the same hour on Easter +Day. For quite a long time he had believed that that was why they called +it Passion Week.</p> + +<p>She moaned "Oh, Walter—don't!" as if he had hurt her, while she +repressed the play of a little, creeping, curling, mundane smile.</p> + +<p>If he would only leave her! But, as they crossed to the curbstone, he +changed over, preserving his proper place. He leaned to her with the +indestructible attention of a lover. His whole manner was inimitably +chivalrous, protective, and polite.</p> + +<p>Anne hardened her heart against him. At the church gate she turned and +faced him coldly.</p> + +<p>"If you're not going in," said she, "you needn't come any further."</p> + +<p>He glanced at the belated group of worshippers gathered before the church +door, and became more than ever polite and chivalrous and protective.</p> + +<p>"I must see you safely in," he said, and took up his stand beside her on +the mat.</p> + +<p>Her eyes rested on him for a second in reproach, then dropped behind the +veil of their lids. In another moment he would have to go. He had already +surrendered her prayer-book, tucking it gently under her arm.</p> + +<p>"You'll be all right when you get in, won't you?" he said encouragingly.</p> + +<p>"Please go," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Do I jar, dear?" he asked sweetly.</p> + +<p>"You do, very much."</p> + +<p>"I'm so sorry. I won't do it again."</p> + +<p>But his whispered vows and promises belied him, battling with her +consecrated mood. She felt that his innermost spirit remained in its +profanity, unillumined by her rebuke.</p> + +<p>Once more she set her face, and hardened her heart against him, and +removed herself in the silence and isolation of her prayer.</p> + +<p>Through the closed door there came the rich, confused murmur of the +Confession. He saw her lips curl, flower-like, with emotion, as her +breath rose and fell in unison with the heaving chant. He watched her +with a certain reverence, incomprehensibly chastened, till the door +opened, and she went from him, moving down the lighted aisle with her +remote, renunciating air.</p> + +<p>The door was shut in Majendie's face, and he turned away, intending to +kill, to murder the next hour at his club.</p> + +<p>Anne was self-trained in the habit of detachment. She had only to kneel, +to close her eyes and cover her face, and her soul slid of its own accord +into the place of peace. Her very breathing and the beating of her heart +were stayed. Her mind, emptied in a moment, was in a moment filled, +brimming over with the thought of God. To her veiled vision that thought +was like a sheet of blank light let down behind her drooped eyelids, and +centring in a luminous whorl. It fascinated her. Her prayer shot straight +to the heart of it, a communion too swift to trouble or divide the +blessed light.</p> + +<p>In that instant her husband, the image and the thought of him, were cast +into the secular darkness.</p> + +<p>She remembered how difficult it had once been thus to renounce him. +Her trouble, in the days of her engagement, had been that, thrust him +from her as she would, the idea of his goodness—the goodness that +justified her through its own appeal—would call up his presence, +emerging radiant from the outermost abyss. Inferior emotions then mingled +indistinguishably with her holiest ardours. Spiritually ambitious, she +had had her young eye on a hard-won crown of glory, and she had found +that happiness made the spiritual life almost contemptibly easy. It was +no effort in those days to realise divine mysteries, when the miracle of +the Incarnation was, as it were, worked for her in her own soul; when she +heard in her own heart the beating of the heart of God; when his hand +touched her with a tenderness that warmed her place of peace. She had +hardly known this flamed and lyric creature for herself. It was as if her +soul, resting after long flight, had contemplated for the first time the +silver and fine gold of her wings.</p> + +<p>It was the facility of the revelation that had first caused her to +suspect it. And she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon +her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She +could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in +her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost +purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine.</p> + +<p>Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God +set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment, +oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for +light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great +mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."</p> + +<p>Her hands, as she prayed, were folded close over her eyes. Having +annihilated her husband, she was disagreeably astonished to find that he +was there, that he had been there for some time, in the seat beside her.</p> + +<p>He was sitting in what he took to be an attitude of extreme reverence, +his head bowed and resting on his left arm, which was supported by the +back of the seat in front of him. His right arm embraced, unconsciously, +Anne's muff. Anne was vividly, painfully aware of him. Over the crook of +his elbow one eye looked up at her, bright, smiling with inextinguishable +affection. His lips gave out a sound that was not a prayer, but something +between a murmur and a moan, distinctly audible. She felt his gaze as a +gross, tangible thing, as a violent hand, parting the veils of prayer. +She bowed her head lower and pressed her hands to her face till the blood +tingled.</p> + +<p>The sermon obliged her to sit upright and exposed. It gave him +iniquitous opportunity. He turned in his seat; his eyes watched her under +half-closed lids, two slits shining through the thick, dark curtain of +their lashes. He kept on pulling at his moustache, as if to hide the dumb +but expressive adoration of his mouth. Anne, who felt that her soul had +been overtaken, trapped, and bared to the outrage, removed herself by a +yard's length till the hymn brought them together, linked by the book she +could not withhold. The music penetrated her soul and healed its hurt.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Christian, doth thou see them,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On the holy ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How the troops of Midian<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Prowl and prowl around?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sang Anne in a dulcet pianissimo, obedient to the choir.</p> + +<p>Profound abstraction veiled him, a treacherous unspiritual calm. Majendie +was a man with a baritone voice, which at times possessed him like a +furious devil. It was sleeping in him now, biding its time, ready, she +knew, to be roused by the first touch of a <i>crescendo</i>. The <i>crescendo</i> +came.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Christian! Up and fight them!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The voice waked; it leaped from him; and to Anne's terrified nerves it +seemed to be scattering the voices of the choir before it. It dropped on +the Amen and died; but in dying it remained triumphant, like the trump of +an archangel retreating to the uttermost ends of heaven.</p> + +<p>Anne's heart pained her with a profane tenderness, and a poignant +repudiation. Her soul being once more adjusted to the divine, it was +intolerable to think that this preposterous human voice should have power +to shake it so.</p> + +<p>She sank to her knees and bowed her head to the Benediction.</p> + +<p>"Did you like it?" he asked as they emerged together into the open air.</p> + +<p>He spoke as if to the child she seemed to him now to be. They had been +playing together, pretending they were two pilgrims bound for the +Heavenly City, and he wanted to know if she had had a nice game. He +nursed the exquisite illusion that this time he had pleased her by +playing too.</p> + +<p>"Of course I liked it."</p> + +<p>"So did I," he answered joyously, "I quite enjoyed it. We'll do it again +some other night."</p> + +<p>"What made you come, like that?" said she, appeased by his innocence.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't help it. You looked so pretty, dear, and so forlorn. It +seemed brutal, somehow, to abandon you on the weary road to heaven."</p> + +<p>She sighed. That was his chivalry again. He would escort her politely to +the door of heaven, but would he ever go in with her, would he ever stay +there?</p> + +<p>Still, it was something that he should have gone with her so far. It gave +her confidence and an idea of what her power might come to be. Not that +she relied upon herself alone. Her plan for Majendie's salvation was +liberal and large, it admitted of other methods, other influences. There +was no narrowness, any more than there was jealousy, in Anne.</p> + +<p>"Walter," said she, "I want you to know Mrs. Eliott."</p> + +<p>"But I do know her, don't I?"</p> + +<p>He called up a vision of the lady whose house had been Anne's home in +Scale. He was grateful to Mrs. Eliott. But for her slender acquaintance +with his sister, he would never have known Anne. This made him feel that +he knew Mrs. Eliott.</p> + +<p>"But I want you to know her as I know her."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Is that possible? Does a man ever know a woman as another +woman knows her?"</p> + +<p>Anne felt that she was not only being diverted from her purpose, but led +by a side tract to an unexplored profundity. On the further side of it +she discerned, dimly, the undesirable. It was a murky region, haunted +by still murkier presences, by Lady Cayley and her kind. She persisted +with a magnificent irrelevance.</p> + +<p>"You must know her. You would like her."</p> + +<p>He didn't in the least want to know Mrs. Eliott, he didn't think that he +would like her. But he was soothed, flattered, insanely pleased with +Anne's assumption that he would. It was as if in her thoughts she were +drawing him towards her. He felt that she was softening, yielding. His +approaches were a delicious wooing of an unfamiliar, unwedded Anne.</p> + +<p>"I would like her, because you like her, is that it?"</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't follow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, how you spoil it!"</p> + +<p>"Spoil what?"</p> + +<p>"My inference. It pleased me. But, as you say, the logic wasn't sound."</p> + +<p>Silence being the only dignified course under mystification, Anne was +silent. Some men had that irritating way with women; Walter's smile +suggested that he might have it. She was not going to minister to his +male delight. Unfortunately her silence seemed to please him too.</p> + +<p>"Never mind, dear, I do like her; because she likes you."</p> + +<p>"You will like her for herself when you know her."</p> + +<p>"Will she like me for myself when she knows me? It's extremely doubtful. +You see, hitherto she has made no ardent sign."</p> + +<p>"My dear, she says you've never been near her. You've never come to one +of her Thursdays."</p> + +<p>"Oh, her Thursdays—no, I haven't."</p> + +<p>"Well, how can you expect—but you'll go sometimes, now, to please me?"</p> + +<p>"Won't Wednesdays do?"</p> + +<p>"Wednesdays?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. It wasn't half bad to-night. I'll go to every blessed Wednesday, as +long as they last, if you'll only let me off Thursdays."</p> + +<p>"Please don't talk about being 'let off.' I thought you might like to +know my friends, that's all."</p> + +<p>"So I would. I'd like it awfully. By the way, that reminds me. I met +Hannay at the club to-night, and he asked if his wife might call on you. +Would you mind very much?"</p> + +<p>"Why should I mind, if she's a friend of yours and Edith's?"</p> + +<p>"Oh well, you see, she isn't exactly—"</p> + +<p>"Isn't exactly what?"</p> + +<p>"A friend of Edith's."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + + +<p>There is a polite and ancient rivalry between Prior Street and Thurston +Square, a rivalry that dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, +when Prior Street and Thurston Square were young. Each claims to be the +aristocratic centre of the town. Each acknowledges the other as its +solitary peer. If Prior Street were not Prior Street it would be Thurston +Square. There are a few old families left in Scale. They inhabit either +Thurston Square or Prior Street. There is nowhere else that they could +live with any dignity or comfort. In either place they are secure from +the contamination of low persons engaged in business, and from the wide +invading foot of the newly rich. These build themselves mansions after +their kind in the Park, or in the broad flat highways leading into the +suburbs. They have no sense for the dim undecorated charm of Prior Street +and Thurston Square.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more distinguished than Prior Street, with its sombre +symmetry, its air of delicate early Georgian reticence. But its +atmosphere is a shade too professional; it opens too precipitately on +the unlovely and unsacred street.</p> + +<p>Thurston Square is approached only by unfrequented ancient ways paved +with cobble stones. It is a place of garden greenness, of seclusion and +of leisure. It breathes a provincial quietness, a measured, hallowed +breath as of a cathedral close. Its inhabitants pride themselves on this +immemorial calm. The older families rely on it for the sustenance of +their patrician state. They sit by their firesides in dignified +attitudes, impressively, luxuriously inert. Their whole being is a +religious protest against the spirit of business.</p> + +<p>But the restlessness of the times has seized upon the other families, the +Pooleys, the Gardners, the Eliotts, younger by a century at least. They +utilise the perfect peace for the cultivation of their intellects.</p> + +<p>Every Thursday, towards half-past three, a wave of agreeable expectation, +punctual, periodic, mounts on the stillness and stirs it. Thursday is +Mrs. Eliott's day.</p> + +<p>The Eliotts belong to the old high merchant-families, the aristocracy of +trade, whose wealth is mellowed and beautified by time. Three centuries +met in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room, harmonised by the gentle spirit of the +place. Her frail modern figure moved (with elegance a little dishevelled +by abstraction) on an early Georgian background, among mid-Victorian +furniture, surrounded by a multitude of decorative objects. There were +great jars and idols from China and Japan; inlaid tables; screens and +cabinets and chairs in Bombay black wood, curiously carved; a splendid +profusion of painted and embroidered cloths; the spoils of seventy years +of Eastern trade. And on the top of it all, twenty years or so of recent +culture. The culture was represented by a well-filled bookcase, a few +diminished copies of antique sculpture, some modern sketches made in Rome +and Venice (for the Eliotts had travelled), and an illuminated triptych +with its saints in glory.</p> + +<p>Here, Thursday after Thursday, the same people met each other; they met, +Thursday after Thursday, the same fervid little company of ideas, of +aspirations and enthusiasms.</p> + +<p>It was five o'clock on one of her Thursdays, and Mrs. Eliott had been +conversing with great sweetness and fluency ever since half-past three. +That was the way she and Mrs. Pooley kept it up, and they could have kept +it up much longer but for the arrival of Miss Proctor.</p> + +<p>There was nothing, in Miss Proctor's opinion (if dear Fanny only knew +it), so provincial as an enthusiasm. As for aspirations (and Mrs. Pooley +was full of them) what could be more provincial than these efforts to be +what you were not? Miss Proctor disapproved of Thurston Square's +preoccupation with its intellect, a thing no well-bred person is ever +conscious of. She announced that she had come to take dear Fanny down +from her clouds and humanise her by a little gossip. She ignored Mrs. +Pooley, since Mrs. Pooley apparently wished to be ignored.</p> + +<p>"I want," said she, "the latest news of Anne."</p> + +<p>"If you wait, you may get it from herself."</p> + +<p>"My dear, do you suppose she'd give it me?"</p> + +<p>"It depends," said Mrs. Eliott, "on what you want to know."</p> + +<p>"I want to know whether she's happy. I want to know whether, by this +time, she <i>knows</i>."</p> + +<p>"You can't ask her."</p> + +<p>"Of course I can't. That's why I'm asking you."</p> + +<p>"I know nothing. I've hardly seen her."</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor looked as if she were seeing her that moment without Fanny +Eliott's help.</p> + +<p>"Poor dear Anne."</p> + +<p>Anne Fletcher had been simply dear Anne, Mrs. Walter Majendie was poor +dear Anne.</p> + +<p>Her friends were all sorry for her. They were inclined to be indignant +with Edith Majendie, who, they declared, had been at the bottom of her +marriage all along. She was the cause of Anne's original callings in +Prior Street. If it had not been for Edith, Anne could never have +penetrated that secret bachelor abode. The engagement had been an +awkward, unsatisfactory, sinister affair. It was a pity that Mr. +Majendie's domestic circumstances were such that poor dear Anne appeared +as having made all the necessary approaches and advances. If Mr. Majendie +had had a family that family would have had to call on Anne. But Mr. +Majendie hadn't a family, he had only Edith, which was worse than having +nobody at all. And then, besides, there was his history.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott looked distressed. Mr. Majendie's history could not +be explained away as too ancient to be interesting. In Scale a +seven-year-old event is still startlingly, unforgetably modern. Anne's +marriage had saddled her friends with a difficult responsibility, the +justification of Anne for that astounding step.</p> + +<p>Acquaintances had been made to understand that Mrs. Eliott had had +nothing to do with it. They went away baffled, but confirmed in their +impression that she knew; which was, after all, what they wanted to know.</p> + +<p>It was not so easy to satisfy the licensed curiosity of Anne's friends. +They came to-day in quantities, attracted by the news of the Majendies' +premature return from their honeymoon. Mrs. Eliott felt that Miss Proctor +and the Gardners were sitting on in the hope of meeting them.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott had been obliged to accept Anne's husband, that she might +retain Anne's affection. In this she did violence to her feelings, which +were sore on the subject of the marriage. It was not only on account of +the inglorious clouds he trailed. In any case she would have felt it as a +slight that her friend should have married without her assistance, and so +far outside the charmed circle of Thurston Square. She herself was for +the moment disappointed with Anne. Anne had once taken them all so +seriously. It was her solemn joy in Mrs. Eliott and her circle that had +enabled her young superiority to put up so long with the provincial +hospitalities of Scale on Humber. They, the slender aristocracy of +Thurston Square, were the best that Scale had to offer her, and they had +given her of their best. Socially, the step from Thurston Square to Prior +Street could not be defined as a going down; but, intellectually, it was +a decline, and morally (to those who knew Fanny Eliott and to Fanny +Eliott who <i>knew</i>) it was, by comparison, a plunge into the abyss. Fanny +Eliott was the fine flower of Thurston Square. She had satisfied even the +fastidiousness of Anne.</p> + +<p>She owned that Mr. Majendie had satisfied it too. It was not that quality +in Anne that made her choice so—well, so incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>It was Dr. Gardner's word. Dr. Gardner was the President of the Scale +Literary and Philosophic Society, and in any discussion of the +incomprehensible his word had weight. Vagueness was his foible, the +relaxation of an intellect uncomfortably keen. The spirit that looked +at you through his short-sighted eyes (magnified by enormous glasses) +seemed to have just returned from a solitary excursion in a dream. In +that mood the incomprehensible had for him a certain charm.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott had too much good taste to criticise Anne Majendie's. They +had simply got to recognise that Prior Street had more to offer her than +Thurston Square. That was the way she preferred to put it, effacing +herself a little ostentatiously.</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor maintained that Prior Street had nothing to offer a creature +of Anne Fletcher's kind. It had everything to take, and it seemed bent on +taking everything. It was bad enough in the beginning, when she had given +herself up, body and soul, to the spinal lady; but to go and marry the +brother, without first disposing of the spinal lady in a comfortable home +for spines, why, what must the man be like who could let her do it?</p> + +<p>"My dear," said Mrs. Eliott, "he's a saint, if you're to believe Anne."</p> + +<p>Even Dr. Gardner smiled. "I can't say that's exactly what I should call +him."</p> + +<p>"Need we," said Mr. Eliott, "call him anything? So long as she thinks him +a saint—"</p> + +<p>Mr. Eliott—Mr. Johnson Eliott—hovered on the borderland of culture, +with a spirit purified from commerce by a Platonic passion for the exact +sciences. He was, therefore, received in Thurston Square on his own as +well as his wife's merits. He too had his little weaknesses. Almost +savagely determined in matters of business, at home he liked to sit in +a chair and fondle the illusion of indifference. There was no part of +Mr. Eliott's mental furniture that was not a fixture, yet he scorned the +imputation of conviction. A hunted thing in his wife's drawing-room, Mr. +Eliott had developed in a quite remarkable degree the protective +colouring of stupidity.</p> + +<p>"How can she?" said Miss Proctor. "She's a saint herself, and she ought +to know the difference."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said Dr. Gardner, "that's why she doesn't."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure," said Mrs. Eliott, "it was the original attraction. There +could be no other for Anne."</p> + +<p>"The attraction was the opportunity for self-sacrifice. Whatever she's +makes of Mr. Majendie, she's bent on making a martyr of herself." Miss +Proctor met the vague eyes of her circle with a glance that was defiance +to all mystery. "It's quite simple. This marriage is a short cut to +canonisation, that's all."</p> + +<p>Then it was that little Mrs. Gardner spoke. She had been married for a +year, and her face still wore its bridal look of possession that was +peace, the look that it would wear when Mrs. Gardner was seventy. Her +voice had a certain lucid and profound precision.</p> + +<p>"Anne was always certain of herself. And since she cares for Mr. Majendie +enough to accept him and to accept his sister, and the rather <i>triste</i> +life which is all he has to offer her, doesn't it look as if, probably, +she knew her own business best?"</p> + +<p>"I think," said Mr. Eliott firmly, "we may take it that she does."</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor's departure was felt as a great liberation of the intellect.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pooley sat up in her corner and revived the conversation interrupted +by Miss Proctor. Mrs. Pooley had felt that to talk about Mrs. Majendie +was to waste Mrs. Eliott. Mrs. Majendie apart, Mrs. Pooley had many ideas +in common with her friend; but, whereas Mrs. Eliott would spend superbly +on one idea at a time, Mrs. Pooley's intellect entertained promiscuously +and beyond its means. It was inclined to be hospitable to ideas that had +never met outside it, whose encounter was a little distressing to +everybody concerned. Whenever this happened Mrs. Pooley would appeal to +Mr. Eliott, and Mr. Eliott would say, "Don't ask me. I'm a stupid fellow. +Don't ask me to decide anything."</p> + +<p>Thus did Mr. Eliott wilfully obscure himself.</p> + +<p>To-day he was more impregnably concealed than ever. He hadn't any +opinions of his own. They were too expensive. He borrowed other people's +when he wanted them. "But," said Mr. Eliott, "it is very seldom that I +do want an opinion. If you have any facts to give me—well and good." For +he knew that, at the mention of facts, Mrs. Pooley's intellect would +retreat behind a cloud and that his wife would pursue it there.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said Mrs. Eliott, "there's such a thing as realising your +ideals."</p> + +<p>Her eyes gleamed and wandered and rested upon Mrs. Gardner. Mrs. Gardner +had a singularly beautiful intellect which she was known to be shy of +displaying. People said that Dr. Gardner had fallen in love with it +years ago, and had only waited for it to mature before he married it. +Mrs. Gardner had a habit of sitting apart from the discussion and +untroubled by it, tolerant in her own excess of bliss. It irritated Mrs. +Eliott, on her Thursdays, to think of the distinguished ideas that Mrs. +Gardner might have introduced and didn't. She felt Mrs. Gardner's silence +as a challenge.</p> + +<p>"I wonder" (Mrs. Eliott was always wondering) "what becomes of our ideals +when we've realised them."</p> + +<p>The doctor answered. "My dear lady, they cease to be ideals, and we have +to get some more."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott, in her turn, was received into the cloud.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Mrs. Pooley, emerging from it joyously, "we must have +them."</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Mrs. Eliott vaguely, as her spirit struggled with the +cloud.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Dr. Gardner. He was careful to array himself for +tea-parties in all his innocent metaphysical vanities, to scatter +profundities like epigrams, to flatter the pure intellects of ladies, +while the solemn vagueness of his manner concealed from them the +innermost frivolity of his thought. He didn't care whether they +understood him or not. He knew his wife did. Her wedded spirit moved +in secret and unsuspected harmony with his.</p> + +<p>He had a certain liking for Mrs. Eliott. She seemed to him an apparition +mainly pathetic. With her attenuated distinction, her hectic ardour, her +brilliant and pursuing eye, she had the air of some doomed and dedicated +votress of the pure intellect, haggard, disturbing and disturbed. His +social self was amused with her enthusiasms, but the real Dr. Gardner +accounted for them compassionately. It was no wonder, he considered, that +poor Mrs. Eliott wondered. She had so little else to do. Her nursery +upstairs was empty, it always had been, always would be empty. Did she +wonder at that too, at the transcendental carelessness that had left her +thus frustrated, thus incomplete? Mrs. Eliott would have been scandalised +if she had known the real Dr. Gardner's opinion of her.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," said she, "what will become of Anne's ideal."</p> + +<p>"It's safe," said the doctor. "She hasn't realised it."</p> + +<p>"I wonder, then, what will become of Anne."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pooley retreated altogether before this gross application of +transcendent truth. She had not come to Mrs. Eliott's to talk about +Mrs. Majendie.</p> + +<p>Dr. Gardner smiled. "Oh, come," he said, "you <i>are</i> personal."</p> + +<p>"I'm not," said Mrs. Eliott, conscious of her lapse and ashamed of it. +"But, after all, Anne's my friend. I know people blamed me because I +never told her. How could I tell her?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Mrs. Gardner soothingly, "how could you?"</p> + +<p>"Anne," continued Mrs. Eliott, "was so reticent. The thing was all +settled before anybody could say a word."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Dr. Gardner, "there's no good worrying about it now."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it possible," said the little year-old bride, "that Mr. Majendie +may have told her himself?"</p> + +<p>For Dr. Gardner had told her everything the day before he married her, +confessing to the light loves of his youth, the young lady in the Free +Library and all. She looked round with eyes widened by their angelic +candour. Even more beautiful than Mrs. Gardner's intellect were Mrs. +Gardner's eyes, and the love of them that brought the doctor's home from +their wanderings in philosophic dream. Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that +Mrs. Gardner's intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes.</p> + +<p>"There's one thing," said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened. "Our not +having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him +now."</p> + +<p>"Aren't we all talking," said Mrs. Gardner, "rather as if Anne had +married a monster? After all, have we ever heard anything against +him—except Lady Cayley?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?"</p> + +<p>"Never. He's not half a bad fellow, Majendie."</p> + +<p>Dr. Gardner rose to go.</p> + +<p>"Oh, please—don't go before they come."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardner hesitated, but the doctor, vague in his approaches, +displayed a certain energy in his departure.</p> + +<p>They passed Mrs. Walter Majendie on the stairs.</p> + +<p>She had come alone. That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning. She +could see that it struck even Johnson's obtuseness as unfavourable, for +he presently effaced himself.</p> + +<p>"Fanny," said Anne, holding her friend's evasive eye with the +determination of her query, "tell me, who are the Ransomes?"</p> + +<p>"The Ransomes? Have they called?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but I was out. I didn't see them."</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne +<i>did</i> see them——</p> + +<p>"Are they very dreadful?"</p> + +<p>"Well—they're not your sort."</p> + +<p>Anne meditated. "Not—my—sort. And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are +they?"</p> + +<p>"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one +doesn't know."</p> + +<p>"Are they socially impossible, or what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—socially, they would be considered—in Scale—all right. But he is, +or was, mixed up with some very queer people."</p> + +<p>Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her. +Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in +Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so +much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very +fast set before he married her."</p> + +<p>"And she? Is she nice?"</p> + +<p>"She may be very nice for all I know."</p> + +<p>"I think," said Anne, "she wouldn't call if she wasn't nice, you know."</p> + +<p>She meant that if Mrs. Lawson Hannay hadn't been nice Walter would never +have sanctioned her calling.</p> + +<p>"Oh, as for that," said her friend, "you know what Scale is. The less +nice they are the more they keep on calling. But I should think"—she had +suddenly perceived where Anne's argument was tending—"she is probably +all right."</p> + +<p>"Do you know anything of Mr. Charlie Gorst?"</p> + +<p>"No. But Johnson does. At least I'm sure he's met him."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott saw it all. Poor Anne was being besieged, bombarded by her +husband's set.</p> + +<p>"Then he isn't impossible?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, the Gorsts are a very old Lincolnshire family. Quite grand. What +a number of people you're going to know, my dear. But, your husband isn't +to take you away from <i>all</i> your old friends."</p> + +<p>"He isn't taking me anywhere. I shall stay," said Anne proudly, "exactly +where I was before."</p> + +<p>She was determined that her old friends should never know to what a +sorrowful place she had been taken.</p> + +<p>"You dear," said Mrs. Eliott, holding out a suddenly caressing hand.</p> + +<p>Anne trembled a little under the caress. "Fanny," said she, "I want you +to know him."</p> + +<p>"I mean to," said Mrs. Eliott hurriedly.</p> + +<p>"And I want him, even more, to know you."</p> + +<p>"Then," Mrs. Elliot argued to herself, "she knows nothing; or she never +could suppose we would be kindred spirits."</p> + +<p>But she carried it off triumphantly. "Well," said she, "I hope you're +free for the fifteenth?"</p> + +<p>"The fifteenth?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, or any other evening. We want to give a little dinner, dear, to you +and to your husband—for him to meet all your friends."</p> + +<p>Anne tried not to look too grateful.</p> + +<p>The upward way, then, was being prepared for him. Beneficent +intelligences were at work, influences were in the air, helping her +to raise him.</p> + +<p>In her gladness she had failed to see that, considering the very obvious +nature of the civility, Fanny Eliott was making the least shade too much +of it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + + +<p>Anne presented herself that evening in her husband's study with a sheaf +of visiting cards in her hand. She thought it possible that she might +obtain further illumination by confronting him with them.</p> + +<p>"Walter," said she "all these people have called on us. What do you think +I'd better do?"</p> + +<p>"I think you'll have to call on them some day."</p> + +<p>"All of them?"</p> + +<p>He took the cards from her and glanced through them.</p> + +<p>"Let me see. Charlie Gorst—we must be nice to him."</p> + +<p>"Is <i>he</i> nice?"</p> + +<p>"I think so. Edie's very fond of him."</p> + +<p>"And Mrs. Lawson Hannay?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you must call on her."</p> + +<p>"Shall I like her."</p> + +<p>"Possibly. You needn't see much of her if you don't."</p> + +<p>"Is it easy to drop people?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly."</p> + +<p>"And what about Mrs. Ransome?"</p> + +<p>He frowned. "Has <i>she</i> called?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I'll find out when she's not at home and let you know. You can call +then."</p> + +<p>A fourth card he tore up and threw into the fire.</p> + +<p>"Some people have confounded impudence."</p> + +<p>Anne went away confirmed in her impression that Walter had a large +acquaintance to whom he was by no means anxious to introduce his wife. He +might, she reflected, have incurred the connection through the misfortune +of his business. The life of a ship-owner in Scale was fruitful in these +embarrassments.</p> + +<p>But if these disagreeable people indeed belonged to the period she +mentally referred to as his "past," she was not going to tolerate them +for an instant. He must give them up.</p> + +<p>She judged that he was prepared for so much renunciation. She hoped that +he would, in time, adopt her friends in place of them. He was inclined, +after all, to respond amicably to Mrs. Eliott's overtures.</p> + +<p>Anne wondered how he would comport himself at the dinner on the +fifteenth. She owned to a little uneasiness at the prospect. Would he +indeed yield to the sobering influence of Thurston Square? Or would he +try to impose his alien, his startling personality on it? She had begun +to realise how alien he was, how startling he could be. Would he sit +silent, uninspiring and uninspired? Or would unholy and untimely +inspirations seize him? Would he scatter to the winds all conversational +conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity? What would he +say to Mrs. Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect? Was there +anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial +charm? Would he see that Mr. Eliott's density was only a mask? Would +the Gardners bore him? And would he like Miss Proctor? And if he +didn't, would he show it, and how? His mere manners would, she knew, be +irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour. He +impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but +immeasurably capricious.</p> + +<p>The event surprised her.</p> + +<p>For the first five minutes or so, it seemed that Mrs. Eliott and her +dinner were doomed to failure; so terrible a cloud had fallen on her, and +on her husband, and on every guest. Never had the poor priestess appeared +so abstract an essence, so dream-driven and so forlorn. Never had Mr. +Eliott worn his mask to so extinguishing a purpose. Never had Miss +Proctor been so obtrusively superior, Mrs. Gardner so silent, Dr. Gardner +so vague. They were all, she could see, possessed, crushed down by their +consciousness of Majendie and his monstrous past.</p> + +<p>Into this circle, thus stupefied by his presence, Majendie burst with the +courage of unconsciousness.</p> + +<p>Mr. Eliott had started a topic, the conduct of Sir Rigley Barker, the +ex-member for Scale. A heavy ball of conversation began to roll slowly up +and down the table, between Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. Majendie snatched +at it deftly as it passed him, caught it, turned it in his hands till it +grew golden under his touch. Mr. Eliott thought there wasn't much in poor +Sir Rigley.</p> + +<p>"Not much in him?" said Majendie. "How about that immortal speech of +his?"</p> + +<p>"Immortal—" echoed Mr. Eliott dubiously.</p> + +<p>"Indestructible! The poor fellow couldn't end it. It simply coiled and +uncoiled itself and went off, in great loops, into eternity. It began in +all innocence—naturally, as it was his maiden speech—when he rose, +don't you know, to propose an amendment. I take it that speech was so +maidenly that it shrank from anything in the nature of a proposal. It +went on in a terrified manner, coyly considering and hesitating—till it +cleared the House. And he was awfully pleased when we congratulated him +on his 'maidenly reserve.'"</p> + +<p>"How did he ever get elected?" said Miss Proctor.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady, it was a glorious stroke of the Opposition. They withdrew +their candidate when he contested the election. Of course, they felt that +he'd only got to make a speech and there'd be a dissolution. You simply +saw Parliament melting away before him. If he'd gone on he'd have worn +out the British constitution."</p> + +<p>Dr. Gardner looked at Mrs. Gardner and their eyes brightened, as Majendie +continued to unfold the amazing resources of Sir Rigley. He breathed on +the ex-member like a god, and played with him like a juggler; he tossed +him into the air and kept him there, a radiant, unsubstantial thing. The +ex-member disported himself before Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party as he had +never disported himself in Parliament. Majendie had given him a career, +endowed him with glorious attributes. The ex-member, as a topic, +developed capacities unsuspected in him before. The others followed his +flight breathless, afraid to touch him lest he should break and disappear +under their hands.</p> + +<p>By the time Majendie had done with him, the ex-member had entered on a +joyous immortality in Scale.</p> + +<p>And in the middle of it all Anne laughed.</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor was the first to recover from the surprise of it. She leaned +across the table with a liberal and vivid smile, opulent in appreciation.</p> + +<p>"Well, Mr. Majendie, Sir Rigley ought to be grateful to you. If ever +there was a dull subject dead and buried, it was he, poor man. And now +the difficulty will be to forget him."</p> + +<p>"I don't think," said Majendie gravely, "I shall forget him myself in a +hurry."</p> + +<p>Oh no, he never would forget Sir Rigley. He didn't want to forget him. He +would be grateful to him as long as he lived. He had made Anne laugh. A +girl's laugh, young and deliciously uncontrollable, springing from the +immortal heart of joy.</p> + +<p>It was the first time he had heard her laugh so. He didn't know she could +do it. The hope of hearing her do it again would give him something to +live for. He would win her yet if he could make her laugh.</p> + +<p>Anne was more surprised than anybody, at him and at herself. It was a +revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift. She was +only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on +lectures and on books. She had not thought of Walter as clever. She had +only thought of him as good. That one quality of goodness had swallowed +up the rest.</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor took possession of her where she sat in the drawing-room, as +it were amid the scattered fragments of the ex-member (he still, among +the ladies, emitted a feeble radiance). Miss Proctor had always approved +of Anne. If Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not +in the least provincial. She was something by herself, superior and rare. +A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her +husband's admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her.</p> + +<p>"My dear," said Miss Proctor, "I congratulate you. He's brilliant, he's +charming, he's unique. Why didn't we know of him before? Where has he +been hiding his talents all this time?"</p> + +<p>(A talent that had not bloomed in Thurston Square was a talent pitiably +wasted.)</p> + +<p>Anne smiled a blanched, perfunctory smile. Ah, where had he been hiding +himself, indeed?</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor stood central, radiating the rich afterglow of her +appreciation. Her gaze was a little critical of her friends' faces, as +if she were measuring the effect, on a provincial audience, of Majendie's +conversational technique. She swept down to a seat beside her hostess.</p> + +<p>"My dear Fanny," she said, "why didn't you tell me?"</p> + +<p>"Tell you—"</p> + +<p>"That he was that sort. I didn't know there was such a delightful man in +Scale. What have you all been dreaming of?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott tried to look both amiable and intelligent. In the presence +of Mr. Majendie's robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been +dreaming. Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was +destruction to the dreams she dreamed. She tried to be genial to her +guest's accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie's talents were +let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of +intellectual culture. On the other hand she perceived that Miss Proctor's +idea was to empty that drawing-room by securing Mr. Majendie for her own. +Mrs. Eliott remained uncomfortably seated on her dilemma.</p> + +<p>Sounds of laughter reached her from below. The men were unusually late in +returning to the drawing-room. They appeared a little flushed by the +hilarious festival, as if Majendie had had on them an effect of mild +intoxication. She could see that even Dr. Gardner was demoralised. He +wore, under his vagueness, the unmistakable air of surrender to an +unfamiliar excess. Mr. Eliott too had the happy look of a man who has fed +loftily after a long fast.</p> + +<p>"Anne dear," said Majendie, as they walked back the few yards between +Thurston Square and Prior Street, "we shan't have to do that very often, +shall we?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? You can't say we didn't have a delightful evening."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but it was very exhausting, dear, for me."</p> + +<p>"You? You didn't show much sign of exhaustion. I never heard you talk so +well."</p> + +<p>"Did I talk well?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Almost too well."</p> + +<p>"Too much, you mean. Well, I had to talk, when nobody else did. Besides, +I did it for a purpose."</p> + +<p>But what his purpose was Majendie did not say.</p> + +<p>Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range +of her anticipations. She was glad, above all, that Walter had made +himself acceptable in Thurston Square. But when she came to think of +what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his +incomprehensible ease of attitude. She reflected that this must have been +the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal. Was it +possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that +incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that +had been stretched to take him in? She felt that it was impossible to +exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening. They had met +together, as it were, to celebrate Walter's return to the sanctities +and proprieties he had offended. He had been formally forgiven and +received by the society which (however Fanny Eliott might explain away +its action) had most unmistakably cast him out. She had not expected him +to part with his indomitable self-possession under the ordeal, but she +could have wished that he had borne himself with a little more modesty. +He had failed to perceive the redemptive character of the feast, he had +turned it into an occasion for profane personal display.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party had not saved him; on the contrary, he had +saved the dinner-party.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + + +<p>Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her +designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be +played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From +his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never +have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way +you looked at them.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward +pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way, +and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously.</p> + +<p>He confided his scruples to Edith.</p> + +<p>"Poor dear," he said, "it's quite pathetic. You know, she thinks she's +saving me."</p> + +<p>"And do you mind being saved?"</p> + +<p>"Well, no, I don't mind a little of it. But the question is, how long I +can keep it up."</p> + +<p>"You mean, how long she'll keep it up?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Oh, she'll keep it up for ever. No possible doubt about +that. She'll never tire. I wonder if I ought to tell her."</p> + +<p>"Tell her what?"</p> + +<p>"That it won't work. That she can't do it that way. She's wasting my time +and her own."</p> + +<p>"Oh, what's a little time, dear, when you've all eternity in view?"</p> + +<p>"But I haven't. I've nothing in view. My view, at present, is entirely +obscured by Anne."</p> + +<p>"Poor Anne! To think she actually stands between you and your Maker."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you know—in her very anxiety to introduce us."</p> + +<p>They looked at each other. Her sainthood was so accomplished, her union +with heaven so complete, that she could afford herself these profaner +sympathies. She was secretly indignant with Anne's view of Walter as +unpresentable in the circles of the spiritual <i>élite</i>.</p> + +<p>"It never struck her that you mightn't need an introduction after all; +that you were in it as much as she. That's the sort of mistake one might +expect from—from a spiritual parvenu, but not from Anne."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come, I don't consider myself her equal by a long chalk."</p> + +<p>"Well, say she does belong to the peerage; you're a gentleman, and what +more can she require?"</p> + +<p>"She can't see that I am (If I am. You say so). She considers +me—spiritually—a bounder of the worst sort."</p> + +<p>"That's her mistake. Though I must say you sometimes lend yourself to it +with your horrible profanity."</p> + +<p>"I can't help it, Edie. She's so funny with it. She <i>makes</i> me profane."</p> + +<p>"Dear Walter, if you can think Anne funny—"</p> + +<p>"I do. I think she's furiously funny, and horribly pathetic. All the +time, you know, she thinks she's leading me upward. Profanity's my only +refuge from hypocrisy."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, not your only refuge. You say she thinks she's leading you. Don't +<i>let</i> her think it. Make her think you're leading her."</p> + +<p>"Do you think," said Majendie, "she'd enjoy that quite so much?"</p> + +<p>"She'd enjoy it more. If you took her the right way. The way I mean."</p> + +<p>"What's that?"</p> + +<p>"You must find out," said she. "I'm not going to tell you everything."</p> + +<p>Majendie became thoughtful. "My only fear was that I couldn't keep it up. +But you really don't think, then, that I should score much if I did?"</p> + +<p>"No, my dear, I don't. And as for keeping it up, you never could. And if +you did she'd never understand what you were doing it for. That's not the +way to show you're in love with her."</p> + +<p>"But that's just what I don't want her to see. That's what she hates so +much in me. I've always understood that in these matters it's discreeter +not to show your hand too plainly. You see, it's just as if we'd never +been married, for all she cares. That's the trouble."</p> + +<p>"There's something in that. If she's not in love with you—"</p> + +<p>"Look here, Edie, you're a woman, and you know all about them. Do you +really, honestly think Anne ever was in love with me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't ask me. How should I know?"</p> + +<p>"No, but," he persisted, "what do you think?"</p> + +<p>"I think she <i>was</i> in love."</p> + +<p>"But not with me, though?"</p> + +<p>"No, no, not with you."</p> + +<p>"With whom, then?"</p> + +<p>"Darling idiot, there wasn't any who. If there was, do you think I'd give +her away like that? If you'd asked me <i>what</i> she was in love with—"</p> + +<p>"Well, what then?"</p> + +<p>"Your goodness. She was head over ears in love with that."</p> + +<p>"I see. With something that I wasn't."</p> + +<p>"No, with something that you were, that you are, only she doesn't know +it."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Majendie, "you can't get out of it, she's in love with +<i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, no, you dear goose, not with you. To be in love with you she'd +have to be in love with everything you're <i>not</i>, as well as everything +you are; with everything you have been, with everything you never were, +with everything you will be, with everything you might be, could be, +should be."</p> + +<p>"That's a large order, Edie."</p> + +<p>"There's a larger one than that. She might sweep all that overboard, see +it go by whole pieces (the best pieces) at a time, and still be in love +with the dear, incomprehensible, indescribable <i>you</i>. That," said Edie, +triumphant in her wisdom, "is what being in love is."</p> + +<p>"And do you think she isn't in it?"</p> + +<p>"No. Not anywhere near it. But—it's a big but—"</p> + +<p>"I don't care how big it is. Don't bother me with it."</p> + +<p>"Bother you? Why, it's a beautiful but. As I said, she isn't in love with +you; but she may be any minute. It's just touch and go with her. It +depends on <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"Heavens, what am I to do? I've done everything."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you have, but she hasn't. She's done nothing. She doesn't know how +to. You've got to show her."</p> + +<p>He shook his head hopelessly. "You're beyond me. I don't understand. +There isn't anything for me to do. How am I to show her?"</p> + +<p>"I mean show her what there is in it. What it means. What it's going to +be for her as well as you. Just go at it hard, harder than you did before +you married her."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> see, I've got to make love to her all over again."</p> + +<p>"Exactly. All over again from the very beginning."</p> + +<p>"I say!" He took it in, her idea, in all the width and splendour of its +simplicity. "And do it differently?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, very differently."</p> + +<p>"I don't quite see where the difference is to come in. What did I do +before that was so wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. That's just the worst of it. It was all too right. Ever so much +too right. Don't you see? It's what we've been talking about. You made +her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because +it was <i>your</i> goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted +to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason, +because she's an egoist."</p> + +<p>"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you <i>are</i> in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the +nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?"</p> + +<p>"I don't love you less for anything."</p> + +<p>"Well—unless you can make Anne jealous of me—and you can't—you've got +to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in—to be kept out of +it."</p> + +<p>She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into +bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they +would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous +journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He +had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had +failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights, +and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way.</p> + +<p>"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you? +You were the beginning of it."</p> + +<p>"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's +all."</p> + +<p>"What on earth do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for <i>my</i> +sake, do you?"</p> + +<p>"N—no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she +was in love with me for my own."</p> + +<p>"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of +it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived +that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and +its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I +brought it <i>out</i>, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing +else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something +monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on +itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it, +and when it went everything went. <i>You</i> went first of all. Well, you must +just see that that doesn't happen again."</p> + +<p>"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?"</p> + +<p>"You mustn't lead a life of anything."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?"</p> + +<p>Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this +preposterous notion of his goodness.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good +to me. Concentrate on her, stupid."</p> + +<p>"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified beyond endurance. "Besides, +you said I couldn't make her jealous."</p> + +<p>"No, I wish you could. I mean, don't let her fall in love with your +devotion to me again. Don't hold her by that one rope. Hold her by all +your ropes; then, if one goes, it doesn't so much matter."</p> + +<p>"I see. You don't trust my goodness."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>I</i> trust it, so will she again. But don't <i>you</i> trust it. That +precious goodness of yours is your rival. A bad, dangerous rival. You've +got to beat it out of the field. Show that you're jealous of it. A little +judicious jealousy won't hurt." Edith's eyes were still and profound with +wisdom. "I don't believe you've ever yet made love to Anne properly. +That's what it all comes to."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say," said he, "what do you know about it?"</p> + +<p>"I'm only judging," said Edith, "by the results."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that isn't fair."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it isn't," she owned, her wisdom growing by what it fed on.</p> + +<p>"You see, she wouldn't let me do it properly."</p> + +<p>Edith pondered. "Yes, but how long ago is it? And you've been married +since."</p> + +<p>"What difference does that make?"</p> + +<p>"I should say it would make all the difference. Anne was a girl, then. +She didn't understand. She's a woman now. She does understand. She can be +appealed to."</p> + +<p>He hid his face in his hands.</p> + +<p>"I never thought of that," he murmured thickly.</p> + +<p>"Of course you didn't."</p> + +<p>"Edie," he said, and his face was still hidden, "however did you think of +it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know. I see some things, and then other things come round to +me. But you mustn't forget that <i>you've</i> got to begin all over again from +the very beginning. You'll have to be very careful with her, every bit as +careful as if she were a strange lady you've just met at a dance. Don't +forget that she's strange, that she's another woman, in fact."</p> + +<p>"I see. If there are to be many of these remarkable transformations of +Anne, I shall have all the excitement of polygamy without its drawbacks."</p> + +<p>"You will. And it's the same for her, remember. You're a strange man. +You've just been introduced, you know—by me—and you're begging for the +pleasure of the first waltz, and Anne pretends that her programme is +full, and you look over her shoulder and see that it isn't, and that she +puts you down for all the nice ones. And you sit out all the rest, and +you flirt on the stairs, and take her in to supper, and, finally, you +know, you pull yourself together and you do it—in the conservatory. Oh, +it'll be so amusing, and so funny to watch. You'll begin by being most +awfully polite to each other."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I may yet be permitted to call this strange young lady Anne?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. That's because you remember that you <i>have</i> known her once before, +a very long time ago, when you were children. You are children, both of +you. Oh, Walter, I believe you're looking forward to it; I believe you're +glad you've got to do it all over again."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Edie, I positively believe I am."</p> + +<p>He rose, laughing, prepared to begin that minute his new wooing of Anne.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," said Edith, "it <i>is</i> good-bye, you know, and good luck to +you."</p> + +<p>This time she knew that she had been wise for him.</p> + +<p>Anne would have been horrified if she had known that the situation, so +terrible for her, was developing for her husband certain possibilities of +charm. His irrepressible boyishness refused to accept it in all its moral +gloom. There were, he perceived, advantages in these strained relations. +They had removed Anne into the mysterious realm her maidenhood had +inhabited, before marriage had had time to touch her magic. She had +become once more the unapproachable and unattained. Their first +courtship, pursued under intolerable restrictions of time and place, had +been a rather uninspired affair, and its end a foregone conclusion. He +had been afraid of himself, afraid sometimes of her. For he had not +brought her the spontaneous, unalarmed, unspoiled spirit of his youth. +He had come to her with a stain on his imagination and a wound in his +memory. And she was holy to him. He had held himself in, lest a touch, +a word, a gesture should recall some insufferable association.</p> + +<p>Marriage had delivered him from the tyranny of reminiscence. No +reminiscence could stand before the force of passion in possession. It +purified; it destroyed; it built up in three days its own inviolable +memory.</p> + +<p>And Anne, with the best will in the world, had had no power to undo its +work in him.</p> + +<p>In herself, too, below her kindling spiritual consciousness, in the +unexplored depth and darkness of her, its work remained.</p> + +<p>Majendie was unaware how far he had become another man and she another +woman. He was merely alive to the unusual and agreeable excitement of +wooing his own wife. There was a piquancy in the experiment that appealed +to him. Her new coldness called to him like a challenge. Her new +remoteness waked the adventurous youth in him. His imagination was +touched as it had not been touched before. He could see that Anne had +not yet got over her discovery. The shock of it was in her nerves. He +felt that she shrank from him, and his chivalry still spared her.</p> + +<p>He ceased to be her husband and became her very courteous, very distant +lover. He made no claims, and took nothing for granted. He simply began +all over again from the very beginning. His conscience was vaguely +appeased by the illusion of the new leaf, the rejuvenated innocence of +the blank page. They had never been married (so the illusion suggested). +There had been no revelations. They met as strangers in their own house, +at their own table. In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his +courtship with infinite precautions. He found himself exaggerating Anne's +distance and the lapse of intimacy. He made his way slowly, through all +the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through friendship to +permissible fervour.</p> + +<p>And from time to time, with incomparable discretion, he would withhold +himself that he might make himself more precious. He was hardly aware of +his own restraint, his refinements of instinct and of mood. It was as if +he drew, in his desperate necessity, upon unrealised, untried resources. +There was something in Anne that checked the primitive impulse of swift +chase, and called forth the curious half-feminine cunning of the +sophisticated pursuer. She froze at his ardour, but his coldness almost +kindled her, so that he approached by withdrawals and advanced by +flights.</p> + +<p>He displayed, first of all, a heavenly ignorance, an inspired curiosity +regarding her. He consulted her tastes, as if he had never known them; he +started the time-honoured lovers' topics; he talked about books—which +she preferred and the reasons for her preference.</p> + +<p>He did not advance very far that way. Anne was simply annoyed at the +lapses in his memory.</p> + +<p>He then began to buy books on the chance of her liking them, which +answered better.</p> + +<p>He promoted himself by degrees to personalities. He talked to her about +herself, handling her with religious reticence as a thing of holy and +incomprehensible mystery.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he said one day, "if I were good enough, I should understand +you. Why do you sigh like that? Is it because I'm not good enough? Or +because I don't understand?"</p> + +<p>"I think," said she, "it is because I don't understand you."</p> + +<p>"My dear" (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment), +"I thought I was disgracefully transparent—I'm limpidity, simplicity +itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith. +She understands me."</p> + +<p>"Ah, Edith—" said Anne, as if Edith were a very different affair.</p> + +<p>The intonation was hopeful, it suggested some slender and refined +jealousy. (If only he could make her jealous!)</p> + +<p>On the strength of it he advanced to the punctual daily offering of +flowers, flowers for her drawing-room, flowers for her bedroom, flowers +for her to wear. After that he took to writing her letters from the +office with increasing frequency and fervour. Anne, too, was courteous +and distant. She accepted all he had to offer as a becoming tribute to +her feminine superiority, and evaded dexterously the deeper issue.</p> + +<p>Now and then he reported his progress to Edith.</p> + +<p>"I rather think," he said, "she's coming round. I'm regarded as a +distinctly eligible person."</p> + +<p>They laughed at his complete adoption of the part and his innocent joy in +it.</p> + +<p>That had always been his way. When he had begun a game there was no +stopping him. He played it through to the end.</p> + +<p>Edith would look up smiling and say: "Well, how goes the affair?" (They +always called it the affair.) Or: "How did you get on to-day?"</p> + +<p>And it would be: "Pretty well."—"Better to-day than yesterday."—"No +luck to-day."</p> + +<p>One Sunday he came to her radiant.</p> + +<p>"She really does," said he, "seem interested in what I say."</p> + +<p>"What did you talk about?"</p> + +<p>"The influence of Christianity on woman. Was that good?"</p> + +<p>"Very good."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know very much about it, but I got her to tell me things."</p> + +<p>"That," said Edith, "was still better."</p> + +<p>"But she sticks to it that she doesn't understand me. That's bad."</p> + +<p>"No," said Edith, "that's best of all. It shows she's thinking of you. +She wants to understand. Believe me, the affair marches."</p> + +<p>He meditated on that.</p> + +<p>In the evening, the better to meditate, he withdrew to his study. It was +not long before Anne came to him of her own accord. She asked if she +might read aloud to him.</p> + +<p>"I should be honoured," he replied stiffly.</p> + +<p>She chose Emerson, "On Compensation." And Majendie did not care for +Emerson.</p> + +<p>But Anne had a charming voice; a voice with tones that penetrated like +pain, that thrilled like a touch, that clung delicately like a shy +caress; tones that were as a funeral bell for sadness; tones that rose to +passion without ever touching it; clear, cool tones that were like water +to passion's flame. Majendie closed his eyes and let her voice play over +him.</p> + +<p>"Did you like it?" she asked gravely.</p> + +<p>"Like it? I love it."</p> + +<p>"So do I. I <i>hoped</i> you would."</p> + +<p>"My dear, I didn't understand one word of it."</p> + +<p>"You can't make me believe you loved it then."</p> + +<p>He looked at her.</p> + +<p>"I loved the sound of your voice, dear."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said she coldly, "is that all?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "isn't it enough?"</p> + +<p>"I'd rather—" she began and hesitated.</p> + +<p>"You'd rather I understood Emerson?"</p> + +<p>Her blood flushed in the honey whiteness of her face. She rose, put the +book in its place, and left the room.</p> + +<p>"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was +coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go +like that?"</p> + +<p>"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay."</p> + +<p>"Why afraid?"</p> + +<p>"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to +fight."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but suppose she wins?"</p> + +<p>"She can't win fighting—she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away."</p> + +<p>That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for +Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without +sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and +together be received into the heavenly places.</p> + +<p>She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come +back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour +it without spiritual justification.</p> + +<p>She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love +him—unless God makes him fit for me to love."</p> + +<p>Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + + +<p>It was Anne's birthday. It shone in mid-May like the front of June. +Anne's bedroom was over Edith's and looked out on the garden. A little +rain had fallen over night. Through the open window the day greeted +her with a breath of flowers and earth; a day that came to her all +golden, ripe and sweet from the south.</p> + +<p>Her dressing-table was placed sideways from the window. Anne, fresh from +her cold bath, in a white muslin gown, with her thick sleek hair coiled +and burnished, sat before the looking-glass.</p> + +<p>There was a knock at the door, not Nanna's bold awakening summons, but a +shy and gentle sound. Her heart shook her voice as she responded.</p> + +<p>"Is it permitted?" said Majendie.</p> + +<p>"If you like," she answered quietly.</p> + +<p>He presented his customary morning sacrifice of flowers. Hitherto he +had not presumed so far as to bring it to her room. It waited for her +decorously at breakfast time, beside her plate.</p> + +<p>She took the flowers from him, acknowledged their fragrance by a +quiver of her delicate nostrils, thanked him, and laid them on the +dressing-table.</p> + +<p>He seated himself on the window-sill, where he could see her with the day +upon her. She noticed that he had brought with him, beside the flowers, a +small oblong wooden box. He laid the box on his knee and covered it with +his hand. He sat very still, looking at her as her firm white hands +caressed her coiled hair into shape. Once she moved his flowers to find +her comb, and laid them down again.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you going to wear them?" he inquired anxiously.</p> + +<p>Her upper lip lifted an instant, caught up, in its fashion, by the pretty +play of the little sensitive amber mole. Two small white teeth showed and +were hidden again. It was as if she had been about to smile, or to speak, +and had thought better of it.</p> + +<p>She took up the flowers and tried them, now at her breast, and now at her +waist.</p> + +<p>"Where shall I put them?" said she. "Here? Or here?"</p> + +<p>"Just there."</p> + +<p>She let them stay there in the hollow of her breast.</p> + +<p>He laid the box on the dressing-table close to her hand where it searched +for pins.</p> + +<p>"I've brought you this," he said gently.</p> + +<p>She smiled that divine and virgin smile of hers. Anne was big, but her +smile was small and close and shy.</p> + +<p>"You remembered my birthday?"</p> + +<p>"Did you think I should forget?"</p> + +<p>She opened the lid with cool unhurried fingers. Under the wrappings of +tissue paper and cotton wool, a shape struck clear and firm and familiar +to her touch. A sacred thrill ran through her as she felt there the +presence of the holy thing, the symbol so dear and so desired that it was +divined before seen.</p> + +<p>She lifted from the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the +work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he +had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found +something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort +and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again +the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow +eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the +torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. Surely, on the closed eyelids +there rested the glory and the peace of divine accomplishment?</p> + +<p>She stood still, holding it in her hand and looking at it. Majendie stood +still, also looking at her. He was not quite sure whether she were going +to accept that gift, whether she would hesitate to take from his profane +hands a thing so sacred and so supreme. He was aware that his fate +somehow hung on her acceptance, and he waited in silence, lest a word +should destroy the work of love in her.</p> + +<p>Anne, too (when she could detach her mind from the crucifix), felt that +the moment was decisive. To accept that gift, of all gifts, was to lay +her spirit under obligation to him. It was more than a surrender of body, +heart, or mind. It was to admit him to association with the unspeakably +sacred acts of prayer and adoration.</p> + +<p>If it were possible that that had been his desire; if he had meant his +gift as a tribute, not to her only, but to the spirit of holiness in her; +if, in short, he had been serious, then, indeed, she could not hesitate. +For, if it were so, her prayer was answered.</p> + +<p>She laid down the crucifix and turned to him. They searched each other +with their eyes. She saw, without wholly understanding, the pain in his. +He saw, also unintelligently, the austerity in hers.</p> + +<p>"Are you not going to take it, then?" he said.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Do you realise that you are giving me a very sacred +thing?"</p> + +<p>"I do."</p> + +<p>"And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary present?"</p> + +<p>He lowered his eyelids. "I didn't think you'd want to wear it in your +hair, dear."</p> + +<p>She was about to ask him what he did mean then; but some instinct held +her, told her not to press the sign of grace too hard. She looked at him +still more intently. His eyes had disconcerted and baffled her, but now +she was sheltered by their lowered lids. Then she noticed for the first +time that his face showed the marks of suffering. It was as if it had +dropped suddenly the brilliant mask it wore for her, and given up its +secret unaware. He had suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to +her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes +and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a +certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she +closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was +his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it was, above all, +God's hour.</p> + +<p>She laid her hand on her husband's gift, saying to herself that if she +took that crucifix she would be taking him with it into the holy places +of her heart.</p> + +<p>"I will take it." Her voice came shy and inarticulate as a marriage vow.</p> + +<p>"Thank you," he said.</p> + +<p>He wondered if she would turn to him with some sign of tenderness, +whether she would stoop to him and touch him with her hand or her lips; +or whether she looked to him to offer the first caress.</p> + +<p>She did nothing. It was as if her intentness, her concentration upon +her holy purpose held her. While her soul did but turn to him in the +darkness, it kept and would keep their hands and lips apart.</p> + +<p>He divined that she was only half-won. But, though her body yet moved in +its charmed inviolate circle, he felt dimly that the spiritual barrier +was down.</p> + +<p>She turned from him and went slowly to the door. He opened it and +followed her. On the stairs she parted from him and went alone into his +sister's bedroom.</p> + +<p>Edith's spine had been hurting her in the night. She lay flat and +exhausted, and the embrace of her loving arms was slow and frail.</p> + +<p>Edith was what she called "dressed," and waiting for her sister-in-law. +The little table by her bed was strewn with the presents she had bought +and made for Anne. A birthday was a very serious affair for Edith. She +was not content to buy (buying was nothing; anybody could buy); she must +also make, and make beautifully. "I mayn't have any legs that can carry +me," said Edith; "but I've hands and I <i>will</i> use them. If it wasn't for +my hands I'd be nothing but a great lumbering, lazy mass of palpitating +heart." But her making had become every year more and more expensive. Her +beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights. And at six +o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna, +Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's +birthday!"</p> + +<p>"And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't expect this. I do believe it's getting worse."</p> + +<p>"Worse?" Nanna was contemptuous. "It was worse on Master Walter's +birthday last year."</p> + +<p>(Last year she had made a waistcoat.)</p> + +<p>"I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays."</p> + +<p>But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted +to destroy the spirit of the day.</p> + +<p>Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent +mendacity, "you may well look at me. You couldn't make yourself as flat +as I am if you tried. There are two books for you, and a thingummy-jig, +and a handkerchief to blow your dear nose with."</p> + +<p>"Edie—"</p> + +<p>"Do you like them?"</p> + +<p>"Like them? Oh, you dear—"</p> + +<p>"Why don't you have a birthday oftener? It makes you look so pretty, +dear."</p> + +<p>Anne's heart leaped. Edie's ways, her very words sometimes were like +Walter's.</p> + +<p>"Has Walter seen you?"</p> + +<p>Anne's face became instantly solemn, but it was not sad.</p> + +<p>"Edie," she said, "do you know what he has given me!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Edith. Her eyes searched Anne's eyes with pain in them that +was somehow akin to Walter's pain.</p> + +<p>"She knows everything," thought Anne, "and it was her idea, then, not +his."</p> + +<p>"Edith," said she, "was it you who thought of it, or he?"</p> + +<p>"I? Never. He didn't say a word about it. He just went and got it. He +thought it all out by himself, poor dear."</p> + +<p>"Can you think why he thought of it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Edith gravely, "I can. Can't you?"</p> + +<p>Anne was silent.</p> + +<p>"It's very simple. He wants you to trust him a little more, that's all."</p> + +<p>Anne's mouth trembled, and she tightened it.</p> + +<p>"Are you afraid of him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "I am."</p> + +<p>"Because you think he isn't very spiritual?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but he's on his way there," said Edith. "He's human. You've got to +be human before you can be spiritual. It's a most important part of the +process. Don't you omit it."</p> + +<p>"Have I omitted it?"</p> + +<p>She stroked one of the thin hands that were out-stretched towards her on +the coverlet, and the other closed on her caress. The touch brought the +tears into her eyes. She raised her head to keep them from falling.</p> + +<p>"Dear," said Edith, and paused and reiterated, "dear, you have about all +the big things that I haven't. You're splendid. There's only one thing I +want for you. If you could only see how divinely sacred the human part of +us is—and how pathetic."</p> + +<p>Anne looked at her as she lay there, bright and brave, untroubled by her +own mortal pathos. In her, humanity, woman's humanity, was reduced to its +simplest expression of spiritual loving and bodily suffering. Anne was a +child in her ignorance of the things that had been revealed to Edith +lying there.</p> + +<p>Looking at her, Anne's tears grew heavy and fell.</p> + +<p>"It's your birthday," said Edith softly.</p> + +<p>And as she heard Majendie's foot on the stairs Anne dried her eyes on the +birthday pocket handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"Here she is," said Edith as he entered. "What are you going to do with +her? She doesn't have a birthday every day."</p> + +<p>"I'm going," he said, "to take her down to breakfast."</p> + +<p>Their meals so abounded in occasions for courtesy that they had become +profoundly formal. This morning Anne's courtesy was coloured by some +emotion that defied analysis. She wore her new mood like a soft veil +that heightened her attraction in obscuring it.</p> + +<p>He watched her with a baffled preoccupation that kept him unusually +quiet. His quietness did him good service with Anne in her new mood.</p> + +<p>When the meal was over she rose and went to the window. The sedate +Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here from the cool +clear north.</p> + +<p>"What are you thinking of?" said he.</p> + +<p>"I'm thinking what a beautiful day it is."</p> + +<p>"Yes, isn't it a jolly day?"</p> + +<p>"If it's beautiful here, what must it be in the country?"</p> + +<p>"The country?" A thought struck him. "I say, would you like to go there?"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to-day?"</p> + +<p>Her upper lip lifted, and the two teeth showed again on the pale rose of +its twin. In spite of the dignity of her proportions, Anne had the look +of a child contemplating some hardly permissible delight.</p> + +<p>"Now, this minute. There's a train to Westleydale at nine fifty."</p> + +<p>"It would be very nice. But—how about business?"</p> + +<p>"Business be—"</p> + +<p>"No, no, <i>not</i> that word."</p> + +<p>"But it is, you know; it can't help itself. There's a devil in all the +offices in Scale at this time of the year."</p> + +<p>"Would <i>you</i> like it?"</p> + +<p>"I? Rather. I'm on!"</p> + +<p>"But—Edith—oh no, we can't."</p> + +<p>She turned with a sudden gesture of renunciation, so that she faced him +where he stood smiling at her. His face grew grave for her.</p> + +<p>"Look here," he said, "you mustn't be morbid about Edith. It isn't +necessary. All the time we're gone, she'll be there, in perfect bliss +with simply thinking of the good time <i>we</i>'re having."</p> + +<p>"But her back's bad to-day."</p> + +<p>"Then she'll be glad that we're not there to feel it. Her back will add +to her happiness, if anything."</p> + +<p>She drew in a sharp breath, as if he had hurt her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Walter, how can you?"</p> + +<p>He replied with emphasis. "How can I? I can, not because I'm a brute, as +you seem to suppose, but because she's a saint and an angel. I take off +my hat and go down on my knees when I think of her. Go and put <i>your</i> +hat on."</p> + +<p>She felt herself diminished, humbled, and in two ways. It was as if he +had said: "You are not the saint that Edith is, nor yet the connoisseur +in saintship that I am."</p> + +<p>She knew that she was not the one; but to the other distinction she +certainly fancied that she had the superior claim. And she had never yet +come behind him in appreciation of Edith. Besides, she was hurt at being +spoken to in that way on her birthday.</p> + +<p>Her resentment faded when she found him standing at the foot of the +stairs by Edith's door, waiting for her. He looked up at her as she +descended, and his eyes brightened with pleasure at the sight.</p> + +<p>Edith was charmed with their plan. It might have been conceived as an +exquisite favour to herself, by the fine style in which she handled it.</p> + +<p>They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne's coat. He +had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap +he had worn at Scarby. The pang that struck her at the sight of them was +softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure. +They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn +for her with that open-air attire.</p> + +<p>An hour's journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station. +They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland +field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of +Westleydale, in the heart of the hills.</p> + +<p>They followed a mossy trail. The shade fell thin, warm, and +coloured, from leaves so tender that the light passed through their +half-transparent panes. Overhead there was the delicate scent of green +things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened +earth.</p> + +<p>Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, +and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the +vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned +and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall +beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold +of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and +primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien +beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She +threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like +wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them +palpably as a touch.</p> + +<p>And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him. +If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward, +saying to him: "Not yet."</p> + +<p>A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable +throne for the regal woman that she was. He spread out her coat, and she +made room for him beside her. He sat for a long time without speaking. +The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that +subtle silence. He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for +keeping still.</p> + +<p>Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of +dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream. Its green arms, +plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in.</p> + +<p>Majendie's figure was not diminished by the background. The smallest +nervous movement on his part would have undone him, but he did not move. +His profound stillness, suggesting an interminable patience, gave him a +beautiful immensity of his own.</p> + +<p>Anne, left in her charmed, inviolate circle, surrendered sweetly to the +spirit of Westleydale.</p> + +<p>The place was peace folded upon the breast of peace.</p> + +<p>Presently she spoke, calling his name, as if out of the far-off +unutterable peace.</p> + +<p>"Walter, it was kind of you to bring me here."</p> + +<p>"I am so glad you like it."</p> + +<p>"I do indeed."</p> + +<p>He tried to say more, but his heart choked him.</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes, and the peace poured over her, and sank in. Her +heart beat quietly.</p> + +<p>She opened her eyes and turned them on her husband. She knew that it was +his gaze that had compelled them to open. She smiled to herself, like a +young girl, shyly but happily aware of him, and turned from him to her +contemplation of the woods.</p> + +<p>Anne had always rather prided herself on her susceptibility to the beauty +of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch. +Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her +through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously aware of her own +body as a part of it, and of her husband's joy in contemplating her.</p> + +<p>"He thinks me good-looking," she said to herself, and the thought came to +her as a revelation.</p> + +<p>Then her young memory woke again and thrust at her.</p> + +<p>"He thinks me good-looking. That's why he married me."</p> + +<p>She longed to find out if it were so.</p> + +<p>"Walter," said she, "I want to ask you a question."</p> + +<p>"Well—if it's an easy one."</p> + +<p>"It isn't—very. What made you want to marry me?"</p> + +<p>He paused a moment, searching for the truth.</p> + +<p>"Your goodness."</p> + +<p>"Is that really true?"</p> + +<p>"To the best of my belief, madam, it is."</p> + +<p>"But there are so many other women better than me."</p> + +<p>"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them."</p> + +<p>"And if you had met them?"</p> + +<p>"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them. +I shouldn't have fallen in love with <i>you</i>, if it hadn't been for your +goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any +other woman."</p> + +<p>"Have you known many other women?"</p> + +<p>"One way and another, in the course of my life—yes. And what I liked so +much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me +rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love +with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit. +It was as if they were always expecting something from me—I couldn't +for the life of me tell what—always on the look out, don't you know, for +some mysterious moment that never arrived."</p> + +<p>She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with +incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed +to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have +been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable, +mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever +at assigning causes.</p> + +<p>He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you +know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly. +Being with you was peace."</p> + +<p>"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all."</p> + +<p>"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began."</p> + +<p>"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me. +I must have seemed to you at peace, then."</p> + +<p>"You did—you did. Weren't you?"</p> + +<p>"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace +here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?"</p> + +<p>"I wish we had. I say—are you never going to forget that?"</p> + +<p>"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand."</p> + +<p>"Understand <i>what</i>?"</p> + +<p>"How you could be capable of caring for me—like that—and yet—"</p> + +<p>"But the two things are so entirely different. It's impossible to explain +to you how different. Heaven forbid that you should understand the +difference."</p> + +<p>"I understand enough to know—"</p> + +<p>"You understand enough to know nothing. You must simply take my word for +it. Besides, the one thing's an old thing, over and done with."</p> + +<p>"Over and done with. But if the two things are so different, how can you +be sure?"</p> + +<p>"That sounds awfully clever of you, but I'm hanged if I know what you +mean."</p> + +<p>"I mean, how can you tell that it—the old thing—never would come back?"</p> + +<p>It <i>was</i> clever of her. He realised that he had to deal now with a more +complete and complex creature than Anne had been.</p> + +<p>"How could it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"If <i>she</i> came back—"</p> + +<p>"Never. And if it did—"</p> + +<p>"Ah, if it did—"</p> + +<p>"It couldn't in this case—my case—your case—"</p> + +<p>"Her case—" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come +back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is <i>that</i> what +you've been afraid of all the time?"</p> + +<p>"I never was really afraid till now."</p> + +<p>"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head +for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you +should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take +my word for it."</p> + +<p>He paused.</p> + +<p>"But, since you have raised the question—and it's interesting, too—I +knew a man once—not a 'bad' man—to whom that very thing did happen. And +it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary, +he was still insanely fond of her."</p> + +<p>"What did it mean, then?"</p> + +<p>"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more +for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way +it was a sort of test."</p> + +<p>"I pray heaven—" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the +anecdote to shape her prayer.</p> + +<p>Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious +for the exposition, went on.</p> + +<p>"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her +still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet +all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have +been as straight as anybody if he could have married her."</p> + +<p>"But what does all this prove?"</p> + +<p>"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two +things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you +seem to think."</p> + +<p>"Did Edie care for that man?"</p> + +<p>"I believe so."</p> + +<p>"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made +him a sinner."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was +uncommonly hard on him."</p> + +<p>"Does she know?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows."</p> + +<p>"And she loves him in spite of it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either."</p> + +<p>No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace.</p> + +<p>Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its +vibrating, sub-passionate note.</p> + +<p>"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different."</p> + +<p>He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart +of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own +hour, warned him that his hour was not yet.</p> + +<p>And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne +Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged +with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland +influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul. +They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the +flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth.</p> + +<p>The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above +them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + + +<p>"Are you tired?" he asked.</p> + +<p>They had walked about the wood, made themselves hungry, and lunched like +labourers at high noon.</p> + +<p>"No, I'm only thirsty. Do you think there's a cottage anywhere where you +could get me some water?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, there's one somewhere about. I'll try and find it if you'll sit +here and rest till I come back."</p> + +<p>She waited. He came back, but without the water. His eyes sparkled with +some mysterious, irrepressible delight.</p> + +<p>"Can't you find it?"</p> + +<p>"Rather. I say, do come and look. There's such a pretty sight."</p> + +<p>She rose and went with him. Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards +from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild +hyacinths. It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that +hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either +side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the +wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks +and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that +sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in +one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for +it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from +their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver. +The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light +till it shone like emerald. A stone cottage faced the path; so small that +a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against +the grey gable of its side. The patch of garden in front was stuffed with +wall-flowers and violets. The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred +in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day.</p> + +<p>Majendie grasped Anne's arm and led her forward.</p> + +<p>In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in +warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet. She +laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to +the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with +the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body +to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and +began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song.</p> + +<p>"Look," said Majendie, "that's what I wanted to show you."</p> + +<p>"Oh—oh—oh—" said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still.</p> + +<p>The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene. Green +earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and +solitary joy.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?" said Majendie. "That +anything could be so young!"</p> + +<p>Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination.</p> + +<p>As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and +crawled over the grass to her feet.</p> + +<p>"The little lamb—" said she, and stooped, and lifted it.</p> + +<p>It turned to her, cuddling. Through the thin muslin of her bodice she +could feel the pressure of its tender palms.</p> + +<p>Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess +himself of the delicate clinging fingers. But his eyes were upon +Anne's eyes. They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the +meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze.</p> + +<p>A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen +thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast.</p> + +<p>At first she did not heed it. She stood hushed, attentive to the +prescience that woke in her; surrendered to the secret, with desire that +veiled itself to meet its unveiled destiny.</p> + +<p>Then the veil fell.</p> + +<p>The eyes that looked at her grew tender, and before their tenderness the +veil, the veil of her desire that had hidden him from her, fell.</p> + +<p>Her face burned, and she hid it against the child's face as it burrowed +into the softness of her breast. When she would have parted the child +from her, it clung.</p> + +<p>She laughed. "Release me." And he undid the clinging arms, and took the +child from her, and laid it again in the cradling grass.</p> + +<p>"It's conceived a violent passion for you," said he.</p> + +<p>"They always do," said she serenely.</p> + +<p>The door of the cottage was open. The mother stood on the threshold, +shading her eyes and wondering at them. She gave Anne water, hospitably, +in an old china cup.</p> + +<p>When Anne had drunk she handed the cup to her husband. He drank with his +eyes fixed on her over the brim, and gave it to her again. He wondered +whether she would drink from it after him (Anne was excessively +fastidious). To his intense satisfaction, she drank, draining the last +drop.</p> + +<p>They went back together to their tree. On the way he stopped to gather +wild hyacinths for her. He gathered slowly, in a grave and happy passion +of preoccupation. Anne stood erect in the path and watched him, and +laughed the girl's laugh that he longed to hear.</p> + +<p>It was as if she saw him for the first time through Edith's eyes, with +so tender an intelligence did she take in his attitude, the absurd, the +infantile intentness of his stooping figure, the still more absurdly +infantile emotion of his hands. It was the very same attitude which had +melted Edith, that unhappy day when they had watched him as he walked +disconsolate in the garden, and she, his wife, had hardened her heart +against him. She remembered Edith's words to her not two hours ago: +"If you could only see how unspeakably sacred the human part of us is, +and how pathetic." Surely she saw.</p> + +<p>The deep feeling and enchantment of the woods was upon her. He was sacred +to her; and for pathos, it seemed to her that there was poured upon his +stooping body all the pathos of all the living creatures of God.</p> + +<p>She saw deeper. In the illumination that rested on him there, she saw the +significance of that carelessness, that happiness of his which had once +troubled her. It was simply that his experience, his detestable +experience, had had no power to harm his soul. Through it all he had +preserved, or, by some miracle of God, recovered an incorruptible +innocence. She said to herself: "Why should I not love him? His heart +must be as pure as the heart of that little blessed child."</p> + +<p>The warning voice of the wisdom she had learnt from him whispered: "And +it rests with you to keep him so."</p> + +<p>He led her to her tree, where she seated herself regally as before. He +poured his sheaves of hyacinths as tribute into her lap. As his hands +touched hers her cold face flushed again and softened. He stretched +himself beside her and love stirred in her heart, unforbidden, as in a +happy dream. He watched the movements of her delicate fingers as they +played with the tangled hyacinth bells. Her hands were wet with the thick +streaming juice of the torn stalks; she stretched them out to him +helplessly. He knelt before her, and spread his handkerchief on his +knees, and took her hands and wiped them. She let them rest in his for a +moment, and, with a low, panting cry, he bowed his head and covered them +with kisses.</p> + +<p>At his cry her lips parted. And as her soul had called to him across the +spiritual ramparts, so her eyes said to him: "Come"; and he knew that +with all her body and her soul she yearned to him and consented.</p> + +<p>He held her tight by the wrists and drew her to him; and she laid her +arms lightly on his neck and kissed him.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad now," she whispered, "that Edith didn't tell me. She knew you. +Oh, my dear, she knew."</p> + +<p>And to herself she said proudly: "It rests with me."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"></a>BOOK II</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + + +<p>It was October, five months after Anne's birthday. She was not to know +again the mood which determined her complete surrender. Supreme moods can +never be recaptured or repeated. The passion that inspires them is +unique, self-sacrificial, immortal only through fruition; doomed to pass +and perish in its exaltation. She would know tenderness, but never just +that tenderness; gladness, but never that gladness; peace, but never the +peace that possessed her in the woods at Westleydale.</p> + +<p>The new soul in her moved steadily, to a rhythm which lacked the diviner +thrill of the impulse which had given it birth. It was but seldom that +the moment revived in memory. If Anne had accounted to herself for that +day, she would have said that they had taken the nine-fifty train to +Westleydale, that they had had a nice luncheon, that the weather was +exceptionally fine, and that well, yes, certainly, that day had been the +beginning of their entirely satisfactory relations. Anne's mind had a +tendency to lapse into the commonplace when not greatly stirred. Happily +for her, she had a refuge from it in her communion with the Unseen.</p> + +<p>Only at times was she conscious of a certain foiled expectancy. For the +greater while it seemed to her that she had attained an indestructible +spiritual content.</p> + +<p>She conceived a profound affection for her home. The house in Prior +Street became the centre of her earthward thoughts, and she seldom left +it for very long. Her health remained magnificent; her nature being +adapted to an undisturbed routine, appeased by the well-ordered, even +passage of her days.</p> + +<p>She had made a household religion for herself, and would have suffered in +departing from it. To be always down before her husband for eight-o'clock +breakfast; to sit with Edith from twelve till luncheon time, and in the +early afternoon; to spend her evenings with her husband, reading aloud or +talking, or sitting silent when silence soothed him; these things had +become more sacred and imperative than her attendance at St. Saviour's. +The hours of even-song struck for her no more.</p> + +<p>For, above all, she had made a point of always being at home in time for +Majendie's return from his office. At five o'clock she was ready for him, +beside her tea-table, irreproachably dressed. Her friends complained that +they had lost sight of her. Regularly at a quarter to five she would +forsake the drawing-rooms of Thurston Square. However absorbing Mrs. +Eliott's conversation, towards the quarter, the tender abstraction of +Anne's manner showed plainly that her spirit had surrendered to another +charm. Mrs. Eliott, in letting her go, had the air of a person serenely +sane, indulgent to a persistent and punctual obsession. Anne divided her +friends into those who understood and those who didn't. Fanny Eliott +would never understand. But little Mrs. Gardner, through the immortality +of her bridal spirit, understood completely. And for Anne Mrs. Gardner's +understanding of her amounted to an understanding of her husband. Anne's +heart went out to Mrs. Gardner.</p> + +<p>Not that she saw much of her, either. She had grown impatient of +interests that lay outside her home. Once she had decided to give herself +up to her husband, other people's claims appeared as an impertinence +beside that perfection of possession.</p> + +<p>She was less vividly aware of her own perfect possession of him. Majendie +was hardly aware of it himself. His happiness was so profound that he had +not yet measured it. He, too, had slipped into the same imperturbable +routine. It was seldom that he kept her waiting past five o'clock. He +hated the people who made business appointments with him for that hour. +His old associates saw little of him, and his club knew him no more. +He preferred Anne's society to that of any other person. They had no more +fear of each other. He saw that she was beginning to forget.</p> + +<p>In one thing only he was disappointed. The trembling woman who had held +him in her arms at Westleydale had never shown herself to him again. She +had been called, created, for an end beyond herself. The woman he had +married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance +in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her +reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of +the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an +explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too +sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him when he +thought of her. As for the actual present Anne, loyalty was part of the +large simplicity of his nature, and he could not criticise her. +Remembering Westleydale, he told himself that her blanched susceptibility +was tenderness at white heat. If she said little, he argued that (like +himself) she felt the more. And at times she could say perfect things.</p> + +<p>"I wonder, Nancy," he once said to her, "if you know how divinely sweet +your voice is?"</p> + +<p>"I shall begin to think it is, if you think so," said she.</p> + +<p>"And would you think yourself beautiful, if I thought so?"</p> + +<p>"Very beautiful. At any rate, as beautiful as I want to be."</p> + +<p>He could not control the demonstration provoked by that admission, and +she asked him if he were coming to church with her to-morrow.</p> + +<p>His Nancy chose her moments strangely.</p> + +<p>But not for worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in +a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it. +Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and +sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him +during his hours of business.</p> + +<p>Anne did not like his business. But, in spite of it, she was proud +of him, of his appearance, his charm, his distinction, his entire +superiority to even the aristocracy of Scale.</p> + +<p>She no longer resented his indifference to her friends in Thurston +Square, since it meant that he desired to have her to himself. Of his own +friends he had seen little, and she nothing. If she had not pressed Fanny +Eliott on him, he had spared her Mrs. Lawson Hannay and Mrs. Dick +Ransome. She had been fortunate enough to find both these ladies out when +she returned their calls. And Majendie had spoken of his most intimate +friend, Charlie Gorst, as absent on a holiday in Norway.</p> + +<p>It was, therefore, in a mood of more than usual concession that she +proposed to return, now in October, the second advance made to her by +Mrs. Hannay in July.</p> + +<p>Majendie was relieved to think that he would no longer be compelled to +perjure himself on Anne's account. The Hannays had frequently reproached +him with his wife's unreadiness in response, and (as he had told her) he +had exhausted all acceptable explanations of her conduct. He had "worked" +her headaches "for all they were worth" with Hannay; for weeks he had +kept Hannay's wife from calling, by the fiction, discreetly presented, of +a severe facial neuralgia; and his last shameless intimation, that Anne +was "rather shy, you know," had been received with a respectful +incredulity that left him with nothing more to say.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay was not at home when Anne called, for Anne had deliberately +avoided her "day." But Mrs. Hannay was irrepressibly forgiving, and Anne +found herself invited to dine at the Hannays' with her husband early in +the following week. It was hardly an hour since she had left Mrs. +Hannay's doorstep when the pressing, the almost alarmingly affectionate +little note came hurrying after her.</p> + +<p>"I'll go, dear, if you really want me to," said she.</p> + +<p>"Well—I think, if you don't mind. The Hannays have been awfully good to +me."</p> + +<p>So they went.</p> + +<p>"Don't snub the poor little woman too unmercifully," was Edith's parting +charge.</p> + +<p>"I promise you I'll not snub her at all," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"You can't," said Majendie. "She's like a soft sofa cushion with lots of +frills on. You can sit on her, as you sit on a sofa cushion, and she's as +plump, and soft, and accommodating as ever the next day."</p> + +<p>The Hannays lived in the Park.</p> + +<p>Majendie talked a great deal on the way there. His supporting and +attentive manner was not quite the stimulant he had meant it to be. Anne +gathered that the ordeal would be trying; he was so eager to make it +appear otherwise.</p> + +<p>"Once you're there, it won't be bad, you know, at all. The Hannays are +really all right. They'll ask the very nicest people they know to meet +you. They think you're doing them a tremendous honour, you know, and +they'll rise to it. You'll see how they'll rise."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay had every appearance of having risen to it. Anne's entrance +(she was impressive in her entrances) set the standard high; yet Mrs. +Hannay rose. When agreeably excited Mrs. Hannay was accustomed to move +from one end of her drawing-room to the other with the pleasing and +impalpable velocity of all soft round bodies inspired by gaiety. So +exuberant was the softness of the little lady and so voluminous her +flying frills, that at these moments her descent upon her guests appeared +positively winged like the descent of cherubim. To-night she advanced +slowly from her hearth-rug with no more than the very slightest swaying +and rolling of all her softness, the very faintest tremor of her downy +wings. Mrs. Hannay's face was the round face of innocence, the face of +a cherub with blown cheeks and lips shaped for the trumpet.</p> + +<p>"My dear Mrs. Majendie—at last." She retained Mrs. Majendie's hand for +the moment of presenting her to her husband. By this gesture she +appropriated Mrs. Majendie, taking her under her small cherubic wing. +"Wallie, how d'you do?" Her left hand furtively appropriated Mrs. +Majendie's husband. Anne marked the familiarity with dismay. It was +evident that at the Hannays' Walter was in the warm lap of intimacy.</p> + +<p>It was evident, too, that Mr. Hannay had married considerably beneath +him. Anne owned that he had a certain dignity, and that there was +something rather pleasing in his loose, clean-shaven face. The sharp +slenderness of youth was now vanishing in a rosy corpulence, corpulence +to which Mr. Hannay resigned himself without a struggle. But above it the +delicate arch of his nose attested the original refinement of his type. +His mouth was not without sweetness, Mr. Hannay being as indulgent to +other people as he was to himself.</p> + +<p>He received Anne with a benign air; he assured her of his delight in +making her acquaintance; and he refrained from any allusions to the long +delay of his delight.</p> + +<p>Little Mrs. Hannay was rolling softly in another direction.</p> + +<p>"Canon Wharton, let me present you to Mrs. Walter Majendie."</p> + +<p>She had risen to Canon Wharton. For she had said to her husband: "You +must get the Canon. She can't think us such a shocking bad lot if we have +him." Her face expressed triumph in the capture of Canon Wharton, triumph +in the capture of Mrs. Walter Majendie, triumph in the introduction. +Owing to the Hannays' determination to rise to it, the dinner-party, in +being rigidly select, was of necessity extremely small.</p> + +<p>"Miss Mildred Wharton—Sir Rigley Barker—Mr. Gorst. Now you all know +each other."</p> + +<p>The last person introduced had lingered with a certain charming +diffidence at Mrs. Majendie's side. He was a man of about her husband's +age, or a little younger, fair and slender, with a restless, flushed face +and brilliant eyes.</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you what a pleasure this is, Mrs. Majendie."</p> + +<p>He had an engaging voice and a still more engaging smile.</p> + +<p>"You may have heard about me from your husband. I was awfully sorry to +miss you when I called before I went to Norway. I only came back this +morning, but I <i>made</i> Hannay invite me."</p> + +<p>Anne murmured some suitable politeness. She said afterwards that her +instinct had warned her against Mr. Gorst, with his restlessness and +brilliance; but, as a matter of fact, her instinct had done nothing of +the sort, and his manners had prejudiced her in his favour. Fanny Eliott +had told her that he belonged to a very old Lincolnshire family. There +was a distinction about him. And he really had a particularly engaging +smile.</p> + +<p>So she received him amiably; so amiably that Majendie, who had been +observing their encounter with an intent and rather anxious interest, +appeared finally reassured. He joined them, releasing himself adroitly +from Sir Rigley Barker.</p> + +<p>"How's Edith?" said Mr. Gorst.</p> + +<p>His use of the name and something in his intonation made Anne attentive.</p> + +<p>"She's better," said Majendie. "Come and see her soon."</p> + +<p>"Oh, rather. I'll come round to-morrow. If," he added, "Mrs. Majendie +will permit me."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Majendie," said her husband, "will be delighted."</p> + +<p>Anne smiled assent. Her amiability extended even to Mrs. Hannay, who had +risen to it, so far, well.</p> + +<p>During dinner Anne gave her attention to her right-hand neighbour, Canon +Wharton; and Mrs. Hannay, looking down from her end of the table, saw her +selection justified. In rising to the Canon she had risen her highest; +for the ex-member hardly counted; he was a fallen star. But Canon +Wharton, the Vicar of All Souls, stood on an eminence, social and +spiritual, in Scale. He had built himself a church in the new quarter of +the town, and had filled it to overflowing by the power of his eloquence. +Lawson Hannay, in a moment of unkind insight, had described the Canon as +"a speculative builder"; but he lent him money for his building, and +liked him none the less.</p> + +<p>Out of the pulpit the Vicar of All Souls was all things to all men. In +the pulpit he was nothing but the Vicar of All Souls. He stood there for +a great light in Scale, "holding," as he said, "the light, carrying the +light, battling for light in the darkness of that capital of commerce, +that stronghold of materialism, founded on money, built up in money, +cemented with money!" He snarled out the word "money," and flung it in +the face of his fashionable congregation; he gnashed his teeth over it; +he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in +little Tommy Wharton's pluck in "giving it them hot." He was always +giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire. And then little +Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock, +and into the Hannays' house for whiskey and soda. He could drink peg for +peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned +many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid the whiskey and shook her +handkerchief at the little Canon, and "shooed" him merrily away. And +Lawson, big, good-natured Lawson, would lend him more "money" to build +his church with.</p> + +<p>So the Vicar of All Souls, who aspired to be all things to all men, was +hand in glove with the Lawson Hannays. He had occasionally been known to +provide for the tables of the poor, but he dearly loved to sit at the +tables of the rich; and he justified his predilection by the highest +example.</p> + +<p>Anne, who knew the Canon by his spiritual reputation only, turned to him +with interest. Her eye, keen to discern these differences, saw at once +that he was a man of the people. He had the unfinished features, the +stunted form of an artisan; his body sacrificed, his admirers said, to +the energies of his mighty brain. His face was a heavy, powerful oval, +bilious-coloured, scarred with deep lines, and cleft by the wide mouth of +an orator, a mouth that had acquired the appearance of strength through +the Canon's habit of bringing his lips together with a snap at the close +of his periods. His eyes were a strange, opaque grey, but the clever +Canon made them seem almost uncomfortably penetrating by simply knitting +his eyebrows in a savage pent-house over them. They now looked forth at +Anne as if the Canon knew very well that her soul had a secret, and that +it would not long be hidden from him.</p> + +<p>They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon's catholicity bridged the +gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fashionable +Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning +over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win +over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had +yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying +other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success, +hoping (he said) to see his money back again.</p> + +<p>Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie. Ladies, +when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate +decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he +loved his dinner more. He loved it with a certain pure extravagance, +illuminated by thought and imagination. Mrs. Hannay was one with him in +this affection. Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising +higher and higher in unwearying flights. It was a link between them; +almost (so fine was the passion) an intellectual tie. But reticence was +not in Hannay's nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly. +She missed the high lyric note in it. All epicurean pleasures, even so +delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay's in his dinner, appeared gross +to Anne.</p> + +<p>Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached, +unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay +rallied him on his abstraction.</p> + +<p>"If you <i>are</i> in love, my dear Wallie," she whispered, "you needn't show +it so much. It's barely decent."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it? Anyhow, I hope it's quite decently bare," he answered, tempted +by her folly. They were gay at Mrs. Hannay's end of the table. But Anne, +who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance +which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston +Square. These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull.</p> + +<p>Now, though Anne didn't in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr. +Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her. Not that he +talked very much to anybody. Now and then the Canon's niece, Mildred +Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in +those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred +and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck +Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their +intercourse.</p> + +<p>To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. She tried to be patient with it, +judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen +to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the +Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation.</p> + +<p>At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests +to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she +whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint +of filling his master's glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his +protests. And then her voice rose.</p> + +<p>"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice +to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're +drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's glass, Gould, fill it—fill it." +She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her +to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she +put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs. +Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable +about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa, +and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cushion. +No?—Do—Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay, +supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, "one for +my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I +adore cushions, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cushion +myself, so I suppose that's why."</p> + +<p>Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but +she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually +than you could snub a little down cushion. It would be impossible, she +thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface. +Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended +and her vulgarity began.</p> + +<p>"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's +attitude. "My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and +I ought to be friends too."</p> + +<p>Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning +unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on +the theme of friendship, till her husband appeared with the other three +men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile +drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it +dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it +was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever see such a pair? I tell Lawson he's fonder of Wallie than +he is of me. I believe he'd go down on his knees and black his boots for +nothing, if he asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson +I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little +talk with you."</p> + +<p>Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her place to him, +cushions and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to +the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his +friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness.</p> + +<p>He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty utterance.</p> + +<p>"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear +lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint—a Bayard." He +flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the +crescendo of his thought. "A <i>preux chevalier, sans peur</i>" said Mr. +Hannay, "<i>et sans reproche</i>."</p> + +<p>Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence.</p> + +<p>Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had +been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife.</p> + +<p>And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her +attitude—conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own +shortcomings, and it struck him that Majendie needed some defence against +her judgment of his taste in friendship.</p> + +<p>When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last +lingering guest.</p> + +<p>"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"<i>Poor</i> Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed.</p> + +<p>"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I think she's magnificent."</p> + +<p>"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?"</p> + +<p>"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine +it's going to be any gayer now."</p> + +<p>"<i>Now</i>" said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation +of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville, +with Gwen Richards on."</p> + +<p>"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no +appetite herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular +dog-in-the-manger of a woman."</p> + +<p>"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst. "She can't be as bad as all that. +Edith's awfully fond of her."</p> + +<p>"And <i>that's</i> good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"Yes. That's good enough for me. <i>I</i> like her," said Gorst stoutly; and +Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth.</p> + +<p>But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated, +"Honestly, I like her."</p> + +<p>"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy +forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him.</p> + +<p>"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she.</p> + +<p>"It was a dead failure, Pussy."</p> + +<p>"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she +did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a +woman of exquisite tact.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream—a happy dream."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + + +<p>"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me."</p> + +<p>Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and +hostess of the night before.</p> + +<p>"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that +she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays.</p> + +<p>"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had +not.</p> + +<p>"How you ever could—" she began, but he stopped her.</p> + +<p>"Oh well, we needn't go into that."</p> + +<p>It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind +those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not +wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to +the discussion.</p> + +<p>She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble +had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned, +somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She +wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays—detestable people.</p> + +<p>She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an +account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into +life.)</p> + +<p>"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't know that I did. <i>I</i> should have enjoyed it very much +indeed."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe you."</p> + +<p>"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?"</p> + +<p>"The Hannays were there. It was enough."</p> + +<p>"You liked Mr. Gorst?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He was different."</p> + +<p>"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him."</p> + +<p>"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy."</p> + +<p>"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to +me."</p> + +<p>"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a +good friend to him."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay."</p> + +<p>"It's intolerable!" said Anne.</p> + +<p>"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike +so much stood by Walter when your friends the Eliotts, my child, turned +their virtuous backs on him—when none of his own people, even, would +lend him a helping hand. It was Lawson Hannay who saved him."</p> + +<p>"Saved him?"</p> + +<p>"Saved him. Moved heaven and earth to get him out of that woman's +clutches."</p> + +<p>Anne shook her head, and put her hands over her eyes to dispel her vision +of him. Edith laughed.</p> + +<p>"You can't see Mr. Hannay moving heaven?"</p> + +<p>"No, really I can't."</p> + +<p>"Well, <i>I</i> saw him. At least, if he didn't move heaven, he moved earth. +When nothing else could shake her hold, he bought her off."</p> + +<p>"Bought—her—off?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, bought her—paid her money to go. And she went."</p> + +<p>"He owes him money, then?"</p> + +<p>"Money, and a great many other things beside. You don't like it?"</p> + +<p>"I can't bear it."</p> + +<p>"Of course you can't. It hurts your pride. It hurt mine badly. But my +pride has had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay."</p> + +<p>Anne raised her head as if she refused to lower her pride an inch to him. +She was trying to put the whole episode behind her, as it had come before +her. She had nothing whatever to do with it. Edith, of course, had to be +grateful. <i>She</i> was not bound by the same obligation. But she was +determined that they should be quit of the Hannays. She would make Walter +pay back that money.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Edith's eyes filled with tears at the recollection. "Lawson +Hannay may not have been a very good man himself—I believe at one time +he wasn't. But he loved his friend, and he didn't want to see him going +the same way."</p> + +<p>"The same way? That means that, if it hadn't been for Mr. Hannay, he +would never have met her."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Hannay did his best to prevent his meeting her. He knew what she +was, and Walter didn't. He took him off in his yacht for weeks at a time, +to get him out of her way. When she followed him he brought him back. +When she persecuted him—well, I've told you what he did."</p> + +<p>Anne lifted her hand in supplication, and rose and went to the open +window, as if, after that recital, she thirsted for fresh air. Edith +smiled, in spite of herself, at her sister-in-law's repudiation of the +subject.</p> + +<p>"Poor Mr. Hannay," said she, "the worst you can say of him now is that he +eats and drinks a little more than's good for him."</p> + +<p>"And that he's married a wife who sets him the example," said Anne, +returning from the window-sill refreshed.</p> + +<p>"She keeps him straight, dear."</p> + +<p>"Edith! I shall never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's +horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps him straight!'"</p> + +<p>"You think I take for granted a natural tendency to crookedness. I +don't—I don't. What I take for granted is a natural tendency to +straightness, when it gets its way. It doesn't always get it, though, +especially in a town like Scale."</p> + +<p>"I wish we were out of it."</p> + +<p>"So did I, dear, once; but I don't now. We must make the best of it."</p> + +<p>"Has Walter paid any of that money back to Mr. Hannay?"</p> + +<p>Edith looked up at her sister-in-law, startled by the hardness in her +voice. She had meant to spare Anne's pride the worst blow, but something +in her question stirred the fire that slept in Edith.</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "he hasn't. He was going to, but Mr. Hannay cancelled the +debt, in order that he might marry—that he might marry you."</p> + +<p>Anne drew back as if Edith had struck her bodily. She, then, had been +bought, too, with Mr. Hannay's money. Without it, Walter could not have +afforded to marry her; for she was poor.</p> + +<p>She sat silent, until her self-appointed hour with Edith ended; and then, +still silently, she left the room.</p> + +<p>And Edith turned her cheek on her cushions and sobbed weakly to herself. +"Walter would never forgive me if he knew I'd told her that. It was awful +of me. But Anne would have provoked the patience of a saint."</p> + +<p>Anne owned that Edith was a saint, and that the provocation was extreme.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon, Edith, at her own request, was forgiven, and Anne, by +way of proving and demonstrating her forgiveness, announced her amiable +intention of calling on Mrs. Hannay on her "day."</p> + +<p>The day fell within a week of the dinner. It was agreed that Majendie was +to meet his wife at the Hannays, and to take her home. There was a good +mile between Prior Street and the Park; and Anne was a leisurely walker; +so it happened that she was late, and that Majendie had arrived a few +minutes before her. She did not notice him there all at once. Mrs. Hannay +was a sociable little lady; the radius of her circle was rapidly +increasing, and her "day" drew crowds. The lamps were not yet lit, and as +Anne entered the room, it was dim to her after the daylight of the open +air. She had counted on an inconspicuous entrance, and was astonished to +find that the announcement of her name caused a curious disturbance and +division in the assembly. A finer ear than Anne's might have detected an +ominous sound, something like the rustling of leaves before a storm. But +Anne's self-possession rendered her at times insensible to changes in the +social atmosphere. In any case the slight commotion was no more than she +had come prepared for in a whole roomful of ill-bred persons.</p> + +<p>"Pussy," said a lady who stood near Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had her back +to the doorway. The lady's voice rang on a low note of warning, and she +brought her mouth close to Mrs. Hannay's ear.</p> + +<p>The hostess started, turned, and came at once towards Mrs. Majendie, +rolling deftly between the persons who obstructed her perturbed and +precipitate way. The perfect round of her cheeks had dropped a little; it +was the face of a poor cherub in vexation and dismay.</p> + +<p>"Dear Mrs. Majendie,"—her voice, once so triumphant, had dropped too, +almost to a husky whisper,—"how very good of you."</p> + +<p>She led her to a sofa, the seat of intimacy, set back a little from the +central throne. (Majendie could be seen fairly immersed in the turmoil, +struggling desperately through it, with a plate in his hand.)</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay was followed by her husband, by the other lady, and by +Gorst. She introduced the other lady as Mrs. Ransome, and they seated +themselves, one on each side of Anne. The two men drew up in front of +the sofa, and began to talk very fast, in loud tones and with an +unnatural gaiety. The women, too, closed in upon her somewhat with their +knees; they were both a little confused, both more than a little +frightened, and the manner of both was mysteriously apologetic.</p> + +<p>Anne, with her deep, insulating sense of superiority, had no doubt as to +the secret of the situation. She felt herself suitably protected, guarded +from contact, screened from view, distinguished very properly from +persons to whom it was manifestly impossible, even for Mrs. Hannay, to +introduce her. She was very sorry for poor Mrs. Hannay, she tried to make +it less difficult for her, by ignoring the elements of confusion and +fright. But poor Mrs. Hannay kept on being frightened; she refused to +part with her panic and be natural. So terrified was she, that she hardly +seemed to take in what Mrs. Majendie was saying.</p> + +<p>Anne, however, conversed with the utmost amiability, while her thoughts +ran thus: "Dear lady, why this agitation? You cannot help being vulgar. +As for your friends, what do you think I expected?"</p> + +<p>The other lady, Mrs. Dick Ransome, could not be held accountable for +anything but her own private vulgarity; and it struck Anne as odd that +Mrs. Dick Ransome, who was not responsible for Mrs. Hannay, seemed, if +anything, more terrified than Mrs. Hannay, who was responsible for her.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Dick Ransome did not, at the first blush, inspire confidence. She +was a woman with a great deal of blonde hair, and a fresh-coloured, +conspicuously unspiritual face; coarse-grained, thick-necked, ruminantly +animal, but kind; kind to Mrs. Hannay, kind to Anne, kinder even than +Mrs. Hannay who was responsible for all the kindness.</p> + +<p>Charlie Gorst hurried away to get Mrs. Majendie some tea, and Lawson's +Hannay's large form moved into the gap thus made, blocking Anne's view of +the room. He stood looking down upon her with an extraordinary smile of +mingled apology and protection. Gorst's return was followed by Majendie, +wandering uneasily with his plate. He smiled at Anne, too; and his smile +conveyed the same suggestion of desperation and distress. It was as if he +said to her: "I'm sorry for letting you in for such a crew, but how can +I help it?" She smiled back at him brightly, as much as to say; "Don't +mind. It amuses me. I'm taking it all in."</p> + +<p>He wandered away, and Anne felt that the women exchanged looks across her +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I think I'll be going, Pussy dear," said Mrs. Ransome, nodding some +secret intelligence. She elbowed her way gently across the room, and came +back again, shaking her head hopelessly and helplessly. "She says I can +go if I like, but she'll stay," said Mrs. Ransome under her breath.</p> + +<p>"Oh-h-h," said Mrs. Hannay under hers.</p> + +<p>"What am I to do?" said Mrs. Ransome, flurried into audible speech.</p> + +<p>"Stay—stay. It's much better." Mrs. Hannay plucked her husband by the +sleeve, and he lowered an attentive ear. Mrs. Ransome covered the +confidence with a high-pitched babble.</p> + +<p>"You find Scale a very sociable place, don't you, Mrs. Majendie?" said +Mrs. Ransome.</p> + +<p>"Go," said Mrs. Hannay, "and take her off into the conservatory, or +somewhere."</p> + +<p>"More sociable in the winter-time, of course." (Mrs. Ransome, in her +agitation, almost screamed it.)</p> + +<p>"I can't take her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a +thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of +Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, +benignant gaze.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay was beside herself, beholding his invertebrate behaviour. +"Don't sit down, stupid. Do something—anything."</p> + +<p>He went to do it, but evidently, whatever it was, he had no heart for it.</p> + +<p>A maid came in and lit a lamp. There was a simultaneous movement of +departure among the nearer guests.</p> + +<p>"Oh, heavens," said Mrs. Hannay, "don't tell me they're all going to go!"</p> + +<p>Anne, serenely contemplating these provincial manners, was bewildered by +the horror in Mrs. Hannay's tone. There was no accounting for provincial +manners, or she would have supposed that Mrs. Hannay, mortified by the +presence of her most undesirable acquaintance, would have rejoiced to see +them go.</p> + +<p>Their dispersal cleared a space down the middle of the room to the +bay-window, and disclosed a figure, a woman's figure, which occupied, +majestically, a settee. The settee, set far back in the bay of the +window, was in a direct line with Anne's sofa. That part of the room was +still unlighted, and the figure, sitting a little sideways, remained +obscure.</p> + +<p>A servant went round lighting lamps.</p> + +<p>The first lamp to be lit stood beside Anne's sofa. The effect of the +illumination was to make the lady in the window turn on her settee. +Across the space between, her eyes, obscure lights in a face still +undefined, swept with the turning of her body, and fastened upon Anne's +face, bared for the first time to their view. They remained fixed, as if +Anne's face had a peculiar fascination for them.</p> + +<p>"Who is the lady sitting in the window?" asked Anne.</p> + +<p>"It's my sister." Mrs. Ransome blinked as she answered, and her blood ran +scarlet to the roots of her blonde hair.</p> + +<p>A cherub, discovering a horrible taste in his trumpet, would have looked +like Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"Do let me give you some more tea, Mrs. Majendie?" said she, while Mrs. +Ransome signalled to her husband. "Here, Dick, come and make yourself +useful."</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome, a little stout man with a bald head, a pale puffy face, a +twinkling eye and a severe moustache, was obedient to her summons.</p> + +<p>"Let me see," said she, "have you met Mrs. Majendie?"</p> + +<p>"I have not had that pleasure," said Mr. Ransome, and bowed profoundly. +He waited assiduously on Mrs. Majendie. The Ransomes might have been +responsible for the whole occasion, they so rallied around and supported +her.</p> + +<p>Hannay and Gorst, Ransome and another man were gathered together in a +communion with the lady of the settee. There was a general lull, and her +voice, a voice of sweet but somewhat penetrating quality, was heard.</p> + +<p>"Don't talk to me," said she, "about women being jealous of each other. +Do you suppose I mind another woman being handsome? I don't care how +handsome she is, so long as she isn't handsome in my style. Of course, +I don't say I could stand it if she was the very moral of me."</p> + +<p>"I say, supposing Toodles met the very moral of herself?"</p> + +<p>"Could Toodles have a moral? I doubt it."</p> + +<p>"I want to know what she'd do with it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, by Jove, what <i>would</i> you do?"</p> + +<p>"Do? I should do my worst. I should make her sit somewhere with a good +strong light on her."</p> + +<p>"Hold hard there," said her brother-in-law (the man who called her +Toodles), "Lady Cayley doesn't want that lamp lit just yet"</p> + +<p>In the silence of the rest, the name seemed to leap straight across the +room to Anne.</p> + +<p>The two women beside her heard it, and looked at each other and at her. +Anne sickened under their eyes, struck suddenly by the meaning of their +protection and their sympathy. She longed to rise, to sweep them aside +and go. But she was kept motionless by some superior instinct of disdain.</p> + +<p>Outwardly she appeared in no way concerned by this revelation of the +presence of Lady Cayley. She might never have heard of her, for any +knowledge that her face betrayed.</p> + +<p>Majendie, not far from the settee in the window, was handing cucumber +sandwiches to an old lady. And Lady Cayley had taken the matches from the +maid and was lighting the lamp herself, and was saying, "I'm not afraid +of the light yet, I assure you. There—look at me."</p> + +<p>Everybody looked at her, and she looked at everybody, as she sat in the +lamplight, and let it pour over her. She seemed to be offering herself +lavishly, recklessly, triumphantly, to the light.</p> + +<p>Lady Cayley was a large woman of thirty-seven, who had been a slender and +a pretty woman at thirty. She would have been pretty still if she had +been a shade less large. She had tiny upward-tilted features in her large +white face; but the lines of her jaw and her little round prominent chin +were already vanishing in a soft enveloping fold, flushed through its +whiteness with a bloom that was a sleeping colour. Her forehead and +eyelids were exceedingly white, so white that against them her black +eyebrows and blue eyes were vivid and emphatic. Her head carried high a +Gainsborough hat of white felt, with black plumes and a black line round +its brim. Under its upward and its downward curve her light brown hair +was tossed up, and curled, and waved, and puffed into an appearance of +great exuberance and volume. Exuberance and volume were the note of this +lady, a note subdued a little by the art of her dressmaker. A gown of +smooth black cloth clung to her vast form without a wrinkle, sombre, +severe, giving her a kind of slenderness in stoutness. She wore a white +lace vest and any quantity of lace ruffles, any number of little black +velvet lines and points set with paste buttons. And every ruffle, every +line, every point and button was an accent, emphasising some beauty of +her person.</p> + +<p>And Anne looked at Lady Cayley once and no more.</p> + +<p>It was enough. The trouble that she had put from her came again upon her, +no longer in its merciful immensity, faceless and formless (for she had +shrunk from picturing Lady Cayley), but boldly, abominably defined. She +grasped it now, the atrocious tragedy, made visible and terrible for her +in the body of Lady Cayley, the phantom of her own horror made flesh.</p> + +<p>A terrible comprehension fell on her of that body, of its power, its +secret, and its sin.</p> + +<p>For the first moment, when she looked from it to her husband, her mind +refused to associate him with that degradation. Reverence held her, and +a sudden memory of her passion in the woods at Westleydale. Mercifully, +they veiled her intelligence, and made it impossible for her to realise +that he should have sunk so low.</p> + +<p>Then she remembered. She had known that it was, that it would be so, +that, sooner or later, the woman would come back. Her brain conceived a +curious two-fold intuition of the fact.</p> + +<p>It was all foreappointed and foreknown, that she should come to this +hateful house, and should sit there, and that her eyes should be opened +and that she should see.</p> + +<p>And the woman's voice rose again. "Do I see cucumber sandwiches?" said +Lady Cayley. "Dick, go and tell Mr. Majendie that if he doesn't want all +those sandwiches himself, I'll have one."</p> + +<p>Ransome gave the message, and Majendie turned to the lady of the settee, +presenting the plate with the finest air of abstraction. Her large arm +hovered in selection long enough for her to shoot out one low quick +speech.</p> + +<p>"I only wanted to see if you'd cut me, Wallie. Topsy bet me two to ten +you wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Why on earth should I?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, on earth I know you wouldn't. But didn't I hear just now you'd +married and gone to heaven?"</p> + +<p>"Gone to——?"</p> + +<p>"Sh—sh—sh—I'm sure she doesn't let you use those naughty words. You +needn't say you're not in heaven, for I can see you are. You didn't +expect to meet me there, did you?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly didn't expect to meet you here."</p> + +<p>"How can you be so rude? Dick, take that tiresome plate from him, he +doesn't know what to do with it. Yes. I'll have another before it goes +away for ever."</p> + +<p>Majendie had given up the plate before he realised that he was parting +with the link that bound him to the outer world. He turned instantly to +follow it there; but she saw his intention and frustrated it.</p> + +<p>"Butter? Ugh! You might hold my cup for me while I take my gloves off."</p> + +<p>She peeled two skin-tight gloves from her plump hands, so carefully that +the operation gave her all the time she wanted.</p> + +<p>"I believe you're still afraid of me?" said she.</p> + +<p>He was doing his best to look over her head; but she smiled a smile so +flashing that it drew his eyes to her involuntarily; he felt it as +positively illuminating their end of the room.</p> + +<p>"You're not? Well, prove it."</p> + +<p>"Is it possible to prove anything to you?"</p> + +<p>Again he was about to break from her impatiently. Nothing, he had told +himself, would induce him to stay and talk to her. But he saw Anne's +face across the room; it was pale and hard, fixed in an expression of +implacable repulsion. And she was not looking at Lady Cayley, but at him.</p> + +<p>"You can prove it," said Lady Cayley, "to me and everybody else—they're +all looking at you—by sitting down quietly for one moment, and trying to +look a little less as if we compromised each other."</p> + +<p>He stayed, to prove his innocence before Anne; and he stood, to prove +his independence before Lady Cayley. He had longed to get away from the +woman, to stand by his wife's side—to take her out of the room, out of +the house, into the open air. And now the perversity that was in him kept +him where he hated to be.</p> + +<p>"That's right. Thank heaven one of us has got some presence of mind."</p> + +<p>"Presence of <i>mind</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You don't seem to think of <i>me</i>," she added softly.</p> + +<p>"Why should I?" he replied with a brutality that surprised himself.</p> + +<p>She looked at him with blue eyes softly suffused, and the curve of a red +mouth sweet and tremulous. "Why?" her whisper echoed him. "Because I'm a +woman."</p> + +<p>Her eyelids dropped ever so little, but their dark lashes (following the +upward trend of her features) curled to such a degree that the veil was +ineffectual. He saw a large slit of the wonderful, indomitable blue.</p> + +<p>"I'm a woman, and you're a man, you see; and the world's on your side, my +friend, not on mine."</p> + +<p>She said it sweetly. If she had been bitter she would have (as she +expressed it) "choked him off"; but Lady Cayley knew better than to be +bitter now, at thirty-seven. She had learnt that her power was in her +sweetness.</p> + +<p>His face softened (from the other end of the room Anne saw it soften), +and Lady Cayley pursued with soundless feet her fugitive advantage.</p> + +<p>"Poor Wallie, you needn't look so frightened. I'm quite safe now, or +soon will be. Didn't I tell you I was going there too? I'm going to be +married."</p> + +<p>"I'm delighted to hear it," he said stiffly.</p> + +<p>"To a perfect angel," said she.</p> + +<p>"Really? If you're going up to heaven, he, I take it, is not coming down +to earth."</p> + +<p>"Nothing is settled," said Lady Cayley, with such monstrous gravity that +his stiffness melted, and he laughed outright.</p> + +<p>Anne heard him.</p> + +<p>"Who, if I may ask, is this celestial, this transcendent being?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "I can't tell you, yet."</p> + +<p>"What, isn't even that settled?"</p> + +<p>Majendie was so genuinely diverted at that moment that he would not have +left her if he could.</p> + +<p>She took the sting of it, and flushed, dumbly. Remorse seized him, and he +sought to soothe her.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady, I had a vision of heavenly hosts standing round you in +such quantities that it might be difficult to make a selection, you +know."</p> + +<p>She rallied finely under the reviving compliment. "My dear, it's a case +of quality, not quantity—" Her past was so present to them both that he +almost understood her to say, "this time."</p> + +<p>"I see," he said. "The wings. But nothing's settled?"</p> + +<p>"It's settled right enough," said she, by which he understood her to +imply that the "angel's" case was. She had settled him. Majendie could +see her doing it. His imagination played lightly with the preposterous +idea. He conceived her in the act of bringing down her bird of heaven, +actually "winging him."</p> + +<p>"But it's not given out yet."</p> + +<p>"I see."</p> + +<p>"You're the first I've told, except Topsy. Topsy knows it. So you mustn't +tell anybody else."</p> + +<p>"I never tell anybody anything," said he.</p> + +<p>He gathered that it was not quite so settled as she wished him to +suppose, and that Lady Cayley anticipated some possible dashing of the +cup of matrimony from her lips.</p> + +<p>"So I'm not to have panics, in the night, and palpitations, every time +I think of it?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not, if it rests with me."</p> + +<p>"I wanted you to know. But it's so precious, I'm afraid of losing it. +Nothing," said Lady Cayley, "can make up for the loss of a good man's +love. Except," she added, "a good woman's."</p> + +<p>"Quite so," he assented coldly, with horror at his perception of her +drift.</p> + +<p>His coldness riled her.</p> + +<p>"Who," said she with emphasis, "is the lady who keeps making those awful +eyes at us over Pussy's top-knot?"</p> + +<p>"That lady," said Majendie, "as it happens, is my wife."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you tell me that before? That's what comes, you see, of not +introducing people. I'll tell you one thing, Wallie. She's awfully +handsome. But you always had good taste. Br-r-r, there's a draught +cutting my head off. You might shut that window, there's a dear."</p> + +<p>He shut it.</p> + +<p>"And put my cup down."</p> + +<p>He put it down.</p> + +<p>Anne saw him. She had seen everything.</p> + +<p>"And help me on with my cape."</p> + +<p>He lifted the heavy sable thing with two fingers, and helped her +gingerly. A scent, horrid and thick, and profuse with memories, was +shaken from her as she turned her shoulder. He hoped she was going. But +she was not going; not she. Her body swayed towards him sinuously from +hips obstinately immobile, weighted, literally, with her unshakable +determination to sit on.</p> + +<p>She rewarded him with a smile which seemed to him, if anything, more +atrociously luminous than the last. "I must keep you up to the mark," +said she, as she turned with it. "Your wife's looking at you, and I feel +responsible for your good behaviour. Don't keep her waiting. Can't you +see she wants to go?"</p> + +<p>"And I want to go, too," said he savagely. And he went.</p> + +<p>And as she watched Mrs. Walter Majendie's departure, Lady Cayley smiled +softly to herself; tasting the first delicious flavour of success.</p> + +<p>She had made Mrs. Walter Majendie betray herself; she had made her +furious; she had made her go.</p> + +<p>She had sat Mrs. Walter Majendie out.</p> + +<p>If the town of Scale, the mayor and the aldermen, had risen and given her +an ovation, she could not have celebrated more triumphally her return.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<p>Anne and her husband walked home in silence across the Park, grateful for +its darkness. Majendie could well imagine that she would not want to +talk. He made allowance for her repulsion; he respected it and her +silence as its sign. She had every right to her resentment. He had let +her in for the Hannays, who had let her in for the inconceivable +encounter. On the day of her divorce Sarah Cayley had removed herself +from Scale, and he had shrunk from providing for the supreme +embarrassment of her return. He had looked on her as definitely, +consummately departed. She had disappeared, down dingy vistas, into +unimaginable obscurities. He pictured her as sunk, in Continental +abysses, beyond all possibility of resurgence. And she had emerged (from +abominations) smiling that indestructible smile. The incident had been +unpleasant, so unpleasant that he didn't want to talk about it. All the +same, he would have done violence to his feelings and apologised for it +then and there, but that he really judged it better to let well alone. It +was well, he thought, that Anne was so silent. She might have had a great +deal to say, and it was kind of her not to say it, to let him off so +easily.</p> + +<p>Anne's interpretation of Majendie's silence was not so favourable. After +being exposed to the pain and insult of Lady Cayley's presence she had +expected an immediate apology, and she inferred from its omission an +unpardonable complicity. Any compliance with the public toleration of +that person would have been inexcusable, and he had been more than +compliant, more than tolerant; he had been solicitous, attentive, +deferent. And deference to such a woman was insolence to his wife. Anne +was struck dumb by the shameless levity of the proceedings. The two had +behaved as if nothing had happened, or rather (she bitterly corrected +herself) as if everything had happened, and might happen any day again +(she inferred as much from his silence). It would—it would happen. <i>Her</i> +intentions were, to Anne's mind, unmistakable; that was plainly what she +had come back for. As to his intentions, Anne was not yet clear. She had +not made up her mind that they were bad; but she shuddered as she said to +herself that he was "weak." He had come at that woman's call; he had hung +round her; he had waited on her at her bidding; at her bidding he had sat +down beside her; he had listened to her, attracted, charmed, delighted; +he had talked to her in the low voice Anne knew. How could she tell what +had or had not passed between them there, what intimacies, what +recognitions, what resurrections of the corrupt, ill-buried past? He had +been "weak—weak—weak." Henceforth she must reckon with his weakness, +and reckoning with it, she must keep him from that woman by any method, +and at any cost! It was something that he had the grace to be ashamed of +himself (another inference from his silence). No wonder, after that +communion, if he was ashamed to look at his wife or speak to her.</p> + +<p>He went straight to Edith when they reached home, and Anne went upstairs +to her bedroom.</p> + +<p>She had a great desire to be alone. She wanted to pray, as she had +prayed in that room at Scarby on the morning of her discovery. Not that +she felt in the least as she had felt then. She was more profoundly +wounded—wounded beyond passion and beyond tears, calm and self-contained +in her vision of the inevitable, the fore-ordained reality. She had to +get rid of her vision; it was impossible to live with it, impossible to +live through another hour like the last. Her desire to pray was a +terrible, urgent longing that consumed her, impatient of every minute +that kept her from her prayer. She controlled it, moving slowly as she +took off her outdoor clothes and put them decorously away; feeling that +the force of her prayer gathered and mounted behind these minute +obstructions and delays.</p> + +<p>She knelt down by her bed. She had been used to pray there with her eyes +fixed upon the crucifix which he had given her. It hung low, almost +between the pillows of their bed. Now she closed her eyes to shut it from +her sight. It was then that she realised what had been done to her. With +the closing of her eyes she opened some back room in her brain, a hot +room, now dark, and now charged with a red light, vaporous and vivid, +that ran in furious pulses, as it were the currents of her blood made +visible. The room thus opened was tenanted by the revolting image of Lady +Cayley. Now it loomed steadily in the dark, now it leapt quiveringly into +the red, vaporous light. She could not see her husband, but she had a +sickening sense that he was there, looming, and that his image, too, +would leap into sight at some signal of her unwilling thought. She knew +that that back room would remain, built up indestructibly in the fabric +of her mind. It would be set apart for ever for the phantom of her +husband and her husband's mistress. By a tremendous effort of will she +shut the door on it. There it must be for ever, but wherever she looked, +she would not look there; much less allow herself to dwell in the unclean +place. It was not to think of that woman, his mistress, that she had gone +down on her knees. To think of her was contamination. After all, the +woman had no power over her inner life. She was not forced to think of +her. She had her sanctuary and her way of escape.</p> + +<p>But before she could get there she had to struggle against the fatigue +which came of her effort not to think. Once she would have resigned +herself to this physical lassitude, mistaking it for the sinking of the +soul in the beatific self-surrender. But Anne's sufferings had brought +her a little further on her path. She had come to recognise that supine +state as a great danger to the spiritual life. It was not by lassitude, +but by concentration that the intense communion was attained. She lifted +her bowed head as a sign of her exaltation.</p> + +<p>And as she lifted it, she caught, as it were, the approach of triumphal +music. Words gathered, as on wings, from the clean-swept heavenly +spaces—they went by her like the passing of an immense processional: +"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting +doors, and the King of Glory shall come in...." It came on, that heavenly +invasion, and all her earthly barriers went down before it. And it was as +if something strong in her, something solitary and pure, had cloven its +way through the mesh of the throbbing nerves, through the beating +currents of the blood, through the hot red lights of the brain, and had +escaped into the peaceful blank. She remained there a moment, in the +place of bliss, the divine place of the self-surrendered soul, where +mortal emptiness draws down immortality.</p> + +<p>She said to herself, "I have my refuge; no one can take it from me. +Nothing matters so long as I can get there."</p> + +<p>She rose from her knees more calm and self-contained than ever, barely +conscious of her wound.</p> + +<p>So calm and so self-contained was she at dinner that Majendie had an +agreeable rebound; he supposed that she had recovered from the abominable +encounter, and had put Lady Cayley out of her head like a sensible woman. +Edith had received his account of that incident with a gravity that had +made him profoundly uncomfortable; and his relief was in proportion to +his embarrassment. Unfortunately it gave him the appearance of +complacency; and complacency in the circumstances was more than Anne +could bear. Coming straight from her exaltation and communion, she was +crushed by the profound, invisible difference that separated them, the +perpetual loneliness of her unwedded, unsubjugated soul. They lived a +whole earth and a whole heaven apart. He was untouched by the fires that +burnt and purified her. The tragic crises that destroyed, the spiritual +moments that built her up again, passed by him unperceived. If she were +to tell him how she had attained her present serenity of mind, by what +vision, by what effort, by what sundering of body and soul, he would not +understand.</p> + +<p>And that was not the worst. She had learnt not to look for that spiritual +understanding in him. It mattered little that her unique suffering and +her unique consolation should remain alike ignored. The terrible thing +was that he should have come out of his own ordeal so smiling and so +unconcerned; that he could have sinned as he had sinned, and that he +could meet, after seven years, in his wife's presence, the partner of his +sin (whose face was a revelation of its grossness)—meet her, and not be +shaken by the shame of it. It showed how lightly he held it, how low his +standard was. She recalled, shuddering, the woman's face. Nothing in the +visions she had so shrunk from could compare with the violent reality. +For one moment of repulsion she saw him no less gross. She wondered, +would she have to reckon with that, henceforth, too?</p> + +<p>She looked up, and met across the table the engaging innocence that she +recognised as the habitual expression of his face. He had no idea of what +dreadful things she was thinking of him. She put her thoughts from her, +admitting that she had never had to reckon with that, yet. But it was +terrible to her that, while he forced her to such thinking, he could sit +there so unconscious, and so unashamed. He sat there, bright-eyed, +smiling, a little flushed, playing with a light topic in a manner that +suggested a conscience singularly at ease. He went on sitting there, +absolutely unembarrassed, eating dessert. The eating of dinner was bad +enough, it showed complacency. But dessert argued callousness. She had +wondered how he could have any appetite at all. Her dinner had almost +choked her.</p> + +<p>And she sat waiting for him to finish, hardly looking at him, detached, +saint-like, and still.</p> + +<p>At last her silence struck him as a little ominous. He had distinct +misgivings as they turned into the study for coffee and his cigarette. +Anne sat up in her chair, refusing the support and luxury of cushions, +leaning a little forward with a brooding air.</p> + +<p>"Well, Nancy," said he, "are you going to read to me?"</p> + +<p>(Better to read than talk.)</p> + +<p>"Not now," said she. "I want to talk to you."</p> + +<p>He saw that it was not to be avoided. "Won't you let me have my coffee +and a cigarette first?"</p> + +<p>She waited, silent, with a strained air of patience more uncomfortable +than words.</p> + +<p>"Well," said he, lighting a second cigarette, and settling in the +position that would best enable him to bear it, "out with it, and get it +over."</p> + +<p>"I want to know," said she, "what you are going to do."</p> + +<p>"To do?" He was genuinely bewildered.</p> + +<p>"Yes, to do."</p> + +<p>"But about what?"</p> + +<p>"About that woman."</p> + +<p>He was so charmed with the angelic absurdity of the question that he +paused while he took it in, smiling.</p> + +<p>"I can't see," he said presently, "that I'm called upon to take action. +Why should I?"</p> + +<p>She drew herself up proudly.</p> + +<p>"For my sake."</p> + +<p>He was instantly grave. "For your sake, dear, I would do a great deal. +But"—he smiled again—"what action should I take?"</p> + +<p>"Is it for me to say?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I hardly know. I should be glad, at any rate, if you'd make a +suggestion. I can't, for instance, get up and turn the lady out of her +own sister's house. Do you want me to do that? Would you like me to—to +take her away in a cab?"</p> + +<p>There was a long silence, so awful that he forced himself to speak. "I am +extremely sorry. It was, of course, outrageous that you should have had +to sit in the same room with her for five minutes. But what could I do?"</p> + +<p>"You could have taken <i>me</i> away."</p> + +<p>"I did, as soon as I got the chance."</p> + +<p>"Not before you had"—she paused for her phrase—"condoned her +appearance."</p> + +<p>"Condoned her appearance? How?"</p> + +<p>"By your whole manner to her."</p> + +<p>"Would you have had me uncivil?"</p> + +<p>"There are degrees," said she, "between incivility and marked attention."</p> + +<p>He coloured. "Marked attention! There was nothing marked about it. What +could I do? Would you, I say, have had me turn my back on the unfortunate +woman? That would have been marked attention, if you like."</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I would have had you do. One has no rules beforehand +for inconceivable situations. It was inconceivable that I should have met +her as I did, in your friend's house. Inconceivable that I should meet +such people anywhere. What I do ask is that you will not let me be +exposed in that way again."</p> + +<p>"That I certainly will not. The Ransomes did their best to get her out +of the room to-day. They won't annoy you. I can't conceive why they +called—except that they have always been rather fond of me. You can't +hold people accountable for all the doings of all their relations, can +you?"</p> + +<p>"In this case I should say you could—perfectly well."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't, as it happens. But you needn't have anything to do with +them; not, at least, while she's living in their house."</p> + +<p>"It was in the Hannays' house I met her. But I'm not thinking of myself."</p> + +<p>"I'm thinking of you, and of nothing else."</p> + +<p>"You needn't," said she, cold to his warmth. "I can take care of myself. +It's you I'm thinking of."</p> + +<p>"Me? Why me?"</p> + +<p>"Because I'm your wife and have a right to. It's out of the question that +I should call on Mrs. Hannay or receive her calls. I must also beg of you +to give up going there, and to the Ransomes, and to every place where you +will be brought into contact with Lady Cayley."</p> + +<p>He stared at her in amazement. "My dear girl, you don't expect me to cut +the Ransomes because she isn't brute enough to turn her sister out of +doors?"</p> + +<p>"I expect you to give up going to them, and to the Hannays, as long as +Lady Cayley is in Scale. Promise me."</p> + +<p>"I can't promise you anything of the sort. Heaven knows how long she's +going to stay."</p> + +<p>"I ought not to have to explain that by countenancing her you insult me. +You should see it for yourself."</p> + +<p>"I can't see it. In the first place, with all due regard to you, I don't +insult you by countenancing her, as you call it. In the second place, I +don't countenance her by going into other people's houses. If I went into +her house, you might complain. She hasn't got a house, poor lady."</p> + +<p>She ignored his pity. "In spite of your regard for me, then, you will +continue to meet her?"</p> + +<p>"I shan't if I can help it. But if I must, I must. I can't be rude to +people."</p> + +<p>"You can be firm."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "What have I got to be firm about?"</p> + +<p>"Not meeting her."</p> + +<p>"What if I do meet her? I sincerely hope I shan't; but what if I do?"</p> + +<p>Her mouth trembled; her eyes filled with tears. He sprang up and leaned +over her, resting his arms on the back of her chair, bringing his face +close to hers and smiling into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"No—no—no!" She drew back her head and shrank away from him. He put out +his hand and turned her face to him, gazing into her eyes, as if for the +first time he saw and could fathom the sorrow and the fear in them.</p> + +<p>"What if I do?" he repeated.</p> + +<p>She tried to push his hand from her, but she could not.</p> + +<p>"You stupid child," he said, "do you mean to say that you're still afraid +of that?"</p> + +<p>"It's you who have made me—"</p> + +<p>"My sweetheart—"</p> + +<p>"No, no. Don't touch me."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" he asked gravely, still leaning over and looking down +at her.</p> + +<p>"I mean—I mean—I can't bear it!" she cried, gasping for breath under +the oppression of his nearness.</p> + +<p>He realised her repugnance, and removed himself.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," he said, "because of her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "because of her."</p> + +<p>He laughed softly. "Dear child—she doesn't exist. She doesn't exist." He +swept her out of existence with a gesture of his hand. "Not for me at any +rate."</p> + +<p>The emphasis was lost upon her. "It's all nonsense to talk in that way. +If she doesn't exist for you, you shouldn't have gone near her, you +shouldn't have sat talking—to her."</p> + +<p>"What do you suppose we were talking about?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I don't want to know. I saw and heard enough."</p> + +<p>"Look here, Anne. You wanted me to be rude to her, didn't you? I <i>was</i> +rude. I was brutal. She had to remind me that she was a woman. By heaven, +I'd forgotten it. If you're always to be going back on that—"</p> + +<p>"I'm not going back. She has come back."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter. She doesn't exist. What difference does she make?"</p> + +<p>She rose for better delivery of what she had to say.</p> + +<p>"She makes the whole difference. It's not that I'm afraid of her. I don't +think I am. I believe that you love me."</p> + +<p>"Ah—if you believe that—" He came nearer.</p> + +<p>"I do believe it. It's to me that it makes the difference. I must be +honest with you. It's not that I'm afraid. It is—I think—that I'm +disgusted."</p> + +<p>He lowered his eyes and moved from her uneasily.</p> + +<p>"I was horrified enough when I first knew of it, as you know. You know, +too, that I forgave you, and that I forgot. That was because I didn't +realise it. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't before I had seen her. +Now I have seen her, and I know."</p> + +<p>"What do you know?" he said coldly.</p> + +<p>"The awfulness of it."</p> + +<p>"Do you! Do you!"</p> + +<p>"Yes—and if you had realised it yourself—But you don't, and your not +realising it is what shocks me most."</p> + +<p>"I don't realise it?" His smile, this time, was grim. "I should think I +was in a better position for realising it than you."</p> + +<p>"You don't realise the shame, the sin of it"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't I?" He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all +over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But +you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me +that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth +and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you +are never—never—going to forget it. And you are going to make me +remember it every day of my life. Is that it?"</p> + +<p>"It is not." She could not see herself thus hard and implacable. She had +vowed that there was no duty that she would omit; and it was her duty to +forgive; if possible, to forget. "I am going to try to forget it, as I +have forgotten it before. But it will be very hard, and you must be +patient with me. You must not remind me of it more than you can help."</p> + +<p>"When have I—?"</p> + +<p>She was silent.</p> + +<p>"When?" he insisted.</p> + +<p>She shook her head and turned away. A sudden impulse roused him, and he +sprang after her. He grasped her wrist as she laid her hand on the door +to open it. He drew her to him. "When?" he repeated. "How? Tell me."</p> + +<p>She paused, gazing at him. He would have kissed her, hoping thus to make +his peace with her; but she broke from him.</p> + +<p>"Ah," she cried, "you are reminding me of it now."</p> + +<p>He opened the door, dumb with amazement, and turned from her as she went +through.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + + +<p>It was a fine day, early in November, and Anne was walking alone along +one of the broad flat avenues that lead from Scale into the country +beyond. Made restless by her trouble, she had acquired this pedestrian +habit lately, and Majendie encouraged her in it, regarding it less as a +symptom than as a cure. She had flagged a little in the autumn, and he +was afraid that the strain of her devotion to Edith was beginning to tell +upon her health. On Saturdays and Sundays they generally walked together, +and he did his best to make his companionship desirable. Anne, given now +to much self-questioning as to their relations, owned, in an access of +justice, that she enjoyed these expeditions. Whatever else she had found +her husband, she had never yet found him dull. But it did not occur to +her, any more than it occurred to Majendie, to consider whether she +herself were brilliant.</p> + +<p>She made a point of never refusing him her society. She had persuaded +herself that she went with him for his own good. If he wanted to take +long walks in the country, it was her duty as his wife to accompany him. +She was sustained perpetually by her consciousness of doing her duty as +his wife; and she had persuaded herself also that she found her peace in +it. She kept his hours for him as punctually as ever; she aimed more +than ever at perfection in her household ways. He should never be able +to say that there was one thing in which she had failed him.</p> + +<p>No; she knew that neither he nor Edith, if they tried, could put their +finger on any point, and say: There, or there, she had gone wrong. Not +in her understanding of him. She told herself that she understood him +completely now, to her own great unhappiness. The unhappiness was the +price she paid for her understanding.</p> + +<p>She was absorbed in these reflections as she turned (in order to be home +by five o'clock), and walked towards the town. She was awakened from +them by the trampling of hoofs and the cheerful tootling of a horn. A +four-in-hand approached and passed her; not so furiously but that she had +time to recognise Lady Cayley on the box-seat, Mr. Gorst beside her, +driving, and Mr. Ransome and Mr. Hannay behind amongst a perfect +horticultural show in millinery.</p> + +<p>Anne had no acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Scale and +Beesly Four-in-hand Club, and her intuition stopped short of recognising +Miss Gwen Richards, of the Vaudeville, and the others. All the same her +private arraignment of these ladies refused them whatever benefit they +were entitled to from any doubt. Not that Anne wasted thought on them. +In spite of her condemnation, they barely counted; they were mere +attendants, accessories in the vision of sin presented by Lady Cayley.</p> + +<p>Nothing could have been more conspicuous than her appearance, more +unabashed than the proclamation of her gay approach. Mounted high, +heralded by the tootling horn, her hair blown, her cheeks bright with +speed, her head and throat wrapped in a rosy veil that flung two broad +streamers to the wind (as it were the banners of the red dawn flying and +fluttering over her), she passed, the supreme figure in the pageant of +triumphal vice.</p> + +<p>Her face was turned to Gorst's face, his to hers. He looked more than +ever brilliant, charming and charmed, laughing aloud with his companion. +Hannay and Ransome raised their hats to Mrs. Majendie as they passed. +Gorst was too much absorbed in Lady Cayley.</p> + +<p>Anne shivered, chilled and sick with the resurgence of her old disgust. +These were her husband's chosen associates and comrades; they stood by +one another; they were all bound up together in one degrading intimacy. +His dear friend Mr. Gorst was the dear friend of Lady Cayley. He knew +what she was, and thought nothing of it. Mr. Ransome, her brother-in-law, +knew, and thought nothing of it. As for Mr. Hannay, Walter's other dear +friend, you only had to look at the women he was with to see how much Mr. +Hannay thought. There could have been nothing very profound in his +supposed repudiation of Lady Cayley. If it was true that he had once paid +her money to go, he was doing his best to welcome her, now she had come +back. But it was Gorst, with his vivid delight in Lady Cayley, who amazed +her most. Anne had identified him with the man of whom Walter had once +told her, the man who was "fond of Edith," the man of whom Walter +admitted that he was not "entirely straight." And this man was always +calling on Edith.</p> + +<p>She was resolved that, if she could prevent it, he should call no more. +It should not be said that she allowed her house to be open to such +people. But it required some presence of mind to state her determination. +Before she could speak with any authority she would have to find out all +that could be known about Mr. Gorst. She would ask Fanny Eliott, who had +seemed to know, and to know more than she had cared to say.</p> + +<p>Instead of going straight home, she turned aside into Thurston Square; +and had the good luck to find Fanny Eliott at home.</p> + +<p>Fanny Eliott was rejoiced to see her. She looked at her anxiously, and +observed that she was thin. She spoke of her call as a "coming back"; the +impression conveyed by Anne's manner was so strikingly that of return +after the pursuit of an illusion.</p> + +<p>Anne smiled wearily, as if it had been a long step from Prior Street to +Thurston Square.</p> + +<p>"I thought," said Mrs. Eliott, "I was never going to see you again."</p> + +<p>"You might have known," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I might have known. And you're not going to run away at five +o'clock?"</p> + +<p>"No. I can stay a little—if you're free."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott interpreted the condition as a request for privacy, and rang +the bell to ensure it. She knew something was coming; and it came.</p> + +<p>"Fanny, I want you to tell me what you know of Mr. Gorst."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott looked exceedingly embarrassed. She avoided gossip as +inconsistent with the intellectual life. And unpleasant gossip was +peculiarly distasteful to her. Therefore she hesitated. "My dear, I +don't know much—"</p> + +<p>"Don't put me off like that. You know something. You must tell me."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott reflected that Anne had no more love of scandalous histories +than she had; therefore, if she asked for knowledge, it must be because +her need was pressing.</p> + +<p>"My dear, I only know that Johnson won't have him in the house."</p> + +<p>She spoke as if this were nothing, a mere idiosyncrasy of Johnson's.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" said Anne. "He has very nice manners."</p> + +<p>"I dare say, but Johnson doesn't approve of him." (Another eccentricity +of Johnson's.)</p> + +<p>"And why doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know, Mr. Gorst has a very unpleasant reputation. At least he +goes about with most objectionable people."</p> + +<p>"You mean he's the same sort of person as Mr. Hannay?"</p> + +<p>"I should say he was, if anything, worse."</p> + +<p>"You mean he's a bad man?"</p> + +<p>"Well—"</p> + +<p>"So bad that you won't have him in the house?"</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, you know we are particular." (A singularity that she shared +with Johnson.)</p> + +<p>"So am I," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"And this," she said to herself, "is the man whom Edie's fond of, +Walter's dearest friend. And my friends won't have him in their house."</p> + +<p>"Charming, I believe, and delightful," said Mrs. Eliott, "but perhaps a +little dangerous on that account. And one has to draw the line. I want to +know about you, dear. You're well, though you're so thin?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well."</p> + +<p>"And happy?" (She ventured on it.)</p> + +<p>"Could I be well if I weren't happy? How's Mrs. Gardner?"</p> + +<p>The thought of happiness called up a vision of the perpetually radiant +bride.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mrs. Gardner, she's as happy as the day is long. Much too happy, she +says, to go about paying calls."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> haven't called much, have I?" said Anne, hoping that her friend +would draw the suggested inference.</p> + +<p>"No, you haven't. <i>You</i> ought to be ashamed of yourself."</p> + +<p>"Why I any more than Mrs. Gardner? But I am."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott perceived her blunder. "Well, I forgive you, as long as +you're happy."</p> + +<p>Anne kissed her more tenderly than usual as they said good-bye, so +tenderly that Mrs. Eliott wondered "Is she?"</p> + +<p>Majendie was late that afternoon, and Anne had an hour alone with Edith. +She had made up her mind to speak seriously to her sister-in-law on the +subject of Mr. Gorst, and she chose this admirable opportunity.</p> + +<p>"Edith," said she with the abruptness of extreme embarrassment, "did you +know that Lady Cayley had come back?"</p> + +<p>"Come back?"</p> + +<p>"She's here, living in Scale."</p> + +<p>There was a pause before Edith answered. Anne judged from the quiet of +her manner that this was not the first time that she had heard of the +return.</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, after all, if she is, what does it matter? She must live +somewhere."</p> + +<p>"I should have thought that for her own sake it was a pity to have chosen +a town where she was so well known."</p> + +<p>"Oh well, that's her own affair. I suppose she argues that most people +here know the worst; and that's always a comfort."</p> + +<p>"Oh, for all they appear to care—" Her face became tragic, and she lost +her unnatural control. "I can't understand it. I never saw such people. +She's received as if nothing had happened."</p> + +<p>"By her own people. It's decent of them not to cast her off."</p> + +<p>"Oh, as for decency, they don't seem to have a shred of it amongst them. +And the Hannays are not her own people. I thought I should be safe in +going there after what you told me. And it was there I met her."</p> + +<p>"I know. They were most distressed about it."</p> + +<p>"And yet they received her, too, as if nothing had happened."</p> + +<p>"Because nothing can happen now. They got rid of her when she was +dangerous. She isn't dangerous any more. On the contrary, I believe her +great idea now is to be respectable. I suppose they're trying to give her +a lift up. You must admit it's nice of them."</p> + +<p>"You think them nice?"</p> + +<p>"I think <i>that's</i> nice of them. It's the sort of thing they do. They're +kind people, if they're not the most spiritual I have met."</p> + +<p>"You may call it kindness, I call it shocking indifference. They're worse +than the Ransomes. I don't believe the Ransomes know what's decent. The +Hannays know, but they don't care. They're all dreadful people; and their +sympathy with each other is the most dreadful thing about them. They hold +together and stand up for each other, and are 'kind' to each other, +because they all like the same low, vulgar, detestable things. That's why +Mr. Hannay married Mrs. Hannay, and Mr. Ransome married Lady Cayley's +sister. They're all admirably suited to each other, but not, my dear +Edie, to you or me."</p> + +<p>"They're certainly not your sort, I admit."</p> + +<p>"Nor yours either."</p> + +<p>"No, nor mine either," said Edith, smiling. "Poor Anne, I'm sorry we've +let you in for them."</p> + +<p>"I'm not thinking only of myself. The terrible thing is that you should +be let in, too."</p> + +<p>"Oh, me—how can they harm me?"</p> + +<p>"They have harmed you."</p> + +<p>"How?"</p> + +<p>"By keeping other people away."</p> + +<p>"What people?"</p> + +<p>"The nice people you should have known. You were entitled to the very +best. The Eliotts and the Gardners—those are the people who should have +been your friends, not the Hannays and the Ransomes; and not, believe me, +darling, Mr. Gorst."</p> + +<p>For a moment Edith unveiled the tragic suffering in her eyes. It passed, +and left her gaze grave and lucid and serene.</p> + +<p>"What do you know of Mr. Gorst?"</p> + +<p>"Enough, dear, to see that he isn't fit for you to know."</p> + +<p>"Poor Charlie, that's what he's always saying himself. I've known him too +long, you see, not to know him now. Years and years, my dear, before I +knew you."</p> + +<p>"It was through Mrs. Eliott that I knew you, remember."</p> + +<p>"Because you were determined to know me. It was through you that I knew +Mrs. Eliott. Before that, she never made the smallest attempt to know me +better or to show me any kindness. Why should she?"</p> + +<p>"Well, my dear, if you kept her at arm's length—if you let her see, for +instance, that you preferred Mr. Gorst's society to hers—"</p> + +<p>"Do you think I let her see it?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't. And it wouldn't enter her head. But, considering that she +can't receive Mr. Gorst into her own house—"</p> + +<p>"Why should she?"</p> + +<p>"Edie—if she cannot, how can you?"</p> + +<p>Edith closed her eyes. "I'll tell you some day, dear, but not now."</p> + +<p>Anne did not press her. She had not the courage to discuss Mr. Gorst with +her, nor the heart to tell her that he was to be received into her house +no more. She saw Edith growing tender over his very name; she felt that +there would be tears and entreaties, and she was determined that no +entreaties and no tears should move her to a base surrender. Her pause +was meant to banish the idea of Mr. Gorst from Edith's mind, but it only +served to fix it more securely there.</p> + +<p>"Edith," she said presently, "I will keep my promise."</p> + +<p>"Which promise?" Edith was mystified. Her mind unwillingly renounced the +idea of Mr. Gorst, and the promise could not possibly refer to him.</p> + +<p>"The promise I made to you about Walter."</p> + +<p>"My dear one, I never thought you would break it."</p> + +<p>"I shall never break it. I've accepted Walter once for all, and in spite +of everything. But I will not accept these people you say I've been let +in for. I will not know them. And I shall have to tell him so."</p> + +<p>"Why should you tell him anything? He doesn't want you to take them to +your bosom. He sees how impossible they are."</p> + +<p>"Ah—if he sees that."</p> + +<p>"Believe me" (Edith said it wearily), "he sees everything."</p> + +<p>"If he does," thought Anne, "it will be easier to convince him."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + + +<p>The task was so far unpleasant to her that she was anxious to secure the +first opportunity and get it over. Her moment would come with the two +hours after dinner in the study.</p> + +<p>It did not come that evening; for Majendie telegraphed that he had been +detained in town, and would dine at the Club. He did not come home till +Anne (who sat up till midnight waiting for that opportunity) had gone +tired to bed.</p> + +<p>Her determination gathered strength with the delay, and when her moment +came with the next evening, it came gloriously. Majendie gave himself +over into her hands by bringing Gorst, of all people, back with him to +dine.</p> + +<p>The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarrassed youthful +air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his +confidence over something unfortunate and absurd. He had evidently +counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with +her. He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease, +his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his +knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile +candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's +encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he +had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was +a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give +a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it +amounted to, that awful prodigality of his.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging +smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he +deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm +and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the +prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, +the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the +paraphernalia of triumphant sin. She turned upon her guest the cold eyes +of a condign destiny.</p> + +<p>By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking +in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there. He might even have had +some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend's table so +consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating +his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved +house.</p> + +<p>Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his +wife's protesting presence. The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne +had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained +behind to preserve her protest. Gorst had changed his oppression for a +nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie.</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow," he said, "what is the matter with you?"</p> + +<p>"How should I know?" said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper. "I'm not a +nerve specialist."</p> + +<p>Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, <i>you</i> mustn't go in for +nerves, you know; you can't afford it."</p> + +<p>"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused +with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the +most innocent amusements. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for +them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly +anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith, +can't I?"</p> + +<p>He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all +his "innocent amusements," that supreme consolation would be still open +to him.</p> + +<p>"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do. +I told her you were coming."</p> + +<p>"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to +Edith.</p> + +<p>Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do.</p> + +<p>Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered +noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new +worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's +worship perpetually new.</p> + +<p>Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her +eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She +seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some +cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he +raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly.</p> + +<p>"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she.</p> + +<p>"Months, isn't it?" said he.</p> + +<p>"Weeks, three weeks, by the calendar."</p> + +<p>"I say—tell me—I <i>am</i> to come and see you, just the same?"</p> + +<p>"Just the same? Why, what's different?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me, when a man's married, it's bound +to make a difference."</p> + +<p>Edith's colour mounted; she made an effort to control the trembling of +her mouth, the soft woman's mouth where all that was bodily in her love +still lingered. But the sweetness deepened in her eyes, which were the +dwelling-place of the immortal, immaterial power. They met Gorst's eyes +steadily, laying on his restlessness their peace.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to be married, Charlie?" said she, and smiled bravely.</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Oh, Lord, no; not I."</p> + +<p>"Who is, then?"</p> + +<p>"Walter, of course. I mean he is married, don't you know."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and is there any difference in him to you?"</p> + +<p>"In him? Oh, rather not."</p> + +<p>"In whom, then?"</p> + +<p>"Well—I don't think, Edie, that Mrs. Walter—I like her—" he stuck +to it—"I like her, you know, she's charming, but—I don't think she +particularly cares for <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>"How do you know that?"</p> + +<p>"How do I know anything? By the way she looks at me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the way Anne looks at people—"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know, it's something tremendous, something terrible. +Unutterable things, you know. She knocks the Inquisition and the day of +judgment all to pieces. They're simply not in it. It's awfully hard lines +on me, you see, because I like her."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you like her."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think."</p> + +<p>"And I like her. Please remember that."</p> + +<p>"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all +that?"</p> + +<p>"To Walter? Yes, very devoted."</p> + +<p>"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as +I can come and see you just the same."</p> + +<p>"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same."</p> + +<p>He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he +could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He +lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his +innocent amusements, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth +while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused +to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible +for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated +situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making +desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high +and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the +illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the +person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In +spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the damnable +cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of +adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days. +It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his +rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the +diviner air.</p> + +<p>And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours +had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived +her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life, +in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her +womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual +growth into something like maternal passion. There was no selfishness in +her attitude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best +and offered it to God for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed +and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had +foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped +from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed +itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own +nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover.</p> + +<p>She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them, +laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her +unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible +for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have +married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady +Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had +to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him.</p> + +<p>That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that +sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still. +But Edith insisted that she would make no difference.</p> + +<p>"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's +absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter—"</p> + +<p>He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it +turns out to my advantage."</p> + +<p>"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll +play to me."</p> + +<p>He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her +was the one thing he could do, and he did it well.</p> + +<p>He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys +with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific? +Or loud and strong?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud."</p> + +<p>"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake +the dead."</p> + +<p>That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself +loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour. +The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble +piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too, +triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It +was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the +miracle that he alone could accomplish for her.</p> + +<p>And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the +dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of +Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It +flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous +joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing.</p> + +<p>Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the +opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play."</p> + +<p>He listened, glancing now and then at Anne with a smile of pride in his +friend's performance. It was as if he were asking her to own that there +must be some good in a fellow who could play like that.</p> + +<p>Anne was considering in what words she would intimate to him that Mr. +Gorst's music was never to be heard again in that house. Some instinct +told her that she was courting danger, but the approval of her conscience +urged her on. She waited till the Polonaise was over before she spoke.</p> + +<p>"You say," said she, "he's all right as long as he can play like that. To +me, it's the most convincing proof that he's all wrong."</p> + +<p>"How do you make that out?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to go into it," said Anne. "I don't approve of Mr. Gorst; +but I should think better of him if he had only better taste."</p> + +<p>"You're the first person who ever accused Gorst of bad taste."</p> + +<p>"Do you call it good taste to live as he does, as I know he does, and you +know he does, and yet to come here, and sit with Edie, and behave as if +he'd never done anything to be ashamed of? It would be infinitely better +taste if he kept away."</p> + +<p>"Not at all. There are a great many very nice things about Gorst, and his +caring to come here is one of the nicest. He has been faithful to Edith +for ten years. That sort of thing isn't so common that one can afford to +despise it."</p> + +<p>"Faithful to her? Poor darling, does she think he is?"</p> + +<p>"She doesn't think. She knows."</p> + +<p>"Preserve me from such faithfulness."</p> + +<p>"You don't know what you're talking about."</p> + +<p>"I do know. And you know that I know." In proof of her contention she +offered him the incident of the four-in-hand.</p> + +<p>Majendie made a movement of impatience. "Oh, that's nothing," he said. +"He doesn't like her. He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any +show (I can't see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing +up beside him, he couldn't very well knock her off, you know. You don't +seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she +takes a fancy to sit on. You simply can't do it."</p> + +<p>Anne was silent. She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable +levity.</p> + +<p>He smoked placidly. "No," he said presently. "Gorst mayn't be a saint, +but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah."</p> + +<p>Anne fired. "He may be a very bad man for all that."</p> + +<p>"There again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. He +is not a 'very bad man'. You've no discrimination in these things. You +simply lump us all together as a bad lot. And so we may be, compared with +the angels and the saints. But there are degrees. If Gorst isn't as good +as—as Edie, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's bad."</p> + +<p>"Please—I would rather not argue the point. But I am not going to have +anything to do with Mr. Gorst."</p> + +<p>"Of course not. You disapprove of him. There's nothing more to be said."</p> + +<p>He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he +preserved his own.</p> + +<p>"There is a great deal more to be said, dear. And I may as well say it +now. I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in +this house if I am to remain in it."</p> + +<p>Astonishment held him dumb.</p> + +<p>"You have no right to expect me to," said she.</p> + +<p>"To expect you to remain, or what?"</p> + +<p>"To receive a man of Mr. Gorst's character."</p> + +<p>"My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?"</p> + +<p>"My right as your wife."</p> + +<p>"My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that."</p> + +<p>"I ought not to have to ask you. You should have thought of it yourself. +You should have had more care for my reputation."</p> + +<p>At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers.</p> + +<p>"Your reputation? Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from +poor Gorst."</p> + +<p>"Is it not? My friends—the Eliotts—will not receive him."</p> + +<p>"There's no reason why they should."</p> + +<p>"Is there any reason why I should? Do you want me to be less fastidious +than they are? You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious +people. My father wouldn't have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr. +Gorst. Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my +mother's?"</p> + +<p>"Have you considered what my standard would look like if I turned my best +friend out of the house—a man I've known all my life—just because my +wife doesn't happen to approve of him? I know nothing about your Eliotts; +but if Edie can stand him, I should think you might."</p> + +<p>"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him."</p> + +<p>He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say, +your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like +that."</p> + +<p>"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself."</p> + +<p>"What did I tell you?"</p> + +<p>"That Edith cared for him."</p> + +<p>He remembered.</p> + +<p>"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie."</p> + +<p>"I do care for her."</p> + +<p>"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how +much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What +it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal +hardship of it?"</p> + +<p>"I know it was hard."</p> + +<p>"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them."</p> + +<p>"It isn't I who am hard."</p> + +<p>"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?"</p> + +<p>"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on +himself, and he is hard on her. There's nobody else to blame."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come +any more?"</p> + +<p>"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after—"</p> + +<p>"After what?"</p> + +<p>"After everything."</p> + +<p>"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor +Edie was to blame for that, it's the least <i>she</i> can do for you to give +him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to +her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?"</p> + +<p>She was silent.</p> + +<p>"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot <i>help</i> what you think of me," said she with the stress of +despair.</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of +understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a +hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your +extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to +turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do +it—No, that's beyond me."</p> + +<p>"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house, +I shall go out of it."</p> + +<p>"Well—" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a +wise solution.</p> + +<p>"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'."</p> + +<p>"Well—and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst, +and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be +pleased."</p> + +<p>Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it +seemed the very cry of his delight.</p> + +<p>"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right."</p> + +<p>Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He +broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit +of levity ran riot in immortal sounds.</p> + +<p>"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on +him."</p> + +<p>"If all good women were to reason that way—"</p> + +<p>"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would +happen?"</p> + +<p>"There would be more good men in the world."</p> + +<p>"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because, +don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to."</p> + +<p>"If you're thinking of his good—"</p> + +<p>"Have you thought of hers?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do +then?—poor Edie!"</p> + +<p>"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear +little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to +heaven."</p> + +<p>Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing +the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch.</p> + +<p>Majendie rose, placid and benignant.</p> + +<p>"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + + +<p>Majendie could never be angry with any woman for more than five minutes. +And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen, +as Edith had said, "everything."</p> + +<p>But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He +thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel."</p> + +<p>She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward +eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the +eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of +a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her +encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral +force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be +described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She +believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral +deadness that he carried.</p> + +<p>It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair. +But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly +impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to +understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if +he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr. +Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the +fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have known that, if +she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past, +she would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer.</p> + +<p>She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman +and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her +own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the +sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the +burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such +presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had +married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn.</p> + +<p>She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once +persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was +driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the +question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to +them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal.</p> + +<p>If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew +which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender +to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at +once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was +peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had +not invited him at once.</p> + +<p>At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and +remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress +upon the name) to dinner on Friday.</p> + +<p>The day was Tuesday.</p> + +<p>"And is he coming?" said Anne.</p> + +<p>"He is," said Majendie.</p> + +<p>When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine +with Mrs. Eliott.</p> + +<p>"I thought you would," said Majendie.</p> + +<p>She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't.</p> + +<p>They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in +Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst +came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as +her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such +weather.</p> + +<p>He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door.</p> + +<p>"Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella +and held it over her.</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said she significantly.</p> + +<p>At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab.</p> + +<p>Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished +the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's +manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her +tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as +she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep, +with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding +rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on.</p> + +<p>Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a +pathetic spectacle.</p> + +<p>"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry."</p> + +<p>He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in +the cab, with Anne's boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing +hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood +in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped +with its passage from the cab to their doorstep.</p> + +<p>"I think my feet are wet," said she.</p> + +<p>"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he.</p> + +<p>He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and +stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands +to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and +kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for +a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her +shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission, +to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then +magnanimously forgive.</p> + +<p>It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the +downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing +gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head.</p> + +<p>"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he.</p> + +<p>"What was worth while?"</p> + +<p>"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?"</p> + +<p>There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in +sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she +would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and +that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne +had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her +to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual +voluptuary.</p> + +<p>Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband's manner. +He seemed positively to pander to her curious passion, while preserving +an attitude of superior purity. He multiplied her opportunities. A week +had hardly passed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne +again took refuge in Thurston Square.</p> + +<p>This time Majendie made no comment on her action. He seemed to take it +for granted.</p> + +<p>But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a +sense of moving in a divine combat. Every time she dined in Thurston +Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that +Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up. Thus +unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in +him.</p> + +<p>When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the +Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on +Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and +looked for some irritating maneuver in response. He would, of course, +proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect +a retreat to Mr. Gorst's rooms, or to his club.</p> + +<p>But Majendie lacked her passion and her inspiration. He simply said he +was delighted to hear it, and that he would make a point of being at +home. He would have to give up an engagement which he would not have made +if he had known. But that did not greatly matter.</p> + +<p>They came, the Eliotts and the rest, and Miss Proctor again pronounced +him charming. To be sure, he was not half so amusing as he had been on +his first appearance in Thurston Square; but it was only becoming that +he should repress himself a little at his own table and in the presence +of the Canon. <i>He</i>, the Canon, was brilliant, if you like.</p> + +<p>For that night the Canon was, as usual, all things to all men, and +especially to all women. He was the man of the world for Miss Proctor; +the fine epicure of books for Mrs. Eliott; for Mr. Eliott and Dr. +Gardner, the broad-minded searcher and enthusiast, the humble +camp-follower of the conquering sciences. "You are the pioneers," +said he; "you go before us on the march. But we keep up, we keep up. +We can step out—cassock and all."</p> + +<p>But he spread out all his spiritual lures for Mrs. Majendie. His eyes +seemed more than ever to pursue her, to search her, to be gazing +discreetly at the secret of her soul. They drew her with the clear and +candid flattery of their understanding. She could feel the clever little +Canon taking her in and making notes on her. "Sensitive. Unhappy. +Intensely spiritual nature. Too fine and pure for <i>him</i>." And over the +unhallowed, half-abandoned table, flushed slightly with Majendie's good +wine, the Canon drew up his chair to his host, and stretched his little +legs, and let his spirit expand in a rosy, broad humanity. As he had +charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to +flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in +his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the +versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous +eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his +after-dinner moments, made him sick.)</p> + +<p>Anne heard nothing more of Mr. Gorst for over a fortnight. It was on a +Saturday, and Majendie asked her suddenly, during luncheon, if she +thought the Eliotts would be disengaged that evening.</p> + +<p>"Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because I've asked Gorst" (again that disagreeable emphasis) "to dine +to-night."</p> + +<p>"Very well. I will ask Mrs. Eliott if she can have me."</p> + +<p>"Can you?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly."</p> + +<p>"Oh—and I must prepare you for something quite horrible. Some time, you +know" (he smiled provokingly), "I shall have to ask the Hannays. Do you +think you can arrange that?"</p> + +<p>"I shall have to," said she.</p> + +<p>This time (it was the third) she was obliged to take Mrs. Eliott into her +confidence. She fairly flung herself on her friend's mercy.</p> + +<p>"I feel as if I were making use of you," said she.</p> + +<p>"My dear, make any use of me you please. I'm always here. You can come to +me any time you want to escape."</p> + +<p>"To escape?" Anne's face flew a colour that was a flag of defiance to +any reflection on her husband. She would be loyal to him as long as she +lived. Not one of her friends should know of her trouble and her fear.</p> + +<p>"From your Gorsts and Hannays and people."</p> + +<p>"Oh, from them." Anne felt that she was shielding him.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott marked the flag of defiance and the attitude of defence. If +Anne had meant to "give him away," she could not have given him more +lavishly. Mrs. Elliott's sad inward comment was that there was more in +all this than met the eye.</p> + +<p>And Anne's life now continued on this rather uncomfortable footing. The +Hannays came to dinner, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. The Ransomes +came, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. Mr. Gorst came (for the fourth +time in as many weeks), and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. She began to +wonder whether the Eliotts' hospitality would stand the strain. She also +wondered whether her other friends in Thurston Square were wondering; and +what Canon Wharton must think of it. It had not occurred to her to wonder +what Mr. Gorst would think.</p> + +<p>At first he thought nothing of it. When he found that he had not to +encounter the terrible eyes of Mrs. Majendie, Mr. Gorst's relief was so +great that it robbed him of reflection. And when he began to think, he +merely thought that Majendie had asked him because his wife was absent, +rather than that Majendie's wife was absent because he had been asked. +Majendie had calculated on this. He was not in the least distressed by +Anne's absences. He believed that she was thoroughly enjoying both her +own protest and Mrs. Eliott's society. And the arrangement really solved +the problem nicely. Otherwise the whole thing was trivial to him. He +remained unaware of the tremendous spiritual conflict that was being +waged round the person of the unhappy Gorst.</p> + +<p>But Christmas was now at hand and Christmas brought the problem back +again in a terrific form. For ten years poor Gorst had dined with his +friends in Prior Street on Christmas Day. His presence was considered +by Edith to borrow a peculiar significance and sanctity from the +festival. Did they not celebrate on that day the birth of the Divine +Humanity, the solemn advent of redeeming love? Punctually on Christmas +Day the prodigal returned from his farthest wanderings, and made for +Prior Street as for his home. He had never missed a Christmas. And how +could they expel him now? His coming was such a sacred and established +thing, that he had spoken of it to Edith as a certainty. And it was as +a certainty that Edith spoke of it to Majendie.</p> + +<p>She asked him how they were to break the news to Anne.</p> + +<p>"Better not break it at all," said he. "Just let him come."</p> + +<p>"If he does," said Edith, "she'll walk straight out of the house."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, she won't."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she will. On principle. I understand her."</p> + +<p>"I confess I don't."</p> + +<p>"But I believe," said she, "if you explained it all to her, she'd give in +for once."</p> + +<p>Rather against his judgment, he endeavoured to explain, "We simply can't +not ask him, you know."</p> + +<p>"Ask him by all means. But I shall have to put myself on the Gardners, or +the Proctors, for the Eliotts are away."</p> + +<p>"Don't be absurd. You know you won't be allowed to do anything of the +sort."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing else left for me to do."</p> + +<p>He looked at her gravely; but his speech was light, for it was not in him +to be weighty. "Don't you think that, at this holy season, for the sake +of peace, and good-will, and all the rest of it, you might drop it just +for once? And let the poor chap have a happy Christmas?"</p> + +<p>She seemed to be considering it. "You think me very hard," said she.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, no, not hard." But he was wondering for the first time what this +wife of his was made of.</p> + +<p>"Yes, hard. I don't want you to think me hard. If you could understand +why I cannot meet that man—what it means to me—the effect it has on +me."</p> + +<p>"What," he said, "is the precise effect?" He was really interested. He +had always been curious to know how different men affected different +women, and to get his knowledge at first hand.</p> + +<p>"It's the effect," said she, "of being brought into contact with +something terribly painful and repulsive, the effect of intense +suffering—of unbearable disgust."</p> + +<p>He listened with his thoughtful, interested air. "I know. The effect that +your friend Canon Wharton sometimes has on me."</p> + +<p>"I see no resemblance between Canon Wharton and your friend Mr. Gorst."</p> + +<p>"And I see no resemblance between my friend Mr. Gorst and Canon Wharton."</p> + +<p>She was silent, gathering all her strength to deliver her spirit's last +appeal.</p> + +<p>"Dear," said she (for she wished to be very gentle with him, since he had +thought her hard), "dear, I wonder if you ever realise what the thing we +call—purity is?"</p> + +<p>He blushed violently.</p> + +<p>"I only know it's one of those things one doesn't speak about."</p> + +<p>"I must speak," said she.</p> + +<p>"You needn't," he said curtly; "I understand all right."</p> + +<p>"If you did you wouldn't ask me. All the same, Walter—" She lifted to +him the set face of a saint surrendered to the torture—"If you compel +me—"</p> + +<p>"Compel you? I can't compel you. Especially if you're going to look like +that."</p> + +<p>"It's no use," he said to Edith. "First she talks of dining with the +Gardners—"</p> + +<p>"She will, too—"</p> + +<p>"No. She'll stay—if I compel her."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see. That's worse. She'd let him see it. He wouldn't enjoy his +Christmas if he came."</p> + +<p>"No, poor fellow, I really don't think he would. She's awfully funny +about him."</p> + +<p>"You still think her funny?"</p> + +<p>"My dear—it's the only way to take her. I'm sorry, but I can't let +Charlie spoil her Christmas; nor," he added, "Anne his."</p> + +<p>So Mr. Gorst did not come to Prior Street that Christmas. There came +instead of him whole sheaves and stacks of flowers, Christmas roses and +white lilies, the sacred flowers which, at that festival, the poor +prodigal brought as his tribute to his adored and beloved lady.</p> + +<p>He spent the greater part of his Christmas Day in the society of Mr. Dick +Ransome, and the greater part of his Christmas Night in the society of +pretty Maggie Forrest, the new girl in Evans's shop who had sold him the +Christmas roses and the lilies. "For," said he, "if I can't go and see +Edie, I'll go and see Maggie." And he enjoyed seeing Maggie as much as it +was possible to enjoy anything that was not seeing Edie.</p> + +<p>And Edie lay among her Christmas roses and her lilies, and smiled, with +a high courage, at Nanna, at Majendie, and Anne; and did her best to make +everybody believe that she was having a very happy Christmas. But at +night, when it was all over, Majendie held a tremulous and tearful Edie +in his arms.</p> + +<p>"Don't think me a brute, darling," he said. "I would have insisted, only +if he'd come to-day he'd have found out he wasn't wanted."</p> + +<p>"I know; and he never would have come again."</p> + +<p>He didn't come. For Canon Wharton enlightened Mrs. Hannay, and Mrs. +Hannay enlightened Mr. Hannay, and Mr. Hannay enlightened Mr. Gorst.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said the prodigal, "if she walks out of the house when +I walk into it, I can't very well go."</p> + +<p>"Well, not at present, perhaps, for the sake of peace," said Hannay. "It +strikes me poor old Majendie's in a pretty tight place with that wife of +his."</p> + +<p>So, for the sake of peace, Mr. Gorst kept away from Prior Street and his +Edie, and spent a great deal of time in Evans's shop, cultivating the +attention of Miss Forrest.</p> + +<p>And, for the sake of peace, Majendie kept silence, and his sister +concealed her trembling and her tears.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + + +<p>Gloom fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks that followed +Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it. Anne began +to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's +face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter +garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine.</p> + +<p>The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its +pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as +she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could +make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink +deeper into her couch.</p> + +<p>Anne, between her headaches, devoted herself to her sister with a kind +of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the +emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told +herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she +fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any +other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this +relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her +relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she +thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love +her—but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by +loving her."</p> + +<p>She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing silently by her fireside, +or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold +a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in +hers, as if she would have given them her own strength.</p> + +<p>And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than +ever to her husband.</p> + +<p>At times she mourned, obscurely, the destruction of the new soul that had +been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again +to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect +thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events +that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of +her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in +consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he +always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At +times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she slipped from +her trouble, and turned, with her arms stretched towards him, where he +lay. In her dreams he came to her with the low cry she had heard in the +wood at Westleydale. And in her dreams she was tender; but her waking +thoughts were sad and hard.</p> + +<p>Majendie found it more than ever difficult to realise that she had ever +shown him kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten +with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change of +soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small, +reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely +thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress, +and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very +serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully suggestive, to her husband's +fancy, of her renunciation of the will to please.</p> + +<p>On her first appearance in this garb he enquired whether she had embraced +the religious life.</p> + +<p>"I always have embraced it," said she in her ringing voice.</p> + +<p>"I believe it's about the only thing you ever wanted to embrace."</p> + +<p>"You need not say so," she returned.</p> + +<p>"Then why, oh why, do you wear those awful clothes?"</p> + +<p>"My clothes are suitable," said she.</p> + +<p>"Suitable? My dear girl, they suggest a divorce-suit, Majendie <i>versus</i> +Majendie, if you like. You're a walking prosecution. Your face, with that +expression on it, is a decree <i>nisi</i> with costs. You don't want to be a +libel on your husband, do you?"</p> + +<p>"How can you say such things?"</p> + +<p>"Well—look in the glass, dear, if you don't believe me."</p> + +<p>She looked. The dress was certainly not becoming. She greeted the joyless +apparition with her thin, unwilling smile.</p> + +<p>He put his arm around her and drew her to him. He loved her dearly, for +all her sadness and unsweetness.</p> + +<p>"Poor Nancy," he said, "I <i>am</i> a brute. Forgive me."</p> + +<p>"I do forgive you."</p> + +<p>The words seemed the refrain of her life's sad song.</p> + +<p>And as he kissed her he said to himself, "That's all very well; but if I +only knew what I'm supposed to have done to her! Her friends must think +me a perfect monster."</p> + +<p>And, indeed, there was more truth than Majendie was aware of in his +extravagant jests. His wife's face was so eloquent of misery that her +friends were not slow in drawing their conclusions. Thurston Square +prepared itself to rally round her. Mrs. Eliott was loyal in keeping what +she supposed to be Anne's secret, but when she found that the Gardners +also understood that young Mrs. Majendie wasn't very happy with her +husband, discussion became free in Thurston Square, though it went no +further.</p> + +<p>"The kindest thing we can do is to give her a refuge sometimes from his +dreadful friends," said Mrs. Eliott. "I have to ask her here every time +they're there."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardner declared that she also would ask her gladly. Miss Proctor +said that she would ask Mr. Majendie and Mr. Gorst, which would come to +the same thing for Anne, but that she would not have Anne without her +husband. Miss Proctor could be depended on to take a light view of any +situation, a view entirely her own.</p> + +<p>So the Gardners, as well as the Eliotts, rallied round Mrs. Majendie, and +offered their house also as her refuge. And thus poor Anne, whose ideal +was an indestructible loyalty, contrived to build up the most undesirable +reputation for her husband in Thurston Square. Of this reputation she now +became aware, and it reacted on her own estimate of him. She said to +herself, "They don't approve of him. They seem to know something. They +are sorry for me." And she was humbled in her pride.</p> + +<p>The one who seemed to know most, and to be sorriest of all, was Canon +Wharton. She was always meeting him now. It was positively as if he lay +in wait for her. His eyes seemed more than ever to have penetrated her +secret. They held it safe under the pent-house of his brows. They seemed +to be always making allusions to it, while his tongue preserved a +delicate reticence. At meeting they said to her, "It doesn't matter if I +know your secret. Do you suppose it is so evident to everybody? Why, in +all this town, there is no one—no one, dear lady—capable of discovering +it but I. It is a spiritual secret." And at parting they said, "When you +can bear it no longer you must come to me. Sooner or later you will come +to me."</p> + +<p>And the weeks went on towards Lent. Anne longed for the time of +cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day +services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at +evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her +girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days.</p> + +<p>She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour's for All Souls. She +loved the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that +sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her +the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to +forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb +tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and +strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine +forces centring on her, she went to All Souls.</p> + +<p>On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent +personal mood. In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon's +church.</p> + +<p>She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning, +and more evidently unhappy. She went alone. Majendie had admitted lately +that he liked going to St. Saviour's, but he refused to accompany her to +All Souls.</p> + +<p>She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great +illumination. It came with the Collect for the day. Anne was deeply moved +by the Collect. She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the +sources of her spiritual help. Her light went up with the ascending, +sentence by sentence, of the prayer.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are +nothing worth;</p> + +<p>"Send Thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of +charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues;</p> + +<p>"Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee;</p> + +<p>"Grant this for thine only Son, Jesus Christ's sake." The ritual rang +upon that note. The music of the hymns of charity was part of the light +that penetrated her, poignant, but tender.</p> + +<p>Poignant but tender, too, were the aspect and the mood of the Canon as he +ascended the pulpit and looked upon his congregation.</p> + +<p>There was a rustling, sliding sound as the congregation turned to listen +to their vicar.</p> + +<p>"Though I speak,'" said the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of +angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a +tinkling cymbal."</p> + +<p>He gripped his hearers with the stress he laid upon certain words, +"angels," and "cymbal." He bade them mark that it was not by hazard that +the great prayer for Charity was appointed for the Sunday before Lent. +"The Church," he said, "has such care for her children that she does +nothing by hazard. This call is made to us on the eve of the great battle +against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why, but that those among us +who come off victors may have mercy upon those weakly ones who are +worsted and fallen in the fight. The life of the spirit has its own +unique temptations. It is against these that we pray to-day. We are all +prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its +corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's +and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To +follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of +the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the +statement, we have gone on accepting it, year after year, as the +statement of a somewhat remote, but well-authenticated historical fact. +Have we yet realised its significance? Have we pictured, are we able to +picture to ourselves, what company He kept? Among what surroundings His +divine figure was actually seen? In what purlieus of degenerate +Jerusalem? In what iniquitous splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles? +And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich +young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven +devils? Which is the divinest of the divine parables? The parable of the +prodigal son who devoured his father's living with harlots!"</p> + +<p>The Canon's voice rose and fell, and rose again; thrilling, as his breast +heaved with the immense pathos and burden of the world.</p> + +<p>Anne had a vision of the Hannays and the Ransomes, and of the prodigal +cast out from the house that loved him. And she said to herself for the +first time: "Have I done right? Have I done what Christ would have me +do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked +doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the +problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration.</p> + +<p>"Therefore we pray for charity"—the Canon's voice rang tears—"for +charity, oh, dear and tender Lord, lest, having known Thy love, we fall, +ourselves, into the sins of unpity and of pride."</p> + +<p>Tears came into Anne's eyes. She was overcome, bowed, shaken by the +Canon's incomparable pleading. The Canon was shaken by it himself, his +voice trembled in the benediction that followed. No one had a clearer +vision of the spiritual city. It was his tragedy that he saw it, and +could not enter in. Many, remembering that sermon, counted it, long +afterwards, to him for righteousness. It had conquered Anne. The tongues +of men and of angels, of all spiritual powers, human and divine, spoke to +her in that vibrating, indomitable voice.</p> + +<p>The problem it had raised remained with her, oppressed, tormented her. +What she had done had seemed to her so good. But if, after all, she had +done wrong? If she had failed in charity?</p> + +<p>She had come to a turning in her way when she could no longer see for +herself, or walk alone. She was prepared to surrender, meekly, her own +judgment. She must ask help of the priest whose voice told her that he +had suffered, and whose eyes told her that he knew.</p> + +<p>She sent a note to All Souls Vicarage, requesting an interview, at Canon +Wharton's house rather than her own. She did not want Edith or the +servants to know that she had been closeted with the Canon. The answer +came that night, making an appointment after early Evensong on the +morrow.</p> + +<p>After early Evensong, Anne found herself in the Canon's library. He did +not keep her waiting, and, as he entered, he held out to her, literally, +the hand of help. For the Canon never wasted a gesture. There was no +detail of social observance to which he could not give some spiritual +significance. This was partly the secret of his power. His face had lost +the light that illuminated it in the pulpit, but his eyes gleamed with a +lambent triumph. They said, "Sooner or later. But rather sooner than I +had expected."</p> + +<p>Anne presented her case in a veiled form, as a situation in the abstract. +She scrupulously refrained from mentioning any names.</p> + +<p>The Canon smiled at her precautions. "We are working in the dark," said +he. "I think I can help you a little bit more if you'll allow me to come +down to the concrete. You are speaking, I fancy, of our poor friend, Mr. +Gorst?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him helplessly, startled at his penetration and her own +betrayal, but appeased by the pitying adjective which brought Gorst into +the regions of pardonable discussion.</p> + +<p>"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I had to be certain before I could +advise you. I can now tell you with confidence that you are doing right. +I—know—the—man."</p> + +<p>He uttered the phrase with measured emphasis, and closed his teeth upon +the last words with a snap. It was impossible to convey a stronger effect +of moral reprobation. "But I see your difficulty," he continued. "I +understand that he is a rather intimate friend of Miss Majendie."</p> + +<p>Anne noticed that he deliberately avoided all mention of her husband.</p> + +<p>"She has known him for a very long time."</p> + +<p>"Ah yes. And it is your affection, your pity for your sister that makes +you hesitate. You do not wish to be hard, and at the same time you wish +to do right. Is it not so?"</p> + +<p>She murmured her assent. (How well he understood her!)</p> + +<p>"Ah, my dear Mrs. Majendie, we have sometimes to be a little hard, in +order that we may not be harder. You have thought, perhaps, that you +should be tender to this friendship? Now, I am an old man, and I have had +a pretty large experience of men and women, and I tell you that such +friendships are unwholesome. Unwholesome. Both for the woman and the +man."</p> + +<p>"If I thought that—"</p> + +<p>"You may think it. Look at the man—What has it done for him? Has it made +him any better, any stronger, any purer? Has it made her any happier?"</p> + +<p>"I think so. It is all she has—"</p> + +<p>"How can you say that, my dear Mrs. Majendie, when she has you?"</p> + +<p>"And her brother."</p> + +<p>The Canon gave her a keen glance. He seemed to be turning a little extra +light on to her secret, to see it the better by. And under that light her +mind conceived again a miserable suspicion.</p> + +<p>"He knows something," she thought. "What is it that he knows? They all +seem to know."</p> + +<p>She turned the subject back again to her sister-in-law and Mr. Gorst. +"She thinks she can save him."</p> + +<p>"Her brother?"</p> + +<p>It was another turn of the searchlight, but this time the Canon veiled +his eyes, as if in mercy. He really knew nothing, nothing at all; but, as +a man of the world, he felt that there was a great deal more than Mr. +Gorst and Miss Majendie at the back of this discussion, and he was very +curious to know what it might be.</p> + +<p>Anne recoiled from the veiled condemnation of his face more than she had +from its open intimations. She was not clever enough to see that the +clever Canon had simply laid a trap for her.</p> + +<p>She was now convinced that there was something that he knew. She lifted +her head in loyal defiance of his knowledge. "No," said she proudly, "Mr. +Gorst. It was of him I was speaking."</p> + +<p>"Ah," said the Canon, as if his mind had come down with difficulty from +the contemplation of another and more interesting personality; and again +the significance of his manner was not lost upon Anne.</p> + +<p>"I do not know Miss Majendie," he went on, still with the air of forcing +himself to deal equitably with a subject of minor interest; "but if I am +not much mistaken, she is, is she not, a little morbid?"</p> + +<p>"She is a hopeless invalid."</p> + +<p>"I know she is" (his voice dropped pity). "Poor thing—poor thing! And +she thinks that she can save him? Mark me, I put no limit to the saving +grace of God, and I would not like to say whom He may not choose as +His instrument. But before we presume to act for Him, we should be +very sure about the choice. Judging by the fruits—the fruits of this +friendship"—he paused, as if seeking for a perfect justice—"Yes. That +is what we must look at. I imagine Miss Majendie has been morbid on this +subject. Morbid; and, perhaps, a little weak?"</p> + +<p>Anne flushed. She was distressed to think she had given such an +impression. "Indeed, indeed she isn't. You wouldn't say that if you knew +her."</p> + +<p>"I do not know her. But the strongest of us may be sometimes weak. You +must be strong for her. And I"—he smiled—"must be strong for you. And I +tell you that you have been—so far—wise and right. As long as this man +continues in his evil courses, go on as you are doing. Do not encourage +him by admitting him to your house and to your friendship. But"—(the +Canon stood up, both for the better emphasis of his point, and as a +gentle reminder to Mrs. Majendie that his dinner-hour was now +approaching)—"but let him repent; let him give up his most objectionable +companions; let him lead a pure life—and <i>then</i>—accept him—welcome +him—"(the Canon opened his arms, as if he were that moment receiving a +repentant sinner) "rejoice over him"—(the Canon's face became fairly +illuminated) "as—as much as you like."</p> + +<p>The peroration was rapid, valedictory, complete. He thrust out his hand, +displaying the whole palm of it as a sign of openness, honesty, and +good-will.</p> + +<p>"God bless you."</p> + +<p>The solemn benediction atoned for any little momentary brusquerie.</p> + +<p>Anne went away with a conscience wholly satisfied, in an exalted mood, +fortified by all the ramparts of the spiritual life.</p> + +<p>She was very gentle with Edith that evening. She said to herself that her +love must make up to Edie for the loss her conscience had been compelled +to inflict. "After all," she said to herself, "it's not as if she hadn't +me." Measuring her services with those of the disreputable Mr. Gorst, it +seemed to her that she was amply making up. She had a hatred of moral +indebtedness, as of any other, and she loved to spend. In reckoning the +love she had spent so lavishly on Edie, she had not allowed for the +amount of forgiveness that Edie had spent on her. Forgiveness is a gift +we have to take, whether we will or no, and Anne was blissfully unaware +of what she took.</p> + +<p>Majendie watched her ministrations curiously. Her tenderness was the +subtlest lure to the love in him that still watched and waited for its +hour. That night, in the study, he was silent, nervous, and unhappy. She +shrank from the unrest and misery in his eyes. They followed or were +fixed on her, rousing in her an obscure resentment and discomfort. She +was beginning to be afraid of him. It had come to that.</p> + +<p>She left him earlier than usual, and went very miserably to bed. She +prayed, to-night, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix. It had become for +her the symbol of her life, and of her marriage, which was nothing to her +now but a sacrifice, a martyrdom, a vicarious expiation of her husband's +sin.</p> + +<p>As she lay down, the beating of her pulses told her that she was not to +sleep. She longed for sleep, and tried to win it to her by repeating the +Psalm which had been her comfort in all times of her depression. "I will +lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh +from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes under the peace of the beloved words. And as she +closed them she felt herself once more in the arms of the green hills, +the folding hills of Westleydale.</p> + +<p>She shook off the obsession and prayed another prayer. She longed to be +alone; but, to her grief, she heard the opening and shutting of a door +and her husband's feet moving in the room beyond.</p> + +<p>A few blessed moments of solitude were left her during Majendie's +undressing. She devoted them to the final expulsion of all lingering +illusions. She had long ago lost the illusion of her husband's immaculate +goodness; and now she cast off, once for all, the dear and pitiful belief +that had revived in her under her brief enchantment in the wood at +Westleydale. She told herself that she had married a man who had, not +only a lower standard than her own, but an entirely different code of +morals, a man irremediably contaminated, destitute of all perception of +spiritual values. And she had got to make the best of him, that was all. +Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two +things seemed, at moments, incompatible. To guard herself from all +contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the +spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare +duty to herself and him. She must create a standard for him by keeping +herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he +must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness—the +highest goodness—in her.</p> + +<p>Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was +untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It +was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world.</p> + +<p>Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She +tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay +still as a stone, stiff with her fear. Once, at midnight, she felt him +stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow. She was conscious through +all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her +sleep.</p> + +<p>At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream. She found +herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy, +mystic, cathedral woods. The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the +temple. A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree +that she knew. And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree. It lay on +its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the +left. As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm +hollow of the other she saw that it cradled a little naked child. And at +the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her. The child +stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel's breast, and +it fondled it with searching lips and hands. Then it wailed, and as she +heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne's breast; and the +angel's eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and +despair. She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the +little child. And she was moved to compassion at the helplessness of them +both, of the heavenly and of the earthly thing; and she stooped and +lifted the child, and laid it to her own breast, and nourished it; and +had peace from her pain.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + + +<p>It was the first day in Lent. Anne had come down in a state of +depression. She was silent during breakfast, and Majendie became absorbed +in his morning paper. So much wisdom he had learnt. Presently he gave a +sudden murmur of interest, and looked up with a smile. "I see," said he, +"your friend Mrs. Gardner has got a little son."</p> + +<p>"Has she?" said Anne coldly.</p> + +<p>The blood flushed in her cheeks, and a sudden pang went through her and +rose to her breasts with a pricking pain, such pain as she had felt once +in her dream, and only once in her waking life before. She thought of +dear little Mrs. Gardner, and tried to look glad. She failed miserably, +achieving an expression of more than usual austerity. It was the +expression that Majendie had come to associate with Lent. He thought he +saw in it the spiritual woman's abhorrence of her natural destiny. And +with the provocation of it the devil entered into him.</p> + +<p>"Is there anything in poor Mrs. Gardner's conduct to displease you?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him in a dull passion of reproach.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "how can you be so unkind to me!"</p> + +<p>Her breast heaved, her lower lip trembled. She rose suddenly, pressing +her handkerchief to her mouth, and left the room. He heard the study door +open hastily and shut again. And he said to himself, as if with a sudden +lucid freshness, "What an extraordinary woman my wife is. If I only knew +what I'd done."</p> + +<p>As she had left her breakfast unfinished, he waited a judicious interval +and then went to fetch her back.</p> + +<p>He found her standing by the window, holding her hands tight to her +heaving sides, trying by main force to control the tempest of her sobs. +He approached her gently.</p> + +<p>"Go away," she whispered, through loose lips that shook with every word. +"Go away. Don't come near me."</p> + +<p>"Nancy—what is it?"</p> + +<p>She turned from him, and leaned up against the folded window shutter. Her +emotion was the more terrible to him because she was so seldom given to +these outbursts. She had seemed to him a woman passionless, and of almost +superhuman self-possession. He removed himself to the hearth-rug and +waited for five minutes.</p> + +<p>"Poor child," he said at last. "Can't you tell me what it is?"</p> + +<p>No answer.</p> + +<p>He waited another five minutes, thinking hard.</p> + +<p>"Was it—was it what I said about Mrs. Gardner?"</p> + +<p>He still waited. Then he conceived a happy idea. He would try to make her +laugh.</p> + +<p>"Just because I said she'd had a little son?"</p> + +<p>Her tears fell to answer him.</p> + +<p>She gathered herself together with a supreme effort, and steadied her +lips to speak. "Please leave me. I came here to be alone."</p> + +<p>A light broke in on him, and he left her.</p> + +<p>He shut himself up in the dining-room with his light. He had pushed his +breakfast aside, too preoccupied to eat it.</p> + +<p>"So that's it?" he said to himself. "That's it. Poor Nancy. That's what +she's wanted all the time. What a fool I was never to have thought of +it."</p> + +<p>He breathed with an immense relief. He had solved the enigma of Anne with +all her "funniness." It was not that she had turned against him, nor +against her destiny. She had been disappointed of her destiny, that was +all. It was enough. She must have been fretting for months, poor darling, +and just when she could bear it no longer, Mrs. Gardner, he supposed, had +come as the last straw. No wonder that she had said he was unkind.</p> + +<p>And in that hour of his enlightenment a great chastening fell upon +Majendie. He told himself that he must be as gentle with her as he knew +how; gentler than he had ever yet known how. And his heart smote him as +he thought how he had hurt her, how he might hurt her again unknowingly, +and how the tenderness of the tenderest male was brutality when applied +to these wonderful, pitiful, incomprehensible things that women were. +He accepted the misery of the last three months as a fit punishment for +his lack of understanding.</p> + +<p>His light brought a great longing to him and a great hope. From that +moment he watched her anxiously. He had never realised till now, after +three months of misery, quite what she meant to him, how sacred and dear +she was, and how much he loved her.</p> + +<p>The depth of this feeling left him for the most part dumb before her. His +former levity forsook him, and Anne wondered at this change in him, and +brooded over the possible cause of his serious and unintelligible +silences. She attributed them to some deep personal preoccupation of +which she was not the object.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile her days went on much as before, a serene and dignified +procession to the outward eye. She was thankful that she had so +established her religion of the household that its services could still +continue in their punctual order, after the joy of the spirit had +departed from them. The more she felt that she was losing, hour by hour, +her love of the house in Prior Street, the more she clung to the +observances that held her days together. She had become a pale, sad-eyed, +perfunctory priestess of the home. Majendie protested against what he +called her base superstition, her wholesale sacrifice to the gods of the +hearth. He forbade her to stay so much indoors, or to sit so long in +Edith's room.</p> + +<p>One afternoon he came home unexpectedly and found her there, doing +nothing, but watching Edith, who dozed. He touched her gently, and told +her to get up and go out for a walk.</p> + +<p>"I'm too tired," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Then go upstairs and lie down."</p> + +<p>She went; but, instead of lying down, she wandered through the house, +restless and unsettled. She was possessed by a terrible sense of +isolation. It came over her that this house of which she was the +mistress did not in the least belong to her. She had not been consulted +or thought of in any of its arrangements. There was no place in it that +appealed to her as her own. She went into the little grave old-fashioned +drawing-room. It had a beauty she approved of, a dignity that was in +keeping with her own traditions, but to-day its aspect roused in her +discontent and irritation. The room had remained unchanged since the days +when it was inhabited, first by her husband's mother, then by his aunt, +then by his sister. He had handed it over, just as it stood, to his wife. +It was full, the whole house was full, of portraits of the Majendies; +Majendies in oils; Majendies in water-colours; Majendies in crayons, in +miniatures and silhouettes. She thought of Mrs. Eliott's room in Thurston +Square, of the bookcases, the bronzes, the triptych with its saints in +glory, and of how Fanny sat enthroned among these things that reflected +completely her cultured individuality. Fanny had counted. Her rarity had +been appreciated by the man who married her; her tastes had been studied, +consulted, exquisitely indulged. Anne did not want more books, nor +bronzes, nor a triptych in her drawing-room. But such things were +symbols. Their absence stood for the immense spiritual want through which +her marriage had been made void. Brooding on it, she closed her heart to +her unspiritual husband. She looked round the room with her cold +disenchanted eyes. Numberless signs of his thought and care for her +rebuked her, and rebuking, added to her misery. As her restlessness +increased, it occurred to her that she might find some satisfaction in +arranging the furniture on an entirely different plan. She rang the bell +and sent for Walter. He came, and found her sitting on the high-backed +chair whose cover had been worked by his grandmother. He smiled at the +uncomfortable figure she presented.</p> + +<p>"So that's what you call resting, is it?"</p> + +<p>"Walter—do you mind if I move some of the furniture in this room?"</p> + +<p>"Move it? Of course I don't. But why?"</p> + +<p>"Because I don't very much like the room as it is."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you like it?" (He really wanted to know.)</p> + +<p>"Because I don't feel comfortable in it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. Perhaps—we'd better have some new things."</p> + +<p>"I don't want any new things."</p> + +<p>"What do you want, then?" His voice was gentleness itself.</p> + +<p>"Just to move all the old ones—to move everything."</p> + +<p>She spoke with an almost infantile petulance that appealed to him as +pathetic. There was something terrible about Anne when armoured in the +cold steel of her spirituality, taking her stand upon a lofty principle. +But Anne, sitting on a high-backed chair, uttering tremulous absurdities, +Anne, protected by the unconscious humour of her own ill-temper, was +adorable. He loved this humanly captious and capricious, childishly +unreasonable Anne. And her voice was sweet even in petulance.</p> + +<p>"My darling," he said, "you shall turn the whole house upside down if it +makes you any happier. But"—he looked round the room in quest of its +deficiencies—"what's wrong with it?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing's wrong. You don't understand."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't." His eye fell upon the corner where the piano once stood +that was now in Edith's room.</p> + +<p>"There are three things," said he, "that you certainly ought to have. A +piano, and a reading-stand, and a comfortable sofa. You shall have them."</p> + +<p>She threw back her head and closed her eyes to shut out the stupidity, +and the mockery, and the misery of that idea.</p> + +<p>"I—don't—want"—she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high +petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note—"I don't want a +piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can +call my own."</p> + +<p>"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and +every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors +and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for +myself."</p> + +<p>She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating +impression of his folly.</p> + +<p>"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?"</p> + +<p>She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its +place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was +delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be +able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and +waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he +laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as +perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable.</p> + +<p>When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the +windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with +his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the +perspiration from his forehead.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a +chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where +it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit +better pleased with it to-morrow."</p> + +<p>He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you +don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?"</p> + +<p>"The trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Nancy, the trouble. Do you think I'm such a fool that I don't see +it? It's been coming on a long time. I know you're not happy. You're not +satisfied with things as they are. As they are, you know, there's a sort +of incompleteness, something wanting, isn't there?"</p> + +<p>She sighed. "It's you who are putting it that way, not I."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'm putting it that way. How am I to put it any other way? Let +me think now—well—of course I know perfectly well that it's not a +piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do. +We want the same thing, sweetheart."</p> + +<p>She smiled sadly. "Do we? I should have said the trouble is that we don't +want the same thing, and never did."</p> + +<p>"I don't understand you."</p> + +<p>"Nor I you. You think I'm always wanting something. What is it that you +think I want?"</p> + +<p>"Well—do you remember Westleydale?"</p> + +<p>She drew back. "Westleydale? What has put that into your head?"</p> + +<p>He grew desperate under her evasions, and plunged into his theme. "Well, +that jolly baby we saw there—in the wood—you looked so happy when you +grabbed it, and I thought, perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"There's no use talking about that," said she. "I don't like it."</p> + +<p>"All right—only—it's still a little soon, you know, isn't it, to give +it up?"</p> + +<p>"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly. "It isn't that. It never has +been. If I want anything, Walter, that you haven't given me, it's +something that you cannot give me. I've long ago made up my mind to +that."</p> + +<p>"But why make up your mind to anything? How do you know I can't give it +you—whatever it is—if you won't tell me anything about it? What <i>do</i> +you want, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, my dear, I want nothing, except not to have to feel like this."</p> + +<p>"What do you feel like?"</p> + +<p>"Like what I am. A stranger in my husband's house."</p> + +<p>"And is that my fault?" he asked gently.</p> + +<p>"It is not mine. But there it is. I feel sometimes as if I'd never been +married to you. That's why you must never talk to me as you did just +now."</p> + +<p>"Good God, what a thing to say!"</p> + +<p>He hid his face in his hands. The pain she had inflicted would have been +unbearable but for the light that was in him.</p> + +<p>He rose to leave her. But before he left, he took one long, scrutinising +look at her. It struck him that she was not, at the moment, entirely +responsible for her utterances. And again his light helped him.</p> + +<p>"Look here," said he, "I don't think you're feeling very well. This isn't +exactly a joyous life for you."</p> + +<p>"I want no other," said she.</p> + +<p>"You don't know what you want. You're overstrained—frightfully—and +you ought to have a long rest and a change. You're too good, you know, +to my little sister. I've told you before that I won't allow you to +sacrifice yourself to her. I shall get some one to come and stay, and I +shall take you down this week to the south coast, or wherever you like to +go. It'll do you all the good in the world to get away from this beastly +place for a month or two."</p> + +<p>"It'll do me no good to get away from poor Edie."</p> + +<p>"It will, dearest, it will, really."</p> + +<p>"It will not. If you go and take me away from Edie I shall get ill +myself."</p> + +<p>"You only think so because you're ill already."</p> + +<p>"I am not ill." She turned to him her sombre, tragic face. +"Walter—whatever you do, don't ask me to leave Edie, for I can't."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" he asked gently.</p> + +<p>"Because I love her. And it's—it's the only thing."</p> + +<p>"I see," he said; and left her.</p> + +<p>He went back to Edith. She smiled at his disarray and enquired the cause +of it. He entertained her with an account of his labours.</p> + +<p>"How funny you must both have looked," said Edith, "and, oh, how funny +the poor drawing-room must feel."</p> + +<p>"The fact is," said Majendie gravely, "I don't think she's very well. I +shall get her to see Gardner."</p> + +<p>"I would, if I were you."</p> + +<p>He wrote to Dr. Gardner that night and told Anne what he had done. She +was indignant, and expounded his anxiety as one more instance of his +failure to understand her nature. But she did not refuse to receive the +doctor when he called the next morning.</p> + +<p>When Majendie came back from the office he found his wife calm, but +disposed to a terrifying reticence on the subject of her health. "It's +nothing—nothing," she said; and that was all the answer she would give +him. In the evening he went round to Thurston Square to get the truth out +of Gardner.</p> + +<p>He stayed there an hour, although a very few words sufficed to tell him +that his hope had become a certainty. The President of the Scale +Philosophic Society had cast off all his vagueness. His wandering eyes +steadied themselves to grip Majendie as they had gripped Majendie's +wife. To Gardner Majendie, with his consuming innocence and anxiety, was, +at the moment, by far the more interesting of the two. The doctor brought +all his grave lucidity to bear on Majendie's case, and sent him away +unspeakably consoled; giving him a piece of advice to take with him. "If +I were you," said he, "I wouldn't say anything about it until she speaks +to you herself. Better not let her know you've consulted me."</p> + +<p>In one hour Majendie had learnt more about his wife than he had found out +in the year he had lived with her; and the doctor had found out more +about Majendie than he had learnt in the ten years he had been practising +in Scale.</p> + +<p>And upstairs in her drawing-room, little Mrs. Gardner waited impatiently +for her husband to come back and finish the very interesting conversation +that Majendie had interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Who is the fiend," she said, "who's been keeping you all this time? One +whole hour he's been."</p> + +<p>"The fiend, my dear, is Mr. Majendie." The doctor's face was thoughtful.</p> + +<p>"Is he ill?"</p> + +<p>"No; but I think he would have been if he hadn't come to me. I've been +revising my opinion of Majendie to-night. Between you and me, our friend +the Canon is a very dangerous old woman. Don't you go and believe those +tales he's told you."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe the tales," said Mrs. Gardner, "but I can't help +believing poor Mrs. Majendie's face. <i>That</i> tells a tale, if you like."</p> + +<p>"Poor Mrs. Majendie's face is a face of poor Mrs. Majendie's own making, +I'm inclined to think."</p> + +<p>"I don't think Mrs. Majendie would make faces. I'm sure she isn't happy."</p> + +<p>"Are you? Well then, if you're fond of her, I think you'd better try and +see a little more of her, Rosy. You can help her a good deal better than +I can now."</p> + +<p>Professional honour forbade him to say more than that. He passed to a +more absorbing topic.</p> + +<p>"I must say I can't see the force of this fellow's reasoning. What's +that?"</p> + +<p>"I thought I heard baby crying."</p> + +<p>"You didn't. It was the cat. You must learn the difference, my dear. +Don't you see that these pragmatists are putting the cart before the +horse? Conduct is one of the things to be explained. How can you take it, +then, as the ground of the explanation?"</p> + +<p>"I don't," said Mrs. Gardner.</p> + +<p>"But you do," said Dr. Gardner. It was in such bickerings that they +lived and moved and had their happy being. Each was the possessor of a +strenuous soul, made harmless by its extreme simplicity. They were united +by their love of argument, divided only by their adoration of each other. +They now plunged with joy into the heart of a vast metaphysical +contention; and Majendie, his conduct and the explanation of it, were +forgotten until another cry was heard and, this time, Mrs. Gardner fled.</p> + +<p>She came back full of reproach. "Oh, Philip, to think that you can't +recognise the voice of your little son!"</p> + +<p>Dr. Gardner looked guilty. "I really thought," said he, "it was the cat." +He hated these interruptions.</p> + +<p>He looked for Mrs. Gardner to take up the thread of the delicious +argument where she had dropped it; but something had reminded Mrs. +Gardner that she must write a note to Mrs. Majendie. She sat down and +wrote it at once while she remembered. She could think of nothing to say +but, "When will you come and take tea with me, and see my little son?"</p> + +<p>Anne came that week, and saw the little son, and rejoiced over him. She +kept on coming to see him. She always had been fond of Mrs. Gardner, now +she was growing fonder of her than ever. In her happy presence she felt +wonderfully at peace. There had been a time when the spectacle of Mrs. +Gardner's happiness would have given her sharp pangs of jealousy; but +that time was over now for Anne. She liked to sit and look at her and +watch the happiness flowering in Mrs. Gardner's face. She thought Mrs. +Gardner's face was more beautiful than any woman's she had ever seen, +except Edie's. Edie's face was perfect; but Mrs. Gardner's was a simple +oval that sacrificed perfection in the tender amplitude of her chin. +There were no lines on it; for Mrs. Gardner was never worried, nor +excited, nor perplexed. How could she be worried when Dr. Gardner was +well and happy? Or excited, when, having Dr. Gardner, there was nothing +left to be excited about? Or perplexed, when Dr. Gardner held the +solution of all problems in his mighty brain?</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardner's bridal aspect had not disappeared with the advent of her +motherhood. She was not more wrapped up in the baby than she was in Dr. +Gardner and his metaphysics. She even admitted to Anne that the baby had +been something of a disappointment. Anne was sitting in the nursery with +her when Mrs. Gardner ventured on this confidence.</p> + +<p>"You know I'd rather have had a little daughter."</p> + +<p>Anne confessed that her own yearning was for a little son.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Mrs. Gardner, "I wouldn't have him different now. He's going +to have as happy a life as ever I can give him. I've got so much to make +up for."</p> + +<p>"To make up for?" Anne wondered what little Mrs. Gardner could possibly +have to make up for.</p> + +<p>"Well, you see it's a shocking confession to make; but I didn't care for +him at all before he came. I didn't want him. I didn't want anybody but +Philip, and Philip didn't want anybody but me. Are you horrified?"</p> + +<p>"I think I am," said Anne. She had difficulty in believing that dear +little Mrs. Gardner could ever have taken this abnormal, this monstrous +attitude.</p> + +<p>"You see our life was so perfect as it was. And we have so little time +to be together, because of his tiresome patients. I grudged every minute +taken from him. And, when I knew that this little creature was coming, +I sat down and cried with rage. I felt that he was going to spoil +everything, and keep me from Philip. I hadn't a scrap of tenderness for +him, poor little darling."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"I hadn't really. I was quite happy with my husband." She paused, feeling +that the ground under her was perilous. "I don't know why I'm telling you +all this, dear Mrs. Majendie. I've never told another soul. But I +thought, perhaps, you ought to know."</p> + +<p>"Why," Anne wondered, "does she think I ought to know?"</p> + +<p>"You see," Mrs. Gardner went on, "<i>I</i> thought I couldn't be any happier +than I was. But I am. Ten times happier. And I didn't think I <i>could</i> +love my husband more than I did. But I do. Ten times more, and quite +differently. Just because of this tiny, crying thing, without an idea in +his little soft head. I've learned things I never should have learned +without him. He takes up all my time, and keeps me from enjoying Philip; +and yet I know now that I never was really married till he came."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged +forgiveness if she had said too much. And Anne realised that it was for +her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her +that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously +wedded heart.</p> + +<p>In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing +for the little son. And Anne's heart grew soft over the many little +vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns.</p> + +<p>She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom +when Majendie came in. The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and +Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small, +pure, shy smile of hers. Her soft face drew him to her. He thought it was +his hour. He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his +hand. "I'm so glad," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Nancy—"</p> + +<p>"I can't talk about it."</p> + +<p>"Not to me?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "Not to you."</p> + +<p>"I should have thought—"</p> + +<p>Her face hardened. "I can't. Please understand that, Walter. I don't +think I ever can, now. You've made everything so that I can't bear it."</p> + +<p>She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest.</p> + +<p>And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another +sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating +in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was +too clever for him.</p> + +<p>"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Has she not to you?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She +treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the +primeval slime."</p> + +<p>"Poor Wallie!"</p> + +<p>"Well, but it's pretty serious. Do you think she's going to keep it up +for all eternity?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all."</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up."</p> + +<p>"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do."</p> + +<p>"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?"</p> + +<p>"Well—I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the +first—she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at +Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken +that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have +killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her. +Think of the shock it must have been to her."</p> + +<p>"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at +four o'clock in the morning—before I was awake. What could I do? +Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to +it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between."</p> + +<p>"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember."</p> + +<p>"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if +she was a hard woman."</p> + +<p>"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to +be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive. +Besides, think of her health."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if that really accounts for it."</p> + +<p>"I think it may."</p> + +<p>"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay."</p> + +<p>"What has come to stay?"</p> + +<p>"The dislike she's taken to me."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more."</p> + +<p>"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait."</p> + +<p>He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her +child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full +and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from +the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream.</p> + +<p>He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken +one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at +the birth of their child he looked for it to pass.</p> + +<p>The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and +very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing +in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe.</p> + +<p>He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull +and white, and her arms were stretched out by her sides in utter +exhaustion. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, but her lips moved +as if she were trying to speak to him. He felt her breath upon his face, +but he could hear no words.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" he whispered to the nurse who stood beside him. She held in +one arm the new-born child, hooded and folded in a piece of flannel.</p> + +<p>The nurse touched him on the shoulder. "She's trying to tell you to look +at your little daughter, sir."</p> + +<p>He turned and saw something—something queer and red between two folds of +flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave +forth a cry.</p> + +<p>And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted +when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + + +<p>After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and +self-possession. She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had +once been. The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood +her nature was fulfilled. She had given herself up to the child from the +first moment that she held it to her breast. She had found again her +tenderness, her gladness, and her peace.</p> + +<p>Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so +happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father.</p> + +<p>In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this +hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more +certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices +for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change. +Such as his wife was now, she always would be.</p> + +<p>She had settled down.</p> + +<p>And he had accepted the situation.</p> + +<p>He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and +sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It +kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came +to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell +asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It +had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small +tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had +abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said +to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use +for me."</p> + +<p>Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from +him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to +ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the +idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too.</p> + +<p>But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was +conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the +imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded +her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood +strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal +father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had +loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and +towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while +she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never +swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to +him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the +spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and +a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but +dimly understood.</p> + +<p>Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy +touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he +could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him +back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She +made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him.</p> + +<p>By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete.</p> + +<p>As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture. +Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition, +and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on +the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to +the test.</p> + +<p>She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to +trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play +a passionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent +drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her +strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the +Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child; +her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her +ability to keep them up.</p> + +<p>It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for +appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction, +and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he +had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too +perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years +that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be +tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice; +always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the +thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling +politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to +interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to +return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her +duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about +to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to +feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine +with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be +read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was +how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources +of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his +affection for the child, as well as his passion for the mother.</p> + +<p>For that was the thorn in Anne's side now. The child was content with her +only when Majendie was not there. The moment he came into the room she +would struggle from her mother's lap, and crawl frantically to his feet. +Her tiny face curled in its white, angelic smile as soon as he lifted her +in his arms. Little Peggy had an adorable way of turning her back on her +mother and tucking her face away under Majendie's chin. When she was +cross or ailing she cried for Majendie, and refused to take food or +medicine from any one but him.</p> + +<p>He was sitting one day in the nursery with the little year-old thing on +his knees, feeding her deftly from a cup of warm milk that she had pushed +away when presented by her mother. The nurse and Nanna looked kindly on +the spectacle of Majendie's success, while his wife watched him steadily +without a word. The nurse, presuming on her privileges, made an +injudicious remark.</p> + +<p>"She won't do anything for anybody but her daddy. I never saw such a +funny little girl."</p> + +<p>"I never saw such a shocking little flirt," said Majendie; "she takes +after her mother."</p> + +<p>"She's the living image of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the +other's blunder.</p> + +<p>"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as +a sword.</p> + +<p>Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly.</p> + +<p>The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl. +Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was +thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more +than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain +was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little +Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed +through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said, +"I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her +mother's coldness."</p> + +<p>He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left +them.</p> + +<p>Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of +self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his +own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great +unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was +suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the +least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + + +<p>What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless +attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told +upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change +and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times +when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's +lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening, +and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never +tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that +Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and +kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down +cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the +Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this +frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and +the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was +always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming, +she contrived adroitly to be out. Her attitude to the Hannays was one of +the things she undoubtedly meant to keep up. The natural result was that +Majendie was driven to an increasing friendliness, by way of making up +for the slights the poor things had to endure from his wife. He was +always meaning to remonstrate with Anne, and always putting off the +uncomfortable moment. The subject was so mixed with painful matters that +he shrank from handling it. But, with the New Year following Peggy's +first birthday, circumstances forced him to take, once for all, a firm +stand. Certain entanglements in the affairs of Mr. Gorst had called for +his intervention. There had been important developments in his own +business; Majendie was about to enter into partnership with Mr. Hannay. +And Anne had given him an opportunity for protest by expressing her +unqualified disapprobation of Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had offended +grossly; she had passed the limits; having no instincts, Anne maintained, +to tell her where to stop. Mrs. Hannay had a passion for Peggy which she +was wholly unable to conceal. Moved by a tender impulse of vicarious +motherhood, she had sent her at Christmas a present of a little coat. +Anne had acknowledged the gift in a note so frigid that it cut Mrs. +Hannay to the heart. She had wept over it, and had been found weeping by +her husband, who mentioned the incident to Majendie.</p> + +<p>It was more than Majendie could bear; and that night, in the drawing-room +(Anne had left off sitting in the study. She said it smelt of smoke), he +entered on an explanation, full, brief, and clear.</p> + +<p>"I must ask you," he said, "to behave a little better to poor Mrs. +Hannay. You've never known her anything but kind, and sweet, and +forgiving; and your treatment of her has been simply barbarous."</p> + +<p>"Indeed?"</p> + +<p>"I think so. There are reasons why you will have to ask the Hannays to +dinner next week, and reasons why you will have to be nice to them."</p> + +<p>"What reasons?"</p> + +<p>"One's enough. I'm going into partnership with Lawson Hannay."</p> + +<p>She stared. The announcement was a blow to her.</p> + +<p>"Is that a reason why I should make a friend of Mrs. Hannay?"</p> + +<p>"It's a reason why you should be civil to her. You will send an +invitation to Gorst at the same time."</p> + +<p>She winced. "That I cannot do."</p> + +<p>"You can, dear, and you will. Gorst's in a pretty bad way. I knew he +would be. He's got entangled now with some wretched girl, and I've got to +disentangle him. The only way to do it is to get him to come here again."</p> + +<p>"And <i>I</i> am to write to him?" Her tone proclaimed the idea preposterous.</p> + +<p>"It will come best from you, as it's you who have kept him out of the +house. You must, please, put your own feelings aside, and simply do what +I ask you."</p> + +<p>He rose and went to the writing-place, and prepared a place for her +there.</p> + +<p>Anne said nothing. She was considering how far it was possible to oppose +him. It had always been his way to yield greatly in little things; to +drift and let "things" drift till he created an illusory impression of +his weakness. Then when "things" had gone too far, he would rise, as +he had risen now, and take his stand with a strength the more formidable +because it came as a complete surprise.</p> + +<p>"Come," said he, "it's got to be done; and you may as well do it at once +and get it over."</p> + +<p>She gave one glance at him, as if she measured his will against hers. +Then she obeyed.</p> + +<p>She handed the notes to him in silence.</p> + +<p>"That's all right," said he, laying down her note to Gorst. "And this +couldn't be better. I'm glad you've written so charmingly to Mrs. +Hannay."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry that I ever seemed ungracious to her, Walter. But the other +note I wrote under compulsion, as you know."</p> + +<p>"I don't care how you did it, my dear, so long as it's done." He slipped +the note to Mrs. Hannay into his pocket.</p> + +<p>"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to take this myself to Mrs. Hannay."</p> + +<p>"What are you going to say to her?"</p> + +<p>"The first thing that comes into my head."</p> + +<p>She called him back as he was going. "Walter—have you paid Mr. Hannay +that money you owed him?"</p> + +<p>He stood still, astounded at her knowledge, and inclined for one moment +to dispute her right to question him.</p> + +<p>"I have," he said sternly. "I paid it yesterday."</p> + +<p>She breathed freely.</p> + +<p>Majendie found Mrs. Hannay by her fireside, alone but cheerful. She gave +him a little anxious look as she took his hand. "Wallie," said she, +"you're depressed. What is it?"</p> + +<p>He owned to the charge, but declined to give an account of himself.</p> + +<p>She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his +pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew +how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy.</p> + +<p>"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't. +I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of +a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter."</p> + +<p>"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll +be a help to her."</p> + +<p>"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that."</p> + +<p>"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong. +Peggy, I mean."</p> + +<p>"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "<i>I</i> was a peaky, piny baby, and look at +me now!"</p> + +<p>He looked at her and laughed.</p> + +<p>"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind."</p> + +<p>"Why should I?"</p> + +<p>"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's +happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I +suppose you know it's all come to nothing?"</p> + +<p>"What has?"</p> + +<p>"Her marriage."</p> + +<p>"Oh, her marriage. She has told <i>you</i> about it?"</p> + +<p>"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been +going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think +he really was?"</p> + +<p>"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to +marry her?"</p> + +<p>"If he <i>was</i>, you know, perhaps he wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in +for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have +troubled his bright essence."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings +and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that +poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and +entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in +society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think I mind anything very much now."</p> + +<p>The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to +mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off +and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented +a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in +meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a +quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women +of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead +youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the +triumph of maturity.</p> + +<p>She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie +among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to +meet <i>you</i> here."</p> + +<p>She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then +ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her +success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the +glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful +illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and +other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle +and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires +urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration +was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved +respectability.</p> + +<p>But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young +appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady +Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of +the happy past.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?"</p> + +<p>Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must +approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with +time.</p> + +<p>He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago."</p> + +<p>"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her +memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?"</p> + +<p>She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?"</p> + +<p>"N—no—er—she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night."</p> + +<p>"Indeed? I <i>did</i> hear, didn't I, that you had a little—" She paused, if +anything, more discreetly than before.</p> + +<p>"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now."</p> + +<p>"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling +she is, too."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was +another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?"</p> + +<p>"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with +the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the +dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck."</p> + +<p>Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy.</p> + +<p>"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw +how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, <i>she</i> +could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half +an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah +had ever taken part.</p> + +<p>When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she +turned to Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful."</p> + +<p>"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with +him."</p> + +<p>"I knew he would. He was born to do it."</p> + +<p>"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child."</p> + +<p>"Oh—the child!"</p> + +<p>She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + + +<p>The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a +genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration +of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its +brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable +master of commercial detail.</p> + +<p>The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at +home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of +financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there +early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in +his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business. +Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he +applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal +satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this +devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was +older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a +wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At +thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling +down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age.</p> + +<p>To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he +informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be +sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently +required to give his best attention.</p> + +<p>The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of +his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he +was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he +claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise +to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his +reform must be regarded as the price of his admission.</p> + +<p>For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality +had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense +surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence +of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred, +the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening.</p> + +<p>In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon +Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and +appealed to his friend to help him out.</p> + +<p>"I thought you <i>were</i> out," said Majendie.</p> + +<p>"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have +turned her off. She's down on her luck—and—well—you see, <i>now</i> she +wants me to marry her."</p> + +<p>"I see. Well—"</p> + +<p>"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but—you see—I'm +not the first."</p> + +<p>"You're sure of that?"</p> + +<p>"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute. +I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were +sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her. +Always provided I could keep her. But you know—"</p> + +<p>"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for +her?"</p> + +<p>Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie.</p> + +<p>"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned +out, till I get a berth somewhere."</p> + +<p>Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living. +"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?"</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him, +but she won't. That's it."</p> + +<p>"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of +anybody."</p> + +<p>"And what do you want me to do?"</p> + +<p>"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her."</p> + +<p>"See her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad +when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I +don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces."</p> + +<p>"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things +you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?"</p> + +<p>"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It +never does, you know. Where does the woman live?"</p> + +<p>He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him.</p> + +<p>Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many +tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat +street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It +was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie +gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with +decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be +possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.</p> + +<p>A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of +hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room +on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress +rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.</p> + +<p>Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent +occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.</p> + +<p>The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely +embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see +anybody."</p> + +<p>He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.</p> + +<p>Then Maggie came to him.</p> + +<p>He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her +blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on +the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she +approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her +sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him +against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little +hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to +spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable +grace.</p> + +<p>He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in +Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's +shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under +Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost +(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor +inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed +delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her +colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face +was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure +cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a +sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little +high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and +that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her +little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest +feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him, +preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered +that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that +was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He +thought he should get tired of it in time.</p> + +<p>Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her +eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all +over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with +her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and +disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in +the girl to help him out.</p> + +<p>He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told +her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things +to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie +cut him short.</p> + +<p>"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would +<i>marry</i> me."</p> + +<p>"Well—then—" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to +you, Mr. Mumford?"</p> + +<p>"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I +can't—Mr. Magendy—because of Charlie."</p> + +<p>She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr. +Mumford.</p> + +<p>"Oh dear—" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again.</p> + +<p>She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show +of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed.</p> + +<p>And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined +nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out, +fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature +of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be +crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had +followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs. +Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only +felt.</p> + +<p>"See here," he said. "Charlie <i>can't</i> marry you. He can't marry anybody."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"Well, for one thing, he's too poor."</p> + +<p>"I know he's poor."</p> + +<p>"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you +happy."</p> + +<p>"I'd be unhappy, then."</p> + +<p>"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?"</p> + +<p>"No—no—no! You don't understand."</p> + +<p>"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me."</p> + +<p>"To help him."</p> + +<p>"You can't help him," he said softly.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?"</p> + +<p>"Well—he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd +cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd +work for him."</p> + +<p>Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than +he had thought.</p> + +<p>She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning +dressmaking. Look—" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching +at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a +novice in her art.</p> + +<p>"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him."</p> + +<p>"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let +his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's +another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you."</p> + +<p>Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought—if he was +poor—he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes."</p> + +<p>"I don't think you quite know what I mean."</p> + +<p>"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very +good. But I would be—if he married me—I would—I would indeed."</p> + +<p>"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That +wasn't what I meant by the other reason."</p> + +<p>Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?"</p> + +<p>He was silent, and the flame died in her face.</p> + +<p>"Does he care for somebody else?"</p> + +<p>"It would be better for you if you could think so."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I +thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals."</p> + +<p>She sat very still, taking it in.</p> + +<p>"Is he going to marry her?"</p> + +<p>"No. He isn't going to marry her."</p> + +<p>"She's not got enough money, I suppose. <i>She</i> can't help him."</p> + +<p>"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can."</p> + +<p>He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of +jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her +tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again.</p> + +<p>Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation? +That you understand?"</p> + +<p>"Am I never to see him again?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid not."</p> + +<p>"Nor write to him?"</p> + +<p>"It's better not. It only worries him."</p> + +<p>She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream.</p> + +<p>"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?"</p> + +<p>"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for +you, and you shall have a small allowance."</p> + +<p>"But who's going to give it me?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you."</p> + +<p>He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should +misunderstand him.</p> + +<p>"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said +significantly; "if it must be."</p> + +<p>But Maggie had not misunderstood.</p> + +<p>"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little <i>now</i>."</p> + +<p>"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it—keep all you earn."</p> + +<p>"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the +bone."</p> + +<p>"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go.</p> + +<p>Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "for you."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + + +<p>Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In +justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the +passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which +Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent. +Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing +and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary +taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little +vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's +honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him +to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child, +and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with +Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him."</p> + +<p>He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal, +to have that on his conscience.</p> + +<p>As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called +in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's +intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct. +He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do +worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was +his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only +disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that +Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford. +But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not +to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment +of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that +Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to +which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a +salutary shock of shame.</p> + +<p>But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence. +From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her +prodigal had fallen far. That night, before his departure, he confirmed +her sad suspicions.</p> + +<p>"It's awfully good of you," he said stiffly, "to let me come again."</p> + +<p>"Good of me? Charlie!" Her eyes and voice reproached him for this +strained formality.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Mrs. Majendie's perfectly right. I've justified her bad opinion of +me."</p> + +<p>"I don't know that you've justified it. I don't know what you've done. No +more does she, my dear. And you didn't think, did you, that Walter and I +were going to give you up?"</p> + +<p>"I'd have forgiven you if you had."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't have forgiven myself, or Walter."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Walter—if it hadn't been for him I should have gone to pieces this +time. He's pulled me out of the tightest place I ever was in."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure he was very glad to do it."</p> + +<p>"I wish to goodness I could do the same for him."</p> + +<p>"Why do you say that, Charlie?"</p> + +<p>The prodigal became visibly embarrassed. He seemed to be considering the +propriety of a perfect frankness.</p> + +<p>"I say, you don't mind my asking, do you? Has anything gone wrong with +him and Mrs. Majendie?"</p> + +<p>"What makes you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, I've got a sort of notion that she doesn't understand +him. She's never realised in the least the stuff he's made of. He's the +finest man I know on God's earth, and somehow, it strikes me that she +doesn't see it."</p> + +<p>"Not always, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>"Well—see here—you'll tell her, won't you, what he's done for me? +That ought to open her eyes a bit. You can give me away as much as +ever you like, if you want to rub it in. Only tell her that I've chucked +it—chucked it for good. He's made me loathe myself. Tell her that I'm +not as bad as she thinks me, but that I probably would be if it hadn't +been for him. And you, Edie, only I'm going to leave you out of it."</p> + +<p>"You certainly may."</p> + +<p>"It's because she knows all that already; and the point is to get her to +appreciate him."</p> + +<p>Edith smiled. "I see. And I'm to make what I like of you, if I can only +get her to appreciate him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Tell her that, as far as I'm concerned, I respect her attitude +profoundly."</p> + +<p>"Very well. I'll tell her just what you've told me."</p> + +<p>She spoke of it the next day, when Anne came to read to her in the +afternoon. Anne was as punctual as ever in her devotion, but the passion +of it had been transferred to Peggy. The child was with them, playing +feebly at her mother's knee, and Anne's mood was propitious. She listened +intently. It was the first time that she had brought any sympathy into a +discussion of the prodigal.</p> + +<p>"Did he tell you," said she, "what Walter did for him?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Nor what had happened?"</p> + +<p>"No. I didn't like to ask him. Whatever it was, it has gone very deep +with him. Something has made a tremendous difference."</p> + +<p>"Has it made him change his ways?"</p> + +<p>"I believe it has. You see, Nancy, that's what Walter was trying for. He +always had that sort of hold on him. That was why he was so anxious not +to have him turned away."</p> + +<p>Anne's face was about to harden, when Peggy gave the sad little cry that +brought her mother's arms about her. Peggy had been trying vainly to +climb into Anne's lap. She was now lifted up and held there while her +feet trampled the broad maternal knees, and her hands played with Anne's +face; stroking and caressing; smoothing her tragic brow to tenderness; +tracing with soft, attentive fingers the line of her small, close mouth, +until it smiled.</p> + +<p>Anne seized the little hands and kissed them. "My lamb," she said, "what +are you doing to your poor mother's face?" She did not see, as Edith saw, +that Peggy, a consummate little sculptor, was moulding her mother's face +into the face of love.</p> + +<p>"I should never have dreamed," said Anne, "of turning him away, if I had +thought he was really going to reform. Besides, I was afraid he would be +bad for Walter."</p> + +<p>"It didn't strike you that Walter might be good for him?"</p> + +<p>"It struck me that I had to be strong for Walter."</p> + +<p>"Ah, Walter can be strong for all of us." She paused on that, to let it +sink in. Anne's face was thoughtful.</p> + +<p>"Anne, if you believed that all I've said to you was true, would you +still object to having Charlie here?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly not. I would be the first to welcome him."</p> + +<p>"Then, will you write to him of your own accord, and tell him that, if +what I've told you is true, you'll be glad to see him? He knows why you +couldn't receive him before, dear, and he respects you for it."</p> + +<p>Anne thought better of Mr. Gorst for that respect. It was the proper +attitude; the attitude she had once vainly expected Majendie to take.</p> + +<p>"After all, what have I to do with it? He comes to see you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear; but I shan't always be here for him to see. And if I thought +that you would help Walter to look after him—will you?"</p> + +<p>"I will do what I can. My little one!"</p> + +<p>Anne bowed her head over the soft forehead of her little one. She had a +glad and solemn vision of herself as the protector of the penitent. It +was in keeping with all the sanctities and pieties she cherished. She had +not forgotten that Canon Wharton (a saint if ever there was one) had +enjoined on her the utmost charity to Mr. Gorst, should he turn from his +iniquity.</p> + +<p>She was better able to admit the likelihood of that repentance because +Mr. Gorst had never stood in any close relation to her. His iniquity had +not profoundly affected her. But she found it impossible to realise that +Majendie's influence could count for anything in his redemption. Where +her husband was concerned Anne's mind was made up, and it refused to +acknowledge so fine a merit in so gross a man. She was by this time +comfortably fixed in her attitude, and any shock to it caused her +positive uneasiness. Her attitude was sacred; it had become one of the +pillars of her spiritual life. She was constrained to look for +justification lest she should put herself wrong with God.</p> + +<p>She considered that she had found it in Majendie's habits, his silences, +his moods, the facility of his decline upon the Hannays and the Ransomes. +He was determined to deteriorate, to sink to their level.</p> + +<p>To-night, when he remarked tentatively that he thought he would dine at +the Hannays', she made an effort to stop him.</p> + +<p>"Must you go?" said she. "You are always dining with them."</p> + +<p>"Why?—do you mind?" said he.</p> + +<p>"Well—when it's night after night—"</p> + +<p>"Is it that you mind my dining with the Hannays, or my leaving you?"</p> + +<p>"I mind both."</p> + +<p>"Oh—if I'd thought you wanted me to stay—"</p> + +<p>She made no answer, but rose and led the way to the dining-room.</p> + +<p>He followed. Her arm had touched him as she passed him in the doorway, +and his heart beat thickly, as he realised the strength of her dominion +over him. She had only to say "Stay," and he stayed; or "Come," and she +could always draw him to her. He had never turned away. His very mind was +faithful to her. It had not even conceived, and it would have had +difficulty in grasping, the idea of happiness without her.</p> + +<p>To-night he was profoundly moved by this intimation of his wife's desire +to have him with her. His surprise and satisfaction made him curiously +shy. He sat through two courses without speaking, without lifting his +eyes from his plate; brooding over their separation. He was wondering +whether, after all, it had been so inevitable; whether he had +misunderstood her; whether, if he had had the sense to understand, he +might not have kept her. It was possible she had been wounded by his +absences. He had never explained them. He could not tell her that she +had made him afraid to be alone with her.</p> + +<p>The situation, which he had accepted so obediently, had been more than +a mere mortal man could endure. Especially in the terrible five minutes +after dinner, before they settled for the evening, when each sat waiting +to see if the other had anything to say. Sometimes Majendie would take up +his book and Anne her work. She would sew, and sew, patient, persistent, +in her tragic silence. And when he could bear it no longer, he would put +down his book and go quietly away, to relieve the intolerable constraint +that held her. Sometimes it was Anne who read, while he smoked and +brooded. Then, in the warm, consenting stillness of the summer evenings +(they were now in June), her presence seemed to fill the room; he was +possessed by the sense of it; by the sound of her breathing; by the +stirring of her body in the chair, or of her fingers on the pages of her +book; and he would get up suddenly and leave her, dragging his passion +from the sight of her.</p> + +<p>As he considered these things, many perplexities, many tendernesses, +stirred in him and kept him still.</p> + +<p>Anne watched him from the other end of the table, and her thoughts +debased him. He seemed to her disagreeably incommunicative, and she had +found an ignoble explanation of his mood. There had been too much salt in +the soup, and now there was something wrong with the salmon. He had not +responded to her apology for these accidents, and she supposed that they +had been enough to spoil his evening with her.</p> + +<p>She had come to consider him a creature grossly wedded to material +things.</p> + +<p>"It's a pity you stayed," said she. "Mrs. Hannay would have given you a +better dinner."</p> + +<p>He had nothing to say to so preposterous a charge. His eyes were fixed +more than ever on his plate. She saw his face flush as he bowed his head +in eating; she allowed her fancy to rest in its morbid abhorrence of the +act, and in its suspicion of its grossness. She went on, lashed by her +fancy. "I cannot understand your liking to go there so much, when you +might go to the Eliotts or the Gardners. They're always asking you, and +you haven't been near them for a year."</p> + +<p>"Well, you see, the Hannays let me do what I like. They don't bother me."</p> + +<p>"Do the Eliotts bother you?"</p> + +<p>"They bore me. Horribly."</p> + +<p>"And the Gardners?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes—a little."</p> + +<p>"And Canon Wharton? No. I needn't ask."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "You needn't. <i>He</i> bores me to extinction."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry it is my friends who are so unfortunate."</p> + +<p>"It's your husband who's unfortunate. He is not an intellectual person. +Nor a spiritual one, either, I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>He looked up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played +irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had +combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner. +She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that +veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He +had come to dread more than anything those attentive, sacrificial eyes.</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "to keep you waiting."</p> + +<p>She rang the bell. "Will you have the lamp lit in the drawing-room or the +study?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her. There was no lamp for him in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Whichever you like. I think I shall go over to the Hannays', after all."</p> + +<p>He went; and by the lamp in the drawing-room Anne sat and brooded in her +turn.</p> + +<p>She said to herself: "It's no use my trying to keep him from them. It +only irritates him. He lets me see plainly that he prefers their society +to mine. I don't wonder. They can flatter him and kow-tow to him, and I +cannot. He can be a little god to them; and he must know what he is to +me. We haven't a thought in common—not a feeling—and he cannot bear to +feel himself inferior. As for me—if I've married beneath me, I must pay +the penalty."</p> + +<p>But there was no penalty for her in these reflections. They satisfied +her. They were part of the curious mental process by which she justified +herself.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + + +<p>Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne, +Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance +had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted +that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a +bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His +immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of +Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of +inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself +so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all +situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The +discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost +brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began, +and here, therefore, it shall end."</p> + +<p>He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure +by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he +believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's +prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not +make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his +claim to her respect.</p> + +<p>And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen +things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their +separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible +repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation +(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and +complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her.</p> + +<p>Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts.</p> + +<p>"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that +evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him +to understand.</p> + +<p>He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he +was good enough, who were good enough for him.</p> + +<p>He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst, +oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with +Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she +presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of +simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little +better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and +her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body +leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast, +listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to +Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little +dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem +to mind.</p> + +<p>There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't +consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it +more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him; +and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least +so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little +patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was +really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her +vulgarity.</p> + +<p>He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly +straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably, +if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated +somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a +little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify +them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The +Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their +way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job +for any woman to tackle at the start.</p> + +<p>A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson +straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's +little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic +love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson +was now a model of sobriety.</p> + +<p>And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped +Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She +ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if +he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She +convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale, +was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make +money for, especially Peggy.</p> + +<p>And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and +more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for +the persons whom he loved.</p> + +<p>He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did +not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and +agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small +sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it), +not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless. +She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way +to the street.</p> + +<p>But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it +might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the +payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little +work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began +to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by +for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for +Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl +would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr. +Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she +had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him.</p> + +<p>Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion +to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would +have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was +"really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be +sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he +had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made +her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue.</p> + +<p>At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three +weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would +have to look her up.</p> + +<p>Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the +office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to +his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie +had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit +long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get +more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would +begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for +not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't +too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some +day and see her.</p> + +<p>He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the +next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief. +In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian, +the benefactor, the sender of rent.</p> + +<p>"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you +written to till she was better."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was."</p> + +<p>It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling. +He was soon to know that she had little else.</p> + +<p>He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her +as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a +sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he +might give the poor thing time to recover herself.</p> + +<p>"Did I startle you?" he said.</p> + +<p>Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come."</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very +weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of +brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a +greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face. +She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth.</p> + +<p>She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anæmia. A horrible thought +came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to +repay him?</p> + +<p>"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely.</p> + +<p>Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said.</p> + +<p>"Working your fingers to the bone?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have +me."</p> + +<p>"Well—" he said kindly.</p> + +<p>"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses +and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans +would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her +immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties. +I used to. Do you think—perhaps—they'd have me?"</p> + +<p>Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would."</p> + +<p>"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's. +I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably +foolish; but her folly was adorable.)</p> + +<p>"Why wouldn't she have you?"</p> + +<p>Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered +that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago."</p> + +<p>"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?"</p> + +<p>He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of +industry, which was to her the path of virtue.</p> + +<p>She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls +and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table +various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs, +and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the +patterns—flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy.</p> + +<p>"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's what I <i>can</i> do. I make the patterns out of me head, and +they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said +Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she +had never sold in Evans's shop.</p> + +<p>"Very pretty—very beautiful."</p> + +<p>"I've sold lots—to a lady, before I was ill. See here."</p> + +<p>Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar +care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered +with blue pansies (always blue pansies).</p> + +<p>"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little +girl—a little fair girl."</p> + +<p>He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a +little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said.</p> + +<p>Maggie reddened now.</p> + +<p>"Oh—I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only +to tell people."</p> + +<p>So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could +tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner—no, Mrs. Gardner was +Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He +could have told her everything. As it was—No.</p> + +<p>He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces +of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs. +Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing +to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always +have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go +again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on +making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it.</p> + +<p>Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to +an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she +liked her work.</p> + +<p>She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of +anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want +anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I +can't put in another stitch. Sometimes—when it comes—I'm that tired, +it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew. +And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire +under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But +I'm only tired now."</p> + +<p>She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her +thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again.</p> + +<p>"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."</p> + +<p>"Not even Mr. Mumford?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to +where they started from.</p> + +<p>"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long +time."</p> + +<p>"What hasn't come?"</p> + +<p>"What I've been telling you—what I'm afraid of."</p> + +<p>"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father +or the doctor.)</p> + +<p>"If it does, it'll be worse now."</p> + +<p>"Why should it be?"</p> + +<p>"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls +have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie—think—there +isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."</p> + +<p>"You'll make friends."</p> + +<p>She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.</p> + +<p>"Is that woman kind to you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, very kind."</p> + +<p>"She looks after you well?"</p> + +<p>"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."</p> + +<p>"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to +eat?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."</p> + +<p>"You like her?"</p> + +<p>"I love her."</p> + +<p>"That's all right. You see, you <i>have</i> got a friend, after all."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with +Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"</p> + +<p>Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.</p> + +<p>"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to +me."</p> + +<p>"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to +understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more +amusing for you."</p> + +<p>"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't. +I only wanted you to know—"</p> + +<p>"How good <i>you</i>'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's +no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Maggie simply.</p> + +<p>"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep +some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to +places."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."</p> + +<p>He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you +should."</p> + +<p>"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly, +tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's +metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him +that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were +always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power.</p> + +<p>"Well—" He straightened himself stiffly for departure.</p> + +<p>"Are you going?" she said.</p> + +<p>"I must."</p> + +<p>"Will you—come again?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll come, if you want me."</p> + +<p>He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went +through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It +recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a +sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure.</p> + +<p>It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him, +even poor, perverted Maggie.</p> + +<p>Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face.</p> + +<p>Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's +been the matter with her?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted +herself ill."</p> + +<p>"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all."</p> + +<p>He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance.</p> + +<p>That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the +embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending +Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + + +<p>As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne +became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her +evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer +needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no +worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The +prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He +was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer +loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept +the invading darkness from her door.</p> + +<p>Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with +them.</p> + +<p>Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had +been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put +to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It +was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he +left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she +moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her +circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only +meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and +undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its +approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in +Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber +was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her +constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her +husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a +horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him +by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, +no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long +ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now +aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him. +He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and +made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in +Thurston Square.</p> + +<p>Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business +men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay.</p> + +<p>A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she +saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to +his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when +she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was +touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up +in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to +be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to +be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal +memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably +mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so +familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing +goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great +longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even +for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the +growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile +sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was +softer.</p> + +<p>At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed +to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other +measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its +divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could +not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let +him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie +between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced +difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something +threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual +life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and +winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous +petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning +the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for +her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense +of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil, +opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She +thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's +deterioration.</p> + +<p>Yet Anne was softer.</p> + +<p>Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as +Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had +seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take +Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs, +and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender +body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as +if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw, +wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship +with earth.</p> + +<p>She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each +some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing +of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now +the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its +puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was +Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language. +A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and +Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would +have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking +backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.</p> + +<p>But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood +and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted +for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You +couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word +she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told +her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne +was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between +right and wrong.</p> + +<p>In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement, +proved more effectual than Anne.</p> + +<p>They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time. +It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her +parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to +Majendie, shivering with delight.</p> + +<p>"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my +own self, and eated it all up."</p> + +<p>Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very +miserable day.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty."</p> + +<p>"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all."</p> + +<p>She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was +naughty."</p> + +<p>Majendie laughed.</p> + +<p>"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?"</p> + +<p>Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy."</p> + +<p>Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her +mother.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if +you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, daddy."</p> + +<p>Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast.</p> + +<p>"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now."</p> + +<p>Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked.</p> + +<p>"Are you happy, daddy?"</p> + +<p>He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room.</p> + +<p>And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, darling."</p> + +<p>"Do you think he will come back again?"</p> + +<p>"Darling, I don't know."</p> + +<p>"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?"</p> + +<p>"Of course, Peggy."</p> + +<p>"Then I'll go and tell him."</p> + +<p>She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head +sadly.</p> + +<p>"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy."</p> + +<p>"Why do you say that, Peggy?"</p> + +<p>"Because he won't come when you want him to."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he's busy."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on +a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and +tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy."</p> + +<p>And she trotted downstairs and up again.</p> + +<p>"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he <i>is</i> busy. S'all I take your love to +him?"</p> + +<p>That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her +mother's heart ache.</p> + +<p>Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that, +and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between +right and wrong.</p> + +<p>But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break.</p> + +<p>"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me."</p> + +<p>She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection +against the pursuing vision of her sin.</p> + +<p>"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind."</p> + +<p>But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him. +He minded ever so."</p> + +<p>"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and +comforted her.</p> + +<p>She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against +love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should +refuse to forgive her and kiss her.</p> + +<p>And Anne did not refuse.</p> + +<p>Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge +of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she +began to see?</p> + +<p>That was how Anne grew soft.</p> + +<p>Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The +sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and +flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there +came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip, +the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that +Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of.</p> + +<p>She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband +in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and +transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding +charm, when the child was not with her.</p> + +<p>And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and +desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its +frustration.</p> + +<p>Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided +her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew +his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from +her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of +stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that +frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays, +and eat things that disagreed with him.</p> + +<p>Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always +running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions +concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she +would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him. +Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable +innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the +spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the +child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She +did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry, +looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her +fill of love.</p> + +<p>And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing +drink, and considered that she had done her duty.</p> + +<p>A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in +August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache) +a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy +trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal, +burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing <i>Lead, Kindly +Light</i>, in a heavenly tenor.</p> + +<p>Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat.</p> + +<p>"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing."</p> + +<p>"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at +Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses +to her across the room.</p> + +<p>Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round +Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The +child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs +struggling, and laughed for terror and delight.</p> + +<p>Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for +all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child."</p> + +<p>Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable +revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At +first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions +that brought the blood to her mother's face.</p> + +<p>From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say +good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne +stood linked together by the body of their child.</p> + +<p>And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy."</p> + +<p>Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her +soft lips touch his forehead without parting.</p> + +<p>That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously.</p> + +<p>"Are you not well, Walter?"</p> + +<p>"I've got a splitting headache."</p> + +<p>"You'd better take some anti-pyrine."</p> + +<p>"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine."</p> + +<p>"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent."</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon."</p> + +<p>He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his +forehead.</p> + +<p>She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the +sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid +her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her.</p> + +<p>She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under +his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed +eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft +breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that +seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer +burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad +illness, and fear made her kind.</p> + +<p>"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be +very gentle with him.</p> + +<p>"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered.</p> + +<p>She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the +low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his +arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close +against his mouth, and kissed it.</p> + +<p>She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to +withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him +without a word.</p> + +<p>He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> + + +<p>It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when +Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died +again under her repulse.</p> + +<p>Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes +with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he +come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though +Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best +dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like +the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs. +Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the +title, who had come with Mrs. Ransome—the lady who had bought more +embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie +said, to take your breath away.</p> + +<p>Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for +it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a +god—in case he came.</p> + +<p>He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing +with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should +come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come.</p> + +<p>The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was +alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would +remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that +he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they +began to love her.</p> + +<p>She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as +threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her.</p> + +<p>It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously +and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and +marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on +her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the +matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine +she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody +whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the +house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken +her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big +boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her +cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano +in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little +boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations +rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who +"studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and +he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second +time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen +(not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in +dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one +evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went +on her predestined way.</p> + +<p>For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and +after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst—Last year +Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For +each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her +soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and +driven by the wind.</p> + +<p>As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's +soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in +tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went +from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply +dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when +she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He +was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the +pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook +the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the +pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr. +Mumford. You could only be sorry for him.</p> + +<p>But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of +placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold. +Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even +when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl +could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that +was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating +phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace +and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her +face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted, +tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for +sacrifice.</p> + +<p>Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted +out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her +innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like +her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past.</p> + +<p>And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in +pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her +body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her +unique merit, what marked her from the rest.</p> + +<p>Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the +only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived +miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr. +Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable.</p> + +<p>But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a +thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie +blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That +industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums +to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to +approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in +which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied +them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under +lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her +fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to +have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and +Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a +Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of +this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week +existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train. +The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and +Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were +forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he +had not come.</p> + +<p>He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a +comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not +coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not +come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like +to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always +believed what she liked.</p> + +<p>The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would +come to-night.</p> + +<p>And at nine o'clock he came.</p> + +<p>Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind +him of the dejected, anæmic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last +September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was +lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie, +on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower +middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday +afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her +chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on +Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty +of her deportment.</p> + +<p>"Have you been ill?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Why should I have been ill?"</p> + +<p>"Because you didn't come."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a +chronic invalid at that rate."</p> + +<p>He hadn't realised how often he came. <i>He</i> didn't mark the days with +crosses in a calendar.</p> + +<p>"But you <i>were</i> ill, this time, I know."</p> + +<p>"How do you know?"</p> + +<p>The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive, +burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in +its ways.</p> + +<p>"I know, because I saw—" she hesitated.</p> + +<p>"Saw what?"</p> + +<p>"The light in your window."</p> + +<p>"My window?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve +o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I +knew that you were better."</p> + +<p>"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill."</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in +the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all +night, too. That's your room."</p> + +<p>"No, that's my wife's room."</p> + +<p>Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little +girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it." +Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him.</p> + +<p>"That's the spare room," he said, laughing.</p> + +<p>"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery, +looking on the street. Fancy! That little room."</p> + +<p>Again she became thoughtful. So did he.</p> + +<p>"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?"</p> + +<p>"Because I saw them."</p> + +<p>"You can't see them."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back."</p> + +<p>He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark; +it ended in a blind wall.</p> + +<p>"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?"</p> + +<p>He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's +face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid.</p> + +<p>"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching."</p> + +<p>"Watching?"</p> + +<p>"Your window."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like +it. It doesn't do."</p> + +<p>The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I +had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I +didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And +I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not +as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?"</p> + +<p>"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?"</p> + +<p>Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there."</p> + +<p>"Were you 'watching'?"</p> + +<p>"N-no. It was an accident."</p> + +<p>"How did you know it was my little girl?"</p> + +<p>"I saw you walking with her, one Saturday, in the Park. It was an +accident—really. I was taking my work to that lady who buys from +me—Mrs. 'Anny."</p> + +<p>"I see."</p> + +<p>"You're not angry with me, Mr. Magendy?"</p> + +<p>"Of course not. What made you think I was?"</p> + +<p>"Your face. You would be angry if I followed you. But I wouldn't do such +a thing. I've never followed any one—never. And I wouldn't do it now, +not if I was paid," she protested.</p> + +<p>"It's all right, Maggie, it's all right."</p> + +<p>Maggie clasped her knees and sat thinking. She seemed to know by +intuition when it was advantageous to be silent, and when to speak. But +Majendie was thinking, too. He was wondering whether he was not being a +little too kind to Maggie; whether a little unkindness would not be a +salutary change for both of them. Why couldn't the girl marry Mr. +Mumford? He didn't want to profit by the transaction. He would have +gladly paid Mr. Mumford to marry her, and take her away.</p> + +<p>He put his hand over his eyes as a veil for his thoughts; and when he +took it away again, Maggie had risen and was going on soundless feet +towards the door.</p> + +<p>"Don't go," she said, "I'll be back in a minute."</p> + +<p>He flung himself back in the chair and waited. The minutes dragged. He +had wanted Maggie away; and now she had gone he wanted her back again.</p> + +<p>Maggie did not stay away long enough to give him time to discover how +much he wanted her. She came back, carrying a tray with cups and a +steaming coffee pot, and set it on the table.</p> + +<p>A fragrance of strong coffee filled the room. The service of the god had +begun.</p> + +<p>She stood close against his side, yet humbly, as she handed him his cup. +"It's nice and strong," she said. "Drink it. It'll do your head good."</p> + +<p>And she sat down opposite him, and watched him drink it.</p> + +<p>Maggie's watching face was luminous and tender. In her eyes there was the +look that love gives for his signal—love that, in that moment, was pure +and sweet as a mother's. She was glad to think that the coffee was +strong, and would do his head good. She had no other thought in her mind, +at that moment.</p> + +<p>After the coffee she brought matches and cigarettes, which she offered +shyly. Nature had given her an immortal shyness, born of her extreme +humility.</p> + +<p>"They're all right," she said, "Charlie smoked them." (Charlie was at +times a useful memory.)</p> + +<p>She struck a match and prepared to light the cigarette. This she did +gravely and efficiently, with no sign of feminine consciousness or +coquetry. It was part of the solemn evening service of the god. And, as +he smoked, the devotee retreated to her chair and watched him.</p> + +<p>"Maggie," he said, "supposing Mr. Mumford was to come in?"</p> + +<p>"He won't. Sunday's <i>his</i> day; or would be, if I let him 'ave a day."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "I've seen nobody."</p> + +<p>There was silence for five minutes.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Magendy—"</p> + +<p>"Majendie, Maggie, Majendie."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Mashendy—I'm beginning to be afraid."</p> + +<p>"What are you afraid of?"</p> + +<p>"What I've always told you about. That awful feeling. It's coming on +again, I think."</p> + +<p>"It won't come, Maggie, it won't come. Don't think about it, and it won't +come."</p> + +<p>He didn't understand very clearly what Maggie was talking about; but he +remembered that, last September, after her illness, she had been afraid +of something. And he remembered that he had comforted her with some such +words as these.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said she, "but I feel it coming."</p> + +<p>"Maggie, you oughtn't to live alone like this. See here, you ought to +marry. You ought to marry Mr. Mumford. Why don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to marry anybody. And I don't love him."</p> + +<p>"Well, don't think about that other thing. Don't think about it. You'll +be all right."</p> + +<p>"I won't think," said Maggie, and thought profoundly.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Majendie," she said suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Madam."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't be afraid. I shall never do anything I know you wouldn't +like me to."</p> + +<p>"All right. Only don't think too much about that, either."</p> + +<p>"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me."</p> + +<p>"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm +only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him."</p> + +<p>The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst, +and all <i>he</i> had done for her.</p> + +<p>"And you're paying me back."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back."</p> + +<p>Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on?</p> + +<p>There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie.</p> + +<p>She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet +content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no +tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no +shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own +secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as +he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the +delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her +brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the +look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour.</p> + +<p>As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor +darting from heart to brain.</p> + +<p>"I must go now, Maggie," he said.</p> + +<p>When he stood up, his knees shook under him.</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go."</p> + +<p>He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She +understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done +to drive him away?</p> + +<p>"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright.</p> + +<p>He pushed her back gently from the threshold.</p> + +<p>"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill."</p> + +<p>Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a +vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a +fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not +I as well as anybody else?"</p> + +<p>All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling +to him, "Why not? Why not?"</p> + +<p>He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors +below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond +the threshold. At Anne's door he paused.</p> + +<p>It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in.</p> + +<p>Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.</p> + +<p>Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up +against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand +clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's +hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in +gold.</p> + +<p>His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart +stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.</p> + +<p>As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of +thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> + + +<p>The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep +from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or +certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better." +The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by +inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep. +Meanwhile she was terribly awake.</p> + +<p>She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard +him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She +heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond. +There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth.</p> + +<p>The next day she sent for him.</p> + +<p>"What is it, Edie?" he said.</p> + +<p>She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked, +"Are you ill?"</p> + +<p>He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the +night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear.</p> + +<p>"What is it? Tell me," she insisted.</p> + +<p>He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them.</p> + +<p>"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive <i>me</i>. It's not +headaches. It's Anne."</p> + +<p>"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you +know."</p> + +<p>"Yes. <i>She</i>'s got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die +happy."</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it."</p> + +<p>She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the +sort of thing poor Charlie used to say.</p> + +<p>"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been."</p> + +<p>"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you +would."</p> + +<p>"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only +<i>you</i>'ve had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done +as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth—"</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're assuming that I've lived +to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single +moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as +unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without +her. See?"</p> + +<p>"Walter—if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness +yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound +to come. She's good—"</p> + +<p>He assented with a groan. "Oh, much <i>too</i> good."</p> + +<p>"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she +understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know +how much she understands."</p> + +<p>"Understands what?"</p> + +<p>"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again."</p> + +<p>"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness—you +and Peggy."</p> + +<p>"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the +Gardners—and God."</p> + +<p>"I wish God would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me."</p> + +<p>"Dear—if you keep true to her—He will."</p> + +<p>If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was +almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened.</p> + +<p>"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk. +You see, once they go giving me morphia"—she closed her eyes. "Just let +me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me."</p> + +<p>She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour +she had prayed.</p> + +<p>He found Anne sitting on the nursery floor, playing with Peggy. "Edie +wants you," he said, loosening Peggy's little hands as they clung about +his legs.</p> + +<p>"Mother must go, darling," said she.</p> + +<p>But all Peggy said was, "Daddy'll stay."</p> + +<p>He did not stay long. He had to restrain himself, to go carefully with +Peggy, lest he should help her to make her mother's heart ache.</p> + +<p>Anne found Nanna busied about the bed. Nanna was saying, "Is that any +easier, Miss Edie?"</p> + +<p>"It's heavenly, Nanna," said Edie, stifling a moan. "Oh dear, I hope in +the next world I shan't feel as if my spine were still with me, like +people when their legs are cut off."</p> + +<p>"Miss Edie, what an idea!"</p> + +<p>"Well, Nanna, you can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've +got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for +it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; +and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I +shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with me. +Run away now, please, Nanna, and shut the door."</p> + +<p>Nanna thought she knew why Miss Edie wanted the door shut. She, too, had +her intuitive forebodings. She was aware, the whole household was aware, +that the mistress cared more for her child than for the husband who had +given it her. Their master's life was not altogether happy. They wondered +many times how he was going to stand it.</p> + +<p>"Anne" said Edith, "I'm uneasy about Walter."</p> + +<p>"You need not be," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"Why? Aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"I know he hasn't been well lately—"</p> + +<p>"How can you expect him to be well when he's so unhappy?"</p> + +<p>Anne was silent.</p> + +<p>"How long is it going to last, dear? And where is it going to end?"</p> + +<p>"Edith, you needn't be afraid. I shall never leave him."</p> + +<p>That was not what Edith was afraid of, but she did not say so.</p> + +<p>"How can I," Anne went on, "when I believe the Church's doctrine of +marriage?"</p> + +<p>"Do you? Do you believe that love is a provision for the soul's +redemption of the body? or for the body's redemption of the soul?"</p> + +<p>"I believe that, having married Walter, whatever he is or does, I cannot +leave him without great sin."</p> + +<p>"Then you'll be shocked when I tell you that if your husband were a bad +man, I should be the first to implore you to leave him, though he is my +brother. Where there can be no love on either side there's no marriage, +and no sacrament. That's <i>my</i> profane belief."</p> + +<p>"And when there's love on one side only?"</p> + +<p>"The sacrament is there, offered by the loving person, and refused by the +unloving. And that refusal, my dear child, may, if you like, be a great +sin—supposing, of course, that the love is pure and devoted. I hardly +know which is the worst sin, then, to refuse to give, or to refuse to +take it; or to take it, and then throw it away. What would you think if +Peggy hardened her little heart against you?"</p> + +<p>"My Peggy!"</p> + +<p>"Yes, your Peggy. It's the same thing. You'll see it some day. But I want +you to see it now, before it's too late."</p> + +<p>"Edie, if you'd only tell me where I've failed! If you're thinking of +our—our separation—"</p> + +<p>"I was not. But, since you <i>have</i> mentioned it, I can't help reminding +you that you fell in love with Walter because you thought he was a saint. +And so I don't see what's to prevent you now. He's qualifying. He mayn't +be perfect; but, in some ways, a saint couldn't very well do more. Has it +never occurred to that you are indulging the virtue that comes easiest to +you, and exacting from him the virtue that comes hardest? And he has +stood the test."</p> + +<p>"It was his own doing—his own wish."</p> + +<p>"Is it? I doubt it—when he's more in love with you than he was before he +married you."</p> + +<p>"That's all over."</p> + +<p>"For you. Not for him. He's a man, as you may say, of obstinate +affections."</p> + +<p>"Ah, Edie—you don't know."</p> + +<p>"I know," said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my +scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't +scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you."</p> + +<p>"I know—I know you love me."</p> + +<p>"But I couldn't love you so much, if I didn't love Walter more."</p> + +<p>"You well may, Edie. He's been a good brother to you."</p> + +<p>"Some day you'll own he's been as good a husband as he's been a brother. +Better; for it's a more difficult post, my dear. I don't really think my +body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit."</p> + +<p>"What have I done? Tell me—tell me."</p> + +<p>"Done? Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you. What haven't you done? +There's no way in which you haven't hurt and humiliated him. I'm not +thinking of your separation—I'm thinking of the way you've treated him, +and his affection for you and Peggy. You won't let him love you. You +won't even let him love his little girl."</p> + +<p>"Does he say that?"</p> + +<p>"Would he say it? People in my peculiar position don't require to have +things said to them; they <i>say them</i>. You see, if I didn't say them now +I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten +times more disagreeable for you. It might even be very uncomfortable for +me."</p> + +<p>"Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious."</p> + +<p>"Well, if I'm not serious now, when <i>shall</i> I be?"</p> + +<p>Anne smiled. "You're very like Walter."</p> + +<p>"Yes. He's every bit as serious as I am. And he's getting more and more +serious every day."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Edie, you don't understand. I—I've suffered so terribly."</p> + +<p>"I do understand. I've gone through it—every pang of it—and it's all +come back to me again through your suffering—and I know it's been worse +for you. I've told him so. It's because I don't want you to suffer more +that I'm saying these awful things to you."</p> + +<p>"Oh! <i>Am</i> I to suffer more?"</p> + +<p>"I believe that's the only way your happiness can come to you—through +great suffering. I'm only afraid that the suffering may come through +Peggy, if you don't take care."</p> + +<p>"Peggy—"</p> + +<p>It was her own terror put into words.</p> + +<p>"Yes. That child has a terrible capacity for loving. And for her that +means suffering. She loves you. She loves her father. Do you suppose she +won't suffer when she sees? Her little heart will be torn in two between +you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Edith—I cannot bear it."</p> + +<p>She hid her face from the anguish.</p> + +<p>"You needn't. That's it. It rests with you."</p> + +<p>"With me? If you would only tell me how."</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you anything. It'll come. Probably in the way you least +expect it. But—it'll come."</p> + +<p>"Edie, I feel as if you held us all together. And when you've gone—"</p> + +<p>"You mean when <i>it's</i> gone. When it's 'gone,'" said Edie, smiling. "I +shall hold you together all the more. You needn't sigh like that."</p> + +<p>"Did I sigh?"</p> + +<p>As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith's +loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold +anything any more.</p> + +<p>Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained +fixed in Anne's memory: how Peggy would suffer through overmuch +loving—she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror; +and how love was a provision for the soul's redemption of the body, or +for the body's redemption of the soul. This she remembered, because she +did not understand it.</p> + +<p>That was in August. Before the month was out they were beginning to give +Edith morphia.</p> + +<p>In September Gorst came to see her for the last time.</p> + +<p>In October she died in her brother's arms.</p> + +<p>In the days that followed, it was as if her spirit, refusing to depart +from them, had rested on the sister she had loved. Spirit to spirit, +she stooped, kindling in Anne her own dedicated flame. In the white +death-chamber, and through the quiet house, the presence of Anne, moving +with a hushed footfall, was like the presence of a blessed spirit. Her +face was as a face long hidden upon the heart of peace. Her very grief +aspired; it had wings, lifting her towards her sister in her heavenly +place.</p> + +<p>For Anne, in the days that followed, was possessed by a great and burning +charity. Mrs. Hannay called and was taken into the white room to see +Edith. And Anne's heart went out to Mrs. Hannay, when she spoke of the +beauty and goodness of Edith; and to Lawson Hannay, when he pressed her +hand without speaking; and to Gorst, when she saw him stealing on tiptoe +from Edith's room, his face swollen and inflamed with grief. Her heart +went out to all of them, because they had loved Edith.</p> + +<p>And to her husband her heart went out with a tenderness born of an +immense pity and compassion. For the first three days, Majendie gave no +sign that he was shaken by his sister's death. But on the evening of the +day they buried her, Anne found him in the study, sitting in his low +chair by the fire, his head sunk, his body bowed forward over his knees, +convulsed with a nervous shivering. He started and stared at her +approach, and straightened himself suddenly. She held out her hand. He +looked at it dumbly, as if unwilling or afraid to take it.</p> + +<p>"My dear," she said softly.</p> + +<p>Then she knelt beside him, and drew his head down upon her breast, and +let it rest there.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> + + +<p>It was a Thursday night in October, three weeks after Edith's death. Anne +was in her room, undressing. She moved noiselessly, with many tender +precautions, for fear of waking Peggy, and for fear of destroying the +peace that possessed her own soul like heavenly sleep. It was the mystic +mood that went before prayer.</p> + +<p>In those three weeks Anne felt that she had been brought very near to +God. She had not known such stillness and content since the days at +Scarby that had made her life terrible. It was as if Edith's spirit in +bliss had power given it to help her sister, to draw Anne with it into +the divine presence.</p> + +<p>And the dead woman bound the living to each other also, as she had said. +How she bound them Anne had not realised until to-day. It was Mrs. +Elliott's day, her Thursday. Anne had spent half an hour in Thurston +Square, and had come away with a cold, unsatisfactory feeling towards +Fanny. Fanny, for the first time, had jarred on her. She had so plainly +hesitated between condolence and congratulation. She seemed to be +secretly rejoicing in Edith Majendie's death. Her manner intimated +clearly that a burden had been removed from her friend's life, and that +the time had now come for Anne to blossom out and enjoy herself. Anne had +been glad to get away from Fanny, to come back to the house in Prior +Street and to find Walter waiting for her. Fanny, in spite of her +intellectual rarity, lacked the sense that, after all, <i>he</i> had, the +sense of Edith's spiritual perfection. Strangely, inconsistently, +incomprehensibly, he had it. He and his wife had that in common, if they +had nothing else. They were bound to each other by Edith's dear and +sacred memory, an immaterial, immortal tie. They would always share their +knowledge of her. Other people might take for granted that her terrible +illness had loosened, little by little, the bond that held them to her. +They knew that it was not so. They never found themselves declining on +the mourner's pitiful commonplaces, "Poor Edie"; "She is released"; "It's +a mercy she was taken." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant +personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness +of a strong, beneficent life.</p> + +<p>For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been +on the night of Edith's burial.</p> + +<p>And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost +in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She +forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was +unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched +her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very +high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her +spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only +continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with +him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane +the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of +Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She +could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself +that her prayers for him were answered.</p> + +<p>For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her +husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in +the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin. +She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of +redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in +letting go the immaterial hold by which she might have drawn him with her +into the secret shelter of the Unseen. She perceived that in those years +her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble. +She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for +herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all +mortal things. Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources +of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the +nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul. Too many +miseries cried and strove in her. She could no longer shut to her door, +and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse +and empty her spirit's house for the divine thing she desired to dwell +with her.</p> + +<p>And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, +into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out +her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and +found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine +pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she +had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete. At night, +when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she +seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer. There +were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of +God, the beatitude of the pure.</p> + +<p>After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate +sanctity.</p> + +<p>There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of +minute deceptions and hypocrisies. She was not deceived as to the supreme +event. She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which, +alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction. She had all +but touched the end of the saint's progress. But she was ignorant, both +of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might +again lead, her feet astray.</p> + +<p>Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was +entering into a sanctuary. She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her +husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her. She +accepted her blessed isolation as his gift.</p> + +<p>This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions. She had +gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence +of the night.</p> + +<p>She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her +movements.</p> + +<p>She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when +she heard a low knock at her door. Majendie had been detained, and was +late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed.</p> + +<p>Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise. He stole +on tiptoe to the child's cot, and stood there for a moment. Then he came +and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing +with her arms raised, unpinning her hair. Majendie had always admired +that attitude in Anne. It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly +feminine. Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any +dress.</p> + +<p>He sat looking at the quick white fingers untwisting the braid of hair. +It hung divided into three strands, still rippling with the braiding, +still dull with its folded warmth. She combed the three into one sleek +sheet that covered her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders. +Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands. +Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face +and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white.</p> + +<p>"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?"</p> + +<p>Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet +permitted it.</p> + +<p>"Do you mind my looking at you like this?"</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.)</p> + +<p>She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward +over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to +brush it.</p> + +<p>The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its +ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the +ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and +tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a +ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went +light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and +rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net; +then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It +scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft +falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down. +With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair +rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray; +pure gold in every thread.</p> + +<p>Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its +faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook +him, and he looked away.</p> + +<p>Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her +effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one +mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his +departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the +extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go.</p> + +<p>"Anne," he whispered, "Anne—"</p> + +<p>The whisper struck fear into her.</p> + +<p>She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given +him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability.</p> + +<p>"Have you anything to say to me?" she said.</p> + +<p>"No."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?"</p> + +<p>"Do you really mean it?"</p> + +<p>"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet."</p> + +<p>"And when you have said them?"</p> + +<p>She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face. +She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and +scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep.</p> + +<p>"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself."</p> + +<p>He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him.</p> + +<p>"He is good, after all," her heart said.</p> + +<p>But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much +for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He +remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her +and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he +would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to +go and see her.</p> + +<p>Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night.</p> + +<p>To-morrow night he would go and see her.</p> + +<p>And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until +December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that +Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this +time, she had not written to tell him so.</p> + +<p>He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come, +because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie +was good as gold again, placid and at peace.</p> + +<p>"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?"</p> + +<p>And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody +else?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BOOK_III" id="BOOK_III"></a>BOOK III</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square +blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with +their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of +Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only +raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand. +Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown +belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey +gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and +earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and +sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds.</p> + +<p>Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's +length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing +hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and +straight as a dyke.</p> + +<p>Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of +land a narrow creek.</p> + +<p>Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the +open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to +the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The +farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline. +Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the +east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad +bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness.</p> + +<p>Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path +breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie +came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often +for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very +early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven +miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In +summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness +creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him.</p> + +<p>This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three +years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to +live there.</p> + +<p>The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all +the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated +endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy. +He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, +that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and +complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time. +Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with +people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his +yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent +as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their +living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were +devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were +acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their +yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a +man who observed life dispassionately. He asked no questions and answered +none.</p> + +<p>It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three years +after Edith's death. Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with +Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the +field path to Three Elms Farm. A thin rain fell, blurring the distances. +The house stood humbly, under its three elms. A light was burning in one +window. Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the +click of the field gate which was his signal. When it sounded she came +down the path to meet him. She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew +down his face and kissed him. He took her arm and led her, half clinging +to him, into the house and into the lighted room.</p> + +<p>A fire burned brightly on the hearth. His chair was set for him beside +it, and Maggie's chair opposite. The small round table in the middle +of the room was laid for supper. Maggie had decorated walls and +chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn +leaves and ivy from the hedgerows. The room had a glad light and welcome +for him.</p> + +<p>As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him. +She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings: Is +he ill? Is he well?</p> + +<p>He was, to the outward seeing eye, superlatively well. Three years of +life lived in the open air, life lived according to the will of nature, +had given him back his outward and visible health. At thirty-nine, +Majendie had once more the strength, the firm, upright slenderness, and +the brilliance of his youth. His face was keen and brown, fined and +freshened by wind and weather.</p> + +<p>Maggie, waiting humbly on his mood, saw that it was propitious.</p> + +<p>"What cold hands," said she. "And no overcoat? You bad boy." She felt his +clothes all over to feel if they were damp. "Tired?"</p> + +<p>"Just a little, Maggie."</p> + +<p>She drew up his chair to the fire, and knelt down to unlace his boots.</p> + +<p>"No, Maggie, I can't let you take my boots off."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can, and you will. Does <i>she</i> ever take your boots off?"</p> + +<p>"Never."</p> + +<p>"You don't allow her?"</p> + +<p>"No. I don't allow her."</p> + +<p>"You allow <i>me</i>" said Maggie triumphantly. She was persuaded that (since +his wife was denied the joy of waiting on him) hers was the truly +desirable position. Majendie had never had the heart to enlighten her.</p> + +<p>She pressed his feet with her soft hands, to feel if his stockings were +damp, too.</p> + +<p>"There's a little hole," she cried. "I shall have to mend that to-night."</p> + +<p>She put cushions at his back, and sat down on the floor beside him, and +laid her head on his knee.</p> + +<p>"There's a sole for supper," said she, in a dreamy voice, "and a roast +chicken. And an apple tart. I made it." Maggie had always been absurdly +proud of the things that she could do.</p> + +<p>"Clever Maggie."</p> + +<p>"I made it because I thought you'd like it."</p> + +<p>"Kind Maggie."</p> + +<p>"You didn't get any of those things yesterday, or the day before, did +you?"</p> + +<p>She was always afraid of giving him what he had had at home. That was one +of the difficulties, she felt, of a double household.</p> + +<p>"I forget," he said, a little wearily, "what I had yesterday."</p> + +<p>Maggie noticed the weariness and said no more.</p> + +<p>He laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair. He could always keep +Maggie quiet by stroking her hair. She shifted herself instantly into +a position easier for his hand. She sat still, only turning to the +caressing hand, now her forehead, now the nape of her neck, now her +delicate ear.</p> + +<p>Maggie knew all his moods and ministered to them. She knew to-night that, +if she held her tongue, the peace she had prepared for him would sink +into him and heal him. He was not very tired. She could tell. She could +measure his weariness to a degree by the movements of his hand. When he +was tired she would seize the caressing hand and make it stop. In a few +minutes supper would be ready, and when he had had supper, she knew, it +would be time to talk.</p> + +<p>Majendie was grateful for her silence. He was grateful to her for many +things, for her beauty, for her sweetness, for her humility, for her love +which had given so much and asked so little. Maggie had still the modest +charm that gave to her and to her affection the illusion of a perfect +innocence. It had been heightened rather than diminished by their +intimacy.</p> + +<p>Somehow she had managed so that, as long as he was with her, shame was +impossible for himself or her. As long as he was with her he was wrapped +in her illusion, the illusion of innocence, of happiness, of all the +unspoken sanctities of home. He knew that whether he was or was not with +her, as long as he loved her no other man would come between him and her; +no other man would cross his threshold and stand upon his hearth. The +house he came to was holy to her. There were times, so deep was the +illusion, when he could have believed that Maggie, sitting there at his +feet, was the pure spouse, the helpmate, and Anne, in the house in Prior +Street, the unwedded, unacknowledged mistress, the distant, the secret, +the forbidden. He had never disguised from Maggie the temporary and +partial nature of the tie that bound them. But the illusion was too +strong for both of them. It was strong upon him now.</p> + +<p>The woman, Mrs. Pearson, came in with supper, moving round the room in +silence, devoted and discreet.</p> + +<p>Majendie was hungry. Maggie was unable to conceal her frank joy in seeing +him eat and drink. She ate little and talked a great deal, drawn by his +questions.</p> + +<p>"What have you been doing, Maggie?"</p> + +<p>Maggie gave an account of her innocent days, of her labours in house and +farm and garden. She loved all three, she loved her flowers and her +chickens and her rabbits, and the little young pigs. She loved all things +that had life. She was proud of her house. Her hands were always busy in +it. She had stitched all the linen for it. She had made all the +tablecloths, sofa covers and curtains, and given to them embroidered +borders. She liked to move about among all these beautiful things and +feel that they were hers. But she loved those most which Majendie had +used, or noticed, or admired. After supper she took up her old position +by his chair.</p> + +<p>"How long can you stay?" said she.</p> + +<p>"I must go to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Oh, why?"</p> + +<p>"I've told you why, dear. It's my little girl's birthday to-morrow."</p> + +<p>She remembered.</p> + +<p>"Her birthday. How old will she be to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Seven."</p> + +<p>"Seven. What does she do all day long?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she amuses herself. We have a garden."</p> + +<p>"How she would love this garden, and the flowers, and the swing, and the +chickens, and all the animals, wouldn't she?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Yes."</p> + +<p>Somehow he didn't like Maggie to talk about his child, but he hadn't the +heart to stop her.</p> + +<p>"Is she as pretty as she was?"</p> + +<p>"Prettier."</p> + +<p>"And she's not a bit like you."</p> + +<p>"Not a bit, not a little bit."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad," said Maggie.</p> + +<p>"Why on earth are you glad?"</p> + +<p>"Because—I couldn't bear <i>her</i> child to be like you."</p> + +<p>"You mustn't say those things, Maggie, I don't like it."</p> + +<p>"I won't say them. You don't mind my thinking them, do you? I can't help +thinking."</p> + +<p>She thought for a long time; then she got up, and came to him, and put +her arm round his neck, and bowed her head and whispered.</p> + +<p>"Don't whisper. I hate it. Speak out. Say what you've got to say."</p> + +<p>"I can't say it."</p> + +<p>She said it very low.</p> + +<p>He bent forward, freeing himself from her mouth and clinging arm.</p> + +<p>"No, Maggie. Never. I told you that in the beginning. You promised me you +wouldn't think of it. It's bad enough as it is."</p> + +<p>"What's bad enough?"</p> + +<p>"Everything, my child. I'm bad enough, if you like; but I'm not as bad as +all that, I can assure you."</p> + +<p>"You don't think <i>me</i> bad?"</p> + +<p>"You know I don't. You know what I think of you. But you must learn to +see what's possible and what isn't."</p> + +<p>"I do see. Tell me one thing. Is it because you love <i>her</i>?"</p> + +<p>"We can't go into that, Maggie. Can't you understand that it may be +because I love <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. But I don't mind so long as I know it isn't only because +you love <i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>"You're not to talk about her, Maggie."</p> + +<p>"I know. I won't. I don't want to talk about her, I'm sure. I try not to +think about her more than I can help."</p> + +<p>"But you must think of her."</p> + +<p>"Oh—must I?"</p> + +<p>"At any rate, you must think of me."</p> + +<p>"I do think of you. I think of you from morning till night. I don't think +of anything else. I don't want anything else. I'm contented as long as +I've got you. It wasn't that."</p> + +<p>"What was it, Maggie?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. Only—it's so awfully lonely in between, when you're not here. +That was why I asked you."</p> + +<p>"Poor child, poor Maggie. Is it very bad to bear?"</p> + +<p>"Not when I know you're coming."</p> + +<p>"See here—if it gets too bad to bear, we must end it."</p> + +<p>"End it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Maggie. <i>You</i> must end it; you must give me up, when you're +tired—"</p> + +<p>"Oh no—no," she cried.</p> + +<p>"Give me up," he repeated, "and go back to town."</p> + +<p>"To Scale?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yes; if it's so lonely here."</p> + +<p>"And give you up?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Maggie, you must; if you go back to Scale."</p> + +<p>"I shall never go back. Who could I go to? There's nobody who'd 'ave me. +I've got nobody."</p> + +<p>"Nobody?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody but you, Wallie. Nobody but you. Have you never thought of that? +Why, where should <i>I</i> be if I was to give you up?"</p> + +<p>"I see, Maggie. <i>I</i> see. <i>I</i> see."</p> + +<p>Up till then he had seen nothing. But Maggie, unwise, had put her hand +through the fine web of illusion. She had seen, and made him see, the +tragedy of the truth behind it, the real nature of the tie that bound +them. It was an inconsistent tie, permanent in its impermanence, with all +its incompleteness terribly complete. He could not give her up; he had +not thought of giving her up; but neither had he thought of keeping her.</p> + +<p>It was all wrong. It was wrong to keep her. It would be wrong to give her +up. He was all she had. Whatever happened he could not give her up.</p> + +<p>And so he said, "<i>I</i> see. <i>I</i> see."</p> + +<p>"See here," said she (she had adopted some of his phrases), "when I said +there was nobody, I meant nobody I'd have anything to do with. If I went +back to Scale, there are plenty of low girls in the town who'd make +friends with me, if I'd let 'em. But I won't be seen with them. You +wouldn't have me seen with them, would you?"</p> + +<p>"No, Maggie, not for all the world."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, 'ow can you go on talking about my giving you up?"</p> + +<p>No. He could not give her up. There was no tie between them but their +sin, yet he could not break it. Degraded as it was, it saved him from +deeper degradation.</p> + +<p>He loved Anne with his whole soul, with his heart and with his body, and +he had given his body to Maggie, with as much heart as went with it. In +the world's sight he loved Maggie and was bound to Anne. In his own sight +he loved Anne and was bound to Maggie.</p> + +<p>It had come to that.</p> + +<p>He did not care to look back upon the steps by which it had come. He only +knew that, seven years ago, he had been sound and whole, a man with one +aim and one passion and one life. Now he and his life were divided, cut +clean in two by a line not to be passed or touched upon by either +sundered half. All of him that Anne had rejected he had given to Maggie.</p> + +<p>As far as he could judge he had acted, not grossly, not recklessly, but +with a kind of passionate deliberation. He knew he would have to pay for +it. He had not stopped to haggle with his conscience or to ask: how much? +But he was prepared to pay.</p> + +<p>Up to this moment his conscience had not dunned him. But now he foresaw a +season when the bills would be falling due.</p> + +<p>Maggie had torn the veil of illusion, and he looked for the first time +upon his sin.</p> + +<p>Even his conscience admitted that he had not meant it to come to that. He +had had no ancient private tendency to sin. He wanted nothing but to live +at home, happy with the wife he loved, and with his child, his children. +And poor Maggie, she too would have asked no more than to be a good wife +to the man she loved, and to be the mother of his children.</p> + +<p>This life with Maggie, hidden away in Three Elms Farm, in the wilds of +Holderness, it could not be called dissipation, but it was division. +Where once he had been whole he was now divided. The sane, strong +affection that should have knit body and soul together was itself broken +in two.</p> + +<p>And it was she, the helpmate, she who should have kept him whole, who had +caused him to be thus sundered from himself and her.</p> + +<p>They were all wrong, all frustrated, all incomplete. Anne, in her sublime +infidelity to earth; Maggie, turned from her own sweet use that she might +give him what Anne could not give; and he, who between them had severed +his body from his soul.</p> + +<p>Thus he brooded.</p> + +<p>And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing +the illusion.</p> + +<p>He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house +and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now.</p> + +<p>"And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Very well."</p> + +<p>"And Steve—is he as good to you as ever?"</p> + +<p>Maggie brightened and became more communicative.</p> + +<p>"Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes +me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for +the old Angora rabbit."</p> + +<p>"Do you like going out in the boat?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, very much."</p> + +<p>"Do you like going out with him?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Maggie, making a little face, half of disgust and half of +derision. "No. His hands are all dirty, and he smells of fish."</p> + +<p>Majendie laughed. "There are drawbacks, I must own, to Steve."</p> + +<p>He looked at his watch, an action Maggie hated. It always suggested +finality, departure.</p> + +<p>"Ten o'clock, Maggie. I must be up at six to-morrow. We sail at seven."</p> + +<p>"At seven," echoed Maggie in despair.</p> + +<p>They were up at six. Maggie went with him to the creek, to see him sail. +In the garden she picked a chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole, +forgetting that he couldn't wear her token. There were so many things +he couldn't do.</p> + +<p>A little rain still fell through a clogging mist. They walked side by +side, treading the drenched grass, for the track was too narrow for them +both. Maggie's feet dragged, prolonging the moments.</p> + +<p>A white pointed sail showed through the mist, where the little yacht lay +in the river off the mouth of the creek.</p> + +<p>Steve was in the boat close against the creek's bank, waiting to row +Majendie to the yacht. He touched his cap to Majendie as they appeared on +the bank, but he did not look at Maggie when her gentle voice called +good-morning.</p> + +<p>Steve's face was close-mouthed and hard set.</p> + +<p>She put her hands on Majendie's shoulders and kissed him. Her cheek +against his face was pure and cold, wet with the rain. Steve did not look +at them. He never looked at them when they were together.</p> + +<p>Majendie dropped into the boat. Steve pushed off from the bank. Maggie +stood there watching them go. She stood till the boat reached the creek's +mouth, and Majendie turned, and raised his cap to her; stood till the +white sail moved slowly up the river and disappeared, rounding the spit +of land.</p> + +<p>Majendie, as he paced the deck and talked to his men of wind and weather, +turned casually, on his heel, to look at her where she stood alone in the +level immensity of the land. The world looked empty all around her.</p> + +<p>And he was touched with a sudden poignant realisation of her life; its +sadness, its incompleteness, its isolation.</p> + +<p>That was what he had brought her to.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> + + +<p>The rain cleared off, the mist lifted, and at nine o'clock it was a fine +day for Peggy's birthday. Even Scale, where it stretched its flat avenues +into the country, showed golden in the warm and brilliant air.</p> + +<p>The household in Prior Street had been up early, making preparations for +the day. Peggy had waked before it was light, to feel her presents which +lay beside her on her bed; and, by the time Majendie's sail had passed +Fawlness Point, she was up and dressed, waiting for him.</p> + +<p>Anne had to break it to her gently that perhaps he would not be home in +time for eight-o'clock breakfast. Then the child's mouth trembled, and +Anne comforted her, half-smiling and half-afraid.</p> + +<p>"Ah, Peggy, Peggy," she said, as she rocked her against her breast, "What +shall I do with you? Your little heart is too big for your little body."</p> + +<p>Anne's terror had not left her in three years. It was always with her +now. The child was bound to suffer. She was a little mass of throbbing +nerves, of trembling emotions.</p> + +<p>Yet Anne herself was happier. The three years had passed smoothly over +her. Her motherhood had laid its fine, soft, finishing touch upon her. +Her face, her body, had rounded and ripened, year after slow year, to an +abiding beauty, born of her tenderness. At thirty-five Anne Majendie had +reached the perfect moment of her physical maturity.</p> + +<p>Her mind was no longer harassed by anxiety about her husband. He seemed +to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by +turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had +once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the +slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She +attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual +growth begun in him at the time of his sister's death.</p> + +<p>She desired no change in their relations, no further understanding, no +closer intimacy.</p> + +<p>To Anne's mind, her husband's attitude to her was perfect. The passion +that had been her fear had left him. He waited on her hand and foot, with +humble, heart-rending devotion. He let her see that he adored her with +discretion, at a distance, as a divinely, incomprehensibly high and holy +thing.</p> + +<p>Her household life had simplified itself. Her days passed in noiseless, +equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after +Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with +visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening classes +for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not an hour of her day was idle. At +the end of the three years Mrs. Majendie was known in Scale by her broad +charities and by her saintly life.</p> + +<p>She had fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In +three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. +She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time +when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. +She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat +fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she +did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's delight in her, of all the +sweet and dangerous ministrations of their mutual vanities. Mrs. Eliott +had been uplifted by Anne's preposterously grave approval. Anne had been +ravished by her own distinction as the audience of Fanny Eliott's loftier +and profounder moods. There could be no criticism of these heights and +depths. To have depreciated Fanny Eliott's rarity by a shade would have +been to call in question her own.</p> + +<p>But all this had ceased long ago, when she married Walter Majendie, and +his sister became her dearest friend. Fanny Eliott had always looked on +Edith Majendie as her rival; retreating a little ostentatiously before +her formidable advance. There should have been no rivalry, for there had +been no possible ground of comparison. Neither could Edith Majendie be +said to have advanced. The charm of Edith, or rather, her pathetic claim, +was that she never could have advanced at all. To Anne's mind, from the +first, there had been no choice between Edith, lying motionless on her +sofa by the window, and Fanny at large in the drawing-rooms of her +acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her +intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into +Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while +Fanny Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement +on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. Fanny +Eliott, poor thing, still suffered by the contrast.</p> + +<p>Of all Anne's friends, the Gardners alone stood the test of time. She had +never had a doubt of them. They had come later into her life, after the +perishing of her great illusion. The shock had humbled her senses and +disposed her to reverence for the things of intellect. Dr. Gardner's +position, as President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, was +as a high rock to which she clung. Mrs. Gardner was dear to her for many +reasons.</p> + +<p>The dearness of Mrs. Gardner was significant. It showed that, thanks to +Peggy, Anne's humanisation was almost complete.</p> + +<p>To-day, which was Peggy's birthday, Anne's heart was light and happy. +She had planned, that, if the day were fine, the festival was to be +celebrated by a picnic to Westleydale.</p> + +<p>And the day was fine. Majendie had promised to be home in time to start +by the nine-fifty train. Meanwhile they waited. Peggy had helped Mary the +cook to pack the luncheon basket, and now she felt time heavy on her +little hands.</p> + +<p>Anne suggested that they should go upstairs and help Nanna. Nanna was in +Majendie's room, turning out his drawers. On his bed there was a pile of +suits of the year before last, put aside to be given to Anne's poor +people. When Peggy was tired of fetching and carrying, she watched her +mother turning over the clothes and sorting them into heaps. Anne's +methods were rapid and efficient.</p> + +<p>"Oh, mummy!" cried Peggy, "don't! You touch daddy's things as if you +didn't like them."</p> + +<p>"Peggy, darling, what do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"You're so quick." She laid her face against one of Majendie's coats and +stroked it. "Must daddy's things go away?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, darling. Why don't you want them to go?"</p> + +<p>"Because I love them. I love all his little coats and hats and shoes and +things."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Peggy, Peggy, you're a little sentimentalist. Go and see what +Nanna's got there."</p> + +<p>Nanna had given a cry of joyous discovery. "Look, ma'am," said she, "what +I've found in master's portmanteau."</p> + +<p>Nanna came forward, shaking out a child's frock. A frock of pure white +silk, embroidered round the neck and wrists with a deep border of +daisies, pink and white and gold.</p> + +<p>"Nanna!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, mummy, what is it?"</p> + +<p>Peggy touched a daisy with her soft forefinger and shrank back shyly. She +knew it was her birthday, but she did not know whether the frock had +anything to do with that, or no.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," said Anne, "what little girl daddy brought that for."</p> + +<p>"Did daddy bring it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, daddy brought it. Do you think he meant it for her birthday, +Nanna?"</p> + +<p>"Well, m'm, he may have meant it for her birthday last year. I found it +stuffed into 'is portmanteau wot 'e took with him in the yacht a year +ago. It's bin there—poked away in the cupboard, ever since. I suppose he +bought it, meaning to give it to Miss Peggy, and put it away and forgot +all about it. See, m'm"—Nanna measured the frock against Peggy's small +figure—"it'd 'a' bin too large for her, last birthday. It'll just fit +her now, m'm."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Peggy!" said Anne. "She must put it on. Quick, Nanna. You shall wear +it, my pet, and surprise daddy."</p> + +<p>"What fun!" said Peggy.</p> + +<p>"<i>Is</i>n't it fun?" Anne was as gay and as happy as Peggy. She was smiling +her pretty smile.</p> + +<p>Peggy was solemnly arrayed in the little frock. The borders of daisies +showed like a necklace and bracelets against her white skin.</p> + +<p>"Well, m'm," said Nanna, "if master did forget, he knew what he was +about, at the time, anyhow. It's the very frock for her."</p> + +<p>"Yes. See, Peggy—it's daisies, marguerites. That's why daddy chose +it—for your little name, darling, do you see?"</p> + +<p>"My name," said Peggy softly, moved by the wonder and beauty of her +frock.</p> + +<p>"There he is, Peggy! Run down and show yourself."</p> + +<p>"Oh, muvver," shrieked Peggy, "it will be a surprise for daddy, won't +it?"</p> + +<p>She ran down. They followed, and leaned over the bannisters to listen to +the surprise. They heard Peggy's laugh as she came to the last flight of +stairs and showed herself to her father. They heard her shriek "Daddy! +daddy!" Then there was calm.</p> + +<p>Then Peggy's voice dropped from its high joy and broke. "Oh, daddy, are +you angry with me?"</p> + +<p>Anne came downstairs. Majendie had the child in his arms and was kissing +her.</p> + +<p>"Are you angry with me, daddy?" she repeated.</p> + +<p>"No, my sweetheart, no." He looked up at Anne. He was very pale, and a +sweat was on his forehead. "Who put that frock on her?"</p> + +<p>"I did," said Anne.</p> + +<p>"I think you'd better take it off again," he said quietly.</p> + +<p>Anne raised her eyebrows as a sign to him to look at Peggy's miserable +mouth. "Oh, let her wear it," she said. "It's her birthday."</p> + +<p>Majendie wiped his forehead and turned aside into the study.</p> + +<p>"Muvver," said Peggy, as they went hand in hand upstairs again; "do you +think daddy <i>really meant</i> it as a surprise for <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I think he must have done, darling."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you sorry we spoiled his surprise, mummy?"</p> + +<p>"I don't think he minds, Peggy."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> think he does. Why did he look angry, and say I was to take it off?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, because it's rather too nice a frock for every day."</p> + +<p>"My birthday isn't every day," said Peggy.</p> + +<p>So Peggy wore the frock that Maggie had made for her and given to +Majendie last year. He had hidden it in his portmanteau, meaning to give +it to Mrs. Ransome at Christmas. And he had thrown the portmanteau into +the darkest corner of the cupboard, and gone away and forgotten all about +it.</p> + +<p>And now the sight of Maggie's handiwork had given him a shock. For his +sin was heavy upon him. Every day he went in fear of discovery. Anne +would ask him where he had got that frock, and he would have to lie to +her. And it would be no use; for, sooner or later, she would know that he +had lied; and she would track Maggie down by the frock.</p> + +<p>He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment which was a +token and memorial of his sin. He wished he had thrown the damned thing +into the Humber.</p> + +<p>But Anne had no suspicion. Her face was smooth and tranquil as she came +downstairs. She was calling Peggy her "little treasure," and her eyes +were smiling as she looked at the frail, small, white and gold creature, +stepping daintily and shyly in her delicate dress.</p> + +<p>Peggy was buttoned into a little white coat to keep her warm; and they +set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket, and Peggy an enormous +doll.</p> + +<p>Peggy enjoyed the journey. When she was not talking to Majendie she was +singing a little song to keep the doll quiet, so that the time passed +very quickly both for her and him. There were other people in the +carriage, and Anne was afraid they would be annoyed at Peggy's singing. +But they seemed to like it as much as she and Majendie. Nobody was ever +annoyed with Peggy.</p> + +<p>In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf. It was green +underfoot and on the folding hills. Overhead it was limitless blue above +the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films +and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue.</p> + +<p>Majendie felt Peggy's hand tighten on his hand. Her little body was +trembling with delight.</p> + +<p>They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat. He looked +at her. And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she +stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she +smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile.</p> + +<p>Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman, +smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with +the sorrow of his sin.</p> + +<p>They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first +Majendie's hand, then Anne's hand, and held them together in her lap.</p> + +<p>"Mummy," said she, "aren't you glad that daddy came? It wouldn't be half +so nice without him, would it?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Anne, "it wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Mummy, you don't say that as if you meant it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but you didn't make it sound so."</p> + +<p>"Peggy," said Majendie, "you're a terribly observant little person."</p> + +<p>"She's a little person who sometimes observes all wrong."</p> + +<p>"No, mummy, I don't. You never talk to daddy like you talk to me."</p> + +<p>"You're a little girl, dear, and daddy's a big grown-up man."</p> + +<p>"That's not what I mean, though. You've got a grown-up voice for me, too. +I don't mean your grown-up voice. I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as +if—as if you hadn't known him a very long time. And you talk to me as if +you'd known me—oh, ever so long. <i>Have</i> you known me longer than you've +known daddy?"</p> + +<p>Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill +visible through the branches of the trees.</p> + +<p>"Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought +of."</p> + +<p>"When was I thought of, mummy?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, darling."</p> + +<p>"Do you know, daddy?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, Peggy. <i>I</i> know. You were thought of here, in this wood, under this +tree, on mummy's birthday, between eight and nine years ago."</p> + +<p>"Who thought of me?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's telling."</p> + +<p>"Who thought of me, mummy?"</p> + +<p>"Daddy and I, dear."</p> + +<p>"And you forgot, and daddy remembered."</p> + +<p>"Yes. I've got a rather better memory than your mother, dear."</p> + +<p>"You forgot my old birthday, daddy."</p> + +<p>"I haven't forgotten your mother's old birthday, though."</p> + +<p>Peggy was thinking. Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of +her thought.</p> + +<p>"Mummy—am I only seven?"</p> + +<p>"Only seven, Peggy."</p> + +<p>"Then," said Peggy, "you <i>did</i> think of me before I was born. How did you +know me before I was born?"</p> + +<p>Anne shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Daddy, how did you know me before I was born?"</p> + +<p>"Peggy, you're a little tease."</p> + +<p>"You brought it on yourself, my dear. Peggy, if you'll leave off teasing +daddy, I'll tell you a story."</p> + +<p>"Oh!—"</p> + +<p>"Once upon a time" (Anne's voice was very low) "mummy had a dream. She +dreamed she was in this wood, walking along that little path—just +there—not thinking of Peggy. And when she came to this tree she saw an +angel, with big white wings. He was lying under this very tree, on this +very bit of grass, just there, where daddy's sitting. And one of his +wings was stretched out on the grass, and it was hollow like a cradle. +It was all lined with little feathers, like the inside of a swan's wing, +as soft as soft. And the other wing was stretched over it like the top of +a cradle. And inside, all among the soft little feathers, there was a +little baby girl lying, just like Peggy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, mummy, was it me?"</p> + +<p>"Sh—sh—sh! Whoever it was, the angel saw that mummy loved it, and +wanted it very much—"</p> + +<p>"The little baby girl?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. And so he took the baby and gave it to mummy, to be her own little +girl. That's how Peggy came to mummy."</p> + +<p>"And did he give it to daddy, too, to be his little girl?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Majendie, "I was wondering where I came in."</p> + +<p>"Yes. He gave it to daddy to be his little girl, too."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad he gave me to daddy. The angel brought me to you in the night, +like daddy brought me my big dolly. You did bring my big dolly, and put +her on my bed, didn't you, daddy? Last night?"</p> + +<p>Majendie was silent.</p> + +<p>"Daddy wasn't at home last night, Peggy."</p> + +<p>"Oh, daddy, where were you?"</p> + +<p>Majendie felt his forehead getting damp again.</p> + +<p>"Daddy was away on business."</p> + +<p>"Oh, mummy, don't you wish he'd never go away?"</p> + +<p>"I think it's time for lunch," said Majendie.</p> + +<p>They ate their lunch; and when it was ended, Majendie went to the cottage +to find water, for Peggy was thirsty. He returned, carrying water in a +pitcher, and followed by a red-cheeked, rosy little girl who brought milk +in a cup for Peggy.</p> + +<p>Anne remembered the cup. It was the same cup that she had drunk from +after her husband. And the child was the same child whom he had found +sitting in the grass, whom he had shown to her and taken from her arms, +whose little body, held close to hers, had unsealed in her the first +springs of her maternal passion. It all came back to her.</p> + +<p>The little girl beamed on Peggy with a face like a small red sun, and +Peggy conceived a sudden yearning for her companionship. It seemed that, +at the cottage, there were rabbits, and a new baby, and a litter of +puppies three days old. And all these wonders the little girl offered +to show to Peggy, if Peggy would go with her.</p> + +<p>Peggy begged, and went through the wood, hand in hand with the little +beaming girl. Majendie and Anne watched them out of sight.</p> + +<p>"Look at the two pairs of legs," said Majendie.</p> + +<p>Anne sighed. Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red, +lusty-legged daughter of the woods.</p> + +<p>"I'm not at all happy about her," said she.</p> + +<p>"Why not?"</p> + +<p>"She gets so terribly tired."</p> + +<p>"All children do, don't they?"</p> + +<p>Anne shook her head. "Not as she does. It isn't a child's healthy +tiredness. It doesn't come like that. It came on quite suddenly the other +day, after she'd been excited; and her little lips turned grey."</p> + +<p>"Get Gardner to look at her."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to. He says she ought to be more in the open air. I wish we +could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden."</p> + +<p>Majendie said nothing. He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden +and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from +the sea. He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it.</p> + +<p>"You could afford it, Walter, couldn't you, now?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I can afford it."</p> + +<p>He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the +farm. His business was doing better every year. But the double household +was a drain on his fresh resources. He could not very well afford to take +another house, and keep the farm too. He had thought of that before. He +had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving +him up. Poor Maggie! Well, he would have to manage somehow. If the worst +came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street. And he would +sell the yacht.</p> + +<p>"I think I shall sell the yacht," he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh no, you mustn't do that. You've been so well since you've had it."</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't necessary. I shall be better if I take more exercise."</p> + +<p>Peggy came back and the subject dropped.</p> + +<p>Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended. She was tired, so tired +that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and +carry her all the way to the station. Anne carried the doll.</p> + +<p>In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father's arms. She slept with her +face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast. Her +head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve.</p> + +<p>"Look—" he whispered.</p> + +<p>Anne looked. "The little lamb—" she said.</p> + +<p>Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping +child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an +old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret +and long-forgotten.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2> + + +<p>Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs. +Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession +filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the +Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and +pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and +exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer +and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who +now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for +thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with +her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded +the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor.</p> + +<p>Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled +contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was +mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore +of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging +and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface. +Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it +also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the +mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much +about it.</p> + +<p>Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took +refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a +secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no +longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's +drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club.</p> + +<p>Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's +birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon +had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart.</p> + +<p>"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests +arrive?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she, +"we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor."</p> + +<p>"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon, "about our dear Mrs. +Majendie."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott's eyes darkened with anxiety. She clasped her hands. "Oh why? +What is it? Do you mean about the dear little girl?"</p> + +<p>"I know nothing about the little girl. But I hear very unpleasant things +about her husband."</p> + +<p>"What things?"</p> + +<p>The Canon's face was reticent and grim. He wished Mrs. Eliott to +understand that he was no unscrupulous purveyor of gossip; that if he +spoke, it was under constraint and severe necessity.</p> + +<p>"I do not," said the Canon, "usually give heed to disagreeable reports. +But I am afraid that, where there is such a dense cloud of smoke, there +must be some fire."</p> + +<p>"I think," said Mrs. Eliott, "perhaps they didn't get on very well +together once. But they seem to have made it up after the sister's death. +<i>She</i> has been happier these last three years. She has been a different +woman."</p> + +<p>"The same woman, my dear lady, the same woman. Only a better saint. For +the last three years, they say, he has been living with another woman."</p> + +<p>"Oh—it's impossible. Impossible. He is away a great deal—but—"</p> + +<p>"He is away a great deal too often. Running up to Scarby every week in +that yacht of his. In with the Ransomes and all that disreputable set."</p> + +<p>"Is Lady Cayley in Scale?"</p> + +<p>"Lady Cayley is at Scarby."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to say—"</p> + +<p>"I mean," said the Canon, rising, "to say nothing."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott detained him with her eyes of anguish.</p> + +<p>"Canon Wharton—do you think she knows?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot tell you."</p> + +<p>The Canon never told. He was far too clever.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott wandered to Miss Proctor.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," said Miss Proctor, searching Mrs. Eliott's face with an +inquisitive gaze, "how our friends, the Majendies, are getting on?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, as usual. I see very little of her now. Anne is quite taken up with +her little girl and with her good works."</p> + +<p>"Oh! That," said Miss Proctor, "was a most unsuitable marriage."</p> + +<p>It was five o'clock. The Canon and Miss Proctor had drunk their two +cups of tea and departed. Mrs. Pooley had arrived soon after four; +she lingered, to talk a little more about the thought-power and the +mind-control. Mrs. Pooley was convinced that she could make things +happen. That they were, in fact, happening. But Mrs. Eliott was no longer +interested.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pooley, too, departed, feeling that dear Fanny's Thursday had been a +disappointment. She had been quite unable to sustain the conversation at +its usual height.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Pooley indubitably gone, Mrs. Eliott wandered down to Johnson in his +study. There, in perfect confidence, she revealed to him the Canon's +revelations.</p> + +<p>Johnson betrayed no surprise. That story had been going the round of his +club for the last two years.</p> + +<p>"What will Anne do?" said Mrs. Eliott, "when she finds out?"</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose she'll do anything."</p> + +<p>"Will she get a separation, do you think?"</p> + +<p>"How can I tell you?"</p> + +<p>"I wonder if she knows."</p> + +<p>"She's not likely to tell you, if she does."</p> + +<p>"She's bound to know, sooner or later. I wonder if one ought to prepare +her?"</p> + +<p>"Prepare her for what?"</p> + +<p>"The shock of it. I'm afraid of her hearing in some horrid way. It would +be so awful, if she didn't know."</p> + +<p>"It can't be pleasant, any way, my dear."</p> + +<p>"Do advise me, Johnson. Ought I or ought I not to tell her?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Eliott's face told how his nature shrank from the agony of decision. +But he was touched by her distress.</p> + +<p>"Certainly not. Much better let well alone."</p> + +<p>"If I were only sure that it <i>was</i> well I was letting alone."</p> + +<p>"Can't be sure of anything. Give it the benefit of the doubt."</p> + +<p>"Yes—but if you were I?"</p> + +<p>"If I were you I should say nothing."</p> + +<p>"That only means that I should say nothing if I were you. But I'm not."</p> + +<p>"Be thankful, my dear, at any rate, for that."</p> + +<p>He took up a book, <i>The Search for Stellar Parallaxes</i>, a book that he +understood and that his wife could not understand. That book was the sole +refuge open to him when pressed for an opinion. He knew that, when she +saw him reading it, she would realise that he was her intellectual +master.</p> + +<p>The front doorbell announced the arrival of another caller.</p> + +<p>She went away, wondering, as he meant she should, whether he were so very +undecided, after all. Certainly his indecisions closed a subject more +effectually than other people's verdicts.</p> + +<p>She found Anne in the empty, half-dark drawing-room waiting for her. She +had chosen the darkest corner, and the darkest hour.</p> + +<p>"Fanny," she said, and her voice trembled, "are you alone? Can I speak to +you a moment?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear, yes. Just let me leave word with Mason that I'm not at home. +But no one will come now."</p> + +<p>In the interval she heard Anne struggling with the sob that had choked +her voice. She felt that the decision had been made for her. The terrible +task had been taken out of her hands. Anne knew.</p> + +<p>She sat down beside her friend and put her hand on her shoulder. In that +moment poor Fanny's intellectual vanities dropped from her, like an +inappropriate garment, and she became pure woman. She forgot Anne's +recent disaffection and her coldness, she forgot the years that had +separated them, and remembered only the time when Anne was the girlfriend +who had loved her, and had come to her in all her griefs, and had made +her house her home.</p> + +<p>"What is it, dear?" she murmured.</p> + +<p>Anne felt for her hand and pressed it. She tried to speak, but no words +would come.</p> + +<p>"Of course," thought Mrs. Eliott, "she cannot tell me. But she knows I +know."</p> + +<p>"My dear," she said, "can I or Johnson help you?"</p> + +<p>Anne shook her head; but she pressed her friend's hand tighter.</p> + +<p>Wondering what she could do or say to help her, Mrs. Eliott resolved to +take Anne's knowledge for granted, and act upon it.</p> + +<p>"If there's trouble, dear, will you come to us? We want you to look on +our house as a refuge, any hour of the day or night."</p> + +<p>Anne stared at her friend. There was something ominous and dismaying in +her solemn tenderness, and it roused Anne to wonder, even in her grief.</p> + +<p>"You cannot help me, dear," she said. "No one can. Yet I had to come to +you and tell you—"</p> + +<p>"Tell me everything," said Mrs. Eliott, "if you can."</p> + +<p>Anne tried to steady her voice to tell her, and failed. Then Fanny had an +inspiration. She felt that she must divert Anne's thoughts from the grief +that made her dumb, and get her to talk naturally of other things.</p> + +<p>"How's Peggy?" said she. She knew it would be good to remind her that, +whatever happened, she had still the child.</p> + +<p>But at that question, Anne released Mrs. Eliott's hand, and laid her head +back upon the cushion and cried.</p> + +<p>"Dear," whispered Mrs. Eliott, with her inspiration full upon her, "you +will always have <i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>Then Anne sat up in her corner, and put away her tears, and controlled +herself to speak.</p> + +<p>"Fanny," she said, "Dr. Gardner has seen her. He says I shall not have +her very long. Perhaps—a few years—if we take the very greatest +care—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear! What is it?"</p> + +<p>"It's her heart. I thought it was her spine, because of Edie. But it +isn't. She has valvular disease. Oh, Fanny, I didn't think a little child +could have it."</p> + +<p>"Nor I," said Mrs. Eliott, shocked into a great calm. "But surely—if you +take care—"</p> + +<p>"No. He gives no hope. He only says a few years, if we leave Scale and +take her into the country. She must never be overtired, never excited. We +must never vex her. He says one violent crying fit might kill her. And +she cries so easily. She cries sometimes till she's sick."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Eliott's face had grown white; she trembled, and was dumb before the +anguish of Anne's face.</p> + +<p>But it was Anne who rose, and put her arms about the childless woman, and +kissed and comforted her.</p> + +<p>It was as if she had said: Thank God you never had one.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> + + +<p>The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached +Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and +conflicting emotions.</p> + +<p>She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just +asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs. +Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good +deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands.</p> + +<p>Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and +the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering, +vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted +to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept +feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm.</p> + +<p>She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well +give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she +wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had +stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was +he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear.</p> + +<p>At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since +her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to +prove that it was not so.</p> + +<p>And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a +dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that +it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She +trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground, +the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a +creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman +of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame.</p> + +<p>Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two +little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could +possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant +virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than +Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind, +thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of +human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and, +when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother +about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He +could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No, +she couldn't get any more out of him than that.</p> + +<p>Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had +her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue. +She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end, +at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear +fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago.</p> + +<p>Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that +start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's +handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little +embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of +destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long +trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the +embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and +it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion. +Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at +perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared +together.</p> + +<p>Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself +from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face +with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down +on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation +calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the +facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage.</p> + +<p>Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was +not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in +which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the +beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah +had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive +propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a +deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible +lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her +youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each +bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the +dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh, +that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of +exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling, +and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious +triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship, +and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering +in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still +coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure.</p> + +<p>It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion +to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing. +He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who +saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him +conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been.</p> + +<p>Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the +sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her +sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all +the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may +as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for +years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she +must take steps to save her reputation.</p> + +<p>The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight +to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the +somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She +loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She +wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced, +high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had +consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed +by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife.</p> + +<p>She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all +about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She +divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old +intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him +out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered, +would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him?</p> + +<p>Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to +say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the +more she wondered, the more she desired to know.</p> + +<p>She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she +could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends +mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs +and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house +in Prior Street.</p> + +<p>Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile. +Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not +attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take +for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs. +Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral +prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable +moral effect.</p> + +<p>She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social +intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone.</p> + +<p>She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with +strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful +toilette.</p> + +<p>At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She +restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful, +flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge +she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners +of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That +saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and +belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in +an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue +cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler +still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in +form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness.</p> + +<p>Nobody could have possessed a more irreproachable appearance than Lady +Cayley when she set out for Prior Street.</p> + +<p>At the door she gave neither name nor card. She announced herself as a +lady who desired to see Mrs. Majendie for a moment on important business.</p> + +<p>Kate wondered a little, and admitted her. Ladies did call sometimes on +important business, ladies who approached Mrs. Majendie on missions of +charity; and these did not always give their names.</p> + +<p>Anne was upstairs in the nursery, superintending the packing of Peggy's +little trunk. She was taking her away to-morrow to the seaside, by Dr. +Gardner's orders. She supposed that the nameless lady would be some +earnest, beneficent person connected with a case for her Rescue +Committee, who might have excellent reasons for not announcing herself +by name.</p> + +<p>And, at first, coming into the low lit drawing-room, she did not +recognise her visitor. She advanced innocently, in her perfect manner, +with a charming smile and an appropriate apology.</p> + +<p>The smile died with a sudden rigour of repulsion. She paused before +seating herself, as an intimation that the occasion was not one that +could be trusted to explain itself. Lady Cayley rose to it.</p> + +<p>"Forgive me for calling at this unconventional hour Mrs. Majendie."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie's silence implied that she could not forgive her for +calling at any hour. Lady Cayley smiled inimitably.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to find you at home."</p> + +<p>"You did not give me your name Lady Cayley."</p> + +<p>Their eyes crossed like swords before the duel.</p> + +<p>"I didn't, Mrs. Majendie, <i>because</i> I wanted to find you at home. I can't +help being unconventional—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie raised her eyebrows.</p> + +<p>"It's my nature."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie dropped her eyelids, as much as to say that the nature of +Lady Cayley did not interest her.</p> + +<p>"—And I've come on a most unconventional errand."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean an unpleasant one?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I do, rather. And it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for +you. Have you any idea, Mrs. Majendie, why I've been obliged to come? +It'll make it easier for me if you have."</p> + +<p>"I assure you I have none. I cannot conceive why you have come, nor how I +can make anything easier for you."</p> + +<p>"I think I mean it would have made it easier for you."</p> + +<p>"For me?"</p> + +<p>"Well—it would have spared you some painful explanations." Sarah felt +herself sincere. She really desired to spare Mrs. Majendie. The part +which she had rehearsed with such ease in her own bedroom was impossible +in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room. She was charmed by the spirit of the +place, constrained by its suggestion of fair observances, high decencies, +and social suavities. She could not sit there and tell Mrs. Majendie that +her husband had been unfaithful to her. You do not say these things. And +so subdued was Sarah that she found a certain relief in the reflection +that, by clearing herself, she would clear Majendie.</p> + +<p>"I don't in the least know what you want to say to me," said Mrs. +Majendie. "But I would rather take everything for granted than have any +explanations."</p> + +<p>"If I thought you would take my innocence for granted—"</p> + +<p>"Your innocence? I should be a bad judge of it, Lady Cayley."</p> + +<p>"Quite so." Lady Cayley smiled again, and again inimitably. (It was +extraordinary, the things <i>she</i> took for granted.) "That's why I've come +to explain."</p> + +<p>"One moment. Perhaps I am mistaken. But, if you are referring to—to what +happened in the past, there need be no explanation. I have put all that +out of my mind now. I have heard that you, too, have left it far behind +you; and I am willing to believe it. There is nothing more to be said."</p> + +<p>There was such a sweetness and dignity in Mrs. Majendie's voice and +manner that Lady Cayley was further moved to compete in dignity and +sweetness. She suppressed the smile that ignored so much and took so much +for granted.</p> + +<p>"Unfortunately a great deal more <i>has</i> been said. Your husband is an +intimate friend of my sister, Mrs. Ransome, as of course you know."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie's face denied all knowledge of the intimacy.</p> + +<p>"I might have met him at her house a hundred times, but, I assure you, +Mrs. Majendie, that, since his marriage, I have not met him more than +twice, anywhere. The first time was at the Hannays'. You were there. +You saw all that passed between us."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"The second time was at the Hannays', too. Mrs. Hannay was with us all +the time. What do you suppose he talked to me about? His child. He talked +about nothing else."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," said Mrs. Majendie coldly, "there was nothing else to talk +about."</p> + +<p>"No—but it was so dear and naïf of him." She pondered on his naïveté +with down-dropped eyes whose lids sheltered the irresponsibly hilarious +blue.</p> + +<p>"He talked about his child—your child—to <i>me</i>. I hadn't seen him for +two years, and that's all he could talk about. <i>I</i> had to sit and listen +to <i>that</i>."</p> + +<p>"It wouldn't hurt you, Lady Cayley."</p> + +<p>"It didn't—and I'm sure the little girl is charming—only—it was so +delicious of your husband, don't you see?"</p> + +<p>Her face curled all over with its soft and sensual smile.</p> + +<p>"If we'd been two babes unborn there couldn't have been a more innocent +conversation."</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Well</i>, since that night we haven't seen each other for more than five +years. Ask him if it isn't true. Ask Mrs. Hannay—"</p> + +<p>"Lady Cayley, I do not doubt your word—nor my husband's honour. I can't +think why you're giving yourself all this trouble."</p> + +<p>"Why, because they're saying <i>now</i>—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what +people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say."</p> + +<p>"It isn't likely they'd say it to you."</p> + +<p>"Then why should <i>you</i> say it to me?"</p> + +<p>"Because it concerns my reputation."</p> + +<p>"Forgive me, but—your reputation does not concern me."</p> + +<p>"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?"</p> + +<p>"My husband's reputation can take care of itself."</p> + +<p>"Not in Scale."</p> + +<p>"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never +pay any attention to it."</p> + +<p>"That's all very well—but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when +it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for +the last three years—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this +was not the first time she had heard that rumour.</p> + +<p>"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it."</p> + +<p>"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the +first."</p> + +<p>"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last."</p> + +<p>"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me."</p> + +<p>"No. But I know my husband."</p> + +<p>"So do I."</p> + +<p>"Not <i>now</i>" said Mrs. Majendie quietly.</p> + +<p>Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the +occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost +suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to +his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places +by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her +attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If <i>she</i> didn't know +him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to +spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. +She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude.</p> + +<p>Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to +wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to +unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman +who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her +husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing +more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable +impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little +girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a +rather larger experience of men—"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie cut her short.</p> + +<p>"I do not want to hear anything about your experience."</p> + +<p>"Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell +you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than +your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from +yours."</p> + +<p>"That I can well believe."</p> + +<p>"You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My +experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see +one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that +you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie +was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me +and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's +gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it."</p> + +<p>Anne's lips turned white, but their muscles never moved. And the woman +who watched her wondered in what circumstances Mrs. Majendie would +display emotion, if she did not display it now.</p> + +<p>"What right have you to say these things to me?"</p> + +<p>"I've a right to say a good deal more. Your husband was very fond of me. +He would have married me if his friends hadn't come and bullied me to +give him up for the good of his morals. I loved him—" She suggested by +an adroit shrug of her shoulders that her love was a thing that Mrs. +Majendie could either take for granted or ignore. She didn't expect her +to understand it—"And I gave him up. I'm not a cold-blooded woman; and +it was pretty hard for me. But I did it. And" (she faced her) "what was +the good of it? Which of us has been the best for his morals? You or me? +He lived with me two years, and he married you, and everybody said how +virtuous and proper he was. Well, he's been married to you for nine +years, and he's been living with another woman for the last three."</p> + +<p>She had not meant to say it; for (in the presence of the social +sanctities) you do not say these things. But flesh and blood are stronger +than all the social sanctities; and flesh and blood had risen and claimed +their old dominion over Sarah. The unspeakable depths in her had been +stirred by her vision of the things that might have been. She was filled +with a passionate hatred of the purity which had captured Majendie, and +drawn him from her, and made her seem vile in his sight. She rejoiced +in her power to crush it, to confront it with the proof of its own +futility.</p> + +<p>"I do not believe it," said Mrs. Majendie.</p> + +<p>"Of course you don't believe it. You're a good woman." She shook her +meditative head. "The sort of woman who can live with a man for nine +years without seeing what he's like. If you'd understood your husband as +well as I do, you'd have known that he couldn't run his life on your +lines for six months, let alone nine years."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie's chin rose, as if she were lifting her face above the +reach of the hand that had tried to strike it. Her voice throbbed on one +deep monotonous note.</p> + +<p>"I do not believe a word of what you say. And I cannot think what your +motive is in saying it."</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about my motive. It ought to be pretty clear. Let me tell +you—you can bring your husband back to-morrow, and you can keep him to +the end of time, if you choose, Mrs. Majendie. Or you can lose him +altogether. And you will, if you go on as you're doing. If I were you, +I should make up my mind whether it's good enough. I shouldn't think it +was, myself."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Majendie was silent. She tried to think of some word that would end +the intolerable interview. Her lips parted to speak, but her thoughts +died in her brain unborn.</p> + +<p>She felt her face turning white under the woman's face; it hypnotised +her; it held her dumb.</p> + +<p>"Don't you worry," said Lady Cayley soothingly. "You can get your husband +back from that woman to-morrow, if you choose." She smiled. "Do you see +my motive now?"</p> + +<p>Lady Cayley had not seen it; but she had seen herself for one beautiful +moment as the benignant and inspired conciliator. She desired Mrs. +Majendie to see her so. She had gratified her more generous instincts in +giving the unfortunate lady "the straight tip." She knew, perfectly well, +that Mrs. Majendie wouldn't take it. She knew, all the time, that +whatever else her revelation did, it would not move Mrs. Majendie to +charm her husband back. She could not say precisely what it would do. +Used to live solely in the voluptuous moment, she had no sense of drama +beyond the scene she played in.</p> + +<p>"Your motive," said Mrs. Majendie, "is of no importance. No motive could +excuse you."</p> + +<p>"You think not." She rose and looked down on the motionless woman. "I've +told you the truth, Mrs. Majendie, because, sooner or later, you'd have +had to know it; and other people would have told you worse things that +aren't true. You can take it from me that there's nothing more to tell. +I've told you the worst."</p> + +<p>"You've told me, and I do not believe it."</p> + +<p>"You'd better believe it. But, if you really don't, you can ask your +husband. Ask him where he goes to every week in that yacht of his. Ask +him what's become of Maggie Forrest, the pretty work-girl who made the +embroidered frock for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. Tell him you want one +like it for your little girl; and see what he looks like."</p> + +<p>Anne rose too. Her faint white face frightened Lady Cayley. She had +wondered how Mrs. Majendie would look if she told her the truth about her +husband. Now she knew.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady," said she, "what on earth did you expect?"</p> + +<p>Anne went blindly towards the chimney-piece where the bell was. Lady +Cayley also turned. She meant to go, but not just yet.</p> + +<p>"One moment, Mrs. Majendie, please, before you turn me out. I wouldn't +break my heart about it, if I were you. He might have done worse things."</p> + +<p>"He has done nothing."</p> + +<p>"Well—not much. He has done what I've told you. But, after all, what's +that?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing to you, Lady Cayley, certainly," said Anne, as she rang the +bell.</p> + +<p>She moved slowly towards the door. Lady Cayley followed to the threshold, +and laid her hand delicately on the jamb of the door as Mrs. Majendie +opened it. She raised to her set face the tender eyes of a suppliant.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Majendie," said she, "don't be hard on poor Wallie. He's never been +hard on you. He might have been." The latch sprang to under her gentle +pressure. "Look at it this way. He has kept all his marriage vows—except +one. You've broken all yours—except one. None of your friends will tell +you that. That's why <i>I</i> tell you. Because I'm not a good woman, and I +don't count."</p> + +<p>She moved her hand from the door. It opened wide, and Lady Cayley walked +serenely out.</p> + +<p>She had said her say.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> + + +<p>Anne sat in her chair by the fireside, very still. She had turned out the +light, for it hurt her eyes and made her head ache. She had felt very +weak, and her knees shook under her as she crossed the room. Beyond that +she felt nothing, no amazement, no sorrow, no anger, nor any sort of +pang. If she had been aware of the trembling of her body, she would have +attributed it to the agitation of a disagreeable encounter. She shivered. +She thought there was a draught somewhere; but she did not rouse herself +to shut the window.</p> + +<p>At eight o'clock a telegram from Majendie was brought to her. She was not +to wait dinner. He would not be home that night. She gave the message in +a calm voice, and told Kate not to send up dinner. She had a bad headache +and could not eat anything.</p> + +<p>Kate had stood by waiting timidly. She had had a sense of things +happening. Now she retired with curiosity relieved. Kate was used to her +mistress's bad headaches. A headache needed no explanation. It explained +everything.</p> + +<p>Anne picked up the telegram and read it over again. Every week, for +nearly three years, she had received these messages. They had always been +sent from the same post office in Scale, and the words had always been +the same: "Don't wait. May not be home to-night."</p> + +<p>To-night the telegram struck her as a new thing. It stood for something +new. But all the other telegrams had meant the same thing. Not a new +thing. A thing that had been going on for three years; four, five, six +years, for all she knew. It was six years since their separation; and +that had been his wish.</p> + +<p>She had always known it; and she had always put her knowledge away from +her, tried not to know more. Her friends had known it too. Canon Wharton, +and the Gardners, and Fanny. It all came back to her, the words, and the +looks that had told her more than any words, signs that she had often +wondered at and refused to understand. They had known all the depths of +it. It was only the other day that Fanny had offered her house to her as +a refuge from her own house in its shame. Fanny had supposed that it must +come to that.</p> + +<p>God knew she had been loyal to him in the beginning. She had closed her +eyes. She had forbidden her senses to take evidence against him. She had +been loyal all through, loyal to the very end. She had lied for him. If, +indeed, she <i>had</i> lied. In denying Lady Cayley's statements, she had +denied her right to make them, that was all.</p> + +<p>Her mind, active now, went backwards and forwards over the chain of +evidence, testing each link in turn. All held. It was all true. She had +always known it.</p> + +<p>Then she remembered that she and Peggy would be going away to-morrow. +That was well. It was the best thing she could do. Later on, when they +were home again, it would be time enough to make up her mind as to what +she could do. If there was anything to be done.</p> + +<p>Until then she would not see him. They would be gone to-morrow before he +could come home. Unless he saw them off at the station. She would avoid +that by taking an earlier train. Then she would write to him. No; she +would not write. What they would have to say to each other must be said +face to face. She did not know what she would say.</p> + +<p>She dragged herself upstairs to the nursery, where the packing had been +begun. The room was empty. Nanna had gone down to her supper.</p> + +<p>Anne's heart melted. Peggy had been playing at packing. The little lamb +had gathered together on the table a heap of her beloved toys, things +which it would have broken her heart to part from.</p> + +<p>Her little trunk lay open on the floor, packed already. The embroidered +frock lay uppermost, carefully folded, not to be crushed. At the sight of +it Anne's brain flared in anger.</p> + +<p>A bright fire burned in the grate. She picked up the frock; she took a +pair of scissors and cut it in several places at the neck, then tore it +to pieces with strong, determined hands. She threw the tatters on the +fire; she watched them consume; she raked out their ashes with the tongs, +and tore them again. Then she packed Peggy's toys tenderly in the little +trunk, her heart melting over them. She closed the lid of the trunk, +strapped it, and turned the key in the lock.</p> + +<p>Then, crawling on slow, quiet feet, she went to bed. Undressing vexed +her. She, once so careful and punctilious, slipped her clothes like a +tired Magdalen, and let them fall from her and lie where they fell. Her +nightgown gaped unbuttoned at her throat. Her long hair lay scattered on +her pillow, unbrushed, unbraided. Her white face stared to the ceiling. +She was too spent to pray.</p> + +<p>When she lay down, reality gripped her. And, with it, her imagination +rose up, a thing no longer crude, but full-grown, large-eyed, and +powerful. It possessed itself of her tragedy. She had lain thus, nearly +nine years ago, in that room at Scarby, thinking terrible thoughts. Now +she saw terrible things.</p> + +<p>Peggy stirred in her sleep, and crept from her cot into her mother's bed.</p> + +<p>"Mummy, I'm so frightened."</p> + +<p>"What is it, darling? Have you had a little dream?"</p> + +<p>"No. Mummy, let me stay in your bed."</p> + +<p>Anne let her stay, glad of the comfort of the little warm body, and +afraid to vex the child. She drew the blankets round her. "There," she +said, "go to sleep, pet."</p> + +<p>But Peggy was in no mind to sleep.</p> + +<p>"Mummy, your hair's all loose," she said; and her fingers began playing +with her mother's hair.</p> + +<p>"Mummy, where's daddy? Is he in his little bed?"</p> + +<p>"He's away, darling. Go to sleep."</p> + +<p>"Why does he go away? Is he coming back again?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, darling." Anne's voice shook.</p> + +<p>"Mummy, did you cry when Auntie Edie went away?"</p> + +<p>Anne kissed her.</p> + +<p>"Auntie Edie's dead."</p> + +<p>"Lie still, darling, and let mother go to sleep."</p> + +<p>Peggy lay still, and Anne went on thinking.</p> + +<p>There was nothing to be done. She would have to take him back again, +always. Whatever shame he dragged her through, she must take him back +again, for the child's sake.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she remembered Peggy's birthday. It was only last week. Surely +she had not known then. She must have forgotten for a time.</p> + +<p>Then tenderness came, and with it an intolerable anguish. She was smitten +and was melted; she was torn and melted again. Her throat was shaken, +convulsed; then her bosom, then her whole body. She locked her teeth, +lest her sobs should break through and wake the child.</p> + +<p>She lay thus tormented, till a memory, sharper than imagination, stung +her. She saw her husband carrying the sleeping child, and his face +bending over her with that look of love. She closed her eyes, and let the +tears rain down her hot cheeks and fall upon her breast and in her hair. +She tried to stifle the sobs that strangled her, and she choked. That +instant the child's lips were on her face, tasting her tears.</p> + +<p>"Oh, mummy, you're crying."</p> + +<p>"No, my pet. Go to sleep."</p> + +<p>"Why are you crying?"</p> + +<p>Anne made no sound; and Peggy cried out in terror.</p> + +<p>"Mummy—is daddy dead?"</p> + +<p>Anne folded her in her arms.</p> + +<p>"No, my pet, no."</p> + +<p>"He is, mummy, I know he is. Daddy! Daddy!"</p> + +<p>If Majendie had been in the house she would have carried the child into +his room, and shown him to her, and relieved her of her terror. She had +done that once before when she had cried for him.</p> + +<p>But now Peggy cried persistently, vehemently; not loud, but in an agony +that tore and tortured her as she had seen her mother torn and tortured. +She cried till she was sick; and still her sobs shook her, with a sharp +mechanical jerk that would not cease.</p> + +<p>Gradually she grew drowsy and fell asleep.</p> + +<p>All night Anne lay awake beside her, driven to the edge of the bed, that +she might give breathing space to the little body that pushed, closer and +closer, to the warm place she made.</p> + +<p>Towards dawn Peggy sighed three times, and stretched her limbs, as if +awakening out of her sleep.</p> + +<p>Then Anne turned, and laid her hands on the dead body of her child.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> + + +<p>The yacht had lain all night in Fawlness creek. Majendie had slept on +board. He had sent Steve up to the farm with a message for Maggie. He had +told her not to expect him that night. He would call and see her very +early in the morning. That would prepare her for the end. In the morning +he would call and say good-bye to her.</p> + +<p>He had taken that resolution on the night when Gardner had told him about +Peggy.</p> + +<p>He did not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of +the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water +against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; +the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the +reeds and grasses of the creek.</p> + +<p>All night he thought of Peggy, who would not live, who was the child of +her father's passion and her mother's grief.</p> + +<p>At dawn he got up. It was a perfect day, with the promise of warmth in +it. Over land and water the white mist was lifting and drifting, +eastwards towards the risen sun. Inland, over the five fields, the drops +of fallen mist glittered on the grass. The Farm, guarded by its three +elms, showed clear, and red, and still, as if painted under an unchanging +light. A few leaves, loosened by the damp, were falling with a shivering +sound against the house wall, and lay where they fell, yellow on the +red-brick path.</p> + +<p>Maggie was not at the garden gate. She sat crouched inside, by the +fender, kindling a fire. Tea had been made and was standing on the table. +She was waiting.</p> + +<p>She rose, with a faint cry, as Majendie entered. She put her arms on his +shoulders in her old way. He loosened her hands gently and held her by +them, keeping her from him at arm's length. Her hands were cold, her +eyes had foreknowledge of the end; but, moved by his touch, her mouth +curled unaware and shaped itself for kissing.</p> + +<p>He did not kiss her. And she knew.</p> + +<p>Upstairs in the bedroom overhead, Steve and his mother moved heavily. +There was a sound of drawers opening and shutting, then a grating sound. +Something was being dragged from under the bed. Maggie knew that they +were packing Majendie's portmanteau with the things he had left behind +him.</p> + +<p>They stood together by the hearth, where the fire kindled feebly. He +thrust out his foot, and struck the woodpile; it fell and put out the +flame that was struggling to be born.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, Maggie," he said.</p> + +<p>Maggie stooped and built up the pile again and kindled it. She knelt +there, patient and humble, waiting for the fire to burn.</p> + +<p>He did not know whether he was going to have trouble with her. He was +afraid of her tenderness.</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you come last night?" she said.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't."</p> + +<p>She looked at him with eyes that said, "That is not true."</p> + +<p>"You couldn't?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"You came last week."</p> + +<p>"Last week—yes. But since then things have happened, do you see?"</p> + +<p>"Things have happened," she repeated, under her breath.</p> + +<p>"Yes. My little girl is very ill."</p> + +<p>"Peggy?" she cried, and covered her face with her hands. Then with her +hands she made a gesture that swept calamity aside. Maggie would only +believe what she wanted.</p> + +<p>"She will get better," she said.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. But I must be with my wife."</p> + +<p>"You weren't with her last night," said Maggie. "You could have come +then."</p> + +<p>"No, Maggie, I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"D'you mean—because of the little girl?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"I see," she said softly. She had understood.</p> + +<p>"She will get better," she said, "and then you can come again."</p> + +<p>"No. I've told you. I must be with my wife."</p> + +<p>"I thought—" said Maggie.</p> + +<p>"Never mind what you thought," he said with a quick, fierce impatience.</p> + +<p>"Are you fond of her?" she asked suddenly.</p> + +<p>"You know I am," he said; and his voice was kind again. "You've known it +all the time. I told you that in the beginning."</p> + +<p>"But—since then," said Maggie, "you've been fond of me, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"It's not the same thing. I've told you that, too, a great many times. +I don't want to talk about it. It's different."</p> + +<p>"How is it different?"</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you."</p> + +<p>"You mean—it's different because I'm not good."</p> + +<p>"No, my child, I'm afraid it's different because I'm bad. That's as near +as we can get to it."</p> + +<p>She shook her head in persistent, obstinate negation.</p> + +<p>"See here, Maggie, we must end it. We can't go on like this any more. We +must give it up."</p> + +<p>"I can't," she moaned. "Don't ask me to do that, Wallie dear. Don't ask +me."</p> + +<p>"I must, Maggie. <i>I</i> must give it up. I told you, dear, before we took +this place, that it must end, sooner or later, that it couldn't last very +long. Don't you remember?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—I remember."</p> + +<p>"And you promised me, didn't you, that when the time came, you +wouldn't—"</p> + +<p>"I know. I said I wouldn't make a fuss."</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, we've got to end it now. I only came to talk it over with +you. There'll have to be arrangements."</p> + +<p>"I know. I've got to clear out of this."</p> + +<p>She said it sadly, without passion and without resentment.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "not if you'd rather stay. Do you like the farm, Maggie?"</p> + +<p>"I love it."</p> + +<p>"Do you? I was afraid you didn't. I thought you hated the country."</p> + +<p>"I love it. I love it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well then, you shan't leave it. I'll keep on the farm for you. And, +see here, don't worry about things. I'll look after you, all your life, +dear."</p> + +<p>"Look after me?" Her face brightened, "Like you used to?"</p> + +<p>"Provide for you."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she cried. "<i>That</i>! I don't want to be provided for. I won't have +it. I'd rather be let alone and die."</p> + +<p>"Maggie, I know it's hard on you. Don't make it harder. Don't make it +hard for me."</p> + +<p>"You?" she sobbed.</p> + +<p>"Yes, me. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. I can't do the right thing, +whatever I do. It's wrong to stay with you. It's wrong, it's brutally +wrong to leave you. But that's what I've got to do."</p> + +<p>"You said—you only said—just now—you'd got to end it."</p> + +<p>"That's it. I've got to end it."</p> + +<p>She stood up flaming.</p> + +<p>"End it then. End it this minute. Give up the farm. Send me away. I'll go +anywhere you tell me. Only don't say you won't come and see me."</p> + +<p>"See you? Don't you understand, Maggie, that seeing you is what I've got +to give up? The other things don't matter."</p> + +<p>"Ah," she cried, "it's you who don't understand. I mean—I mean—see me +like you used to. That's all I want, Wallie. Only just to see you. That +wouldn't be awful, would it? There wouldn't be any sin in that?"</p> + +<p>Sin? It was the first time she had ever said the word. The first time, he +imagined, she had formed the thought.</p> + +<p>"Poor little girl," he said. "No, no, dear, it wouldn't do. It sounds +simple, but it isn't."</p> + +<p>"But," she said, bewildered, "I love you."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "That's why, Maggie, that's why. You've been very sweet and +very good to me. And that's why I mustn't see you. That's how you make it +hard for me."</p> + +<p>Maggie sat down and put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her +hands.</p> + +<p>"Will you give me some tea?" he said abruptly.</p> + +<p>She rose.</p> + +<p>"It's all stewed. I'll make fresh."</p> + +<p>"No. That'll do. I can't wait."</p> + +<p>She gave him his tea. Before he tasted it he got up and poured out a cup +for her. She drank a little at his bidding, then pushed the cup from her, +choking. She sat, not looking at him, but looking away, through the +window, across the garden and the fields.</p> + +<p>"I must go now," he said. "Don't come with me."</p> + +<p>She started to her feet.</p> + +<p>"Ah, let me come."</p> + +<p>"Better not. Much better not."</p> + +<p>"I must," she said.</p> + +<p>They set out along the field-track. Steve, carrying his master's luggage, +went in front, at a little distance. He didn't want to see them, still +less to hear them speak.</p> + +<p>But they did not speak.</p> + +<p>At the creek's bank Steve was ready with the boat.</p> + +<p>Majendie took Maggie's hand and pressed it. She flung herself on him, and +he had to loose her hold by main force. She swayed, clutching at him to +steady herself. He heard Steve groan. He put his hand on her shoulder, +and kept it there a moment, till she stood firm. Her eyes, fixed on his, +struck tears from them, tears that cut their way like knives under his +eyelids.</p> + +<p>Her body ceased swaying. He felt it grow rigid under his hand.</p> + +<p>Then he went from her and stepped into the boat. She stood still, looking +after him, pressing one hand against her breast, as if to keep down its +heaving.</p> + +<p>Steve pushed off from the bank, and rowed towards the creek's mouth. And +as he rowed, he turned his head over his right shoulder, away from the +shore where Maggie stood with her hand upon her breast.</p> + +<p>Majendie did not look back. Neither he nor Steve saw that, as they neared +the mouth of the creek, Maggie had turned, and was going rapidly across +the field, towards the far side of the spit of land where the yacht lay +moored out of the current. As they had to round the point, her way by +land was shorter than theirs by water.</p> + +<p>When they rounded the point they saw her standing on the low inner shore, +watching for them.</p> + +<p>She stood on the bank, just above the belt of silt and sand that divided +it from the river. The two men turned for a moment, and watched her from +the yacht's deck. She waited till the big mainsail went up, and the +yacht's head swung round and pointed up stream. Then she began to run +fast along the shore, close to the river.</p> + +<p>At that sight Majendie turned away and set his face toward the +Lincolnshire side.</p> + +<p>He was startled by an oath from Steve and a growl from Steve's father at +the wheel. "Eh—the—little—!" At the same instant the yacht was pulled +suddenly inshore and her boom swung violently round.</p> + +<p>Steve and the boatswain rushed to the ropes and began hauling down the +mainsail.</p> + +<p>"What the devil are you doing there?" shouted Majendie. But no one +answered him.</p> + +<p>When the sail came down he saw.</p> + +<p>"My God," he cried, "she's going in."</p> + +<p>Old Pearson, at the wheel, spat quietly over the yacht's side. "Not she," +said old Pearson. "She's too much afraid o' cold water."</p> + +<p>Maggie was down on the lower bank close to the edge of the river. +Majendie saw her putting her feet in the water and drawing them out +again, first one foot, and then the other. Then she ran a little way, +very fast, like a thing hunted. She stumbled on the slippery, slanting +ground, fell, picked herself up again, and ran. Then she stood still and +tried the water again, first one foot and then the other, desperate, +terrified, determined. She was afraid of life and death.</p> + +<p>The belt of sand sloped gently, and the river was shallow for a few feet +from the shore. She was safe unless she threw herself in.</p> + +<p>Majendie and Steve rushed together for the boat. As Majendie pushed +against him at the gangway, Steve shook him off. There was a brief +struggle. Old Pearson left the wheel to the boatswain and crossed to the +gangway, where the two men still struggled. He put his hand on his +master's sleeve.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me, sir, you'd best stay where you are."</p> + +<p>He stayed.</p> + +<p>The captain went to the wheel again, and the boatswain to the boat. +Majendie stood stock-still by the gangway. His hands were clenched in his +pockets: his face was drawn and white. The captain slewed round upon him +a small vigilant eye. "You'd best leave her to Steve, sir. He's a good +lad and he'll look after 'er. He'd give his 'ead to marry her. Only she +wuddn't look at 'im."</p> + +<p>Majendie said nothing. And the captain continued his consolation.</p> + +<p>"<i>She's</i> only trying it on, sir," said he. "<i>I</i> know 'em. She'll do nowt. +She'll do nubbut wet 'er feet. She's afeard o' cold water."</p> + +<p>But before the boat could put off, Maggie was in again. This time her +feet struck a shelf of hard mud. She slipped, rolled sideways, and lay, +half in and half out of the water. There she stayed till the boat reached +her.</p> + +<p>Majendie saw Steve lift her and carry her to the upper bank. He saw +Maggie struggle from his arms and beat him off. Then he saw Steve seize +her by force, and drag her back, over the fields, towards Three Elms +Farm.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> + + +<p>Majendie landed at the pier and went straight to the office. There he +found a telegram from Anne telling him of his child's death.</p> + +<p>He went to the house. The old nurse opened the door for him. She was +weeping bitterly. He asked for Anne, and was told that she was lying down +and could not see him. It was Nanna who told him how Peggy died, and all +the things he had to know. When she left him, he shut himself up alone in +his study for the first hour of his grief. He wanted to go to Anne; but +he was too deeply stupefied to wonder why she would not see him.</p> + +<p>Later they met.</p> + +<p>He knew by his first glance at her face that he must not speak to her of +the dead child. He could understand that. He was even glad of it. In this +she was like him, that deep feeling left her dumb. And yet, there was a +difference. It was that he could not speak, and she, he felt, would not.</p> + +<p>There were things that had to be done. He did them all, sparing her as +much as possible. Once or twice she had to be consulted. She gave him a +fact, or an opinion, in a brief methodic manner that set him at a +distance from her sacred sorrow. She had betrayed more emotion in +speaking to Dr. Gardner.</p> + +<p>But for these things they went through their first day in silence, like +people who respect each other's grief too profoundly for any speech.</p> + +<p>In the evening they sat together in the drawing-room. There was nothing +more to do.</p> + +<p>Then he spoke. He asked to see Peggy. His voice was so low that she did +not hear him.</p> + +<p>"What did you say, Walter?"</p> + +<p>He had to say it again. "Where is she? Can I see her?"</p> + +<p>His voice was still low, and it was thick and uncertain, but this time +she understood.</p> + +<p>"In Edie's room," she said. "Nanna has the key."</p> + +<p>She did not go with him.</p> + +<p>When he came back to her she was still cold and torpid. He could +understand that her grief had frozen her.</p> + +<p>At night she parted from him without a word.</p> + +<p>So the days went on.</p> + +<p>Sometimes he would sit in the study by himself for a little while. His +racked nerves were soothed by solitude. Then he would think of the woman +upstairs in the drawing-room, sitting alone. And he would go to her. She +did not send him away. She did not leave him. She did nothing. She said +nothing.</p> + +<p>He began to be afraid. It would do her good, he said to himself, if she +could cry. He wondered whether it was wise to leave her to her terrible +torpor; whether he ought to speak to her. But he could not.</p> + +<p>Yet she was kind to him for all her coldness. Once, when his grief was +heaviest upon him, he thought she looked at him with anxiety, with pity. +She came to him once, where he sat downstairs, alone. But though she +came to him, she still kept him from her. And she would not go with him +into the room where Peggy lay.</p> + +<p>Now and then he wondered if she knew. He was not certain. He put the +thought away from him. He was sure that for nearly three years she had +not known anything. She had not known anything as long as she had had the +child, when her knowing would not, he thought, have mattered half so +much. It would be horrible if she knew now. And yet sometimes her eyes +seemed to say to him: "Why not now? When nothing matters."</p> + +<p>On the night before the funeral, the night they closed the coffin, he +came to her where she sat upstairs alone. He put his hand on her shoulder +and spoke her name. She shrank from him with a low cry. And again he +wondered if she knew.</p> + +<p>The day after the funeral she told him that she was going away for a +month with Mrs. Gardner.</p> + +<p>He said he was glad to hear it. It would do her good. It was the best +thing she could do.</p> + +<p>He had meant to take her away himself. She knew it. Yet she had arranged +to go with Mrs. Gardner.</p> + +<p>Then he was certain that she knew.</p> + +<p>She went, with Mrs. Gardner, the next day. He and Dr. Gardner saw them +off at the station. He thanked Mrs. Gardner for her kindness, wondering +if she knew. The little woman had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand +and tried to speak to him, and broke down. He gathered that, whatever +Anne knew, her friend knew nothing.</p> + +<p>The doctor was inscrutable. He might or he might not know. If he did, +he would keep his knowledge to himself. They walked together from the +station, and the doctor talked about the weather and the municipal +elections.</p> + +<p>Anne was to be away a month. Majendie wrote to her every week and +received, every week, a precise, formal little letter in reply. She told +him, every week, of an improvement in her own health, and appeared +solicitous for his.</p> + +<p>While she was away, he saw a great deal of the Hannays and of Gorst. When +he was not with the Hannays, Gorst was with him. Gorst was punctilious, +but a little shy in his inquiries for Mrs. Majendie. The Hannays made no +allusion to her beyond what decency demanded. They evidently regarded her +as a painful subject.</p> + +<p>About a week before the day fixed for Anne's return, the firm of Hannay & +Majendie had occasion to consult its solicitor about a mortgage on some +office buildings. Price was excited and assiduous. Excited and assiduous, +Hannay thought, beyond all proportion to the trivial affair. Hannay +noticed that Price took a peculiar and almost morbid interest in the +junior partner. His manner set Hannay thinking. It suggested the legal +instinct scenting the divorce-court from afar.</p> + +<p>He spoke of it to Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"Do you think she knows?" said Mrs. Hannay.</p> + +<p>"Of course she does. Or why should she leave him, at a time when most +people stick to each other if they've never stuck before?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think she'll try for a separation?"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't."</p> + +<p>"I do," said Mrs. Hannay. "Now that the dear little girl's gone."</p> + +<p>"Not she. She won't let him off as easily as all that. She'll think of +the other woman. And she'll live with him and punish him for ever."</p> + +<p>He paused pondering. Then he delivered himself of that which was within +him, his idea of Anne.</p> + +<p>"I always said she was a she-dog in the manger."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> + + +<p>Anne was not expected home before the middle of November. She wrote to +her husband, fixing Saturday for the day of her return.</p> + +<p>Majendie, therefore, was surprised to find her luggage in the hall when +he entered the house at six o'clock on Friday evening. Nanna had +evidently been waiting for the sound of his latchkey. She hurried to +intercept him.</p> + +<p>"The mistress has come home, sir," she said.</p> + +<p>"Has she? I hope you've got things comfortable for her."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir. We had a telegram this afternoon. She said she would like to +see you in the study, sir, as soon as you came in."</p> + +<p>He went at once into the study. Anne was sitting there in her chair by +the hearth. Her hat and jacket were thrown on the writing-table that +stood near in the middle of the room. She rose as he came in, but made no +advance to meet him. He stood still for a moment by the closed door, and +they held each other with their eyes.</p> + +<p>"I didn't expect you till to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"I sent a telegram," she said.</p> + +<p>"If you'd sent it to the office I'd have met you."</p> + +<p>"I didn't want anybody to meet me."</p> + +<p>He felt that her words had some reference to their loss, and to the +sadness of her home-coming. A sigh broke from him; but he was unaware +that he had sighed.</p> + +<p>He sat down, not in his accustomed seat by the hearth, opposite to hers, +but in a nearer chair by the writing-table. He saw that she had been +writing letters. He pushed them away and turned his chair round so as to +face her. His heart ached looking at her.</p> + +<p>There were deep lines on her forehead; and she was very pale, even her +small close mouth had no colour in it. She kept her sad eyes half hidden +under their drooping lids. Her lips were tightly compressed, her narrow +nostrils white and pinched. It was a face in which all the doors of life +were closing; where the inner life went on tensely, secretly, behind the +closing doors.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "I'm very glad you've come back."</p> + +<p>"Walter—have you any idea why I went away?"</p> + +<p>"Why you went? Obviously, it was the best thing you could do."</p> + +<p>"It was the only thing I could do. And I am glad I did it. My mind has +become clearer."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> see. I thought it would."</p> + +<p>"It would not have been clear if I had stayed."</p> + +<p>"No," he said vaguely, "of course it wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"I've seen," she continued, "that there is nothing for me but to come +back. It is the right thing."</p> + +<p>"Did you doubt it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I even doubted whether it were possible—whether, in the +circumstances, I could bear to come back, to stay—"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean—to—the house?"</p> + +<p>"No. I mean—to you."</p> + +<p>He turned away. "I understand," he said. "So it came to that?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. It came to that. I've been here three hours; and up to the last +hour, I was not sure whether I would not pack the rest of my things and +go away. I had written a letter to you. There it is, under your arm."</p> + +<p>"Am I to read it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>He turned his back on her, and read the letter.</p> + +<p>"I see. You say here you want a separation. If you want it you shall have +it. But hadn't you better hear what I have to say, <i>first</i>?"</p> + +<p>"I've come back for that. What have you to say?"</p> + +<p>He bowed his head upon his breast.</p> + +<p>"Not very much, I'm afraid. Except that I'm sorry—and ashamed of +myself—and—I ask your forgiveness. What more can I say?"</p> + +<p>"What more indeed? I'm to understand, then, that everything I was told is +true?"</p> + +<p>"It <i>was</i> true."</p> + +<p>"And is not now?"</p> + +<p>"No. Whoever told you, omitted to tell you that."</p> + +<p>"You mean you have given up living with this woman?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. If you call it living with her."</p> + +<p>"You have given it up—for how long?"</p> + +<p>"About five weeks." His voice was almost inaudible.</p> + +<p>She winced. Five weeks back brought her to the date of Peggy's death.</p> + +<p>"I dare say," she said. "You could hardly—have done less in the +circumstances."</p> + +<p>"Anne," he said. "I gave it up—I broke it off—before that. I—I broke +with her that morning—before I heard."</p> + +<p>"You were away that night."</p> + +<p>"I was not with her."</p> + +<p>"Well—And it was going on, all the time, for three years before that?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Ever since your sister's death?"</p> + +<p>He did not answer.</p> + +<p>"Ever since Edie died," she repeated, as if to herself rather than to +him.</p> + +<p>"Not quite. Why don't you say—since you sent me away?"</p> + +<p>"When did I ever send you away?"</p> + +<p>"That night. When I came to you."</p> + +<p>She remembered.</p> + +<p>"Then? Walter, that is unforgivable. To bring up a little thing like +that—"</p> + +<p>"You call it a little thing? A little thing?"</p> + +<p>"I had forgotten it. And for you to remember it all these years—and to +cast it up against me—<i>now</i>—"</p> + +<p>"I haven't cast anything up against you."</p> + +<p>"You implied you held me responsible for your sin."</p> + +<p>"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that."</p> + +<p>Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis.</p> + +<p>He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it. +Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough +of it."</p> + +<p>"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had +forgotten my promise."</p> + +<p>"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold +you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not."</p> + +<p>"I can never have my promise back—I made it to Edie."</p> + +<p>"To Edie?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. A short time before she died."</p> + +<p>His face brightened.</p> + +<p>"What did you promise her?" he said softly.</p> + +<p>"That I would never leave you."</p> + +<p>"Did she make you promise not to?"</p> + +<p>"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it +possible."</p> + +<p>"But <i>you</i> did?"</p> + +<p>"I thought it possible—yes."</p> + +<p>"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause."</p> + +<p>"I did not know that."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that you suspected me—then?"</p> + +<p>"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts."</p> + +<p>"You suspected?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know."</p> + +<p>"And—afterwards—did you suspect anything?"</p> + +<p>"No. I never suspected anything—afterwards."</p> + +<p>"I see. You suspected me when you had no cause. And when I gave you cause +you suspected nothing. I must say you are a very extraordinary woman."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Who told you? Or must I not ask that?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot tell you. I would rather not. I was not told much. And there +are some things that I have a right to know."</p> + +<p>"Well—"</p> + +<p>"Who is this woman?—the girl you've been living with?"</p> + +<p>"I've no right to tell you—that. Why do you want to know? It's all +over."</p> + +<p>"I must know, Walter. I have a reason."</p> + +<p>"Can you give me your reason?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I want to help her."</p> + +<p>"You would—really—help her?"</p> + +<p>"If I can. It is my duty."</p> + +<p>"It isn't in the least your duty."</p> + +<p>"And I want to help you. That also is my duty. I want to undo, as far as +possible, the consequences of your sin. We cannot let the girl suffer."</p> + +<p>Majendie was moved by her charity. He had not looked for charity from +Anne.</p> + +<p>"If you will give me her name, and tell me where to find her, I will see +that she is provided for."</p> + +<p>"She is provided for."</p> + +<p>"How?"</p> + +<p>"I am keeping on the house for her."</p> + +<p>Anne's face flushed.</p> + +<p>"What house?"</p> + +<p>"A farm, out in the country."</p> + +<p>"That house is yours? You were living with her there?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>Her face hardened. She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have +gone into the country to get strong.</p> + +<p>He was tortured by the same thought. Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat +and rosy in the pure air of Holderness. Peggy had died in Scale.</p> + +<p>In her bitterness she turned on him.</p> + +<p>"And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?"</p> + +<p>"My word. Isn't that sufficient?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Walter. It would have been once. It isn't now. What proof +have I of your honour?"</p> + +<p>"My—"</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon. I forgot. A man's honour and a woman's honour are two +very different things."</p> + +<p>"They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not +mentioned."</p> + +<p>"I will try to take it for granted. You must forgive my having mentioned +it. There is one thing I must know. Has she—that woman—any children?"</p> + +<p>"She has none."</p> + +<p>Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness +of intense constraint. But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had +sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of +committees. Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the +beating of her heart. Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long, +deep breath of relief.</p> + +<p>"And you propose to keep on this house for her?" she said calmly.</p> + +<p>"Yes. She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after."</p> + +<p>"Who will look after her?"</p> + +<p>"The Pearsons. They're people I can trust."</p> + +<p>"And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?"</p> + +<p>"I <i>must</i> make her a small allowance."</p> + +<p>"That is a very unwise arrangement. Whatever help is given her had much +better come from me."</p> + +<p>"From <i>you</i>?"</p> + +<p>"From a woman. It will be the best safeguard for the girl."</p> + +<p>He saw her drift and smiled.</p> + +<p>"Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?"</p> + +<p>"It's my duty—my work."</p> + +<p>"Your work?"</p> + +<p>"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the +last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered +through my husband's fault."</p> + +<p>"What do you want to do with her?"</p> + +<p>"I want, if possible, to reclaim her."</p> + +<p>He smiled again.</p> + +<p>"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her."</p> + +<p>"And so you want to reclaim her?"</p> + +<p>"I do, indeed."</p> + +<p>"You couldn't reclaim her."</p> + +<p>"She is very young, isn't she?"</p> + +<p>"N—no—She's eight—and—twenty."</p> + +<p>"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that—and bad—"</p> + +<p>"Bad? Bad?"</p> + +<p>He rose and looked down on her in anger.</p> + +<p>"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady, +but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and +kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever +met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was +absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she +possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you +blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought +for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk +of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous +committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and +shut up in one of your beastly institutions! No. On the whole, I think +she'll be better off if you leave her to me."</p> + +<p>"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think +her perfect."</p> + +<p>"She <i>was</i> perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't +very well do more."</p> + +<p>"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin."</p> + +<p>"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can +you defend yourself, Walter?"</p> + +<p>He was silent.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. <i>That</i> you +would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?"</p> + +<p>"My sin against her was not caring for her. <i>You</i> needn't call me to +account for it."</p> + +<p>"I am to believe that you did not care for her?"</p> + +<p>"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing, +and I left her like a brute."</p> + +<p>"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?"</p> + +<p>"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same +reason. And she knew it."</p> + +<p>"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman, +because you cared for me?"</p> + +<p>"For no earthly reason except that."</p> + +<p>"You deceived me—you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three +years—and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of +her—and I am to believe that you cared for me!"</p> + +<p>"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I +wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You +mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but +that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married +you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but +you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six +years—can you say that I put another woman in your place?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a +hopeless, helpless gesture.</p> + +<p>"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it +was wrong."</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the +beginning. How are we going to make it right?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best."</p> + +<p>"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"</p> + +<p>"I have told you that I am not going to leave you."</p> + +<p>"We are to go on, then, as we did before?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—as far as possible."</p> + +<p>"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't +you see <i>now</i> that it's all wrong?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?"</p> + +<p>"Does it rest with me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it. +What is your notion of the best?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, Walter."</p> + +<p>"I <i>must</i> know. You say you'll take me back—you'll never leave me. What +are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for +me, dear. It was bad for both of us."</p> + +<p>She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went +to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity.</p> + +<p>"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep +straight. You needn't be afraid. Only—See here. There's no reason why +you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring +for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie. +You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along. +There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up—"</p> + +<p>"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for."</p> + +<p>"I know—I know. But still—we mightn't be so unhappy—perhaps, in +time—And if we had children—"</p> + +<p>"Never," she cried sharply, "never!"</p> + +<p>He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she +drew back, flinching.</p> + +<p>"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me."</p> + +<p>"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation—of your +sin—three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken +you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought +to have."</p> + +<p>She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her +face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him.</p> + +<p>"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything."</p> + +<p>"I have never compelled you, as you know."</p> + +<p>"I know. I know you have been good in that way."</p> + +<p>"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?"</p> + +<p>"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will +not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it +will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself. +To save some other woman, perhaps—"</p> + +<p>"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I +appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms. +I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are +trying to tell me is that you do not care for me."</p> + +<p>She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I +do not care for you. Not in that way."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any +way—your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that. +I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all."</p> + +<p>Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if +trying to see the truth inside herself.</p> + +<p>"No—no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there +is <i>no</i> way in which I can care for you again. Or—well—I can care +perhaps—I'm caring now—but—"</p> + +<p>"I see. You do not love me."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and—I do not love you."</p> + +<p>"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said."</p> + +<p>"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you."</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping +things from me."</p> + +<p>"I had meant to spare you."</p> + +<p>At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me."</p> + +<p>She still hesitated.</p> + +<p>"What is it?"</p> + +<p>She spoke low.</p> + +<p>"If you had been here—that night—Peggy would not have died."</p> + +<p>He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly.</p> + +<p>"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for +you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were +not dead."</p> + +<p>She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain.</p> + +<p>He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for +her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compassion.</p> + +<p>"Why have you told me this?" he said.</p> + +<p>"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when +nothing else will."</p> + +<p>"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?"</p> + +<p>Anne closed her eyes.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2> + + +<p>He did not know whether he believed what she had said, nor whether she +believed it herself, neither could he understand her motive in saying it.</p> + +<p>At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from +time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must +have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could +bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he +knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she +the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be +responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that +could have made him charge her with it.</p> + +<p>Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty +of the blow had brutalised his imagination.</p> + +<p>He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed +on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in +his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into +the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey, +measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become +necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of +Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted.</p> + +<p>He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and +cleared it.</p> + +<p>He went back into the study and began to think. He remained thinking for +some time, consecutively, and with great lucidity. He asked himself what +he was to do now, and he saw clearly that he could do nothing. If Anne +had been a passionate woman, hurling her words in a fury of fierce grief, +he would have thought no more of it. If she had been the tender, tearful +sort, dropping words in a weak, helpless misery, he would have thought +no more of it. He could imagine poor little Maggie saying a thing like +that, not knowing what she said. If it had been poor little Maggie he +could have drawn her to him and comforted her, and reasoned with her till +he had made her see the senselessness of her idea. Maggie would have +listened to reason—his reason. Anne never would.</p> + +<p>She had been cold and slow, and implacably deliberate. It was not blind +instinct, but illuminated reason that had told her what to say and when +to say it. Nothing he could ever do or say would make her take back her +words. And if she took back her words, her thought would remain +indestructible. She would never give it up; she would never approach him +without it; she would never forget that it was there. It would always +rise up between them, unburied, unappeased.</p> + +<p>His brain swam and clouded again. He went again to the dining-room and +drank more whiskey. Kate was in the dining-room and she saw him drinking. +He saw Kate looking at him; but he didn't care. He was past caring for +what anybody might think of him.</p> + +<p>His brain was clearer than ever now. He realised Anne's omnipotence to +harm him. He saw the hard, imperishable divinity in her. His wife was a +spiritual woman. He had not always known what that meant. But he knew +now; and now for the first time in his life he judged her. For the first +time in his life his heart rose in a savage revolt against her power.</p> + +<p>His head grew hot. The air of the study was stifling. He opened the +window and went out into the cool, dark garden. He paced up and down, +heedless of where he trod, trampling the flowerless plants down into +their black beds. At the end of the path a little circle of white stones +glimmered in the dark. That was Peggy's garden.</p> + +<p>An agony of love and grief shook him as he thought of the dead child.</p> + +<p>He thought, with his hot brain, of Anne, and his anger flared like hate. +It was through the child that she had always struck him. She was a fool +to refuse to have more children, to sacrifice her boundless opportunities +to strike.</p> + +<p>There was a light in the upper window. He thought of Maggie, walking up +and down in the back alley behind the garden, watching the lights of his +house burning to the dawn. The little thing had loved him. She had given +him all she had to give; and he had given her nothing. He had compelled +her to live childless; and he had cast her off. She had been sacrificed +to his passion, and to his wife's coldness.</p> + +<p>Up there he could see Anne's large shadow moving on the lighted +window-blind. She was dressing for dinner.</p> + +<p>Kate was standing on the step, looking for him. As he came to the study +window he saw Nanna behind her, going out of the room. His servants had +been watching him. Kate was frightened. Her voice fluttered in her throat +as she told him dinner was served.</p> + +<p>He sat opposite his wife, with the little oblong table between them. +Twice, sometimes three times a day, as long as they both lived, they +would have to sit like that, separated, hostile, horribly conscious of +each other.</p> + +<p>Anne talked about the Gardners, and he stared at her stupidly, with eyes +that were like heavy burning balls under his aching forehead. He ate +little and drank a good deal. Half an hour after dinner he followed her +to the drawing-room, dazed, not knowing clearly where he went.</p> + +<p>Anne was seated at her writing-table. The place was strewn with papers. +She was absorbed in the business of her committee, working off five weeks +of correspondence in arrears.</p> + +<p>He lay on the sofa and dozed, and she took no notice of him. He left the +room, and she did not hear him go out.</p> + +<p>He went to the Hannays. They were out. He went on to the Ransomes and +found them there. He found Canon Wharton there, too, drinking whiskey and +soda.</p> + +<p>"Here's Wallie," some one said. Mrs. Hannay (it <i>was</i> Mrs. Hannay) gave a +cry of delight, and made a little rush at him which confused him. Ransome +poured out more whiskey, and gave it to him and to the Canon. The Canon +drank peg for peg with them, while he eyed Majendie austerely. He used to +drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, in the days when Hannay drank; now +he drank peg for peg with Majendie, eyeing him austerely.</p> + +<p>Then the Hannays came between them. They closed round Majendie and hemmed +him in a corner, and kept him there talking to him. He had no clear idea +what they were saying or what he was saying to them; but their voices +were kind and they soothed him. Dick Ransome brought him more whiskey. He +refused it. He had a sort of idea that he had had enough, rather more, in +fact, than was quite good for him; and ladies were in the room. Ransome +pressed him, and Lawson Hannay said something to Ransome; he couldn't +tell what. He was getting drowsy and disinclined to answer when people +spoke to him. He wished they would let him alone.</p> + +<p>Lawson Hannay put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come along with +us, Wallie," and he wished Lawson Hannay would let him alone. Mrs. Hannay +came and stooped over him and whispered things in his ear, and he tried +to rouse himself so far as to stare into her face and try to understand +what she was saying.</p> + +<p>She was saying, "Wallie, get up—Come with us, Wallie, dear." And she +laid her hand on his arm. He took her hand in his, and pressed it, and +let it drop.</p> + +<p>Then Ransome said, "Why can't you let the poor chap alone? Let him stay +if he likes."</p> + +<p>That was what he wanted. Ransome knew what he wanted—to be let alone.</p> + +<p>He didn't see the Hannays go. The only thing he saw distinctly was the +Canon's large grey face, and the eyes in it fixed unpleasantly on him. He +wished the Canon would let him alone.</p> + +<p>He was getting really <i>too</i> sleepy. He would have to rouse himself +presently and go. With a tremendous effort he dragged himself up and +went. Ransome walked with him to the club and left him there.</p> + +<p>The club-room was in an hotel opposite the pier. He could get a bedroom +there for the night; and when the night was over he would be able to +think what he would do. He couldn't go back to Prior Street as he was. He +was too sleepy to know very much about it, but he knew that. He knew, +too, that something had happened which might make it impossible for him +to go back at all.</p> + +<p>Ransome had told the manager of the hotel to take care of him. Every now +and then the manager came and looked at him; and then the drowsiness +lifted from his brain with a jerk, and he knew that something horrible +had happened. That was why they kept on looking at him.</p> + +<p>At last he dragged himself to his room. He rang the bell and ordered +more whiskey. This time he drank, not for lucidity, but for blessed +drunkenness, for kind sleep and pitiful oblivion.</p> + +<p>He slept on far into the morning and woke with a headache. At twelve +Hannay and Ransome called for him. It was a fine warm day with a +southerly wind blowing and sails on the river. Ransome's yacht lay off +the pier, with Mrs. Ransome in it. The sails were going up in Ransome's +yacht. Hannay's yacht rocked beside it. Dick took Majendie by the arm. +Dick, outside in the morning light, looked paler and puffier than ever, +but his eyes were kind. He had an idea. Dick's idea was that Majendie +should run up with him and Mrs. Ransome to Scarby for the week-end. +Hannay looked troubled as Dick unfolded his idea.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't go, old man," said he, "with that head of yours."</p> + +<p>Dick stared. "Head? Just the thing for his head," said Dick. "It'll do +him all the good in the world."</p> + +<p>Hannay took Dick aside. "No, it won't. It won't do him any good at all."</p> + +<p>"I say, you know, I don't know what you're driving at, but you might let +the poor chap have a little peace. Come along, Majendie."</p> + +<p>Majendie sent a telegram to Prior Street and went.</p> + +<p>The wind blew away his headache and put its own strong, violent, gusty +life into him. He felt agreeably excited as he paced the slanting deck. +He stayed there in the wind.</p> + +<p>Downstairs in the cabin the Ransomes were quarrelling.</p> + +<p>"What on earth," said she, "possessed you to bring him?"</p> + +<p>"And why not?"</p> + +<p>"Because of Sarah."</p> + +<p>"What's she got to do with it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, you don't want them to meet again, do you?"</p> + +<p>Dick made his face a puffy blank. "Why the devil shouldn't they?" said +he.</p> + +<p>"Well, you know the trouble he's had with his wife already about Sarah."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't about Sarah. It was another woman altogether!"</p> + +<p>"I know that. But she was the beginning of it."</p> + +<p>"Let her be the end of it, then. If you're thinking of <i>him</i>. The sooner +that wife of his gets a separation the better it'll be for him."</p> + +<p>"And you want my sister to be mixed up in <i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ransome began to cry.</p> + +<p>"She can't be mixed up in it. He's past caring for Sarah, poor old girl."</p> + +<p>"She isn't past caring for him. She isn't past anything," sobbed Mrs. +Ransome.</p> + +<p>"Don't be a fool, Topsy. There isn't any harm in poor old Toodles. +Majendie's a jolly sight safer with Toodles, I can tell you, than he is +with that wife of his."</p> + +<p>"Has she come home, then?"</p> + +<p>"She came yesterday afternoon. You saw what he was like last night. If +I'd left him to himself this morning he'd have drunk himself into a fit. +When a sober—a fantastically sober man does that—"</p> + +<p>"What does it mean?"</p> + +<p>"It generally means that he's in a pretty bad way. And," added Dick +pensively, "they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman."</p> + +<p>All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII</h2> + + +<p>It was nine o'clock on Sunday evening. Majendie was in Scarby, in the +hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their +honeymoon.</p> + +<p>Lady Cayley was with him. She was with him in the sitting-room which had +been his and Anne's. They were by themselves. The Ransomes were dining +with friends in another quarter of the town. He had accepted Sarah's +invitation to dine with her alone.</p> + +<p>The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with +them. He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes. They had been +irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them. He had +told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could +hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome. Then he had explained gently that he had +had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably, +and that he wished they would leave him alone. It was all he wanted. Then +they had left him alone, with Sarah. He was glad to be with her. She was +the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let +alone.</p> + +<p>She had been with him all day. She had sat beside him on the deck of the +yacht as they cruised up and down the coast till sunset. Afterwards, when +the Ransomes' friends had trooped in, one after another, and filled the +sitting-room with insufferable sounds, she had taken him into a quiet +corner and kept him there. He had felt grateful to her for that.</p> + +<p>She had been angelic to him during dinner. She had let him eat as little +and drink as much as he pleased. And she had hardly spoken to him. She +had wrapped him in a heavenly silence. Only from time to time, out of the +divine silence, her woman's voice had dropped between them, soothing and +pleasantly indistinct. He had been drinking hard all day. He had been +excited, intolerably excited; and she soothed him. He was aware of her +chiefly as a large, benignant presence, maternal and protecting.</p> + +<p>His brain felt brittle, but extraordinarily clear, luminous, transparent, +the delicate centre of monstrous and destructive energies. It burned +behind his eyeballs like a fire. His eyes were hot with it, the pupils +strained, distended, gorged with light.</p> + +<p>This monstrous brain of his originated nothing, but ideas presented to +it became monstrous, too. And their immensity roused no sense of the +incredible.</p> + +<p>The table had been cleared of everything but coffee-cups, glasses, and +wine. They still sat facing each other. Sarah had her arms on the table, +propping her chin up with her clenched hands. Her head was tilted back +slightly, in a way that was familiar to him; so that she looked at him +from under the worn and wrinkled white lids of her eyes. And as she +looked at him she smiled slightly; and the smile was familiar, too.</p> + +<p>And he sat opposite her, with his chin sunk on his breast. His bright, +dark, distended eyes seemed to strain upwards towards her, under the +weight of his flushed forehead.</p> + +<p>"Well, Wallie," she said, "I didn't get married, you see, after all."</p> + +<p>"Married—married? Why didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"I never meant to. I only wanted you to think it."</p> + +<p>"Why? Why did you want me to think it?"</p> + +<p>He was no longer disinclined to talk. Though his brain lacked +spontaneity, it responded appropriately to suggestion.</p> + +<p>"I didn't want you to think something else."</p> + +<p>"What? What should I think?"</p> + +<p>His voice was thick and rapid, his eyes burned.</p> + +<p>"That you'd made a mess of my life, my dear."</p> + +<p>"When did I make a mess of your life?"</p> + +<p>"Never mind when. I <i>might</i> have married, only I didn't. That's the +difference between me and you."</p> + +<p>"And that's how I made a mess of your life, is it? I haven't made a +furious success of my own, have I?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't have brought it up against you, if you had. The awful thing +was to stand by, and see you make a sinful muddle of it"</p> + +<p>"A sinful muddle?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. That's what it's been. A sinful muddle."</p> + +<p>"Which is worse, d'you think, a sinful muddle? or a muddling sin?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't ask me, my dear. I can't see any difference."</p> + +<p>"My God—nor I!"</p> + +<p>"There's no good talking. You're so obstinate, Wallie, that I believe, if +you could live your life over again, you'd do just the same."</p> + +<p>"I would, probably. Just the same."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing you'd alter?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing. Except one thing."</p> + +<p>"What thing?"</p> + +<p>"Never mind what."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind, if the one thing wasn't <i>me</i>—was it?"</p> + +<p>He did not answer.</p> + +<p>"Was it?" she insisted, turning the full blue blaze of her eyes on him.</p> + +<p>He started. "Of course it wasn't. You don't suppose I'd have said so if +it had been, do you?"</p> + +<p>"A-ah! So, if you could live your life over again, you wouldn't turn me +out of it? I didn't take up much room, did I? Only two years."</p> + +<p>"Two years?"</p> + +<p>"That was all. And you'd let me stay in for my two poor little years. +Well, that's something. It's a great deal. It's more than some women +get."</p> + +<p>"Yes. More than some women get."</p> + +<p>"Poor Wallie. I'm afraid you wouldn't live your life again."</p> + +<p>"No. I wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"I would. I'd live mine, horrors and all. Just for those two little +years. I say, if we'd keep each other in for those two years, we needn't +turn each other out now, need we?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no, oh no."</p> + +<p>His brain followed her lead, originating nothing.</p> + +<p>"See here," she said, "if I come in—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," he said vaguely.</p> + +<p>He was bending forward now, with his hands clasped on the table. She +stretched out her beautiful white arms and covered his hands with hers, +and held them. Her eyes were full-orbed, luminous, and tender. They held +him, too.</p> + +<p>"I come in on my own terms, this time, not yours."</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course."</p> + +<p>"I mean I can't come in on the same terms as before. All that was over +nine years ago, when you married. You and I are older. We have had +experience. We've suffered horribly. We know."</p> + +<p>"What do we know?"</p> + +<p>She let go his hands.</p> + +<p>"At least we know the limits—the lines we must draw. Fifteen years ago +we didn't know anything, either of us. We were innocents. You were an +innocent when you left me, when you married."</p> + +<p>"When I married?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, when you married. You were a blessed innocent, or you couldn't have +done it. You married a good woman."</p> + +<p>"I know."</p> + +<p>"So do I. Well, I've given one or two men a pretty bad time, but you may +write it on my tombstone that I never hurt another woman."</p> + +<p>"Of course you haven't."</p> + +<p>"And I'm not going to hurt your wife, remember."</p> + +<p>"I'm stupid, I don't think I understand."</p> + +<p>"Can't you understand that I'm not going to make trouble between you and +her?"</p> + +<p>"Me? And her?"</p> + +<p>"You and her. You've come back to me as my friend. We'll be better +friends if you understand that, whatever I let you do, dear, I'm not +going to let you make love to me."</p> + +<p>She drew herself back and faced him with her resolution.</p> + +<p>She knew the man with whom she had to deal. His soul must be off its +guard before she could have any power over his body. In presenting +herself as unattainable she would make herself desired. She would bring +him back.</p> + +<p>She knew what fires he had passed through on his way to her. She saw that +she could not bring him back by playing poor, tender Maggie's part. She +could not move him by appearing as the woman she once was, by falling at +his feet as she had once fallen. This time, it was he who must fall at +hers.</p> + +<p>Anne Majendie had held her empire, and had made herself for ever +desirable, by six years of systematic torturings and deceptions and +denials, by all the infidelities of the saint in love with her own +sanctity. The woman who was to bring him back now would have to borrow +for a moment a little of Anne Majendie's spiritual splendour. She saw by +his flaming face that she had suggested the thing she had forbidden.</p> + +<p>"You think," said she, "there isn't any danger? I don't say there is. But +if there was, you'd never see it. You'd never think of it. You'd be up to +your neck in it before you knew where you were."</p> + +<p>He moved impatiently. "At any rate I know where I am now."</p> + +<p>"And I," said she, in response to his movement, "mean that you shall stay +there." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. You'd like to know what +right I have to say these things to you."</p> + +<p>"Well—I'm awfully stupid—"</p> + +<p>"I earned the right fifteen years ago. When a woman gives a man all she +has to give, and gets nothing, there are very few things she hasn't a +right to say to him."</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt you earned your right."</p> + +<p>"I'm not reproaching you, dear. I'm simply justifying the plainness of my +speech."</p> + +<p>He stared at her, but he did not answer.</p> + +<p>"Don't think me hard," said she. "I'm saying these things because I care +for you. Because—" She rose, and flung her arms out with a passionate +gesture towards him. "Oh, my dear—my heart aches for you so that I can't +bear it."</p> + +<p>She came over to where he sat staring at her, staring half stupefied, +half inflamed. She stood beside him, and passed her hand lightly over his +hair.</p> + +<p>"I only want to help you."</p> + +<p>"You can't help me."</p> + +<p>"I know I can't. I can only say hard things to you."</p> + +<p>She stooped, and her lips swept his hair. For a moment love gave her back +her beauty and the enchantment of her youth; it illuminated the house of +flesh it dwelt in and inspired. And yet she could not reach him. His soul +was on its guard.</p> + +<p>"You've come back," she whispered. "You've come back. But you never came +till you were driven. That's how I thought you'd come. When you were +driven. When there was nobody but me."</p> + +<p>He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his +thick and swift sensations.</p> + +<p>"What have you done that you should have to pay so?"</p> + +<p>"What have I done?"</p> + +<p>"Or I?" she said.</p> + +<p>He did not hear her. There was another sound in his ears.</p> + +<p>Her voice ceased. Her eyes only called to him. He pushed back his chair +and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his +face from her. She knelt down beside him. Her voice was like a warm wind +in his ears. He groaned. She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her +shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face.</p> + +<p>At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and +her. He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain. When she +clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did, +thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung +from her a cry of pain and anger.</p> + +<p>But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were +heavy weights binding him to the floor. He had a sensation of intolerable +sickness; then a pain beat like a hammer on one side of his head. He +staggered, and fell, headlong, at her feet.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2> + + +<p>Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday +night. The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the +sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion. She had always +had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser, +expert in the business of societies and committees.</p> + +<p>In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the +house, and that he did not return to it.</p> + +<p>In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a +grave face, and took her into Majendie's room. Nanna pointed out to her +that his bed had not been slept in. Anne's heart sank. Later on, the +telegram he sent explained his absence. She supposed that he had slept +at the Ransomes' or the Hannays', and she thought no more of it. The +business of the day again absorbed her.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her. It was the recognised visit +of condolence, delayed till her return. In his manner with Mrs. Majendie +there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk +whiskey with Mrs. Majendie's husband the night before. His manner was +reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender. He abstained from all the +commonplaces of consolation. He did not speak of the dead child; but +reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her +to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and +call her blessed. He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her +ended, had in reality only just begun. He said that, if great natures +were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also +dedicated to great uses. Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and +perfect training.</p> + +<p>He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled.</p> + +<p>On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls. In the afternoon +she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith's and Peggy's +graves lay side by side. In the evening she went again to All Souls.</p> + +<p>The church services were now the only link left between her soul and +God. She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these +consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most +private personal possession.</p> + +<p>For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from +the Unseen. She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in +surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual +world. She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had +been taken from her. She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the +heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing. She had +still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith. Therefore she +occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours +that waited for her as their prey.</p> + +<p>It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless. For then she +thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse +than dead.</p> + +<p>She had one terrible consolation. She had once doubted the justice of her +attitude to him. Now she was sure. Her justification was complete.</p> + +<p>She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the +drawing-room that overlooked the street.</p> + +<p>About ten o'clock she heard a cab drive up to the door.</p> + +<p>She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when +Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished +to speak to her at once.</p> + +<p>Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the +fireplace. He did not come forward to meet her. His rosy, sensual face +was curiously set. As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed +again in a firm fold.</p> + +<p>He pressed her hand without speaking. His heaviness and immobility +alarmed her.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and +suffocated it.</p> + +<p>"I've come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie."</p> + +<p>"Tell me," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"Walter is ill—very dangerously ill."</p> + +<p>"He is dead."</p> + +<p>The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling. She +felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the +doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting.</p> + +<p>"No. He is not dead."</p> + +<p>Her heart beat again.</p> + +<p>"He's dying, then."</p> + +<p>"They don't know."</p> + +<p>"Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"At Scarby."</p> + +<p>"Scarby? How much time have I?"</p> + +<p>"There's a train at ten-twenty. Can you be ready in five—seven minutes?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>She rang the bell.</p> + +<p>"Tell Kate where to send my things," she said as she left the room. Her +mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her +lips, or a single motion of her feet. She came back in five minutes, +ready to start.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she said as they drove to the station.</p> + +<p>"Hæmorrhage of the brain."</p> + +<p>"The brain?"</p> + +<p>"Apoplexy."</p> + +<p>"Is he unconscious?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>She closed her eyes.</p> + +<p>"He will not know me," she said.</p> + +<p>Hannay was silent. She lay back and kept her eyes closed.</p> + +<p>A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station. The driver +reined in his horse. She opened her eyes in terror.</p> + +<p>"We shall miss the train—if we stop."</p> + +<p>"No, no, we've plenty of time."</p> + +<p>They waited.</p> + +<p>"Oh, tell him to drive round the other way."</p> + +<p>"We shall miss the train if we do <i>that</i>."</p> + +<p>"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn—up there."</p> + +<p>The van turned into a side street, and they drove on.</p> + +<p>The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes +before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had +it to themselves.</p> + +<p>The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby.</p> + +<p>A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered. She had +brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees +and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close. +She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was +sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he +spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief +made her passive now.</p> + +<p>Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered +his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped +that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the +relief of tears.</p> + +<p>But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn +behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was +help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station.</p> + +<p>As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which +is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny.</p> + +<p>A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see +her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken +her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the +woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley.</p> + +<p>She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She +wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband.</p> + +<p>She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He +lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush +on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and +one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side.</p> + +<p>His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a +deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket. +A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave +place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it.</p> + +<p>The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the +wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was +paralysed.</p> + +<p>And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and +holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear +the weight of it.</p> + +<p>Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the +nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him.</p> + +<p>After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her +husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment. +Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of +trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as +if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the +sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and +creaseless.</p> + +<p>He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that.</p> + +<p>She saw that he wore a clean white nightshirt of coarse cotton. It must +have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have +come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must +have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about +him was very white and clean. She was glad.</p> + +<p>She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from +him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at +him, to see, her hands touching him.</p> + +<p>A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that +there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his +hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She +must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up +and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went +back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her +meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could +only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat +there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting +and watching.</p> + +<p>Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning, +came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed +to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought +a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the +pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne +and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to +Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking +together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear +of what he would say to her presently.</p> + +<p>He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There +is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he +was going to say "There is no hope."</p> + +<p>"Will he get better?" she said.</p> + +<p>"I cannot tell you."</p> + +<p>The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with +the case.</p> + +<p>"It's impossible to say. He <i>may</i> get better. He may even get well. But +I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that."</p> + +<p>"You can give <i>no</i> hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real +thought.</p> + +<p>"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not—exclusively—in +favour of recovery."</p> + +<p>"The chances?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she +were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes assured him that she +could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's +a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get +well—perfectly well."</p> + +<p>"And if it does not absorb?"</p> + +<p>"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may +be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other. +But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely."</p> + +<p>She pictured it.</p> + +<p>"Ah—but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?"</p> + +<p>"Well—there may be further lesions—in which case—"</p> + +<p>"He will die?"</p> + +<p>"He may die. He may die any moment."</p> + +<p>She accepted it, abandoning hope.</p> + +<p>"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?"</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it +is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two +things in his favour. He has evidently a sound constitution. And he has +lived—up till now—Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate +life. That is so?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always—always. Why?"</p> + +<p>The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's +face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not +bear.</p> + +<p>"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no <i>why</i>, of course. That is in his +favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which +would predispose to the attack."</p> + +<p>"Would a shock—predispose him?"</p> + +<p>"A shock?"</p> + +<p>"Any very strong emotion—"</p> + +<p>"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he—that +you—had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?"</p> + +<p>"A month—nearly five weeks."</p> + +<p>"Ah—so long ago as that? No, I think it would hardly be likely. If there +had been any recent violent emotion—"</p> + +<p>"It would account for it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, it might account for it."</p> + +<p>"Thank you."</p> + +<p>He was touched by her look of agony. "If there is anything else I can—"</p> + +<p>"No. Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know."</p> + +<p>She went back into the sick-room. She stayed there all evening, and they +brought her food to her there. She stayed, watching for the sign of +consciousness that would give hope. But there was no sign.</p> + +<p>The nurse went to bed at nine o'clock. Anne had insisted on sitting up +that night. Hannay slept in the next room, on a sofa, within call.</p> + +<p>When they had left her alone with her husband, she knelt down beside his +bedside and prayed. And as she knelt, with her bowed head near to that +body sleeping its strange and terrible sleep, she remembered nothing but +that she had once loved him; she was certain of nothing but that she +loved him still. His body was once more dear and sacred to her as in her +bridal hour. She did not ask herself whether it were paying the penalty +of its sin; her compassion had purged him of his sin. She had no memory +for the past. It seemed to her that all her life and all her suffering +were crowded into this one hour while she prayed that his soul might come +back and speak to her, and that his body might not die. The hour trampled +under it that other hour when she had knelt by the loathed bridal bed, +wrestling for her own spiritual life. She had no life of her own to pray +for now. She prayed only that he might live.</p> + +<p>And though she knew not whether her prayer were answered she knew that it +was heard.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX</h2> + + +<p>It was the evening of the third day. There was no change in Majendie.</p> + +<p>Dr. Gardner had been sent for. He had come and gone. He had confirmed the +Scarby doctor's opinion, with a private leaning to the side of hope. +Hannay, who had waited to hear his verdict, was going back to Scale +early the next morning. Mrs. Majendie had been in her husband's room all +day, and he had seen little of her.</p> + +<p>He was sitting alone by the fire after dinner, trying to read a paper, +when she came in. Her approach was so gentle that he was unaware of it +till she stood beside him. He started to his feet, mumbling an apology +for his bewilderment. He pulled up an arm-chair to the fire for her, +wandered uneasily about the room for a minute or two, and would have left +it, had she not called him back to her.</p> + +<p>"Don't go, Mr. Hannay. I want to speak to you."</p> + +<p>He turned, with an air of frustrated evasion, and remained, a supremely +uncomfortable presence.</p> + +<p>"Have you time?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Plenty. All my time is at your disposal."</p> + +<p>"You have been very kind—"</p> + +<p>"My dear Mrs. Majendie—"</p> + +<p>"I want you to be kinder still. I want you to tell me the truth."</p> + +<p>"The truth—" Hannay tried to tighten his loose face into an expression +of judicial reserve.</p> + +<p>"Yes, the truth. There's no kindness in keeping things from me."</p> + +<p>"My dear Mrs. Majendie, I'm keeping nothing from you, I assure you. The +doctors have told me no more than they have told you."</p> + +<p>"I know. It's not that."</p> + +<p>"What is it that's troubling you?"</p> + +<p>"Did you see Walter before he came here?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Did you see him on Friday night?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Was he perfectly well then?"</p> + +<p>"Er—yes—he was well. Quite well."</p> + +<p>Anne turned her sorrowful eyes upon him.</p> + +<p>"No. There was something wrong. What was it?"</p> + +<p>"If there was he didn't tell me."</p> + +<p>"No. He wouldn't. Why did you hesitate just now?"</p> + +<p>"Did I hesitate?"</p> + +<p>"When I asked you if he was well."</p> + +<p>"I thought you meant did I notice any signs of his illness coming on. I +didn't. But of course, as you know, he was very much shaken by—-by your +little girl's death."</p> + +<p>"You noticed that while I was away?"</p> + +<p>"Y-es. But I certainly noticed it more on the night you were speaking +of."</p> + +<p>"You would have said, then, that he must have received a severe shock?"</p> + +<p>"Certainly—certainly I would."</p> + +<p>Hannay responded quite cheerfully in his immense relief.</p> + +<p>It was what they were all trying for, to make poor Mrs. Majendie believe +that her husband's illness was to be attributed solely to the shock of +the child's death.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that shock could have had anything to do with his illness?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I do. At least, I should say it was indirectly responsible for +it."</p> + +<p>She put her hand up to hide her face. He saw that in some way +incomprehensible to him, so far from shielding her, he had struck a blow.</p> + +<p>"Dr. Gardner told you that much," said he. He felt easier, somehow, in +halving the responsibility with Gardner.</p> + +<p>"Yes. He told me that. But he had not seen him since October. You saw him +on Friday, the day I came home."</p> + +<p>Hannay was confirmed in his suspicion that on Friday there had been a +scene. He now saw that Mrs. Majendie was tortured by the remembrance of +her part in it.</p> + +<p>"Oh well," he said consolingly. "He hadn't been himself for a long time +before that."</p> + +<p>"I know. I know. That only makes it worse."</p> + +<p>She wept slowly, silently, then stopped suddenly and held herself in a +restraint that was ten times more pitiful to see. Hannay was unspeakably +distressed.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," said he, "if you could tell me what's on your mind, I might be +able to relieve you."</p> + +<p>She shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Come," he said kindly, "what is it, really? What do you imagine makes it +worse?"</p> + +<p>"I said something to him that I didn't mean."</p> + +<p>"Of course you did," said Hannay, smiling cheerfully. "We all say things +to each other that we don't mean. That wouldn't hurt him."</p> + +<p>"But it did. I told him he was responsible for Peggy's death. I didn't +know what I was saying. I let him think he killed her."</p> + +<p>"He wouldn't think it."</p> + +<p>"He did. There was nothing else he could think. If he dies I shall have +killed him."</p> + +<p>"You will have done nothing of the sort. He wouldn't think twice about +what a woman said in her anger or her grief. He wouldn't believe it. He's +got too much sense. You can put that idea out of your head for ever."</p> + +<p>"I cannot put it out. I had to tell you—lest you should think—"</p> + +<p>"Lest I should think—what?"</p> + +<p>"That it was something else that caused his illness."</p> + +<p>"But, my dear lady—it <i>was</i> something else. I haven't a doubt about it."</p> + +<p>"I know what you mean," she said quickly. "He had been drinking—poor +dear."</p> + +<p>"How do you know that?"</p> + +<p>"The doctor asked me. He asked me if he had been in the habit of taking +too much."</p> + +<p>Hannay heaved a deep sigh of discomfort and disappointment.</p> + +<p>"It's no good," said she, "trying to keep things from me. And there's +another thing that I must know."</p> + +<p>"You're distressing yourself most needlessly. There is nothing more to +know."</p> + +<p>"I know that woman was here. I do not know whether he came here to meet +her."</p> + +<p>"Ah well—that I can assure you he did not."</p> + +<p>"Still—he must have met her. She was here."</p> + +<p>"How do you know that she was here?"</p> + +<p>"You saw her yourself, coming out of the hotel. You were horrified, and +you pulled me back so that I shouldn't see her."</p> + +<p>"There's nothing in that, nothing whatever."</p> + +<p>"If you'd seen your own face, Mr. Hannay, you would have said there was +everything in it."</p> + +<p>"My face, dear Mrs. Majendie, does not prove that they met. Or that there +was any reason why they shouldn't meet. It only proves my fear lest Lady +Cayley should stop and speak to you. A thing she wouldn't be very likely +to do if they had met—as you suppose."</p> + +<p>"There is nothing that woman wouldn't do."</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that."</p> + +<p>"I don't know."</p> + +<p>"No. You don't know. So you're bound to give her the benefit of the +doubt. I advise you to do it. For your own peace of mind's sake. And for +your husband's sake."</p> + +<p>"It was for his sake that I asked you for the truth. Because—"</p> + +<p>"You wanted me to clear him?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Or to tell me if there is anything I should forgive."</p> + +<p>"I can assure you he didn't come here to see Sarah Cayley. As to +forgiveness—you haven't got to forgive him that; and if you only +understood, you'd find that there was precious little you ever had to +forgive."</p> + +<p>"If I only understood. You think I don't understand, even yet?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sure you don't. You never did."</p> + +<p>"I would give everything if I could understand now."</p> + +<p>"Yes, if you could. But can you?"</p> + +<p>"I've tried very hard. I've prayed to God to make me understand."</p> + +<p>Poor Hannay was embarrassed at the name of God. He fell to contemplating +his waistcoat buttons in profound abstraction for a while. Then he spoke.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mrs. Majendie. Poor Walter always said you were much too good +for him. If you'll pardon my saying so, I never believed that until now. +Now, upon my soul, I do believe it. And I believe that's where the +trouble's been all along. There are things about a man that a woman like +you cannot understand. She doesn't try to understand them. She doesn't +want to. She'd die rather than know. So—well—the whole thing's wrapped +up in mystery, and she thinks it's something awful and iniquitous, +something incomprehensible."</p> + +<p>"Yes. If she thinks about it at all."</p> + +<p>"My dear lady, very often she thinks about it a great deal more than is +good for her, and she thinks wrong. She's bound to, being what she is. +Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there's certain to +be trouble."</p> + +<p>He paused, pondering. "My wife's a dear, good, little woman," he said +presently; "she's the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare +say to outsiders, she's a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I +don't call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn't a good +man at all before she married me. D'you mind my talking about myself like +this?"</p> + +<p>"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don't think I do."</p> + +<p>"You do, I'm afraid. I don't much like it myself. But, you see, I'm +trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I want to understand."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, I'm not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I'd no +more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would +of committing a murder. But, if she'd been 'too good' for me, there's +no knowing what I mightn't have done. D'you see?"</p> + +<p>"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband +left me."</p> + +<p>"Your fault? No. It was hardly your <i>fault</i>, Mrs. Majendie."</p> + +<p>He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away +with the idea that—that this sort of thing is so tremendously important +to us. It isn't. It isn't."</p> + +<p>"Then why behave as if it were?"</p> + +<p>"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married +and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't +happy—but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The +ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to—his business, +his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are <i>the</i> +important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up +his time."</p> + +<p>"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count."</p> + +<p>"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the +woman may <i>be</i> his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it +certainly was so."</p> + +<p>Her face quivered.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said, "what beats you is—how a man can love his wife +with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her."</p> + +<p>"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once, +long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand."</p> + +<p>"Well—well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are +brutes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about Walter."</p> + +<p>"Yes. We're talking about Walter."</p> + +<p>"And Walter is my dearest friend, so dear that I hardly know how to talk +to you about him."</p> + +<p>"Try," she said.</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose I know more about him than anybody else. And I never +knew a man freer from any weakness for women. He was always so awfully +sorry for them, don't you know. Sarah Cayley could never have fastened +herself on him if he hadn't been sorry for her. No more could that +girl—Maggie Forrest."</p> + +<p>"How did he come to know her?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, some fellow he knew had behaved pretty badly to her, and Walter had +been paying for her keep, years before there was anything between them. +She got dependent on him, and he on her. We are pathetically dependent +creatures, Mrs. Majendie."</p> + +<p>"What was she like?"</p> + +<p>"She? Oh, a soft, simple, clinging little thing. And instead of shaking +her off, he let her cling. That's how it all began. Then, of course, the +rest followed. I'm not excusing him, mind you. Only—" Poor Hannay became +shy and unhappy. He hid his face in his hands and lifted it from them, +red, as if with shame. "The fact is," he said, "I'm a clumsy fellow, Mrs. +Majendie. I want to help you, but I'm afraid of hurting you."</p> + +<p>"Nothing can hurt me now."</p> + +<p>"Well—" He pondered again. "If you want to get down to the root of it, +it's as simple as hunger and thirst."</p> + +<p>"Hunger and thirst," she murmured.</p> + +<p>"It's what I've been trying to tell you. When you're not thirsty you +don't think about drinking. When you are thirsty, you do. When you're +driven mad with thirst, you think of nothing else. And sometimes—not +always—when you can't get clean water, you drink water that's—not +so clean. Though you may be very particular. Walter was—morally—the +most particular man I ever knew."</p> + +<p>"I know. I know."</p> + +<p>"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he'll be. And +supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he +goes out, some kind person offers him a drink—can you blame him very +much if, some day, he takes it?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him.</p> + +<p>"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know <i>why</i> I'm saying all +this."</p> + +<p>"To help me," she said humbly.</p> + +<p>"And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he's going to live or +die. And I've told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn't have +to judge him harshly, and if he doesn't die, you may feel that he's—he's +given back to you. D'you see?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see," she said softly.</p> + +<p>She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected. +She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him +coarse in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any +existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any +good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an +instant. Now she knew.</p> + +<p>She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that +her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now +she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He +had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the +gentlest woman could not have been more kind.</p> + +<p>She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration. +"Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to +me."</p> + +<p>She took up her third night's watch.</p> + +<p>The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her +own punctual sleep.</p> + +<p>There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the +sightless eyes.</p> + +<p>Anne sat by her husband's side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the +life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that +she had no right to touch him.</p> + +<p>She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she +had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her, +and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she +had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity +for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had +been merciless where she owed most mercy.</p> + +<p>Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and +that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the +same view of her. They had all told her the same thing.</p> + +<p>She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband's ruin.</p> + +<p>Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had +done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible +side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that +was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it +with him.</p> + +<p>Where she had wronged him most had been in the pitiless refusals of her +soul. And even there she had wronged him less by the things she had +refused to give than by the things that she had refused to take. There +were sanctities and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and +half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had +shut her eyes that she might justify herself.</p> + +<p>Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of +herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride.</p> + +<p>And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened +to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little +child's voice, nor to the voice of God in her own heart. Then, that she +might be humbled, she had had to take God's message from the persons +whom she had most detested and despised.</p> + +<p>She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted +by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs. +Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had +been, by her share of that one godlike thing.</p> + +<p>She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and +blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as +things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the +hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner +uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come +near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known.</p> + +<p>And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and +humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew.</p> + +<p>Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's +redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the +soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of +the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going +upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the +spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way.</p> + +<p>It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known +it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over +again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more +turning back.</p> + +<p>She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and +tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw +love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and +into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality. +She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not +been proven in the house of flesh.</p> + +<p>She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away +from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here.</p> + +<p>And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down +under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a +sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life. She saw what they +might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of +herself and him. She thought of his patience, his chivalry and +forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child.</p> + +<p>God had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him. God had +given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped, +she had not protected him.</p> + +<p>God had dealt justly with her. She had loved God; but God had rejected a +love that was owing to her husband. Looking back, she saw that she had +been nearest to God in the days when she had been nearest to her husband. +The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from God. +And she had not seen it.</p> + +<p>All the love that was in her she had given to her child. Her child had +been born that she might see that the love which was given to her was +holy; and she had not seen it. So God had taken her child from her that +she might see.</p> + +<p>And seeing that, she saw herself aright. That passion of motherhood was +not all the love that was in her. The love that was in her had sprung up, +full-grown, in a single night. And it had grown to the stature of the +diviner love she saw. And as she felt that great springing up of love, +with all its strong endurances and charities, she saw herself redeemed by +her husband's sin.</p> + +<p>There she paused, trembling. It was a great and terrible mystery, that +the sin of his body should be the saving of her soul. And as she thought +of the price paid for her, she humbled herself once more in her shame.</p> + +<p>She was no longer afraid that he would die. Something told her that he +would live, that he would be given back to her. She dared not think how. +He might be given back paralysed, helpless, and with a ruined mind. Her +punishment might be the continual reproach of his presence, her only +consolation the tending of the body she had tortured, humiliated, and +destroyed. She prayed God to be merciful and spare her that.</p> + +<p>And on the morning of the fifth day Majendie woke from his terrible +sleep. He could see light. Towards evening his breathing softened and +grew soundless. And on the dawn of the sixth day he called her name, +"Nancy."</p> + +<p>Then she knew that for a little time he would be given back to her. And, +as she nursed him, love in her moved with a new ardour and a new +surrender. For more than seven years her pulses had been proof against +his passion and his strength. Now, at the touch of his helpless body, +they stirred with a strange, adoring tenderness. But as yet she went +humbly, in her fear of the punishment that might be measured to her. She +told herself it was enough that he was aware of her, of her touch, of her +voice, of her face as it bent over him. She hushed the new-born hope in +her heart, lest its cry should wake the angel of the divine retribution.</p> + +<p>Then, week by week, slowly, a little joy came to her, as she saw the +gradual return of power to the paralysed body and clearness to the +flooded brain. She wondered, when he would begin to remember, whether +her face would recall to him their last interview, her cruelty, her +repudiation.</p> + +<p>At last she knew that he remembered. She dared not ask herself "How +much?" It was borne in on her that it was this way that her punishment +would come.</p> + +<p>For, as he gradually recovered, his manner to her became more +constrained; notwithstanding his helpless dependence on her. He was shy +and humble; grateful for the things she did for him; grateful with a +heart-rending, pitiful surprise. It was as if he had looked to come back +to the heartless woman he had known, and was puzzled at finding another +woman in her place.</p> + +<p>As the weeks wore on, and her hands had less to do for him, she felt that +his awakened spirit guarded itself from her, fenced itself more and more +with that inviolable constraint. And she bowed her head to the +punishment.</p> + +<p>When he was well enough to be moved she took him to the south coast. +There he recovered power rapidly. By the end of February he showed no +trace of his terrible illness.</p> + +<p>They were to return to Scale in the beginning of March.</p> + +<p>Then, at their home-coming, she would know whether he remembered. There +would be things that they would have to say to each other.</p> + +<p>Sometimes she thought that she could never say them; that her life was +secure only within some pure, charmed circle of inviolate silence; that +her wisdom lay in simply trusting him to understand her. She <i>could</i> +trust him. After all, she had been most marvellously "let off"; she had +not had to pay the extreme penalty; she had been allowed, oh, divinely +allowed, to prove her love for him. He could not doubt it now; it +possessed her, body and soul; it was manifest to him in her eyes, and +in her voice, and in the service of her hands.</p> + +<p>And if he said nothing, surely it would mean that he, too, trusted her to +understand.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL</h2> + +<p>They had come back. They had spent their first evening together in the +house in Prior Street. Anne had dreaded the return; for the house +remembered its sad secrets. She had dreaded it more on her husband's +account than on her own.</p> + +<p>She had passed before him through the doorway of the study; and her heart +had ached as she thought that it was in that room that she had struck at +him and put him from her. As he entered, she had turned, and closed the +door behind them, and lifted her face to his and kissed him. He had +looked at her with his kind, sad smile, but he had said nothing. All that +evening they had sat by their hearth, silent as watchers by the dead.</p> + +<p>From time to time she had been aware of his eyes resting on her in their +profound and tragic scrutiny. She had been reminded then of the things +that yet remained unsaid.</p> + +<p>At night he had risen at her signal; and she had waited while he put the +light out; and he had followed her upstairs. At her door she had stopped, +and kissed him, and said good-night, and she had turned her head to look +after him as he went. Surely, she had thought, he will come back and +speak to me.</p> + +<p>And now she was still waiting after her undressing. She said to herself, +"We have come home. But he will not come to me. He has nothing to say to +me. There is nothing that can be said. If I could only speak to him."</p> + +<p>She longed to go to him, to kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive her +and take her back again, as if it had been she who had sinned. But she +could not.</p> + +<p>She stood for a moment before the couch at the foot of the bed, ready to +slip off her long white dressing-gown. She paused. Her eyes rested on the +silver crucifix, the beloved symbol of redemption. She remembered how he +had given it to her. She had not understood him even then; but she +understood him now. She longed to tell him that she understood. But she +could not.</p> + +<p>She turned suddenly as she heard his low knock at her door. She had been +afraid to hear it once; now it made her heart beat hard with longing and +another fear. He came in. He stood by the closed door, gazing at her with +the dumb look that she knew.</p> + +<p>She went to meet him, with her hands out-stretched to him, her face +glowing.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear," she said, "you've come back to me. You've come back."</p> + +<p>He looked down on her with miserable eyes. She put her arms about him. +His face darkened and was stern to her. He held her by her arms and put +her from him, and she trembled in all her body, humiliated and rebuked.</p> + +<p>"No. Not that," he said. "Not now. I can't ask you to take me back now."</p> + +<p>"Need you ask me—now?"</p> + +<p>"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know. Darling, you don't +know."</p> + +<p>At the word of love she turned to him, beseeching him with her tender +eyes.</p> + +<p>"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you."</p> + +<p>She sat down on the couch, and made room for him beside her.</p> + +<p>"I don't want," she said, "to know more than I do."</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid you must know. When you do know you won't talk about taking +me back."</p> + +<p>"I have taken you back."</p> + +<p>"Not yet. I'd no business to come back at all, without telling you."</p> + +<p>"Tell me, then," she said.</p> + +<p>"I can't. I don't know how."</p> + +<p>She put her hand on his.</p> + +<p>"Don't," he said, "don't. I'd rather you didn't touch me."</p> + +<p>She looked at him and smiled, and her smile cut him to the heart.</p> + +<p>"Walter," she said, "are you afraid of me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"You needn't be."</p> + +<p>"I am. I'm afraid of your goodness."</p> + +<p>She smiled again.</p> + +<p>"Do you think I'm good?"</p> + +<p>"I know you are."</p> + +<p>"You don't know how you're hurting me."</p> + +<p>"I've always hurt you. And I'm going to hurt you more."</p> + +<p>"You only hurt me when you talk about my goodness. I'm not good. I never +was. And I never can be, dear, if you're afraid of me. What is it that I +<i>must know</i>?"</p> + +<p>His voice sank.</p> + +<p>"I've been unfaithful to you. Again."</p> + +<p>"With whom?" she whispered.</p> + +<p>"I can't tell you. Only—it wasn't Maggie."</p> + +<p>"When was it?"</p> + +<p>"I think it was that Sunday—at Scarby."</p> + +<p>"Why do you say you think?" she said gently. "Don't you know?"</p> + +<p>"No. I don't know much about it. I didn't know what I was doing."</p> + +<p>"You can't remember?"</p> + +<p>"No. I can't remember."</p> + +<p>"Then—are you sure you <i>were</i>—?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I think so. I don't know. That's the horrible part of it. I don't +know, I can't remember anything about it. I must have been drinking."</p> + +<p>She took his hand in hers again. "Walter, dear, don't think about it. +Don't think it was possible. Just put it all out of your head and forget +about it."</p> + +<p>"How can I when I don't know?" He rose. "See here—I oughtn't to look at +you—I oughtn't to touch you—I oughtn't to live with you, as long as I +don't know. You don't know, either."</p> + +<p>"No," she said quietly. "I don't know. Does that matter so very much when +I understand?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, if you could understand. But you never could."</p> + +<p>"I do. Supposing I had known, do you think I should not have forgiven +you?"</p> + +<p>"I'm certain you wouldn't. You couldn't. Not that."</p> + +<p>"But," she said, "I did know."</p> + +<p>His mouth twitched. His eyelids dropped before her gaze.</p> + +<p>"At least," she said, "I thought—"</p> + +<p>"You thought <i>that</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"What made you think it?"</p> + +<p>"I saw her there."</p> + +<p>"You saw her? You thought that, and yet—you would have let me come back +to you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I thought that."</p> + +<p>As he stood before her, shamed, and uncertain, and unhappy, the new +soul that had been born in her pleaded for him and assured her of his +innocence.</p> + +<p>"But," she said again, "I do not think it now."</p> + +<p>"You—you don't believe it?"</p> + +<p>"No. I believe in you."</p> + +<p>"You believe in me? After everything?"</p> + +<p>"After everything."</p> + +<p>"And you would have forgiven me that?"</p> + +<p>"I did forgive you. I forgave you all the time I thought it. There's +nothing that I wouldn't forgive you now. You know it."</p> + +<p>"I thought you might forgive me. But I never thought you'd let me come +back—after that."</p> + +<p>"You haven't. You haven't. You never left me. It's I who have come back +to you."</p> + +<p>"Nancy—" he whispered.</p> + +<p>"It's I who need forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me."</p> + +<p>"Forgive you? You?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, me."</p> + +<p>Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession.</p> + +<p>"I was unfaithful to you."</p> + +<p>"You don't know what you're saying, dear. You couldn't have been +unfaithful to me."</p> + +<p>"If I had been, would you have forgiven me?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her a long time.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said simply.</p> + +<p>"You could have forgiven me that?"</p> + +<p>"I could have forgiven you anything."</p> + +<p>She knew it. There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity. "Well," she +said, "you have worse things to forgive me."</p> + +<p>"What have I to forgive?"</p> + +<p>"Everything. If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have +had to ask for forgiveness now."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not, Nancy. But that wasn't your fault."</p> + +<p>"It was my fault. It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end."</p> + +<p>"No, no."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes. Mr. Hannay knew that. He told me so."</p> + +<p>"When?"</p> + +<p>"At Scarby."</p> + +<p>Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart.</p> + +<p>"He was a brute," he said, "to tell you that."</p> + +<p>"He wasn't. He was kind. He knew."</p> + +<p>"What did he know?"</p> + +<p>"That I would rather think that I was bad than that you were."</p> + +<p>"And would you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes I would—now. Mr. Hannay spared me all he could. He didn't tell me +that if you had died at Scarby it would have been my fault. But it would +have been."</p> + +<p>He groaned.</p> + +<p>"Darling—you couldn't say that if you knew anything about it."</p> + +<p>"I know all about it."</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Listen, Walter. You've been unfaithful to me—once, years after I gave +you cause. I've been unfaithful to you ever since I married you. And your +unfaithfulness was nothing to mine. A woman once told me that. She said +you'd only broken one of your marriage vows, and I had broken all of +them, except one. It was true."</p> + +<p>"Who said that to you?"</p> + +<p>"Never mind who. It needed saying. It was true. I sinned against the +light. I knew what you were. You were good and you loved me. You were +unhappy through loving me, and I shut my eyes to it. I've done more harm +to you than that poor girl—Maggie. You would never have gone to her if I +hadn't driven you. You loved me."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I loved you."</p> + +<p>She turned to him again; and her eyes searched his for absolution. "I +didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand."</p> + +<p>"No. A woman doesn't, dear. Not when she's as good as you."</p> + +<p>At that a sob shook her. In the passion of her abasement she had cast off +all her beautiful spiritual apparel. Now she would have laid down her +crown, her purity, at his feet.</p> + +<p>"I thought I was so good. And I sinned against my husband more that he +ever sinned against me."</p> + +<p>He took her hands and tried to draw her to him, but she broke away, and +slid to the floor and knelt there, bowing her head upon his knee. Her +hair fell, loosened, upon her shoulders, veiling her.</p> + +<p>He stooped and raised her. His hand smoothed back the hair that hid her +face. Her eyes were closed.</p> + +<p>Her drenched eyelids felt his lips upon them. They opened; and in her +eyes he saw love risen to immortality through mortal tears. She looked at +him, and she knew him as she knew her own soul.</p> + + +<p>The End</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_MAY_SINCLAIR" id="By_MAY_SINCLAIR"></a>By MAY SINCLAIR</h2> + +<p>THE HELPMATE</p> + +<p><i>The Literary Digest</i> says: "The novels of May Sinclair make waste paper +of most of the fiction of a season." This new story, the first written +since "The Divine Fire," will strengthen the author's reputation. +It has been serialized in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, and <i>The New York Sun</i> +says of an early instalment:</p> + +<p>"Miss Sinclair's new novel, 'The Helpmate,' is attracting much attention. +It is a miniature painting of delicacy and skill, reproducing few +characters in a small space, with fine sincerity,—the invalid sister, +the man with a past, and the wife with strict convictions. The riddle is +to find which one of the women is the helpmate. In the vital situation +thus far developed the sister is leading in the race."</p> + +<p>As the plot develops the canvas is filled in with other characters as +finely drawn. The story grips the reader. Lovers of good literature and +of a good story will delight in its development.</p> + + +<p>THE DIVINE FIRE</p> + +<p>The story of the regeneration of a London poet and the degeneration of a +London critic. 15th printing.</p> + + +<p>MARY MOSS in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>: "Certain it is that in all +our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 'The Divine +Fire,' nothing even remotely approaching the same class."</p> + + +<p>AUDREY CRAVEN</p> + +<p>The story of a pretty little woman with the soul of a spoiled child, who +had a fatal fascination for most men.</p> + +<p><i>Literary Digest</i>: "Humor is of the spontaneous sort and rings true, and +the lancet of her wit and epigram, tho keen, is never cruel.... An author +whose novels may be said to make waste paper of most of the fiction of a +season."</p> + + +<p>SUPERSEDED</p> + +<p>The story of two highly contrasted teachers in a girls' school.</p> + +<p><i>New York Sun</i>: "It makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little +English woman may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen."</p> + + +<p>THE TYSONS</p> + +<p>(MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON)</p> + +<p><i>Chicago Record-Herald</i>: "Maintains a clinging grip upon the +mind and senses, compelling one to acknowledge the author's +genius."</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 17867-h.txt or 17867-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/6/17867">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/8/6/17867</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a> + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** +</pre> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/17867.txt b/17867.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2234b2e --- /dev/null +++ b/17867.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15714 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Helpmate, by May Sinclair + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Helpmate + + +Author: May Sinclair + + + +Release Date: February 26, 2006 [eBook #17867] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE*** + + +E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) + + + +THE HELPMATE + +by + +MAY SINCLAIR + +Author of "The Divine Fire," "Superseded," "Audrey Craven," Etc. + + + + + + + +New York +Henry Holt and Company +1907 +The Quinn & Boden Co. Press +Rahway, N.J. + + + + + +BOOK I + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +It was four o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Walter Majendie still lay on +the extreme edge of the bed, with her face turned to the dim line of sea +discernible through the open window of the hotel bedroom. + +Since midnight, when she had gone to bed, she had lain in that +uncomfortable position, motionless, irremediably awake. Mrs. Walter +Majendie was thinking. + +At first the night had gone by her unperceived, black and timeless. Now +she could measure time by the dull progress of the dawn among the objects +in the room. A slow, unhappy thing, born between featureless grey cloud +and sea, it had travelled from the window, shimmered in the watery square +of the looking-glass, and was feeling for the chair where her husband had +laid his clothes down last night. He had thought she was asleep, and had +gone through his undressing noiselessly, with movements of angelic and +elaborate gentleness that well-nigh disarmed her thought. He was sleeping +now. She tried not to hear the sound of his placid breathing. Only the +other night, their wedding night, she had lain awake at this hour and +heard it, and had turned her face towards him where he lay in the divine +unconsciousness of sleep. The childlike, huddled posture of the sleeper +had then stirred her heart to an unimaginable tenderness. + +Now she had got to think, to adjust a new and devastating idea to a +beloved and divine belief. + +Somewhere in the quiet town a church clock clanged to the dawn, and the +sleeper stretched himself. The five hours' torture of her thinking wrung +a low sob from the woman at his side. + +He woke. His hand searched for her hand. At his touch she drew it away, +and moved from under her cramped shoulder the thick, warm braid of her +hair. It tossed a gleam of pale gold to the risen light. She felt his +drowsy, affectionate fingers pressing and smoothing the springy bosses of +the braid. + +The caress kindled her dull thoughts to a point of flame. She sat up and +twisted the offending braid into a rigid coil. + +"Walter," she said, "_who_ is Lady Cayley?" + +She noticed that the name waked him. + +"Does it matter now? Can't you forget her?" + +"Forget her? I know nothing about her. I want to know." + +"Haven't you been told everything that was necessary?" + +"I've been told nothing. It was what I heard." + +There was a terrible stillness about him. Only his breath came and went +unsteadily, shaken by the beating of his heart. + +She quieted her own heart to listen to it; as if she could gather from +such involuntary motions the thing she had to know. + +"I know," she said, "I oughtn't to have heard it. And I can't believe +it,--I don't, really." + +"Poor child! What is it that you don't believe?" + +His calm, assured tones had the force of a denial. + +"Walter--if you'd only say it isn't true--" + +"What Edith told you?" + +"Edith? Your sister? No; about that woman--that you--that she--" + +"Why are you bringing all that up again, at this unearthly hour?" + +"Then," she said coldly, "it _is_ true." + +His silence lay between them like a sword. + +She had rehearsed this scene many times in the five hours; but she had +not prepared herself for this. Her dread had been held captive by her +belief, her triumphant anticipation of Majendie's denial. + +Presently he spoke; and his voice was strange to her as the voice of +another man. + +"Anne," he said, "didn't she tell you? It was before I knew you. And it +was the only time." + +"Don't speak to me," she cried with a sudden passion, and lay shuddering. + +She rose, slipped from the bed, and went to a chair that stood by the +open window. There she sat, with her back to the bed, and her eyes +staring over the grey parade and out to the eastern sea. + +"Anne," said her husband, "what are you doing there?" + +Anne made no answer. + +"Come back to bed; you'll catch cold." + +He waited. + +"How long are you going to sit there in that draught?" + +She sat on, upright, immovable, in her thin nightgown, raked by the keen +air of the dawn. Majendie raised himself on his elbow. He could just see +her where she glimmered, and her braid of hair, uncoiled, hanging to her +waist. Up till now he had been profoundly unhappy and ashamed, but +something in the unconquerable obstinacy of her attitude appealed to the +devil that lived in him, a devil of untimely and disastrous humour. The +right thing, he felt, was not to appear as angry as he was. He sat up on +his pillow, and began to talk to her with genial informality. + +"See here,--I suppose you want an explanation. But don't you think we'd +better wait until we're up? Up and dressed, I mean. I can't talk +seriously before I've had a bath and--and brushed my hair. You see, +you've taken rather an unfair advantage of me by getting out of bed." +(He paused for an answer, and still no answer came.)--"Don't imagine I'm +ignobly lying down all the time, wrapped in a blanket. I'm sitting on my +pillow. I know there's any amount to be said. But how do you suppose I'm +going to say it if I've got to stay here, all curled up like a blessed +Buddha, and you're planted away over there like a monument of all the +Christian virtues? Are you coming back to bed, or are you not?" + +She shivered. To her mind his flippancy, appalling in the circumstances, +sufficiently revealed the man he was. The man she had known and married +had never existed. For she had married Walter Majendie believing him to +be good. The belief had been so rooted in her that nothing but his own +words or his own silence could have cast it out. She had loved Walter +Majendie; but it was another man who called to her, and she would not +listen to him. She felt that she could never go back to that man, never +sit in the same room, or live in the same house with him again. She would +have to make up her mind what she would do, eventually. Meanwhile, to get +away from him, to sit there in the cold, inflexible, insensitive, to +obtain a sort of spiritual divorce from him, while she martyrised her +body which was wedded to him, that was the young, despotic instinct she +obeyed. + +"If you won't come," he said, "I suppose it only remains for me to go." + +He got up, took Anne's cloak from the door where it hung, and put it +tenderly about her shoulders. + +"Whatever happens or unhappens," he said, "we must be dressed." + +He found her slippers, and thrust them on her passive feet. She lay back +and closed her eyes. From the movements that she heard, she gathered that +Walter was getting into his clothes. Once, as he struggled with an +insufficiently subservient shirt, he laughed, from mere miserable +nervousness. Anne, not recognising the utterance of his helpless +humanity, put that laugh down to the account of the devil that had +insulted her. Her heart grew harder. + +"I am clothed, and in my right mind," said Majendie, standing before her +with his hand on the window sill. + +She looked up at him, at the face she knew, the face that (oddly, it +seemed to her) had not changed to suit her new conception of him, that +maintained its protest. She had loved everything about him, from the +dark, curling hair of his head to his well-finished feet; she had loved +his slender, virile body, and the clean red and brown of his face, the +strong jaw and the mouth that, hidden under the short moustache, she +divined only to be no less strong. More than these things she had loved +his eyes, the dark, bright dwelling-places of the "goodness" she had +loved best of all in him. Used to smiling as they looked at her, they +smiled even now. + +"If you'll take my advice," he said, "you'll go back to your warm bed. +You shall have the whole place to yourself." + +And with that he left her. + +She rose, went to the bed, arranged the turned-back blanket so as to hide +the place where he had lain, and slid on to her knees, supporting herself +by the bedside. + +Never before had Anne hurled herself into the heavenly places in +turbulence and disarray. It had been her wont to come, punctual to some +holy, foreappointed hour, with firm hands folded, with a back that, even +in bowing, preserved its pride; with meek eyes, close-lidded; with +breathing hushed for the calm passage of her prayer; herself marshalling +the procession of her dedicated thoughts, virgins all, veiled even before +their God. + +Now she precipitated herself with clutching hands thrown out before her; +with hot eyes that drank the tears of their own passion; with the shamed +back and panting mouth of a Magdalen; with memories that scattered the +veiled procession of the Prayers. They fled before her, the Prayers, in a +gleaming tumult, a rout of heavenly wings that obscured her heaven. When +they had vanished a sudden vagueness came upon her. + +And then it seemed that the storm that had gone over her had rolled her +mind out before her, like a sheet of white-hot iron. There was a record +on it, newly traced, of things that passion makes indiscernible under its +consuming and aspiring flame. Now, at the falling of the flame, the faint +characters flashed into sight upon the blank, running in waves, as when +hot iron changes from white to sullen red. Anne felt that her union with +Majendie had made her one with that other woman, that she shared her +memory and her shame. For Majendie's sake she loathed her womanhood that +was yesterday as sacred to her as her soul. Through him she had conceived +a thing hitherto unknown to her, a passionate consciousness and hatred of +her body. She hated the hands that had held him, the feet that had gone +with him, the lips that had touched him, the eyes that had looked at him +to love him. Him she detested, not so much on his own account, as because +he had made her detestable to herself. + +Her eyes wandered round the room. Its alien aspect was becoming +transformed for her, like a scene on a tragic stage. The light had +established itself in the windows and pier-glasses. The wall-paper was +flushing in its own pink dawn. And the roses bloomed again on the grey +ground of the bed-curtains. These things had become familiar, even dear, +through their three days' association with her happy bridals. Now the +room and everything in it seemed to have been created for all time to be +the accomplices and ministers of her degradation. They were well +acquainted with her and it; they held foreknowledge of her, as the +pier-glass held her dishonoured and dishevelled image. + +She thought of her dead father's house, the ivy-coated Deanery in the +south, and of the small white bedroom, a girl's bedroom that had once +known her and would never know her again. She thought of her father and +mother, and was glad that they were dead. Once she wondered why their +death had been God's will. Now she saw very clearly why. But why she +herself should have been sent upon this road, of all roads of suffering, +was more than Anne could see. + +She, whose nature revolted against the despotically human, had schooled +herself into submission to the divine. Her sense of being supremely +guided and protected had, before now, enabled her to act with decision +in turbulent and uncertain situations of another sort. Where other people +writhed or vacillated, Anne had held on her course, uplifted, +unimpassioned, and resigned. Now she was driven hither and thither, +she sank to the very dust and turned in it, she saw no way before her, +neither her own way nor God's way. + +Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless. If her +husband's body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood +beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his +spirit. But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her love, love +that had already given itself over, too weak to struggle against +dissolution, it was as if she had seen some horrible reversal of the +law of death, spirit returning to earth, the incorruptible putting on +corruption. + +Not only was her house of life made desolate; it was defiled. Dumb and +ashamed, she abandoned herself like a child to the arms of God, too +agonised to pray. + +An hour passed. + +Then slowly, as she knelt, the religious instinct regained possession of +her. It was as if her soul had been flung adrift, had gone out with the +ebb of the spiritual sea, and now rocked, poised, waiting for the turn of +the immortal tide. + +Her lips parted, almost mechanically, in the utterance of the divine +name. Aware of that first motion of her soul, she gathered herself +together, and concentrated her will upon some familiar prayer for +guidance. For a little while she prayed thus, grasping at old shadowy +forms of petition as they went by her, lifting her sunken mind by main +force from stupefaction; and then, it was as if the urging, steadying +will withdrew, and her soul, at some heavenly signal, moved on alone into +the place of peace. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +It was broad daylight outside. A man was putting out the lights one by +one along the cold little grey parade. A figure, walking slowly, with +down-bent head, was approaching the hotel from the pier. Anne recognised +it as that of her husband. Both sights reminded her that her life had to +be begun all over again, and to go on. + +Another hour passed. Majendie had sent up a waitress with breakfast to +her room. He was always thoughtful for her comfort. It did not occur to +her to wonder what significance there might be in his thus keeping away +from her, or what attitude toward her he would now be inclined to take. +She would not have admitted that he had a right to any attitude at all. +It was for her, as the profoundly injured person, to decide as to the new +disposal of their relations. + +She was very clear about her grievance. The facts, that her husband had +been pointed at in the public drawing-room of their hotel; that the +terrible statement she had overheard had been made and received casually; +that he had assumed, no less casually, her knowledge of the thing, all +bore but one interpretation: that Walter Majendie and the scandal he had +figured in were alike notorious. The marvel was that, staying in the town +where he lived and was known, she herself had not heard of it before. A +peculiarly ugly thought visited her. Was it possible that Scarby was the +very place where the scandal had occurred? + +She remembered now that, when she had first proposed that watering-place +for their honeymoon, he had objected on the ground that Scarby was full +of people whom he knew. Besides, he had said, she wouldn't like it. But +whether she would like it or not, Anne, who had her bridal dignity to +maintain, considered that in the matter of her honeymoon his wishes +should give way to hers. She was inclined to measure the extent of his +devotion by that test. Scarby, she said, was not full of people who knew +_her_. Anne had been insistent and Majendie passive, as he was in most +unimportant matters, reserving his energies for supremely decisive +moments. + +Anne, bearing her belief in Majendie in her innocent breast, failed at +first to connect her husband with the remarkable intimations that passed +between the two newcomers gossiping in the drawing-room before dinner. +They, for their part, had no clue linking the unapproachably strange lady +on the neighbouring sofa with the hero of their tale. The case, they +said, was "infamous." At that point Majendie had put an end to his own +history and his wife's uncertainty by entering the room. Three words and +a look, observed by Anne, had established his identity. + +Her mind was steadied by its inalienable possession of the facts. She had +returned through prayer to her normal mood of religious resignation. She +tried to support herself further by a chain of reasoning. If all things +were divinely ordered, this sorrow also was the will of God. It was the +burden she was appointed to take up and bear. + +She bathed and dressed herself for the day. She felt so strange +to herself in these familiar processes that, standing before the +looking-glass, she was curious to observe what manner of woman she had +become. The inner upheaval had been so profound that she was surprised +to find so little record of it in her outward seeming. + +Anne was a woman whose beauty was a thing of general effect, and the +general effect remained uninjured. Nature had bestowed on her a body +strongly made and superbly fashioned. Having framed her well, she +coloured her but faintly. She had given her eyes of a light thick grey. +Her eyebrows, her lashes, and her hair were of a pale gold that had ashen +undershades in it. They all but matched a skin honey-white with that +even, sombre, untransparent tone that belongs to a temperament at once +bilious and robust. For the rest, Nature had aimed nobly at the +significance of the whole, slurring the details. She had built up the +forehead low and wide, thrown out the eyebones as a shelter for the +slightly prominent eyes; saved the short, straight line of the nose by a +hair's-breadth from a tragic droop. But she had scamped her work in +modelling the close, narrow nostrils. She had merged the lower lip with +the line of the chin, missing the classic indentation. The mouth itself +she had left unfinished. Only a little amber mole, verging on the thin +rose of the upper lip, foreshortened it, and gave to its low arc the +emphasis of a curve, the vivacity of a dimple (Anne's under lip was +straight as the tense string of a bow). When she spoke or smiled Anne's +mole seemed literally to catch up her lip against its will, on purpose to +show the small white teeth below. Majendie loved Anne's mole. It was that +one charming and emphatic fault in her face, he said, that made it human. +But Anne was ashamed of it. + +She surveyed her own reflection in the glass sadly, and sadly went +through the practised, mechanical motions of her dressing; smoothing the +back of her irreproachable coat, arranging her delicate laces with a +deftness no indifference could impair. Yesterday she had had delight in +that new garment and in her own appearance. She knew that Majendie +admired her for her distinction and refinement. Now she wondered what he +could have seen in her--after Lady Cayley. At Lady Cayley's personality +she had not permitted herself so much as to guess. Enough that the woman +was notorious--infamous. + +There was a knock at the door, the low knock she had come to know, and +Majendie entered in obedience to her faint call. + +The hours had changed him, given his bright face a tragic, submissive +look, as of a man whipped and hounded to her feet. + +He glanced first at the tray, to see if she had eaten her breakfast. + +"There are some things I should like to say to you, with your permission. +But I think we can discuss them better out of doors." + +He looked round the disordered room. The associations of the place were +evidently as painful to him as they were to her. + +They went out. The parade was deserted at that early hour, and they found +an empty seat at the far end of it. + +"I, too," she said, "have things that I should like to say." + +He looked at her gravely. + +"Will you allow me to say mine first?" + +"Certainly; but I warn you, they will make no difference." + +"To you, possibly not. They make all the difference to me. I'm not going +to attempt to defend myself. I can see the whole thing from your point of +view. I've been thinking it over. Didn't you say that what you heard you +had not heard from Edith?" + +"From Edith? Never!" + +"When did you hear it, then?" + +"Yesterday afternoon." + +"From some one in the hotel?" + +"Yes." + +"From whom? Not that it matters." + +"From those women who came yesterday. I didn't know whom they were +talking about. They were talking quite loud. They didn't know who I was." + +"You say you didn't know whom they were talking about?" + +"Not at first--not till you came in. Then I knew." + +"I see. That was the first time you had heard of it?" + +Her lips parted in assent, but her voice died under the torture. + +"Then," he said, "I am profoundly sorry. If I had realised that, I would +not have spoken to you as I did." + +The memory of it stung her. + +"That," she said, "was--in any circumstances--unpardonable." + +"I know it was. And I repeat, I am profoundly sorry. But, you see, I +thought you knew all the time, and that you had consented to forget it. +And I thought, don't you know, it was--well, rather hard on me to have it +all raked up again like that. Now I see how very hard it was on you, +dear. Your not knowing makes all the difference." + +"It does indeed. If I _had_ known----" + +"I understand. You wouldn't have married me?" + +"I should not." + +"Dear--do you suppose I didn't know that?" + +"I know nothing." + +"Do you remember the day I asked you why you cared for me, and you said +it was because you knew I was good?" + +Her lip trembled. + +"And of course I know it's been an awful shock to you to discover +that--I--was _not_ so good." + +She turned away her face. + +"But I never meant you to discover it. Not for yourself, like this. I +couldn't have forgiven myself--after what you told me. I meant to have +told you myself--that evening--but my poor little sister promised me that +she would. She said it would be easier for you to hear it from her. Of +course I believed her. There _were_ things she could say that I +couldn't." + +"She never said a word." + +"Are you sure?" + +"Perfectly. Except--yes--she _did_ say----" + +It was coming back to her now. + +"Do you mind telling me exactly what she said?" + +"N--no. She made me promise that if I ever found things in you that I +didn't understand, or that I didn't like----" + +"Well--what did she make you promise?" + +"That I wouldn't be hard on you. Because, she said, you'd had such a +miserable life." + +"Poor Edith! So that was the nearest she could get to it. Things you +didn't understand and didn't like!" + +"I didn't know what she meant." + +"Of course you didn't. Who could? But I'm sorry to say that Edith made me +pretty well believe you did." + +He was silent a while, trying to fathom the reason of his sister's +strange duplicity. Apparently he gave it up. + +"You can't be a brute to a poor little woman with a bad spine," said he; +"but I'm not going to forgive Edith for that." + +Anne flamed through her pallor. "For what?" she said. "For not having had +more courage than yourself? Think what you put on her." + +"I didn't. She took it on herself. Edith's got courage enough for +anybody. She would never admit that her spine released her from all moral +obligations. But I suppose she meant well." + +The spirit of the grey, cold morning seemed to have settled upon Anne. +She gazed sternly out over the eastern sea. Preoccupied with what he +considered Edith's perfidy, he failed to understand his wife's silence +and her mood. + +"Edith's very fond of you. You won't let this make any difference between +you and her?" + +"Between her and me it can make no difference. I am very fond of Edith." + +"But the fact remains that you married me under false pretences? Is that +what you mean?" + +"You may certainly put it that way." + +"I understand your point of view completely. I wish you could understand +mine. When Edith said there were things she could have told you that I +couldn't, she meant that there were extenuating circumstances." + +"They would have made no difference." + +"Excuse me, they make all the difference. But, of course, there's no +extenuation for deception. Therefore, if you insist on putting it that +way--if--if it has made the whole thing intolerable to you, it seems to +me that perhaps I ought, don't you know, to release you from your +obligations----" + +She looked at him. She knew that he had understood the meaning and the +depth of her repugnance. She did not know that such understanding is +rare in the circumstances, nor could she see that in itself it was a +revelation of a certain capacity for the "goodness" she had once believed +in. But she did see that she was being treated with a delicacy and +consideration she had not expected of this man with the strange devil. +It touched her in spite of her repugnance. It made her own that she had +expected nothing short of it until yesterday. + +"_Do_ you insist?" he went on. "After what I've told you?" + +"After what you've told me--no. I'm ready to believe that you did not +mean to deceive me." + +"Doesn't that make any difference?" he asked tenderly. + +"Yes. It makes some difference--in my judgment of you." + +"You mean you're not--as Edith would say--going to be too hard on me?" + +"I hope," said Anne, "I should never be too hard on any one." + +"Then," he inquired, eager to be released from the strain of a most +insupportable situation, "what are we going to do next?" + +He had assumed that the supreme issue had been decided by a polite +evasion; and his question had been innocent of all momentous meaning. He +merely wished to know how they were going to spend the day that was +before them, since they had to spend days, and spend them together. But +Anne's tense mind contemplated nothing short of the supreme issue that, +for her, was not to be evaded, nor yet to be decided hastily. + +"Will you leave me alone," she said, "to think it over? Will you give me +three hours?" + +He stared and turned pale; for, this time, he understood. + +"Certainly," he said coldly, rising and taking out his watch. "It's +twelve now." + +"At three, then?" + +They met at three o'clock. Anne had spent one hour of bewilderment out of +doors, two hours of hard praying and harder thinking in her room. + +Her mind was made up. However notorious her husband had been, between him +and her there was to be no open rupture. She was not going to leave him, +to appeal to him for a separation, to deny him any right. Not that she +was moved by a profound veneration for the legal claim. Marriage was to +her a matter of religion even more than of law. And though, at the +moment, she could no longer discern its sacramental significance through +the degraded aspect it now wore for her, she surrendered on the religious +ground. The surrender would be a martyrdom. She was called upon to lay +down her will, but not to subdue the deep repugnance of her soul. + +Protection lay for her in Walter's chivalry, as she well knew. But she +would not claim it. Chastened and humbled, she would take up her wedded +life again. There was no vow that she would not keep, no duty she would +not fulfil. And she would remain in her place of peace, building up +between them the ramparts of the spiritual life. + +Meanwhile she gave him credit for his attitude. + +"Things can never be as they were between us," she said. "That you cannot +expect. But--" + +He listened with his eyes fixed on hers, accepting from her his destiny. +She reddened. + +"It was good of you to offer to release me--" He spared her. + +"Are you not going to hold me to it, then?" + +"I am not." She paused, and then forced herself to it. "I will try to be +a good wife to you." + +"Thank you." + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +It was impossible for them to stay any longer at Scarby. The place was +haunted by the presence and the voice of scandalous rumour. Anne had the +horrible idea that it had been also a haunt of Lady Cayley, of the infamy +itself. + +The week-old honeymoon looked at them out of its clouds with such an +aged, sinister, and disastrous aspect that they resolved to get away from +it. For the sake of appearances, they spent another week of aimless +wandering on the East coast, before returning to the town where an +unintelligible fate had decided that Majendie should have a business he +detested, and a house. + +Anne had once asked herself what she would do if she were told that +she would have to spend all her life in Scale on Humber. Scale is +prevailingly, conspicuously commercial. It is not beautiful. Its streets +are squalidly flat, its houses meanly rectangular. The colouring of Scale +is thought by some to be peculiarly abominable. It is built in brown, +paved and pillared in unclean grey. Its rivers and dykes run brown under +a grey northeastern sky. + +Once a year it yields reluctantly to strange passion, and Spring is +born in Scale; born in tortures almost human, a relentless immortality +struggling with visible corruption. The wonder is that it should be born +at all. + +To-day, the day of their return, the March wind had swept the streets +clean, and the evening had secret gold and sharp silver in its grey. Anne +remembered how, only last year, she had looked upon such a spring on the +day when she guessed for the first time that Walter cared for her. She +was not highly endowed with imagination; still, even she had felt dimly, +and for once in her life, that sense of mortal tenderness and divine +uplifting which is the message of Spring to all lovers. + +But that emotion, which had had its momentary intensity for Anne +Fletcher, was over and done with for Anne Majendie. Like some mourner for +whom superb weather has been provided on the funeral day of his beloved, +she felt in this young, wantoning, unsympathetic Spring the immortal +cruelty and irony of Nature. She was bearing her own heart to its burial; +and each street that they passed, as the slow cab rattled heavily on its +way from the station, was a stage in the intolerable progress; it brought +her a little nearer to the grave. + +From her companion's respectful silence she gathered that, though lost +to the extreme funereal significance of their journey, he was not +indifferent; he shared to some extent her mourning mood. She was grateful +for that silence of his, because it justified her own. + +They were both, by their temperaments, absurdly and diversely, +almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very +worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble. +Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all +lives passed between walls that protect them from the world. At +seven-and-twenty she was a girl, with a girl's indestructible innocence. +She had not yet felt within her the springs of her own womanhood. +Marriage had not touched the spirit, which had kept itself apart even +from her happiness, in the days that were given her to be happy in. Her +suffering was like a child's, and her attitude to it bitterly immature. +It bounded her; it annihilated the intellectual form of time, +obliterating the past, and intercepting any view of a future. Only, +unlike a child, and unlike Majendie, she lacked the power of the +rebound to joy. + +"Dear," said her husband anxiously, as the cab drew up at the door of the +house in Prior Street, "have you realised that poor Edith is probably +preparing to receive us with glee? Do you think you could manage to look +a little less unhappy?" + +The words were a shock to her, but they did her the service of a shock +by recalling her to the realities outside herself. All the courtesies +and kindnesses she owed to those about her insisted that her bridal +home-coming must lack no sign of grace. She forced a smile. + +"I'm sorry. I didn't know I was looking particularly unhappy." + +It struck her that Walter was not looking by any means too happy himself. + +"It doesn't matter; only, we don't want to dash her down, first thing, do +we?" + +"No--no. Dear Edith. And there's Nanna--how sweet of her--and Kate, and +Mary, too." + +The old nurse stood on the doorstep to welcome them; her fellow-servants +were behind her, smiling, at the door. Interested faces appeared at the +windows of the house opposite. At the moment of alighting Anne was aware +that the eyes of many people were upon them, and she was thankful that +she had married a man whose self-possession, at any rate, she could rely +on. Majendie's manner was perfect. He avoided both the bridegroom's +offensive assiduity and his no less offensive affectation of +indifference. It had occurred to him that, in the circumstances, Anne +might find it peculiarly disagreeable to be stared at. + +"Look at Nanna," he whispered, to distract her attention. "There's no +doubt about her being glad to see you." + +Nanna grasped the hands held out to her, hanging her head on one side, +and smiling her tremorous, bashful smile. The other two, Kate and Mary, +came forward, affectionate, but more self-contained. Anne realised with a +curious surprise that she was coming back to a household that she knew, +that knew her and loved her. In the last week she had forgotten Prior +Street. + +Majendie watched her anxiously. But she, too, had qualities which could +be relied on. As she passed into the house she had held her head high, +with an air of flinging back the tragic gloom like a veil from her face. +She was not a woman to trail a tragedy up and down the staircase. Above +all, he could trust her trained loyalty to convention. + +The servants threw open two doors on the ground floor, and stood back +expectant. On such an occasion it was proper to look pleased and to give +praise. Anne was fine in her observance of each propriety as she looked +into the rooms prepared for her. The house in Prior Street had not lost +its simple old-world look in beautifying itself for the bride. It had put +on new blinds and clean paint, and the smell of spring flowers was +everywhere. The rest was familiar. She had told Majendie that she liked +the old things best. They appealed to her sense of the fit and the +refined; they were signs of good taste and good breeding in her husband's +family and in himself. The house was a survival, a protest against the +terrible all-invading soul of Scale on Humber. + +For another reason, which she could not yet analyse, Anne was glad that +nothing had been changed for her coming. It was as if she felt that it +would have been hard on Majendie if he had been put to much expense in +renovating his house for a woman in whom the spirit of the bride had +perished. The house in Prior Street was only a place for her body to +dwell in, for her soul to hide in, only walls around walls, the shell +of the shell. + +She turned to her husband with a smile that flashed defiance to the +invading pathos of her state. Majendie's eyes brightened with hope, +beholding her admirable behaviour. He had always thoroughly approved of +Anne. + +Upstairs, in the room that was her own, poor Edith (the cause, as he +felt, of their calamity) had indeed prepared for them with joy. + +Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her, +as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured +spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little +while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The +flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave +to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into +vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its +temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched +them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped on her cushions, had +acquired a dominant yet passionless presence, as of some regal woman of +the earth surrendered to a heavenly empire. You could see that, however +sanctified by suffering, Edith had still a placid mundane pleasure in her +white wrapper of woollen gauze, and in her long lace scarf. She wore them +with an appearance of being dressed appropriately for a superb occasion. + +The sign of her delicacy was in her hands, smoothed and wasted with +inactivity. Yet they had an energy of their own. The hands and the weak, +slender arms had a surprising way of leaping up to draw to her all +beloved persons who bent above her couch. They leapt now to her brother +and his wife, and sank, fatigued with their effort. Two frail, nervous +hands embraced Majendie's, till one of them let go, as she remembered +Anne, and held her, too. + +Anne had been vexed, and Majendie angry with her; but anger and vexation +could not live in sight of the pure, tremulous, eager soul of love that +looked at them out of Edith's eyes. + +"What a skimpy honeymoon you've had," she said. "Why did you go and cut +it short like that? Was it just because of me?" + +In one sense it was because of her. Anne was helpless before her +question; but Majendie rose to it. + +"I say--the conceit of her! No, it wasn't just because of you. Anne +agreed with me about Scarby. And we're not cutting our honeymoon short, +we're spinning it out. We're going to have another one, some day, in a +nicer place." + +"Anne didn't like Scarby, after all?" + +"No, I knew she wouldn't. And she lived to own that I was right." + +"That," said Edith, laughing, "was a bad beginning. If I'd been you, +Anne, whether I was right or not, I'd never have owned that _he_ was." + +"Anne," said Majendie, "is never anything but just. And this time she was +generous." + +Edith's hand was on the sleeve of Majendie's coat, caressing it. She +looked up at Anne. + +"And what," said she, "do you think of my little brother, on the whole?" + +"I think he says a great many things he doesn't mean." + +"Oh, you've found that out, have you? What else have you discovered?" + +The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her tragedy. + +"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?" + +Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue, +withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the +movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested +there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself. + +At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad +assumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon Nanna +as she came in with the tea-tray. + +Nanna was sly and shy and ceremonial in her bearing, but under it there +lurked the privileged audacity of the old servant, and (as poor Majendie +perceived) the secret, terrifying gaiety of the hymeneal devotee. The +faint sound of giggling on the staircase penetrated to the room. It was +evident that Nanna was preparing some horrid and tremendous rite. + +She set her tray in its place by Edith's couch, and cleared a side table +which she had drawn into a central and conspicuous position. The three, +as if humouring a child in its play, feigned a profound ignorance of what +Nanna had in hand. + +She disappeared, suppressed the giggling on the stairs, and returned, +herself in jubilee let loose. She carried an enormous plate, and on the +plate Anne's wedding-cake with all its white terraces and towers, and (a +little shattered) the sugar orange blossoms and myrtles of its crown. She +stood it alone on its table of honour, and withdrew abruptly. + +The three were stricken dumb by the presence of the bridal thing. Nanna, +listening outside the door, attributed their silence to an appreciation +too profound for utterance. + +They looked at it, and it looked at them. Its veil of myrtle, trembling +yet with the shock of its entrance, gave it the semblance of movement and +of life. It towered in the majesty of its insistent whiteness. It trailed +its mystic modesties before them. Its brittle blossoms quivered like +innocence appalled. The wide cleft at its base betrayed the black and +formidable heart beneath the fair and sugared surface. These crowding +symbols, perceptible to Edith's subtler intelligence, massed themselves +in her companions' minds as one vast sensation of discomfort. + +As usual when he was embarrassed, Majendie laughed. + +"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous +thing. _Must_ we eat it?" + +"_You_ must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't." + +"I don't think I can--possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her +sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache. + +"Let's all eat it--and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of +fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and +buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that +Nanna will dig it up again?" + +Anne turned white over her tea, pleaded her headache, and begged to be +taken to her room. Majendie took her there. + +"Isn't Anne well?" asked Edith anxiously, when he came back. + +"Oh, it's nothing. She's been seedy all day, and the sight of that cake +finished her off. I don't wonder. It's enough to upset a strong man. +Let's ring for Nanna to take it away." + +He rang. When Nanna appeared Edith was eating her crumbs ostentatiously, +as if unwilling to leave the last of a delicious thing. + +"Oh, Nanna," said she, "that's a heavenly wedding-cake!" + +Majendie was reminded of the habitual tender perfidy of that saint, his +sister. She was always lying to make other people happy, saying that she +had everything she wanted, when she hadn't, and that her spine didn't +hurt her, when it did. When Edith was too exhausted to lie, she would +look at you and smile, with the sweat of her torture on her forehead. He +knew Edith, and wondered how far she had lied to Anne, and what she had +done it for. He had a good mind to ask her; but he shrank from "dashing +her down the first day." + +But Edith herself dashed everything down the first five minutes. There +was nothing that _she_ shrank from. + +"I'm sorry for poor Anne," said she; "but it's nice to get you all to +myself again. Just for once. Only for once. I'm not jealous." + +He smiled, and stroked her hair. + +"I was jealous--oh, furiously jealous, just at first, for five minutes. +But I got over it. It was so undignified." + +"It didn't show, dear." + +"I didn't mean it to. It wouldn't have been pretty. And now, it's all +over and I like Anne. But I don't like her as much as you." + +"You must like her more," he said gravely. "She'll need it--badly." + +Edith looked at him. "How can she need it badly, when she has you?" + +"You're a good woman, and I'm a mere mortal man. She's found that out +already, and she doesn't like it." + +"Wallie, _dear_, what do you mean?" + +"I mean exactly what I say. She's found it out. She's found _me_ out. +She's found everything out." + +"Found out? But how?" + +"It doesn't matter how. Edie, why didn't you tell her? You said you +would." + +"Yes--I said I would." + +"And you told me you had." + +"No. I didn't tell you I had." + +"What did you tell me, then?" + +"I told you there was nothing to be afraid of, that it was all right." + +"And of course I thought you'd told her." + +"If I had told her it wouldn't have been all right; for she wouldn't have +married you." + +Majendie scowled, and Edith went on calmly. + +"I knew that--she as good as told me so--and I knew _her_." + +"Well--what if she hadn't married me?" + +"That would have been very bad for both of you. Especially for you." + +"For me? And how do you know this isn't going to be worse? For both of +us. It's generally better to be straight, and face facts, however +disagreeable. Especially when everybody knows that you've got a skeleton +in your cupboard." + +"Anne didn't, and she was so afraid of skeletons." + +"All the more reason why you should have hauled the horrid thing out and +let her have a good look at it. She mightn't have been afraid of it then. +Now she's convinced it's a fifty times worse skeleton than it is." + +"She wouldn't have lived with it in the house, dear. She said so." + +"But I thought you never told her?" + +"She was talking about somebody else's skeleton, dear." + +"Oh, somebody else's, that's a very different thing." + +"She meant--if she'd been the woman. I was testing her, to see how she'd +take it. Do you think I was very wrong?" + +"Well, frankly, dear, I cannot say you were very wise." + +"I wonder----" + +She lay back wondering. Doubt of her wisdom shook her through all her +tender being. She had been so sure. + +"How would you have liked it," said she, "if Anne had given you up and +gone away, and you'd never seen her again?" + +His face said plainly that he wouldn't have liked it at all. + +"Well, that's what she'd have done. And I wanted her to stay and marry +you." + +"Yes, but with her eyes open." + +She shook her head, the head that would have been so wise for him. + +"No," said she. "Anne's one of those people who see best with their eyes +shut." + +"Well, they're open enough now in all conscience. But there's one thing +she hasn't found out. She doesn't know how it happened. Can you tell her? +_I_ can't. I told her there were extenuating circumstances; but of +course I couldn't go into them." + +"What did she say?" + +"She said no circumstances could extenuate facts." + +"I can hear her saying it." + +"I understand her state of mind," said Majendie. "She couldn't see the +circumstances for the facts." + +"Our Anne is but young. In ten years' time she won't be able to see the +facts for the circumstances." + +"Well--will you tell her?" + +"Of course I will." + +"Make her see that I'm not necessarily an utter brute just because I----" + +"I'll make her see everything." + +"Forgive me for bothering you." + +"Dear--forgive me for breaking my promise and deceiving you." + +He bent to her weak arms. + +"I believe," she whispered, "the end will yet justify the means." + +"Oh--the end." + +He didn't see it; but he was convinced that there could hardly be a worse +beginning. + +He went upstairs, where Anne lay in the agonies of her bilious attack. He +found comfort, rather than gave it, by holding handkerchiefs steeped in +eau-de-Cologne to her forehead. It gratified him to find that she would +let him do it without shrinking from his touch. + +But Anne was past that. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +For once in his life Majendie was glad that he had a business. Shipping +(he was a ship-owner) was a distraction from the miserable problem that +weighed on him at home. + +Anne's morning face was cold to him. She lay crushed in her bed. She had +had a bad night, and he knew himself to be the cause of it. + +His pity for her hurt like passion. + +"How is she?" asked Edith, as he came into her room before going to the +office. + +"She's a wreck," he said, "a ruin. She's had an awful night. Be kind to +her, Edie." + +Edie was very kind. But she said to herself that if Anne was a ruin that +was not at all a bad thing. + +Edith Majendie was a loving but shrewd observer of the people of her +world. Lying on her back she saw them at an unusual angle, almost as if +they moved on a plane invisible to persons who go about upright on their +legs. The four walls of her room concentrated her vision in bounding it. +She saw few women and fewer men, but she saw them apart from those +superficial activities which distract and darken judgment. Faces that +she was obliged to see bending over her had another aspect for Edith than +that which they presented to the world at large. Anne Majendie, who had +come so near to Edith, had always put a certain distance between herself +and her other friends. While they were chiefly impressed with her superb +superiority, and saw her forever standing on a pedestal, Edith declared +that she knew nothing of Anne's austere and impressive attributes. She +protested against anything so dreary as the other people's view of her. +They and their absurd pedestals! She refused to regard her sister-in-law +as an established solemnity, eminent and lonely in the scene. Pedestals +were all very well at a proper distance, but at a close view they were +foreshortening to the human figure. Other people might like to see more +pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they +didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter. + +If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with +her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for +Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you +traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause +of all Anne's troubles. + +That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever +obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. She knew that it was her spine +that had kept her brother from marrying all those years. He couldn't +leave her alone with it, neither could he ask any woman to share the +house inhabited, pervaded, dominated by it. Unsafeguarded by marriage, he +had fallen into evil hands. To Edith, who had plenty of leisure for +reflection, all this had become terribly clear. + +Then Anne had come, the strong woman who could bear Walter's burden for +him. She had been jealous of Anne at first, for five minutes. Then she +had blessed her. + +But Edith, as she had told her brother, was not a fool. And all the time, +while her heart leapt to the image of Anne in her dearness and sweetness, +her brain saw perfectly well that her sister-in-law had not been free +from the sin of pride (that came, said Edith, of standing on a pedestal. +It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at +any rate, where you were). + +Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a +woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you +to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to +disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him. + +Anne owned herself baffled. + +Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness, +by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her +ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health. +As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man +she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen +his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling +her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in +the house in Prior Street before her memories assailed her. Her new and +detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him. +The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile +them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected +by an army of associations. The manifestations of his actual presence +were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her +memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her, +her conscience resisted and rose against them both. + +Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs +she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening. +She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's +home-coming. + +To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She +could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept +that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, +and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at +from her window. With its green grass plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong +space defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had +planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many +thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But +something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As +Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended +knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to +them. + +To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of +that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious +of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that +way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it +did not appeal to her in any way at all. + +"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of +mine--of yours, I mean." + +"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not +jealous." + +"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't +garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache." + +"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly. + +Her calmness irritated Edith. + +"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!" + +Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for. + +"You know, you used to think so, too." + +"Of course I did," said Anne evasively. + +"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?" + +"I _have_ married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?" + +"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that." + +"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying--mere marrying--may be a +great deal--about as much as many men have a right to ask." + +"Hasn't every man a right to ask for--what shall I say--a little +understanding--from the woman he cares for?" + +"Edith, what has he told you?" + +"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself." + +"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?" + +"Did he pose as _l'homme incompris_? No, he didn't." + +"Still--he told you," Anne insisted. + +"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to +her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand." + +"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring. +I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook. + +"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he +is." + +"I know what he was--what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with +what he is." + +"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him +something too bad for words?" + +Anne broke down weakly. + +"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?" + +"What? That Wallie was bad?" + +"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything." + +"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It +wouldn't have been true." + +"He says himself that everything was true." + +"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know +the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell +you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left +it to me; he said I was to tell you." + +"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me." + +"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose +for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?" + +"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible +part of it." + +"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But _I_ knew all right. He never kept +anything from me, not for long." + +"But, Edith--how _could_ he? How _could_ he? When the woman--Lady +Cayley--She was _bad_, wasn't she?" + +"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them--worse. You know she was +divorced?" + +"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know." + +"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were +several others--four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a +mere drop in her ocean." + +Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her. + +"But," said she, "he was in it." + +"Oh yes, he was in it. The ocean swallowed him as it swallowed the +others. But it couldn't keep him. He couldn't live in it, like them." + +"But how did she get hold of him?" + +"She got hold of him by appealing to his chivalry." + +(His chivalry--she knew it.) + +"It's what happens, over and over again. He thought her a vilely injured +woman. He may have thought her good. He certainly thought her pathetic. +It was the pathos that did it." + +"That--did--it?" + +"Yes. Did it. She hurled herself at his head--at his knees--at his +feet---till he _had_ to lift her. And that's how it happened." + +Anne's spirit writhed as she contemplated the happening. + +"I know it oughtn't to have happened. I know Walter wasn't the holy saint +he ought to have been. But oh, he was a martyr!" She paused. "And--he was +very young." + +"Edith--when was it?" + +"Seven years ago." + +Anne pondered. The seven years helped to purify him. Every day helped +that threw the horror further back in time--separated it from her. If--if +he had not been steeped too long in it. She wanted to know _how_ long, +but she was afraid to ask; afraid lest it should be brought nearer to her +than she could bear. Edith saw her fear. + +"It lasted two years. It was all my fault." + +"Your fault?" + +"Yes, my fault. Because of my horrid spine. You see, it kept him from +marrying." + +"Well, but--" + +"Well, but it couldn't have happened if he had married. How _could_ it? +How could it have happened if you had been there? You would have saved +him." + +She paused on that note, a long, illuminating pause. The note itself was +a divine inspiration. It rang all golden. It thrilled to the verge of the +dominant chord in Anne. It touched her soul, the mother of brooding, +mystic harmonies. + +"You would have saved him." + +Anne saw herself for one moment as his guardian angel, her mission +frustrated through a flaw of time. That vision was dashed by another, +herself as the ideal, the star he should have looked to before its dawn, +herself dishonoured by his young haste, his passion, his failure to +foresee. + +"He should have waited for me." + +"Did you wait for him?" + +A quick flush pulsed through the whiteness of Anne's face. She looked +back seven years to her girlhood in the southern Deanery, her home. She +had another vision, a vision of a Minor Canon, whom she had loved with +the pure worship of her youth, a love of which somehow she was now +ashamed. Ashamed, though it had then seemed to her so spiritual. Her dead +parents had desired the marriage, but neither she nor they had the power +to bring it about. + +Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a +venture. + +"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can +say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'" + +"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to +marry him." + +For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased +to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a +disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed +of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one +and Lady Cayley? + +"Edith," she said suddenly, "did you ever see her?" + +"Never," said Edith emphatically. + +"You don't know what she was like?" + +"I don't. I never wanted to. I dare say there are people in Scale who +could tell you all about her, only I wouldn't inquire if I were you." + +"Did it happen at Scarby?" She was determined to know the worst. + +"I believe so." + +"Oh--why did I ever go there?" + +"He didn't want you to. That was why." + +"Where is she now?" + +"Nobody knows. She might be anywhere." + +"Not here?" + +"No, not here. My dear, you mustn't get her on your nerves." + +"I'm afraid of meeting her." + +"It isn't likely that you ever will. She isn't the sort one does +meet--now, poor thing." + +"Who was she?" + +"The wife of Sir Andrew Cayley, a tallow-chandler." + +"Oh, how did Walter ever--" + +"My dear, one meets all sorts of funny people in Scale. He was a very +wealthy tallow-chandler. Besides, it wasn't he that Walter did meet, +naturally." + +"How can you joke about it? It makes me sick to think of it." + +"It made me sick enough once, dear. But I don't think of it." + +"I can't help thinking of it." + +"Well, whenever you do, when it does come over you--it will, +sometimes--think of what Walter's life was before he knew you. Everything +was spoiled for him because of me. He was sent to a place he detested +because of me; put into an office which he loathed, shut up here in this +hateful house, because of me. And he was good to me, good and dear. Even +at the worst he hardly ever left me if he thought I wanted him--not even +to go to _her_. But he was young, and it was an awful life for him; you +don't know how awful. It would have been bad enough for a woman. It was +intolerable for a man. I was worse then than I am now. I was horribly +fretful, and I worried him. I think I drove him to her--I know I did. He +had to get away from it sometimes. Won't you think of that?" + +"I'll try to think of it." + +"And it won't make you not like him?" + +"My dear, I liked him first for your sake, then I liked you for his, now +I suppose I must like him for yours again." + +"No--for his own sake." + +"Does it matter which?" + +"Not much--so long as you like him. He really is angelic, though you +mayn't think it." + +"I think you are." + +Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew +with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that +hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her +likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature +not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne, +a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers +sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing +in her hair. + +"You're a saint," said Edith. + +"I am not," said Anne, while her pale cheek glowed with the flattery. + +"Of course you are," said Edith, "or you could never have put up with +me." + +Whereupon Anne kissed her. + +"And I may tell Walter what you've said?" + +It was thus that she spared Anne's mortal pride. She knew how it would +shrink from telling him. + +Anne went down to Majendie in the garden and sent him to his sister. They +returned to the house by the open window of his study. A bright fire was +burning in the room. He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an +arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there. + +His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that +room had been their refuge. Not that they had often been alone together. +She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when +Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room. It had been nearly always +in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine +devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of +the scene. She had so associated him with his sister that it had been +hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own. She +felt that his love for her had simply grown out of his love for Edith, +it was the flame, the flower of his tenderness. It was one with his +goodness, and she had been glad to have it so. There was no jealousy in +Anne. + +It came over her now with a fresh shock, how very little, after all, she +had known of him. It was through Edith that she really knew him. And yet +it was impossible that Edith could have absorbed him utterly. Anne had +not counted his business; for it had not interested her, and to say that +Walter was a ship-owner did not define him in the very least. What +remained over of Walter was a secret that this room, his study, must +partially reveal. + +She remembered how she had first come there, and had looked shyly about +her for intimations of his inner nature, and how it was his pipe-rack and +his boots that had first suggested that he had a life apart and dealings +with the outer world. Now she rose and went round the room, searching for +its secret, and finding no new impressions, only fresh lights on the old. +If the room told her anything it told her how little Majendie had used +it, how little he had been able to call anything his own. The things in +it had no comfortable look of service. He could not have smoked there +much, the curtains were too innocent. He could not have sat in that +arm-chair much, the surface was too smooth. He could not have come there +much at any time, for, though the carpet was faded, there was no +well-worn passage from the threshold to the hearth. As far as she could +make out he came there for no earthly purpose but to change his boots +before going upstairs to Edith. + +The bookcase told the same story. It held histories and standard works +inherited from Majendie's father; the works of Dickens, and Thackeray, +and Hardy, read over and over again in the days when he had time for +reading; several poets whom, by his own confession, he could not have +read in any circumstances. One Meredith, partly uncut, testified to an +honest effort and a baulked accomplishment. On a shelf apart stood the +books that he had loved when he was a boy, the Annuals, the tales of +travel and adventure, and one or two school prizes gorgeously bound. + +As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence +appealed to her comprehension and compassion. + +She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition. Instead of being +sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early +support himself. He had supported himself. And he had stuck to the +business that he might the better support Edith. + +She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness. + +She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she +had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day. +It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had +answered: "Because you are good. You always have been good." + +And he had said (how it came back to her!), "And if I hadn't always? +Wouldn't you have cared then?" + +She had answered, "I would have cared, but I couldn't marry you." + +And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping +his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment. She had +wondered what had come over him. + +Now she knew. He had not been good. And she had married him. + +At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung +her, and again she trampled them down. + +She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that +her knowledge of him had laid low. She told herself that, after all, much +remained. She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his +goodness. He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other +woman who could have borne his burden half so well. Edith was too sweet +to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed. In +marrying Walter she would lift half the weight. Anne was strong, and she +glorified in her strength. That was what she was there for. + +How much more was she prepared to do? Keeping his house was nothing; +Nanna had always kept it well. Caring for Edith was nothing; she could +not help but care for her. She had promised Walter that she would be a +good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her +spiritual life apart. + +Was that being a good wife to him? To divorce her soul, her best self, +from him? If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere +material tie, what would she make of herself? Of him? + +It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than +that. She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never +would have appreciated _her_. That other woman didn't count; she had +thrust herself on him. When it came to choosing, he had chosen a +spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.) +And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter's choice was really +God's will. God's hand had led him to her. + +It had been a blow to Anne's pride to realise that she had +married--spiritually--beneath her. Her pride now recovered wonderfully, +seeing in this very inequality its opportunity. She beheld herself +superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter's +poverty. Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give +than to receive. + +Their marriage, in this its new, its immaterial consummation, would not +be unequal. She would raise Walter. That, of course, was what God had +meant her to do all the time. Never again could she look at her husband +with eyes of mortal passion. But her love, which had died, was risen +again; it could still turn to him a glorified and spiritual face; it +could still know passion, a passion immortal and supreme. + +But it was an emotion of which by its very nature she could not bring +herself to speak. It could mean nothing to Walter in his yet unspiritual +state. She felt that when he came to her he would insist on some +satisfaction, and there was no satisfaction that she could give to the +sort of claim he would make. Therefore she awaited his coming with +nervous trepidation. + +He came in as if nothing had happened. He sank with every symptom of +comfortable assurance into the opposite arm-chair. And he asked no more +formidable question than, "How's your headache?" + +"Better, thank you." + +"That's all right." + +He did not look at her, but his eyes were smiling as if at some agreeable +thought or reminiscence. He had apparently assumed that Anne had +recovered, not only from her headache, but from its cause. To Anne, +tingling with the tension of a nervous crisis, this attitude was +disconcerting. It seemed to reduce her and her crisis to insignificance. +She had expected him to be tingling too. He had more cause to. + +"Do you mind my smoking? Say if you really do." + +She really did, but she forbore to say so. Forbearance henceforth was to +be part of her discipline. + +He smoked contentedly, with half-closed eyes; and when he talked, he +talked of the garden and of bulbs. + +Of bulbs, after what he had discussed with Edith upstairs. She would +rather that he had asked his question, forced her to the issue. That at +least would have shown some comprehension of her state. But he had taken +the issue for granted, refused to face the immensity of it all. She had +had her first taste of sacrificial flames, and her spirit was prepared to +go through fire to reach him. And he presented himself as already folded +and protected; satisfied with some inferior and independent secret of his +own. + +She felt that a little perturbation would have become him more than that +impenetrable peace. + +It would make it so difficult to raise him. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +The bell of St. Saviour's had ceased. Over the open market-place the air +throbbed with a thousand pulses from the dying heart of sound. The great +grey body of the Church was still; tower and couchant nave watched in +their monstrous, motionless dominion, till the music stirred in them like +a triumphant soul. + +As they hurried over the open market-place, Anne realised with some +annoyance that she was late again for the Wednesday evening service. She +dearly loved punctuality and order, and disliked to be either checked or +hastened in her superb movements. She disliked to be late for anything. +Above all she disliked standing on a mat outside a closed church door, in +the middle of a General Confession, trying to surrender her spirit to the +spirit of prayer, while Walter lingered, murmuring profane urbanities +that claimed her as his own. + +He had perceived what he called her innocent design, her transparent +effort to lead him to her heavenly heights. He had lent himself to +it, tenderly, gravely, as he would have lent himself to a child's +heart-rending play. He could not profess to follow the workings of his +wife's mind, but he did understand her point of view. She had been "let +in" for something she had not expected, and he was bound to make it up +to her. + +There had been a week of concessions, crowned by his appearance at St. +Saviour's. + +But that was on a Sunday. This was Wednesday, and he drew the line at +Wednesdays. + +Oh yes, he saw her drift. He knew that what she expected of him was +incessant penitence. But, after all, it was difficult to feel much +abasement for a fault committed quite a number of years ago and +sufficiently repented of at the time. He had settled his account, and +it was hard that he should be made to pay twice over. To-night his mood +was strangely out of harmony with Lent. + +Anne slackened her pace to intimate as much to him. Whereupon he lapsed +into strange and disturbing legends of his childhood. He told her he had +early weaned himself from the love of Lenten Services, observing their +effect upon the unfortunate lady, his aunt, who had brought him up. +Punctually at twelve o'clock on Palm Sunday, he said, the poor soul, +exhausted with her endeavours after the Christian life, would fly into +a passion, and punctually would rise from it at the same hour on Easter +Day. For quite a long time he had believed that that was why they called +it Passion Week. + +She moaned "Oh, Walter--don't!" as if he had hurt her, while she +repressed the play of a little, creeping, curling, mundane smile. + +If he would only leave her! But, as they crossed to the curbstone, he +changed over, preserving his proper place. He leaned to her with the +indestructible attention of a lover. His whole manner was inimitably +chivalrous, protective, and polite. + +Anne hardened her heart against him. At the church gate she turned and +faced him coldly. + +"If you're not going in," said she, "you needn't come any further." + +He glanced at the belated group of worshippers gathered before the church +door, and became more than ever polite and chivalrous and protective. + +"I must see you safely in," he said, and took up his stand beside her on +the mat. + +Her eyes rested on him for a second in reproach, then dropped behind the +veil of their lids. In another moment he would have to go. He had already +surrendered her prayer-book, tucking it gently under her arm. + +"You'll be all right when you get in, won't you?" he said encouragingly. + +"Please go," she whispered. + +"Do I jar, dear?" he asked sweetly. + +"You do, very much." + +"I'm so sorry. I won't do it again." + +But his whispered vows and promises belied him, battling with her +consecrated mood. She felt that his innermost spirit remained in its +profanity, unillumined by her rebuke. + +Once more she set her face, and hardened her heart against him, and +removed herself in the silence and isolation of her prayer. + +Through the closed door there came the rich, confused murmur of the +Confession. He saw her lips curl, flower-like, with emotion, as her +breath rose and fell in unison with the heaving chant. He watched her +with a certain reverence, incomprehensibly chastened, till the door +opened, and she went from him, moving down the lighted aisle with her +remote, renunciating air. + +The door was shut in Majendie's face, and he turned away, intending to +kill, to murder the next hour at his club. + +Anne was self-trained in the habit of detachment. She had only to kneel, +to close her eyes and cover her face, and her soul slid of its own accord +into the place of peace. Her very breathing and the beating of her heart +were stayed. Her mind, emptied in a moment, was in a moment filled, +brimming over with the thought of God. To her veiled vision that thought +was like a sheet of blank light let down behind her drooped eyelids, and +centring in a luminous whorl. It fascinated her. Her prayer shot straight +to the heart of it, a communion too swift to trouble or divide the +blessed light. + +In that instant her husband, the image and the thought of him, were cast +into the secular darkness. + +She remembered how difficult it had once been thus to renounce him. +Her trouble, in the days of her engagement, had been that, thrust him +from her as she would, the idea of his goodness--the goodness that +justified her through its own appeal--would call up his presence, +emerging radiant from the outermost abyss. Inferior emotions then mingled +indistinguishably with her holiest ardours. Spiritually ambitious, she +had had her young eye on a hard-won crown of glory, and she had found +that happiness made the spiritual life almost contemptibly easy. It was +no effort in those days to realise divine mysteries, when the miracle of +the Incarnation was, as it were, worked for her in her own soul; when she +heard in her own heart the beating of the heart of God; when his hand +touched her with a tenderness that warmed her place of peace. She had +hardly known this flamed and lyric creature for herself. It was as if her +soul, resting after long flight, had contemplated for the first time the +silver and fine gold of her wings. + +It was the facility of the revelation that had first caused her to +suspect it. And she had thrown ashes on the flame, and set a watch upon +her soul, lest she should mistake an earthly for a heavenly content. She +could not bear to think that she was cheated, that her pulses counted in +her sense of exaltation and beatitude. She desired, purely, the utmost +purity in that divine communion, so as to be sure that it was divine. + +Now, having suffered, she was completely sure. Her wound was the seal God +set upon her soul. It was easy enough now for her to achieve detachment, +oblivion of Walter Majendie, to pour out her whole soul in the prayer for +light: "Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and by Thy great +mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night." + +Her hands, as she prayed, were folded close over her eyes. Having +annihilated her husband, she was disagreeably astonished to find that he +was there, that he had been there for some time, in the seat beside her. + +He was sitting in what he took to be an attitude of extreme reverence, +his head bowed and resting on his left arm, which was supported by the +back of the seat in front of him. His right arm embraced, unconsciously, +Anne's muff. Anne was vividly, painfully aware of him. Over the crook of +his elbow one eye looked up at her, bright, smiling with inextinguishable +affection. His lips gave out a sound that was not a prayer, but something +between a murmur and a moan, distinctly audible. She felt his gaze as a +gross, tangible thing, as a violent hand, parting the veils of prayer. +She bowed her head lower and pressed her hands to her face till the blood +tingled. + +The sermon obliged her to sit upright and exposed. It gave him +iniquitous opportunity. He turned in his seat; his eyes watched her under +half-closed lids, two slits shining through the thick, dark curtain of +their lashes. He kept on pulling at his moustache, as if to hide the dumb +but expressive adoration of his mouth. Anne, who felt that her soul had +been overtaken, trapped, and bared to the outrage, removed herself by a +yard's length till the hymn brought them together, linked by the book she +could not withhold. The music penetrated her soul and healed its hurt. + + + "Christian, doth thou see them, + On the holy ground, + How the troops of Midian + Prowl and prowl around?" + + +sang Anne in a dulcet pianissimo, obedient to the choir. + +Profound abstraction veiled him, a treacherous unspiritual calm. Majendie +was a man with a baritone voice, which at times possessed him like a +furious devil. It was sleeping in him now, biding its time, ready, she +knew, to be roused by the first touch of a _crescendo_. The _crescendo_ +came. + + + "Christian! Up and fight them!" + + +The voice waked; it leaped from him; and to Anne's terrified nerves it +seemed to be scattering the voices of the choir before it. It dropped on +the Amen and died; but in dying it remained triumphant, like the trump of +an archangel retreating to the uttermost ends of heaven. + +Anne's heart pained her with a profane tenderness, and a poignant +repudiation. Her soul being once more adjusted to the divine, it was +intolerable to think that this preposterous human voice should have power +to shake it so. + +She sank to her knees and bowed her head to the Benediction. + +"Did you like it?" he asked as they emerged together into the open air. + +He spoke as if to the child she seemed to him now to be. They had been +playing together, pretending they were two pilgrims bound for the +Heavenly City, and he wanted to know if she had had a nice game. He +nursed the exquisite illusion that this time he had pleased her by +playing too. + +"Of course I liked it." + +"So did I," he answered joyously, "I quite enjoyed it. We'll do it again +some other night." + +"What made you come, like that?" said she, appeased by his innocence. + +"I couldn't help it. You looked so pretty, dear, and so forlorn. It +seemed brutal, somehow, to abandon you on the weary road to heaven." + +She sighed. That was his chivalry again. He would escort her politely to +the door of heaven, but would he ever go in with her, would he ever stay +there? + +Still, it was something that he should have gone with her so far. It gave +her confidence and an idea of what her power might come to be. Not that +she relied upon herself alone. Her plan for Majendie's salvation was +liberal and large, it admitted of other methods, other influences. There +was no narrowness, any more than there was jealousy, in Anne. + +"Walter," said she, "I want you to know Mrs. Eliott." + +"But I do know her, don't I?" + +He called up a vision of the lady whose house had been Anne's home in +Scale. He was grateful to Mrs. Eliott. But for her slender acquaintance +with his sister, he would never have known Anne. This made him feel that +he knew Mrs. Eliott. + +"But I want you to know her as I know her." + +He laughed. "Is that possible? Does a man ever know a woman as another +woman knows her?" + +Anne felt that she was not only being diverted from her purpose, but led +by a side tract to an unexplored profundity. On the further side of it +she discerned, dimly, the undesirable. It was a murky region, haunted +by still murkier presences, by Lady Cayley and her kind. She persisted +with a magnificent irrelevance. + +"You must know her. You would like her." + +He didn't in the least want to know Mrs. Eliott, he didn't think that he +would like her. But he was soothed, flattered, insanely pleased with +Anne's assumption that he would. It was as if in her thoughts she were +drawing him towards her. He felt that she was softening, yielding. His +approaches were a delicious wooing of an unfamiliar, unwedded Anne. + +"I would like her, because you like her, is that it?" + +"It wouldn't follow." + +"Oh, how you spoil it!" + +"Spoil what?" + +"My inference. It pleased me. But, as you say, the logic wasn't sound." + +Silence being the only dignified course under mystification, Anne was +silent. Some men had that irritating way with women; Walter's smile +suggested that he might have it. She was not going to minister to his +male delight. Unfortunately her silence seemed to please him too. + +"Never mind, dear, I do like her; because she likes you." + +"You will like her for herself when you know her." + +"Will she like me for myself when she knows me? It's extremely doubtful. +You see, hitherto she has made no ardent sign." + +"My dear, she says you've never been near her. You've never come to one +of her Thursdays." + +"Oh, her Thursdays--no, I haven't." + +"Well, how can you expect--but you'll go sometimes, now, to please me?" + +"Won't Wednesdays do?" + +"Wednesdays?" + +"Yes. It wasn't half bad to-night. I'll go to every blessed Wednesday, as +long as they last, if you'll only let me off Thursdays." + +"Please don't talk about being 'let off.' I thought you might like to +know my friends, that's all." + +"So I would. I'd like it awfully. By the way, that reminds me. I met +Hannay at the club to-night, and he asked if his wife might call on you. +Would you mind very much?" + +"Why should I mind, if she's a friend of yours and Edith's?" + +"Oh well, you see, she isn't exactly--" + +"Isn't exactly what?" + +"A friend of Edith's." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +There is a polite and ancient rivalry between Prior Street and Thurston +Square, a rivalry that dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, +when Prior Street and Thurston Square were young. Each claims to be the +aristocratic centre of the town. Each acknowledges the other as its +solitary peer. If Prior Street were not Prior Street it would be Thurston +Square. There are a few old families left in Scale. They inhabit either +Thurston Square or Prior Street. There is nowhere else that they could +live with any dignity or comfort. In either place they are secure from +the contamination of low persons engaged in business, and from the wide +invading foot of the newly rich. These build themselves mansions after +their kind in the Park, or in the broad flat highways leading into the +suburbs. They have no sense for the dim undecorated charm of Prior Street +and Thurston Square. + +Nothing could be more distinguished than Prior Street, with its sombre +symmetry, its air of delicate early Georgian reticence. But its +atmosphere is a shade too professional; it opens too precipitately on +the unlovely and unsacred street. + +Thurston Square is approached only by unfrequented ancient ways paved +with cobble stones. It is a place of garden greenness, of seclusion and +of leisure. It breathes a provincial quietness, a measured, hallowed +breath as of a cathedral close. Its inhabitants pride themselves on this +immemorial calm. The older families rely on it for the sustenance of +their patrician state. They sit by their firesides in dignified +attitudes, impressively, luxuriously inert. Their whole being is a +religious protest against the spirit of business. + +But the restlessness of the times has seized upon the other families, the +Pooleys, the Gardners, the Eliotts, younger by a century at least. They +utilise the perfect peace for the cultivation of their intellects. + +Every Thursday, towards half-past three, a wave of agreeable expectation, +punctual, periodic, mounts on the stillness and stirs it. Thursday is +Mrs. Eliott's day. + +The Eliotts belong to the old high merchant-families, the aristocracy of +trade, whose wealth is mellowed and beautified by time. Three centuries +met in Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room, harmonised by the gentle spirit of the +place. Her frail modern figure moved (with elegance a little dishevelled +by abstraction) on an early Georgian background, among mid-Victorian +furniture, surrounded by a multitude of decorative objects. There were +great jars and idols from China and Japan; inlaid tables; screens and +cabinets and chairs in Bombay black wood, curiously carved; a splendid +profusion of painted and embroidered cloths; the spoils of seventy years +of Eastern trade. And on the top of it all, twenty years or so of recent +culture. The culture was represented by a well-filled bookcase, a few +diminished copies of antique sculpture, some modern sketches made in Rome +and Venice (for the Eliotts had travelled), and an illuminated triptych +with its saints in glory. + +Here, Thursday after Thursday, the same people met each other; they met, +Thursday after Thursday, the same fervid little company of ideas, of +aspirations and enthusiasms. + +It was five o'clock on one of her Thursdays, and Mrs. Eliott had been +conversing with great sweetness and fluency ever since half-past three. +That was the way she and Mrs. Pooley kept it up, and they could have kept +it up much longer but for the arrival of Miss Proctor. + +There was nothing, in Miss Proctor's opinion (if dear Fanny only knew +it), so provincial as an enthusiasm. As for aspirations (and Mrs. Pooley +was full of them) what could be more provincial than these efforts to be +what you were not? Miss Proctor disapproved of Thurston Square's +preoccupation with its intellect, a thing no well-bred person is ever +conscious of. She announced that she had come to take dear Fanny down +from her clouds and humanise her by a little gossip. She ignored Mrs. +Pooley, since Mrs. Pooley apparently wished to be ignored. + +"I want," said she, "the latest news of Anne." + +"If you wait, you may get it from herself." + +"My dear, do you suppose she'd give it me?" + +"It depends," said Mrs. Eliott, "on what you want to know." + +"I want to know whether she's happy. I want to know whether, by this +time, she _knows_." + +"You can't ask her." + +"Of course I can't. That's why I'm asking you." + +"I know nothing. I've hardly seen her." + +Miss Proctor looked as if she were seeing her that moment without Fanny +Eliott's help. + +"Poor dear Anne." + +Anne Fletcher had been simply dear Anne, Mrs. Walter Majendie was poor +dear Anne. + +Her friends were all sorry for her. They were inclined to be indignant +with Edith Majendie, who, they declared, had been at the bottom of her +marriage all along. She was the cause of Anne's original callings in +Prior Street. If it had not been for Edith, Anne could never have +penetrated that secret bachelor abode. The engagement had been an +awkward, unsatisfactory, sinister affair. It was a pity that Mr. +Majendie's domestic circumstances were such that poor dear Anne appeared +as having made all the necessary approaches and advances. If Mr. Majendie +had had a family that family would have had to call on Anne. But Mr. +Majendie hadn't a family, he had only Edith, which was worse than having +nobody at all. And then, besides, there was his history. + +Mrs. Eliott looked distressed. Mr. Majendie's history could not +be explained away as too ancient to be interesting. In Scale a +seven-year-old event is still startlingly, unforgetably modern. Anne's +marriage had saddled her friends with a difficult responsibility, the +justification of Anne for that astounding step. + +Acquaintances had been made to understand that Mrs. Eliott had had +nothing to do with it. They went away baffled, but confirmed in their +impression that she knew; which was, after all, what they wanted to know. + +It was not so easy to satisfy the licensed curiosity of Anne's friends. +They came to-day in quantities, attracted by the news of the Majendies' +premature return from their honeymoon. Mrs. Eliott felt that Miss Proctor +and the Gardners were sitting on in the hope of meeting them. + +Mrs. Eliott had been obliged to accept Anne's husband, that she might +retain Anne's affection. In this she did violence to her feelings, which +were sore on the subject of the marriage. It was not only on account of +the inglorious clouds he trailed. In any case she would have felt it as a +slight that her friend should have married without her assistance, and so +far outside the charmed circle of Thurston Square. She herself was for +the moment disappointed with Anne. Anne had once taken them all so +seriously. It was her solemn joy in Mrs. Eliott and her circle that had +enabled her young superiority to put up so long with the provincial +hospitalities of Scale on Humber. They, the slender aristocracy of +Thurston Square, were the best that Scale had to offer her, and they had +given her of their best. Socially, the step from Thurston Square to Prior +Street could not be defined as a going down; but, intellectually, it was +a decline, and morally (to those who knew Fanny Eliott and to Fanny +Eliott who _knew_) it was, by comparison, a plunge into the abyss. Fanny +Eliott was the fine flower of Thurston Square. She had satisfied even the +fastidiousness of Anne. + +She owned that Mr. Majendie had satisfied it too. It was not that quality +in Anne that made her choice so--well, so incomprehensible. + +It was Dr. Gardner's word. Dr. Gardner was the President of the Scale +Literary and Philosophic Society, and in any discussion of the +incomprehensible his word had weight. Vagueness was his foible, the +relaxation of an intellect uncomfortably keen. The spirit that looked +at you through his short-sighted eyes (magnified by enormous glasses) +seemed to have just returned from a solitary excursion in a dream. In +that mood the incomprehensible had for him a certain charm. + +Mrs. Eliott had too much good taste to criticise Anne Majendie's. They +had simply got to recognise that Prior Street had more to offer her than +Thurston Square. That was the way she preferred to put it, effacing +herself a little ostentatiously. + +Miss Proctor maintained that Prior Street had nothing to offer a creature +of Anne Fletcher's kind. It had everything to take, and it seemed bent on +taking everything. It was bad enough in the beginning, when she had given +herself up, body and soul, to the spinal lady; but to go and marry the +brother, without first disposing of the spinal lady in a comfortable home +for spines, why, what must the man be like who could let her do it? + +"My dear," said Mrs. Eliott, "he's a saint, if you're to believe Anne." + +Even Dr. Gardner smiled. "I can't say that's exactly what I should call +him." + +"Need we," said Mr. Eliott, "call him anything? So long as she thinks him +a saint--" + +Mr. Eliott--Mr. Johnson Eliott--hovered on the borderland of culture, +with a spirit purified from commerce by a Platonic passion for the exact +sciences. He was, therefore, received in Thurston Square on his own as +well as his wife's merits. He too had his little weaknesses. Almost +savagely determined in matters of business, at home he liked to sit in +a chair and fondle the illusion of indifference. There was no part of +Mr. Eliott's mental furniture that was not a fixture, yet he scorned the +imputation of conviction. A hunted thing in his wife's drawing-room, Mr. +Eliott had developed in a quite remarkable degree the protective +colouring of stupidity. + +"How can she?" said Miss Proctor. "She's a saint herself, and she ought +to know the difference." + +"Perhaps," said Dr. Gardner, "that's why she doesn't." + +"I'm sure," said Mrs. Eliott, "it was the original attraction. There +could be no other for Anne." + +"The attraction was the opportunity for self-sacrifice. Whatever she's +makes of Mr. Majendie, she's bent on making a martyr of herself." Miss +Proctor met the vague eyes of her circle with a glance that was defiance +to all mystery. "It's quite simple. This marriage is a short cut to +canonisation, that's all." + +Then it was that little Mrs. Gardner spoke. She had been married for a +year, and her face still wore its bridal look of possession that was +peace, the look that it would wear when Mrs. Gardner was seventy. Her +voice had a certain lucid and profound precision. + +"Anne was always certain of herself. And since she cares for Mr. Majendie +enough to accept him and to accept his sister, and the rather _triste_ +life which is all he has to offer her, doesn't it look as if, probably, +she knew her own business best?" + +"I think," said Mr. Eliott firmly, "we may take it that she does." + +Miss Proctor's departure was felt as a great liberation of the intellect. + +Mrs. Pooley sat up in her corner and revived the conversation interrupted +by Miss Proctor. Mrs. Pooley had felt that to talk about Mrs. Majendie +was to waste Mrs. Eliott. Mrs. Majendie apart, Mrs. Pooley had many ideas +in common with her friend; but, whereas Mrs. Eliott would spend superbly +on one idea at a time, Mrs. Pooley's intellect entertained promiscuously +and beyond its means. It was inclined to be hospitable to ideas that had +never met outside it, whose encounter was a little distressing to +everybody concerned. Whenever this happened Mrs. Pooley would appeal to +Mr. Eliott, and Mr. Eliott would say, "Don't ask me. I'm a stupid fellow. +Don't ask me to decide anything." + +Thus did Mr. Eliott wilfully obscure himself. + +To-day he was more impregnably concealed than ever. He hadn't any +opinions of his own. They were too expensive. He borrowed other people's +when he wanted them. "But," said Mr. Eliott, "it is very seldom that I +do want an opinion. If you have any facts to give me--well and good." For +he knew that, at the mention of facts, Mrs. Pooley's intellect would +retreat behind a cloud and that his wife would pursue it there. + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Eliott, "there's such a thing as realising your +ideals." + +Her eyes gleamed and wandered and rested upon Mrs. Gardner. Mrs. Gardner +had a singularly beautiful intellect which she was known to be shy of +displaying. People said that Dr. Gardner had fallen in love with it +years ago, and had only waited for it to mature before he married it. +Mrs. Gardner had a habit of sitting apart from the discussion and +untroubled by it, tolerant in her own excess of bliss. It irritated Mrs. +Eliott, on her Thursdays, to think of the distinguished ideas that Mrs. +Gardner might have introduced and didn't. She felt Mrs. Gardner's silence +as a challenge. + +"I wonder" (Mrs. Eliott was always wondering) "what becomes of our ideals +when we've realised them." + +The doctor answered. "My dear lady, they cease to be ideals, and we have +to get some more." + +Mrs. Eliott, in her turn, was received into the cloud. + +"Of course," said Mrs. Pooley, emerging from it joyously, "we must have +them." + +"Of course," said Mrs. Eliott vaguely, as her spirit struggled with the +cloud. + +"Of course," said Dr. Gardner. He was careful to array himself for +tea-parties in all his innocent metaphysical vanities, to scatter +profundities like epigrams, to flatter the pure intellects of ladies, +while the solemn vagueness of his manner concealed from them the +innermost frivolity of his thought. He didn't care whether they +understood him or not. He knew his wife did. Her wedded spirit moved +in secret and unsuspected harmony with his. + +He had a certain liking for Mrs. Eliott. She seemed to him an apparition +mainly pathetic. With her attenuated distinction, her hectic ardour, her +brilliant and pursuing eye, she had the air of some doomed and dedicated +votress of the pure intellect, haggard, disturbing and disturbed. His +social self was amused with her enthusiasms, but the real Dr. Gardner +accounted for them compassionately. It was no wonder, he considered, that +poor Mrs. Eliott wondered. She had so little else to do. Her nursery +upstairs was empty, it always had been, always would be empty. Did she +wonder at that too, at the transcendental carelessness that had left her +thus frustrated, thus incomplete? Mrs. Eliott would have been scandalised +if she had known the real Dr. Gardner's opinion of her. + +"I wonder," said she, "what will become of Anne's ideal." + +"It's safe," said the doctor. "She hasn't realised it." + +"I wonder, then, what will become of Anne." + +Mrs. Pooley retreated altogether before this gross application of +transcendent truth. She had not come to Mrs. Eliott's to talk about +Mrs. Majendie. + +Dr. Gardner smiled. "Oh, come," he said, "you _are_ personal." + +"I'm not," said Mrs. Eliott, conscious of her lapse and ashamed of it. +"But, after all, Anne's my friend. I know people blamed me because I +never told her. How could I tell her?" + +"No," said Mrs. Gardner soothingly, "how could you?" + +"Anne," continued Mrs. Eliott, "was so reticent. The thing was all +settled before anybody could say a word." + +"Well," said Dr. Gardner, "there's no good worrying about it now." + +"Isn't it possible," said the little year-old bride, "that Mr. Majendie +may have told her himself?" + +For Dr. Gardner had told her everything the day before he married her, +confessing to the light loves of his youth, the young lady in the Free +Library and all. She looked round with eyes widened by their angelic +candour. Even more beautiful than Mrs. Gardner's intellect were Mrs. +Gardner's eyes, and the love of them that brought the doctor's home from +their wanderings in philosophic dream. Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that +Mrs. Gardner's intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes. + +"There's one thing," said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened. "Our not +having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him +now." + +"Aren't we all talking," said Mrs. Gardner, "rather as if Anne had +married a monster? After all, have we ever heard anything against +him--except Lady Cayley?" + +"Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?" + +"Never. He's not half a bad fellow, Majendie." + +Dr. Gardner rose to go. + +"Oh, please--don't go before they come." + +Mrs. Gardner hesitated, but the doctor, vague in his approaches, +displayed a certain energy in his departure. + +They passed Mrs. Walter Majendie on the stairs. + +She had come alone. That, Mrs. Eliott felt, was a bad beginning. She +could see that it struck even Johnson's obtuseness as unfavourable, for +he presently effaced himself. + +"Fanny," said Anne, holding her friend's evasive eye with the +determination of her query, "tell me, who are the Ransomes?" + +"The Ransomes? Have they called?" + +"Yes, but I was out. I didn't see them." + +"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Eliott, in a tone which implied that when Anne +_did_ see them---- + +"Are they very dreadful?" + +"Well--they're not your sort." + +Anne meditated. "Not--my--sort. And the Lawson Hannays, what sort are +they?" + +"Well, we don't know them. But there are a great many people in Scale one +doesn't know." + +"Are they socially impossible, or what?" + +"Oh--socially, they would be considered--in Scale--all right. But he is, +or was, mixed up with some very queer people." + +Anne's cold face intimated that the adjective suggested nothing to her. +Mrs. Eliott was compelled to be explicit. The word queer was applied in +Scale to persons of dubious honesty in business; whereas it was not so +much in business as in pleasure that Mr. Lawson Hannay had been queer. + +"Mr. Hannay may be very steady now, but I believe he belonged to a very +fast set before he married her." + +"And she? Is she nice?" + +"She may be very nice for all I know." + +"I think," said Anne, "she wouldn't call if she wasn't nice, you know." + +She meant that if Mrs. Lawson Hannay hadn't been nice Walter would never +have sanctioned her calling. + +"Oh, as for that," said her friend, "you know what Scale is. The less +nice they are the more they keep on calling. But I should think"--she had +suddenly perceived where Anne's argument was tending--"she is probably +all right." + +"Do you know anything of Mr. Charlie Gorst?" + +"No. But Johnson does. At least I'm sure he's met him." + +Mrs. Eliott saw it all. Poor Anne was being besieged, bombarded by her +husband's set. + +"Then he isn't impossible?" + +"Oh no, the Gorsts are a very old Lincolnshire family. Quite grand. What +a number of people you're going to know, my dear. But, your husband isn't +to take you away from _all_ your old friends." + +"He isn't taking me anywhere. I shall stay," said Anne proudly, "exactly +where I was before." + +She was determined that her old friends should never know to what a +sorrowful place she had been taken. + +"You dear," said Mrs. Eliott, holding out a suddenly caressing hand. + +Anne trembled a little under the caress. "Fanny," said she, "I want you +to know him." + +"I mean to," said Mrs. Eliott hurriedly. + +"And I want him, even more, to know you." + +"Then," Mrs. Elliot argued to herself, "she knows nothing; or she never +could suppose we would be kindred spirits." + +But she carried it off triumphantly. "Well," said she, "I hope you're +free for the fifteenth?" + +"The fifteenth?" + +"Yes, or any other evening. We want to give a little dinner, dear, to you +and to your husband--for him to meet all your friends." + +Anne tried not to look too grateful. + +The upward way, then, was being prepared for him. Beneficent +intelligences were at work, influences were in the air, helping her +to raise him. + +In her gladness she had failed to see that, considering the very obvious +nature of the civility, Fanny Eliott was making the least shade too much +of it. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +Anne presented herself that evening in her husband's study with a sheaf +of visiting cards in her hand. She thought it possible that she might +obtain further illumination by confronting him with them. + +"Walter," said she "all these people have called on us. What do you think +I'd better do?" + +"I think you'll have to call on them some day." + +"All of them?" + +He took the cards from her and glanced through them. + +"Let me see. Charlie Gorst--we must be nice to him." + +"Is _he_ nice?" + +"I think so. Edie's very fond of him." + +"And Mrs. Lawson Hannay?" + +"Oh, you must call on her." + +"Shall I like her." + +"Possibly. You needn't see much of her if you don't." + +"Is it easy to drop people?" + +"Perfectly." + +"And what about Mrs. Ransome?" + +He frowned. "Has _she_ called?" + +"Yes." + +"I'll find out when she's not at home and let you know. You can call +then." + +A fourth card he tore up and threw into the fire. + +"Some people have confounded impudence." + +Anne went away confirmed in her impression that Walter had a large +acquaintance to whom he was by no means anxious to introduce his wife. He +might, she reflected, have incurred the connection through the misfortune +of his business. The life of a ship-owner in Scale was fruitful in these +embarrassments. + +But if these disagreeable people indeed belonged to the period she +mentally referred to as his "past," she was not going to tolerate them +for an instant. He must give them up. + +She judged that he was prepared for so much renunciation. She hoped that +he would, in time, adopt her friends in place of them. He was inclined, +after all, to respond amicably to Mrs. Eliott's overtures. + +Anne wondered how he would comport himself at the dinner on the +fifteenth. She owned to a little uneasiness at the prospect. Would he +indeed yield to the sobering influence of Thurston Square? Or would he +try to impose his alien, his startling personality on it? She had begun +to realise how alien he was, how startling he could be. Would he sit +silent, uninspiring and uninspired? Or would unholy and untimely +inspirations seize him? Would he scatter to the winds all conversational +conventions, and riot in his own unintelligible frivolity? What would he +say to Mrs. Eliott, that priestess of the pure intellect? Was there +anything in him that could be touched by her uncoloured, immaterial +charm? Would he see that Mr. Eliott's density was only a mask? Would +the Gardners bore him? And would he like Miss Proctor? And if he +didn't, would he show it, and how? His mere manners would, she knew, be +irreproachable, but she had no security for his spiritual behaviour. He +impressed her as a creature uncaught, undriven; graceful, but +immeasurably capricious. + +The event surprised her. + +For the first five minutes or so, it seemed that Mrs. Eliott and her +dinner were doomed to failure; so terrible a cloud had fallen on her, and +on her husband, and on every guest. Never had the poor priestess appeared +so abstract an essence, so dream-driven and so forlorn. Never had Mr. +Eliott worn his mask to so extinguishing a purpose. Never had Miss +Proctor been so obtrusively superior, Mrs. Gardner so silent, Dr. Gardner +so vague. They were all, she could see, possessed, crushed down by their +consciousness of Majendie and his monstrous past. + +Into this circle, thus stupefied by his presence, Majendie burst with the +courage of unconsciousness. + +Mr. Eliott had started a topic, the conduct of Sir Rigley Barker, the +ex-member for Scale. A heavy ball of conversation began to roll slowly up +and down the table, between Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. Majendie snatched +at it deftly as it passed him, caught it, turned it in his hands till it +grew golden under his touch. Mr. Eliott thought there wasn't much in poor +Sir Rigley. + +"Not much in him?" said Majendie. "How about that immortal speech of +his?" + +"Immortal--" echoed Mr. Eliott dubiously. + +"Indestructible! The poor fellow couldn't end it. It simply coiled and +uncoiled itself and went off, in great loops, into eternity. It began in +all innocence--naturally, as it was his maiden speech--when he rose, +don't you know, to propose an amendment. I take it that speech was so +maidenly that it shrank from anything in the nature of a proposal. It +went on in a terrified manner, coyly considering and hesitating--till it +cleared the House. And he was awfully pleased when we congratulated him +on his 'maidenly reserve.'" + +"How did he ever get elected?" said Miss Proctor. + +"My dear lady, it was a glorious stroke of the Opposition. They withdrew +their candidate when he contested the election. Of course, they felt that +he'd only got to make a speech and there'd be a dissolution. You simply +saw Parliament melting away before him. If he'd gone on he'd have worn +out the British constitution." + +Dr. Gardner looked at Mrs. Gardner and their eyes brightened, as Majendie +continued to unfold the amazing resources of Sir Rigley. He breathed on +the ex-member like a god, and played with him like a juggler; he tossed +him into the air and kept him there, a radiant, unsubstantial thing. The +ex-member disported himself before Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party as he had +never disported himself in Parliament. Majendie had given him a career, +endowed him with glorious attributes. The ex-member, as a topic, +developed capacities unsuspected in him before. The others followed his +flight breathless, afraid to touch him lest he should break and disappear +under their hands. + +By the time Majendie had done with him, the ex-member had entered on a +joyous immortality in Scale. + +And in the middle of it all Anne laughed. + +Miss Proctor was the first to recover from the surprise of it. She leaned +across the table with a liberal and vivid smile, opulent in appreciation. + +"Well, Mr. Majendie, Sir Rigley ought to be grateful to you. If ever +there was a dull subject dead and buried, it was he, poor man. And now +the difficulty will be to forget him." + +"I don't think," said Majendie gravely, "I shall forget him myself in a +hurry." + +Oh no, he never would forget Sir Rigley. He didn't want to forget him. He +would be grateful to him as long as he lived. He had made Anne laugh. A +girl's laugh, young and deliciously uncontrollable, springing from the +immortal heart of joy. + +It was the first time he had heard her laugh so. He didn't know she could +do it. The hope of hearing her do it again would give him something to +live for. He would win her yet if he could make her laugh. + +Anne was more surprised than anybody, at him and at herself. It was a +revelation to her, his cleverness, his brilliant social gift. She was +only intimate with one kind of cleverness, the kind that feeds itself on +lectures and on books. She had not thought of Walter as clever. She had +only thought of him as good. That one quality of goodness had swallowed +up the rest. + +Miss Proctor took possession of her where she sat in the drawing-room, as +it were amid the scattered fragments of the ex-member (he still, among +the ladies, emitted a feeble radiance). Miss Proctor had always approved +of Anne. If Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not +in the least provincial. She was something by herself, superior and rare. +A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her +husband's admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her. + +"My dear," said Miss Proctor, "I congratulate you. He's brilliant, he's +charming, he's unique. Why didn't we know of him before? Where has he +been hiding his talents all this time?" + +(A talent that had not bloomed in Thurston Square was a talent pitiably +wasted.) + +Anne smiled a blanched, perfunctory smile. Ah, where had he been hiding +himself, indeed? + +Miss Proctor stood central, radiating the rich afterglow of her +appreciation. Her gaze was a little critical of her friends' faces, as +if she were measuring the effect, on a provincial audience, of Majendie's +conversational technique. She swept down to a seat beside her hostess. + +"My dear Fanny," she said, "why didn't you tell me?" + +"Tell you--" + +"That he was that sort. I didn't know there was such a delightful man in +Scale. What have you all been dreaming of?" + +Mrs. Eliott tried to look both amiable and intelligent. In the presence +of Mr. Majendie's robust reality it was indeed as if they had all been +dreaming. Her instinct told her that the spirit of pure comedy was +destruction to the dreams she dreamed. She tried to be genial to her +guest's accomplishment; but she felt that if Mr. Majendie's talents were +let loose in her drawing-room, it would cease to be the place of +intellectual culture. On the other hand she perceived that Miss Proctor's +idea was to empty that drawing-room by securing Mr. Majendie for her own. +Mrs. Eliott remained uncomfortably seated on her dilemma. + +Sounds of laughter reached her from below. The men were unusually late in +returning to the drawing-room. They appeared a little flushed by the +hilarious festival, as if Majendie had had on them an effect of mild +intoxication. She could see that even Dr. Gardner was demoralised. He +wore, under his vagueness, the unmistakable air of surrender to an +unfamiliar excess. Mr. Eliott too had the happy look of a man who has fed +loftily after a long fast. + +"Anne dear," said Majendie, as they walked back the few yards between +Thurston Square and Prior Street, "we shan't have to do that very often, +shall we?" + +"Why not? You can't say we didn't have a delightful evening." + +"Yes, but it was very exhausting, dear, for me." + +"You? You didn't show much sign of exhaustion. I never heard you talk so +well." + +"Did I talk well?" + +"Yes. Almost too well." + +"Too much, you mean. Well, I had to talk, when nobody else did. Besides, +I did it for a purpose." + +But what his purpose was Majendie did not say. + +Anne had been human enough to enjoy a performance so far beyond the range +of her anticipations. She was glad, above all, that Walter had made +himself acceptable in Thurston Square. But when she came to think of +what was, what must be known of him in Scale, she was appalled by his +incomprehensible ease of attitude. She reflected that this must have been +the first time he had dined in Thurston Square since the scandal. Was it +possible that he did not realise the insufferable nature of that +incident, the efforts it must have cost to tolerate him, the points that +had been stretched to take him in? She felt that it was impossible to +exaggerate the essential solemnity of that evening. They had met +together, as it were, to celebrate Walter's return to the sanctities +and proprieties he had offended. He had been formally forgiven and +received by the society which (however Fanny Eliott might explain away +its action) had most unmistakably cast him out. She had not expected him +to part with his indomitable self-possession under the ordeal, but she +could have wished that he had borne himself with a little more modesty. +He had failed to perceive the redemptive character of the feast, he had +turned it into an occasion for profane personal display. + +Mrs. Eliott's dinner-party had not saved him; on the contrary, he had +saved the dinner-party. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +Anne was right. Though Majendie was, as he expressed it, "up to her +designs upon his unhappy soul," he remained unconscious of the part to be +played by Mrs. Eliott and her circle in the scheme of his salvation. From +his observation of the aristocracy of Thurston Square, it would never +have occurred to him that they were people who could count, whichever way +you looked at them. + +Meanwhile he was a little disturbed by his own appearance as a heavenward +pilgrim. He was not sure that he had not gone a little too far that way, +and he felt that it was a shame to allow Anne to take him seriously. + +He confided his scruples to Edith. + +"Poor dear," he said, "it's quite pathetic. You know, she thinks she's +saving me." + +"And do you mind being saved?" + +"Well, no, I don't mind a little of it. But the question is, how long I +can keep it up." + +"You mean, how long she'll keep it up?" + +He laughed. "Oh, she'll keep it up for ever. No possible doubt about +that. She'll never tire. I wonder if I ought to tell her." + +"Tell her what?" + +"That it won't work. That she can't do it that way. She's wasting my time +and her own." + +"Oh, what's a little time, dear, when you've all eternity in view?" + +"But I haven't. I've nothing in view. My view, at present, is entirely +obscured by Anne." + +"Poor Anne! To think she actually stands between you and your Maker." + +"Yes, you know--in her very anxiety to introduce us." + +They looked at each other. Her sainthood was so accomplished, her union +with heaven so complete, that she could afford herself these profaner +sympathies. She was secretly indignant with Anne's view of Walter as +unpresentable in the circles of the spiritual _elite_. + +"It never struck her that you mightn't need an introduction after all; +that you were in it as much as she. That's the sort of mistake one might +expect from--from a spiritual parvenu, but not from Anne." + +"Oh, come, I don't consider myself her equal by a long chalk." + +"Well, say she does belong to the peerage; you're a gentleman, and what +more can she require?" + +"She can't see that I am (If I am. You say so). She considers +me--spiritually--a bounder of the worst sort." + +"That's her mistake. Though I must say you sometimes lend yourself to it +with your horrible profanity." + +"I can't help it, Edie. She's so funny with it. She _makes_ me profane." + +"Dear Walter, if you can think Anne funny--" + +"I do. I think she's furiously funny, and horribly pathetic. All the +time, you know, she thinks she's leading me upward. Profanity's my only +refuge from hypocrisy." + +"Oh no, not your only refuge. You say she thinks she's leading you. Don't +_let_ her think it. Make her think you're leading her." + +"Do you think," said Majendie, "she'd enjoy that quite so much?" + +"She'd enjoy it more. If you took her the right way. The way I mean." + +"What's that?" + +"You must find out," said she. "I'm not going to tell you everything." + +Majendie became thoughtful. "My only fear was that I couldn't keep it up. +But you really don't think, then, that I should score much if I did?" + +"No, my dear, I don't. And as for keeping it up, you never could. And if +you did she'd never understand what you were doing it for. That's not the +way to show you're in love with her." + +"But that's just what I don't want her to see. That's what she hates so +much in me. I've always understood that in these matters it's discreeter +not to show your hand too plainly. You see, it's just as if we'd never +been married, for all she cares. That's the trouble." + +"There's something in that. If she's not in love with you--" + +"Look here, Edie, you're a woman, and you know all about them. Do you +really, honestly think Anne ever was in love with me?" + +"Oh, don't ask me. How should I know?" + +"No, but," he persisted, "what do you think?" + +"I think she _was_ in love." + +"But not with me, though?" + +"No, no, not with you." + +"With whom, then?" + +"Darling idiot, there wasn't any who. If there was, do you think I'd give +her away like that? If you'd asked me _what_ she was in love with--" + +"Well, what then?" + +"Your goodness. She was head over ears in love with that." + +"I see. With something that I wasn't." + +"No, with something that you were, that you are, only she doesn't know +it." + +"Then," said Majendie, "you can't get out of it, she's in love with +_me_." + +"Oh no, no, you dear goose, not with you. To be in love with you she'd +have to be in love with everything you're _not_, as well as everything +you are; with everything you have been, with everything you never were, +with everything you will be, with everything you might be, could be, +should be." + +"That's a large order, Edie." + +"There's a larger one than that. She might sweep all that overboard, see +it go by whole pieces (the best pieces) at a time, and still be in love +with the dear, incomprehensible, indescribable _you_. That," said Edie, +triumphant in her wisdom, "is what being in love is." + +"And do you think she isn't in it?" + +"No. Not anywhere near it. But--it's a big but--" + +"I don't care how big it is. Don't bother me with it." + +"Bother you? Why, it's a beautiful but. As I said, she isn't in love with +you; but she may be any minute. It's just touch and go with her. It +depends on _you_." + +"Heavens, what am I to do? I've done everything." + +"Yes, you have, but she hasn't. She's done nothing. She doesn't know how +to. You've got to show her." + +He shook his head hopelessly. "You're beyond me. I don't understand. +There isn't anything for me to do. How am I to show her?" + +"I mean show her what there is in it. What it means. What it's going to +be for her as well as you. Just go at it hard, harder than you did before +you married her." + +"_I_ see, I've got to make love to her all over again." + +"Exactly. All over again from the very beginning." + +"I say!" He took it in, her idea, in all the width and splendour of its +simplicity. "And do it differently?" + +"Oh, very differently." + +"I don't quite see where the difference is to come in. What did I do +before that was so wrong?" + +"Nothing. That's just the worst of it. It was all too right. Ever so much +too right. Don't you see? It's what we've been talking about. You made +her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because +it was _your_ goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted +to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason, +because she's an egoist." + +"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't." + +"Oh, you _are_ in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the +nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?" + +"I don't love you less for anything." + +"Well--unless you can make Anne jealous of me--and you can't--you've got +to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in--to be kept out of +it." + +She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into +bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they +would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous +journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He +had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had +failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights, +and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way. + +"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you? +You were the beginning of it." + +"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's +all." + +"What on earth do you mean?" + +"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for _my_ +sake, do you?" + +"N--no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she +was in love with me for my own." + +"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of +it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived +that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and +its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I +brought it _out_, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing +else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something +monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on +itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it, +and when it went everything went. _You_ went first of all. Well, you must +just see that that doesn't happen again." + +"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?" + +"You mustn't lead a life of anything." + +"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?" + +Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this +preposterous notion of his goodness. + +"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good +to me. Concentrate on her, stupid." + +"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified beyond endurance. "Besides, +you said I couldn't make her jealous." + +"No, I wish you could. I mean, don't let her fall in love with your +devotion to me again. Don't hold her by that one rope. Hold her by all +your ropes; then, if one goes, it doesn't so much matter." + +"I see. You don't trust my goodness." + +"Oh, _I_ trust it, so will she again. But don't _you_ trust it. That +precious goodness of yours is your rival. A bad, dangerous rival. You've +got to beat it out of the field. Show that you're jealous of it. A little +judicious jealousy won't hurt." Edith's eyes were still and profound with +wisdom. "I don't believe you've ever yet made love to Anne properly. +That's what it all comes to." + +"Oh, I say," said he, "what do you know about it?" + +"I'm only judging," said Edith, "by the results." + +"Oh, that isn't fair." + +"Perhaps it isn't," she owned, her wisdom growing by what it fed on. + +"You see, she wouldn't let me do it properly." + +Edith pondered. "Yes, but how long ago is it? And you've been married +since." + +"What difference does that make?" + +"I should say it would make all the difference. Anne was a girl, then. +She didn't understand. She's a woman now. She does understand. She can be +appealed to." + +He hid his face in his hands. + +"I never thought of that," he murmured thickly. + +"Of course you didn't." + +"Edie," he said, and his face was still hidden, "however did you think of +it?" + +"Oh, I don't know. I see some things, and then other things come round to +me. But you mustn't forget that _you've_ got to begin all over again from +the very beginning. You'll have to be very careful with her, every bit as +careful as if she were a strange lady you've just met at a dance. Don't +forget that she's strange, that she's another woman, in fact." + +"I see. If there are to be many of these remarkable transformations of +Anne, I shall have all the excitement of polygamy without its drawbacks." + +"You will. And it's the same for her, remember. You're a strange man. +You've just been introduced, you know--by me--and you're begging for the +pleasure of the first waltz, and Anne pretends that her programme is +full, and you look over her shoulder and see that it isn't, and that she +puts you down for all the nice ones. And you sit out all the rest, and +you flirt on the stairs, and take her in to supper, and, finally, you +know, you pull yourself together and you do it--in the conservatory. Oh, +it'll be so amusing, and so funny to watch. You'll begin by being most +awfully polite to each other." + +"I suppose I may yet be permitted to call this strange young lady Anne?" + +"Yes. That's because you remember that you _have_ known her once before, +a very long time ago, when you were children. You are children, both of +you. Oh, Walter, I believe you're looking forward to it; I believe you're +glad you've got to do it all over again." + +"Yes, Edie, I positively believe I am." + +He rose, laughing, prepared to begin that minute his new wooing of Anne. + +"Good-bye," said Edith, "it _is_ good-bye, you know, and good luck to +you." + +This time she knew that she had been wise for him. + +Anne would have been horrified if she had known that the situation, so +terrible for her, was developing for her husband certain possibilities of +charm. His irrepressible boyishness refused to accept it in all its moral +gloom. There were, he perceived, advantages in these strained relations. +They had removed Anne into the mysterious realm her maidenhood had +inhabited, before marriage had had time to touch her magic. She had +become once more the unapproachable and unattained. Their first +courtship, pursued under intolerable restrictions of time and place, had +been a rather uninspired affair, and its end a foregone conclusion. He +had been afraid of himself, afraid sometimes of her. For he had not +brought her the spontaneous, unalarmed, unspoiled spirit of his youth. +He had come to her with a stain on his imagination and a wound in his +memory. And she was holy to him. He had held himself in, lest a touch, +a word, a gesture should recall some insufferable association. + +Marriage had delivered him from the tyranny of reminiscence. No +reminiscence could stand before the force of passion in possession. It +purified; it destroyed; it built up in three days its own inviolable +memory. + +And Anne, with the best will in the world, had had no power to undo its +work in him. + +In herself, too, below her kindling spiritual consciousness, in the +unexplored depth and darkness of her, its work remained. + +Majendie was unaware how far he had become another man and she another +woman. He was merely alive to the unusual and agreeable excitement of +wooing his own wife. There was a piquancy in the experiment that appealed +to him. Her new coldness called to him like a challenge. Her new +remoteness waked the adventurous youth in him. His imagination was +touched as it had not been touched before. He could see that Anne had +not yet got over her discovery. The shock of it was in her nerves. He +felt that she shrank from him, and his chivalry still spared her. + +He ceased to be her husband and became her very courteous, very distant +lover. He made no claims, and took nothing for granted. He simply began +all over again from the very beginning. His conscience was vaguely +appeased by the illusion of the new leaf, the rejuvenated innocence of +the blank page. They had never been married (so the illusion suggested). +There had been no revelations. They met as strangers in their own house, +at their own table. In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his +courtship with infinite precautions. He found himself exaggerating Anne's +distance and the lapse of intimacy. He made his way slowly, through all +the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through friendship to +permissible fervour. + +And from time to time, with incomparable discretion, he would withhold +himself that he might make himself more precious. He was hardly aware of +his own restraint, his refinements of instinct and of mood. It was as if +he drew, in his desperate necessity, upon unrealised, untried resources. +There was something in Anne that checked the primitive impulse of swift +chase, and called forth the curious half-feminine cunning of the +sophisticated pursuer. She froze at his ardour, but his coldness almost +kindled her, so that he approached by withdrawals and advanced by +flights. + +He displayed, first of all, a heavenly ignorance, an inspired curiosity +regarding her. He consulted her tastes, as if he had never known them; he +started the time-honoured lovers' topics; he talked about books--which +she preferred and the reasons for her preference. + +He did not advance very far that way. Anne was simply annoyed at the +lapses in his memory. + +He then began to buy books on the chance of her liking them, which +answered better. + +He promoted himself by degrees to personalities. He talked to her about +herself, handling her with religious reticence as a thing of holy and +incomprehensible mystery. + +"I suppose," he said one day, "if I were good enough, I should understand +you. Why do you sigh like that? Is it because I'm not good enough? Or +because I don't understand?" + +"I think," said she, "it is because I don't understand you." + +"My dear" (he allowed himself at this point the more formal endearment), +"I thought I was disgracefully transparent--I'm limpidity, simplicity +itself. I've only one idea and one subject of conversation. Ask Edith. +She understands me." + +"Ah, Edith--" said Anne, as if Edith were a very different affair. + +The intonation was hopeful, it suggested some slender and refined +jealousy. (If only he could make her jealous!) + +On the strength of it he advanced to the punctual daily offering of +flowers, flowers for her drawing-room, flowers for her bedroom, flowers +for her to wear. After that he took to writing her letters from the +office with increasing frequency and fervour. Anne, too, was courteous +and distant. She accepted all he had to offer as a becoming tribute to +her feminine superiority, and evaded dexterously the deeper issue. + +Now and then he reported his progress to Edith. + +"I rather think," he said, "she's coming round. I'm regarded as a +distinctly eligible person." + +They laughed at his complete adoption of the part and his innocent joy in +it. + +That had always been his way. When he had begun a game there was no +stopping him. He played it through to the end. + +Edith would look up smiling and say: "Well, how goes the affair?" (They +always called it the affair.) Or: "How did you get on to-day?" + +And it would be: "Pretty well."--"Better to-day than yesterday."--"No +luck to-day." + +One Sunday he came to her radiant. + +"She really does," said he, "seem interested in what I say." + +"What did you talk about?" + +"The influence of Christianity on woman. Was that good?" + +"Very good." + +"I didn't know very much about it, but I got her to tell me things." + +"That," said Edith, "was still better." + +"But she sticks to it that she doesn't understand me. That's bad." + +"No," said Edith, "that's best of all. It shows she's thinking of you. +She wants to understand. Believe me, the affair marches." + +He meditated on that. + +In the evening, the better to meditate, he withdrew to his study. It was +not long before Anne came to him of her own accord. She asked if she +might read aloud to him. + +"I should be honoured," he replied stiffly. + +She chose Emerson, "On Compensation." And Majendie did not care for +Emerson. + +But Anne had a charming voice; a voice with tones that penetrated like +pain, that thrilled like a touch, that clung delicately like a shy +caress; tones that were as a funeral bell for sadness; tones that rose to +passion without ever touching it; clear, cool tones that were like water +to passion's flame. Majendie closed his eyes and let her voice play over +him. + +"Did you like it?" she asked gravely. + +"Like it? I love it." + +"So do I. I _hoped_ you would." + +"My dear, I didn't understand one word of it." + +"You can't make me believe you loved it then." + +He looked at her. + +"I loved the sound of your voice, dear." + +"Oh," said she coldly, "is that all?" + +"Yes," he said, "isn't it enough?" + +"I'd rather--" she began and hesitated. + +"You'd rather I understood Emerson?" + +Her blood flushed in the honey whiteness of her face. She rose, put the +book in its place, and left the room. + +"Edith," he said, relating the incident afterwards, "I thought she was +coming round when she wanted to read to me. Why did she get up and go +like that?" + +"She went, dear goose, because she was afraid to stay." + +"Why afraid?" + +"Because she's fighting you, Wallie. It's all right if she's got to +fight." + +"Yes, but suppose she wins?" + +"She can't win fighting--she's a woman. Her only chance is to run away." + +That night Anne knelt by her bedside and hid her face and prayed for +Walter; that he might be purified, so that she might love him without +sin; that he and she might travel together on the divine way, and +together be received into the heavenly places. + +She had felt that night the stirring of natural affection. It had come +back to her, a feeble, bruised, humiliated thing. She could not harbour +it without spiritual justification. + +She kept herself awake by saying: "I can't love him, I can't love +him--unless God makes him fit for me to love." + +Sleeping, she dreamed that she was in his arms. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +It was Anne's birthday. It shone in mid-May like the front of June. +Anne's bedroom was over Edith's and looked out on the garden. A little +rain had fallen over night. Through the open window the day greeted +her with a breath of flowers and earth; a day that came to her all +golden, ripe and sweet from the south. + +Her dressing-table was placed sideways from the window. Anne, fresh from +her cold bath, in a white muslin gown, with her thick sleek hair coiled +and burnished, sat before the looking-glass. + +There was a knock at the door, not Nanna's bold awakening summons, but a +shy and gentle sound. Her heart shook her voice as she responded. + +"Is it permitted?" said Majendie. + +"If you like," she answered quietly. + +He presented his customary morning sacrifice of flowers. Hitherto he +had not presumed so far as to bring it to her room. It waited for her +decorously at breakfast time, beside her plate. + +She took the flowers from him, acknowledged their fragrance by a +quiver of her delicate nostrils, thanked him, and laid them on the +dressing-table. + +He seated himself on the window-sill, where he could see her with the day +upon her. She noticed that he had brought with him, beside the flowers, a +small oblong wooden box. He laid the box on his knee and covered it with +his hand. He sat very still, looking at her as her firm white hands +caressed her coiled hair into shape. Once she moved his flowers to find +her comb, and laid them down again. + +"Aren't you going to wear them?" he inquired anxiously. + +Her upper lip lifted an instant, caught up, in its fashion, by the pretty +play of the little sensitive amber mole. Two small white teeth showed and +were hidden again. It was as if she had been about to smile, or to speak, +and had thought better of it. + +She took up the flowers and tried them, now at her breast, and now at her +waist. + +"Where shall I put them?" said she. "Here? Or here?" + +"Just there." + +She let them stay there in the hollow of her breast. + +He laid the box on the dressing-table close to her hand where it searched +for pins. + +"I've brought you this," he said gently. + +She smiled that divine and virgin smile of hers. Anne was big, but her +smile was small and close and shy. + +"You remembered my birthday?" + +"Did you think I should forget?" + +She opened the lid with cool unhurried fingers. Under the wrappings of +tissue paper and cotton wool, a shape struck clear and firm and familiar +to her touch. A sacred thrill ran through her as she felt there the +presence of the holy thing, the symbol so dear and so desired that it was +divined before seen. + +She lifted from the box an old silver crucifix. It must have been the +work of some craftsman whose art was pure and fine as the silver he +had wrought in. But that was not what Anne saw. She had always found +something painful and repellent in those crucifixes of wood which distort +and deepen the lines of ivory, or in those of ivory which gives again +the very pallor of human death. But the precious metal had somehow +eternalised the symbol of the crucified body. She saw more than the +torture, the exhaustion, the attenuation. Surely, on the closed eyelids +there rested the glory and the peace of divine accomplishment? + +She stood still, holding it in her hand and looking at it. Majendie stood +still, also looking at her. He was not quite sure whether she were going +to accept that gift, whether she would hesitate to take from his profane +hands a thing so sacred and so supreme. He was aware that his fate +somehow hung on her acceptance, and he waited in silence, lest a word +should destroy the work of love in her. + +Anne, too (when she could detach her mind from the crucifix), felt that +the moment was decisive. To accept that gift, of all gifts, was to lay +her spirit under obligation to him. It was more than a surrender of body, +heart, or mind. It was to admit him to association with the unspeakably +sacred acts of prayer and adoration. + +If it were possible that that had been his desire; if he had meant his +gift as a tribute, not to her only, but to the spirit of holiness in her; +if, in short, he had been serious, then, indeed, she could not hesitate. +For, if it were so, her prayer was answered. + +She laid down the crucifix and turned to him. They searched each other +with their eyes. She saw, without wholly understanding, the pain in his. +He saw, also unintelligently, the austerity in hers. + +"Are you not going to take it, then?" he said. + +"I don't know. Do you realise that you are giving me a very sacred +thing?" + +"I do." + +"And that I can't treat it as I would an ordinary present?" + +He lowered his eyelids. "I didn't think you'd want to wear it in your +hair, dear." + +She was about to ask him what he did mean then; but some instinct held +her, told her not to press the sign of grace too hard. She looked at him +still more intently. His eyes had disconcerted and baffled her, but now +she was sheltered by their lowered lids. Then she noticed for the first +time that his face showed the marks of suffering. It was as if it had +dropped suddenly the brilliant mask it wore for her, and given up its +secret unaware. He had suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to +her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes +and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a +certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she +closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was +his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it was, above all, +God's hour. + +She laid her hand on her husband's gift, saying to herself that if she +took that crucifix she would be taking him with it into the holy places +of her heart. + +"I will take it." Her voice came shy and inarticulate as a marriage vow. + +"Thank you," he said. + +He wondered if she would turn to him with some sign of tenderness, +whether she would stoop to him and touch him with her hand or her lips; +or whether she looked to him to offer the first caress. + +She did nothing. It was as if her intentness, her concentration upon +her holy purpose held her. While her soul did but turn to him in the +darkness, it kept and would keep their hands and lips apart. + +He divined that she was only half-won. But, though her body yet moved in +its charmed inviolate circle, he felt dimly that the spiritual barrier +was down. + +She turned from him and went slowly to the door. He opened it and +followed her. On the stairs she parted from him and went alone into his +sister's bedroom. + +Edith's spine had been hurting her in the night. She lay flat and +exhausted, and the embrace of her loving arms was slow and frail. + +Edith was what she called "dressed," and waiting for her sister-in-law. +The little table by her bed was strewn with the presents she had bought +and made for Anne. A birthday was a very serious affair for Edith. She +was not content to buy (buying was nothing; anybody could buy); she must +also make, and make beautifully. "I mayn't have any legs that can carry +me," said Edith; "but I've hands and I _will_ use them. If it wasn't for +my hands I'd be nothing but a great lumbering, lazy mass of palpitating +heart." But her making had become every year more and more expensive. Her +beautiful, pitiful embroideries were paid for in bad nights. And at six +o'clock that morning she had given her little dismal cry: "Oh, Nanna, +Nanna, my beast of a spine is going to bother me to-day, and it's Anne's +birthday!" + +"And what else," said Nanna severely, "do you expect, Miss Edith?" + +"I didn't expect this. I do believe it's getting worse." + +"Worse?" Nanna was contemptuous. "It was worse on Master Walter's +birthday last year." + +(Last year she had made a waistcoat.) + +"I can't think," moaned Edith, "why it's always bad on birthdays." + +But however badly "it" might behave in the night, it was never permitted +to destroy the spirit of the day. + +Anne looked anxiously at the collapsed, exhausted figure in the bed. + +"Yes," said Edith, having smiled at her sister-in-law with magnificent +mendacity, "you may well look at me. You couldn't make yourself as flat +as I am if you tried. There are two books for you, and a thingummy-jig, +and a handkerchief to blow your dear nose with." + +"Edie--" + +"Do you like them?" + +"Like them? Oh, you dear--" + +"Why don't you have a birthday oftener? It makes you look so pretty, +dear." + +Anne's heart leaped. Edie's ways, her very words sometimes were like +Walter's. + +"Has Walter seen you?" + +Anne's face became instantly solemn, but it was not sad. + +"Edie," she said, "do you know what he has given me!" + +"Yes," said Edith. Her eyes searched Anne's eyes with pain in them that +was somehow akin to Walter's pain. + +"She knows everything," thought Anne, "and it was her idea, then, not +his." + +"Edith," said she, "was it you who thought of it, or he?" + +"I? Never. He didn't say a word about it. He just went and got it. He +thought it all out by himself, poor dear." + +"Can you think why he thought of it?" + +"Yes," said Edith gravely, "I can. Can't you?" + +Anne was silent. + +"It's very simple. He wants you to trust him a little more, that's all." + +Anne's mouth trembled, and she tightened it. + +"Are you afraid of him?" + +"Yes," she said, "I am." + +"Because you think he isn't very spiritual?" + +"Perhaps." + +"Oh, but he's on his way there," said Edith. "He's human. You've got to +be human before you can be spiritual. It's a most important part of the +process. Don't you omit it." + +"Have I omitted it?" + +She stroked one of the thin hands that were out-stretched towards her on +the coverlet, and the other closed on her caress. The touch brought the +tears into her eyes. She raised her head to keep them from falling. + +"Dear," said Edith, and paused and reiterated, "dear, you have about all +the big things that I haven't. You're splendid. There's only one thing I +want for you. If you could only see how divinely sacred the human part of +us is--and how pathetic." + +Anne looked at her as she lay there, bright and brave, untroubled by her +own mortal pathos. In her, humanity, woman's humanity, was reduced to its +simplest expression of spiritual loving and bodily suffering. Anne was a +child in her ignorance of the things that had been revealed to Edith +lying there. + +Looking at her, Anne's tears grew heavy and fell. + +"It's your birthday," said Edith softly. + +And as she heard Majendie's foot on the stairs Anne dried her eyes on the +birthday pocket handkerchief. + +"Here she is," said Edith as he entered. "What are you going to do with +her? She doesn't have a birthday every day." + +"I'm going," he said, "to take her down to breakfast." + +Their meals so abounded in occasions for courtesy that they had become +profoundly formal. This morning Anne's courtesy was coloured by some +emotion that defied analysis. She wore her new mood like a soft veil +that heightened her attraction in obscuring it. + +He watched her with a baffled preoccupation that kept him unusually +quiet. His quietness did him good service with Anne in her new mood. + +When the meal was over she rose and went to the window. The sedate +Georgian street was full of the day that shone soberly here from the cool +clear north. + +"What are you thinking of?" said he. + +"I'm thinking what a beautiful day it is." + +"Yes, isn't it a jolly day?" + +"If it's beautiful here, what must it be in the country?" + +"The country?" A thought struck him. "I say, would you like to go there?" + +"Do you mean to-day?" + +Her upper lip lifted, and the two teeth showed again on the pale rose of +its twin. In spite of the dignity of her proportions, Anne had the look +of a child contemplating some hardly permissible delight. + +"Now, this minute. There's a train to Westleydale at nine fifty." + +"It would be very nice. But--how about business?" + +"Business be--" + +"No, no, _not_ that word." + +"But it is, you know; it can't help itself. There's a devil in all the +offices in Scale at this time of the year." + +"Would _you_ like it?" + +"I? Rather. I'm on!" + +"But--Edith--oh no, we can't." + +She turned with a sudden gesture of renunciation, so that she faced him +where he stood smiling at her. His face grew grave for her. + +"Look here," he said, "you mustn't be morbid about Edith. It isn't +necessary. All the time we're gone, she'll be there, in perfect bliss +with simply thinking of the good time _we_'re having." + +"But her back's bad to-day." + +"Then she'll be glad that we're not there to feel it. Her back will add +to her happiness, if anything." + +She drew in a sharp breath, as if he had hurt her. + +"Oh, Walter, how can you?" + +He replied with emphasis. "How can I? I can, not because I'm a brute, as +you seem to suppose, but because she's a saint and an angel. I take off +my hat and go down on my knees when I think of her. Go and put _your_ +hat on." + +She felt herself diminished, humbled, and in two ways. It was as if he +had said: "You are not the saint that Edith is, nor yet the connoisseur +in saintship that I am." + +She knew that she was not the one; but to the other distinction she +certainly fancied that she had the superior claim. And she had never yet +come behind him in appreciation of Edith. Besides, she was hurt at being +spoken to in that way on her birthday. + +Her resentment faded when she found him standing at the foot of the +stairs by Edith's door, waiting for her. He looked up at her as she +descended, and his eyes brightened with pleasure at the sight. + +Edith was charmed with their plan. It might have been conceived as an +exquisite favour to herself, by the fine style in which she handled it. + +They set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket and Anne's coat. He +had changed, and appeared in the Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and cap +he had worn at Scarby. The pang that struck her at the sight of them was +softened by her practical perception of their fitness for the adventure. +They became him, too, and she had memory of the charm he had once worn +for her with that open-air attire. + +An hour's journey by rail brought them to the little wayside station. +They turned off the high road, walked for ten minutes across an upland +field, and came to the bridle-path that led down into the beech-woods of +Westleydale, in the heart of the hills. + +They followed a mossy trail. The shade fell thin, warm, and +coloured, from leaves so tender that the light passed through their +half-transparent panes. Overhead there was the delicate scent of green +things and of sap, and underfoot the deep smell of moss and moistened +earth. + +Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, +and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the +vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned +and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall +beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold +of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and +primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien +beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. She +threw back her head, as if her white throat drank the sweet air like +wine. She held out her white hands, and let the warmth play over them +palpably as a touch. + +And Majendie longed to take her by those white hands and draw her to him. +If he could have trusted her; but some instinct plucked him backward, +saying to him: "Not yet." + +A mossy rise under a beech-tree offered itself to Anne as a suitable +throne for the regal woman that she was. He spread out her coat, and she +made room for him beside her. He sat for a long time without speaking. +The powers which were working that day for Majendie gave to him that +subtle silence. He had, at most times, an inexhaustible capacity for +keeping still. + +Above them, just discernible through the tree-tops, veiled by a gauze of +dazzling air, the hill brooded in its majestic dream. Its green arms, +plunging to the valley, gathered them and shut them in. + +Majendie's figure was not diminished by the background. The smallest +nervous movement on his part would have undone him, but he did not move. +His profound stillness, suggesting an interminable patience, gave him a +beautiful immensity of his own. + +Anne, left in her charmed, inviolate circle, surrendered sweetly to the +spirit of Westleydale. + +The place was peace folded upon the breast of peace. + +Presently she spoke, calling his name, as if out of the far-off +unutterable peace. + +"Walter, it was kind of you to bring me here." + +"I am so glad you like it." + +"I do indeed." + +He tried to say more, but his heart choked him. + +She closed her eyes, and the peace poured over her, and sank in. Her +heart beat quietly. + +She opened her eyes and turned them on her husband. She knew that it was +his gaze that had compelled them to open. She smiled to herself, like a +young girl, shyly but happily aware of him, and turned from him to her +contemplation of the woods. + +Anne had always rather prided herself on her susceptibility to the beauty +of nature, but it had never before reached her with this poignant touch. +Hitherto she had drawn it in with her eyes only; now it penetrated her +through every nerve. She was vaguely but deliciously aware of her own +body as a part of it, and of her husband's joy in contemplating her. + +"He thinks me good-looking," she said to herself, and the thought came to +her as a revelation. + +Then her young memory woke again and thrust at her. + +"He thinks me good-looking. That's why he married me." + +She longed to find out if it were so. + +"Walter," said she, "I want to ask you a question." + +"Well--if it's an easy one." + +"It isn't--very. What made you want to marry me?" + +He paused a moment, searching for the truth. + +"Your goodness." + +"Is that really true?" + +"To the best of my belief, madam, it is." + +"But there are so many other women better than me." + +"Possibly. I haven't been happy enough to meet them." + +"And if you had met them?" + +"As far as I can make out, I shouldn't have fallen in love with them. +I shouldn't have fallen in love with _you_, if it hadn't been for your +goodness. But I shouldn't have fallen in love with your goodness in any +other woman." + +"Have you known many other women?" + +"One way and another, in the course of my life--yes. And what I liked so +much about you was your difference from those other women. You gave me +rest from them and their ways. They bored me even when I was half in love +with them, and made me restless for them even when I wasn't a little bit. +It was as if they were always expecting something from me--I couldn't +for the life of me tell what--always on the look out, don't you know, for +some mysterious moment that never arrived." + +She thought she knew. She felt that he was describing vaguely and with +incomparable innocence the approaches of the ladies who had once designed +to marry him. He had never seen through them; they (and they must have +been so obvious, those ladies) had remained for him inscrutable, +mysterious. He could deal competently with effects, but he was not clever +at assigning causes. + +He seemed conscious of her reflections. "They were quite nice, don't you +know. Only they couldn't let you alone. You let me alone so perfectly. +Being with you was peace." + +"I see," she said quietly. "It was peace. That was all." + +"Oh, was it? That was only the beginning, if you must know how it began." + +"It began," she murmured, "in peace. That was what struck you most in me. +I must have seemed to you at peace, then." + +"You did--you did. Weren't you?" + +"I must have been. But I've forgotten. It's so long ago. There's peace +here, though. Why didn't we choose this place instead of Scarby?" + +"I wish we had. I say--are you never going to forget that?" + +"I've forgiven it. I might forget it if I could only understand." + +"Understand _what_?" + +"How you could be capable of caring for me--like that--and yet--" + +"But the two things are so entirely different. It's impossible to explain +to you how different. Heaven forbid that you should understand the +difference." + +"I understand enough to know--" + +"You understand enough to know nothing. You must simply take my word for +it. Besides, the one thing's an old thing, over and done with." + +"Over and done with. But if the two things are so different, how can you +be sure?" + +"That sounds awfully clever of you, but I'm hanged if I know what you +mean." + +"I mean, how can you tell that it--the old thing--never would come back?" + +It _was_ clever of her. He realised that he had to deal now with a more +complete and complex creature than Anne had been. + +"How could it?" he asked. + +"If _she_ came back--" + +"Never. And if it did--" + +"Ah, if it did--" + +"It couldn't in this case--my case--your case--" + +"Her case--" she whispered. + +"Her case? She hasn't got one. She simply doesn't exist. She might come +back as much as she pleased, and still she wouldn't exist. Is _that_ what +you've been afraid of all the time?" + +"I never was really afraid till now." + +"What you're afraid of couldn't happen. You can put that out of your head +for ever. If I could mention you in the same sentence as that woman you +should know why I am so certain. As it is, I must ask you again to take +my word for it." + +He paused. + +"But, since you have raised the question--and it's interesting, too--I +knew a man once--not a 'bad' man--to whom that very thing did happen. And +it didn't mean that he'd left off caring for his wife. On the contrary, +he was still insanely fond of her." + +"What did it mean, then?" + +"That she'd left off showing that she cared for him. And he cared more +for her, that man, after having left her, than he did before. In its way +it was a sort of test." + +"I pray heaven--" said Anne; but she was too greatly shocked by the +anecdote to shape her prayer. + +Majendie, feeling that the time, the place, and her mood were propitious +for the exposition, went on. + +"There's another man I know. He was very fond of Edie. He's fond of her +still. He'll come and sit for hours playing backgammon with her. And yet +all his fondness for her hasn't kept him entirely straight. But he'd have +been as straight as anybody if he could have married her." + +"But what does all this prove?" + +"It proves nothing," he said almost passionately, "except that these two +things, just because they're different, are not so incompatible as you +seem to think." + +"Did Edie care for that man?" + +"I believe so." + +"Ah, don't you see? There's the difference. What made Edie a saint made +him a sinner." + +"I doubt if Edie would look on it quite in that light. She thinks it was +uncommonly hard on him." + +"Does she know?" + +"Oh, there's no end to the things that Edie knows." + +"And she loves him in spite of it?" + +"Yes. I suppose there's no end to that either." + +No end to her loving. That was the secret, then, of Edie's peace. + +Anne meditated upon that, and when she spoke again her voice rang on its +vibrating, sub-passionate note. + +"And you said that I gave you rest. You were different." + +He made as if he would draw nearer to her, and refrained. The kind heart +of Nature was in league with his. Nature, having foreknowledge of her own +hour, warned him that his hour was not yet. + +And so he waited, while Nature, mindful of her purpose, began in Anne +Majendie her holy, beneficent work. The soul of the place was charged +with memories, with presciences, with prophecies. A thousand woodland +influences, tender timidities, shy assurances, wooed her from her soul. +They pleaded sweetly, persistently, till Anne's brooding face wore the +flush of surrender to the mysteries of earth. + +The spell was broken by a squirrel's scurrying flight in the boughs above +them. Anne looked up, and laughed, and their moment passed them by. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +"Are you tired?" he asked. + +They had walked about the wood, made themselves hungry, and lunched like +labourers at high noon. + +"No, I'm only thirsty. Do you think there's a cottage anywhere where you +could get me some water?" + +"Yes, there's one somewhere about. I'll try and find it if you'll sit +here and rest till I come back." + +She waited. He came back, but without the water. His eyes sparkled with +some mysterious, irrepressible delight. + +"Can't you find it?" + +"Rather. I say, do come and look. There's such a pretty sight." + +She rose and went with him. Up a turning in the dell, about fifty yards +from their tree, a long grassy way cut sheer through a sheet of wild +hyacinths. It ran as if between two twin borders of blue mist, that +hemmed it in and closed it by the illusion of their approach. On either +side the blue mist spread, and drifted away through the inlets of the +wood, and became a rarer and rarer atmosphere, torn by the tree-trunks +and the fern. The path led to a small circular clearing, a shaft that +sucked the daylight down. It was as if the sunshine were being poured in +one stream from a flooded sky, and danced in the dark cup earth held for +it. The trees grew close and tall round the clearing. Light dripped from +their leaves and streamed down their stems, turning their grey to silver. +The bottom of the cup was a level floor of grass that had soaked in light +till it shone like emerald. A stone cottage faced the path; so small that +a laburnum brushed its roof and a may-tree laid a crimson face against +the grey gable of its side. The patch of garden in front was stuffed with +wall-flowers and violets. The sun lay warm on them; their breath stirred +in the cup, like the rich, sweet fragrance of the wine of day. + +Majendie grasped Anne's arm and led her forward. + +In the middle of the green circle, under the streaming sun, cradled in +warm grass, a girl baby sat laughing and fondling her naked feet. She +laughed as she lay on her back and opened one folded, wrinkled foot to +the sun; she laughed as she threw herself forward and beat her knees with +the outspread palms of her hands; she laughed as she rocked her soft body +to and fro from her rosy hips; then she stopped laughing suddenly, and +began crooning to herself a delicious, unintelligible song. + +"Look," said Majendie, "that's what I wanted to show you." + +"Oh--oh--oh--" said Anne, and looked, and stood stock-still. + +The beatitude of that adorable little figure possessed the scene. Green +earth and blue sky were so much shelter and illumination to its pure and +solitary joy. + +"Did you ever see anything so heart-rending?" said Majendie. "That +anything could be so young!" + +Anne shook her head, dumb with the fascination. + +As they approached again, the little creature rolled on its waist, and +crawled over the grass to her feet. + +"The little lamb--" said she, and stooped, and lifted it. + +It turned to her, cuddling. Through the thin muslin of her bodice she +could feel the pressure of its tender palms. + +Majendie stood close to her and tried gently to detach and possess +himself of the delicate clinging fingers. But his eyes were upon +Anne's eyes. They drew her; she looked up, her eyes flashed to the +meeting-point; his widened in one long penetrating gaze. + +A sudden pricking pain went through her, there where the pink and flaxen +thing lay sun-warm and life-warm to her breast. + +At first she did not heed it. She stood hushed, attentive to the +prescience that woke in her; surrendered to the secret, with desire that +veiled itself to meet its unveiled destiny. + +Then the veil fell. + +The eyes that looked at her grew tender, and before their tenderness the +veil, the veil of her desire that had hidden him from her, fell. + +Her face burned, and she hid it against the child's face as it burrowed +into the softness of her breast. When she would have parted the child +from her, it clung. + +She laughed. "Release me." And he undid the clinging arms, and took the +child from her, and laid it again in the cradling grass. + +"It's conceived a violent passion for you," said he. + +"They always do," said she serenely. + +The door of the cottage was open. The mother stood on the threshold, +shading her eyes and wondering at them. She gave Anne water, hospitably, +in an old china cup. + +When Anne had drunk she handed the cup to her husband. He drank with his +eyes fixed on her over the brim, and gave it to her again. He wondered +whether she would drink from it after him (Anne was excessively +fastidious). To his intense satisfaction, she drank, draining the last +drop. + +They went back together to their tree. On the way he stopped to gather +wild hyacinths for her. He gathered slowly, in a grave and happy passion +of preoccupation. Anne stood erect in the path and watched him, and +laughed the girl's laugh that he longed to hear. + +It was as if she saw him for the first time through Edith's eyes, with +so tender an intelligence did she take in his attitude, the absurd, the +infantile intentness of his stooping figure, the still more absurdly +infantile emotion of his hands. It was the very same attitude which had +melted Edith, that unhappy day when they had watched him as he walked +disconsolate in the garden, and she, his wife, had hardened her heart +against him. She remembered Edith's words to her not two hours ago: +"If you could only see how unspeakably sacred the human part of us is, +and how pathetic." Surely she saw. + +The deep feeling and enchantment of the woods was upon her. He was sacred +to her; and for pathos, it seemed to her that there was poured upon his +stooping body all the pathos of all the living creatures of God. + +She saw deeper. In the illumination that rested on him there, she saw the +significance of that carelessness, that happiness of his which had once +troubled her. It was simply that his experience, his detestable +experience, had had no power to harm his soul. Through it all he had +preserved, or, by some miracle of God, recovered an incorruptible +innocence. She said to herself: "Why should I not love him? His heart +must be as pure as the heart of that little blessed child." + +The warning voice of the wisdom she had learnt from him whispered: "And +it rests with you to keep him so." + +He led her to her tree, where she seated herself regally as before. He +poured his sheaves of hyacinths as tribute into her lap. As his hands +touched hers her cold face flushed again and softened. He stretched +himself beside her and love stirred in her heart, unforbidden, as in a +happy dream. He watched the movements of her delicate fingers as they +played with the tangled hyacinth bells. Her hands were wet with the thick +streaming juice of the torn stalks; she stretched them out to him +helplessly. He knelt before her, and spread his handkerchief on his +knees, and took her hands and wiped them. She let them rest in his for a +moment, and, with a low, panting cry, he bowed his head and covered them +with kisses. + +At his cry her lips parted. And as her soul had called to him across the +spiritual ramparts, so her eyes said to him: "Come"; and he knew that +with all her body and her soul she yearned to him and consented. + +He held her tight by the wrists and drew her to him; and she laid her +arms lightly on his neck and kissed him. + +"I'm glad now," she whispered, "that Edith didn't tell me. She knew you. +Oh, my dear, she knew." + +And to herself she said proudly: "It rests with me." + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +It was October, five months after Anne's birthday. She was not to know +again the mood which determined her complete surrender. Supreme moods can +never be recaptured or repeated. The passion that inspires them is +unique, self-sacrificial, immortal only through fruition; doomed to pass +and perish in its exaltation. She would know tenderness, but never just +that tenderness; gladness, but never that gladness; peace, but never the +peace that possessed her in the woods at Westleydale. + +The new soul in her moved steadily, to a rhythm which lacked the diviner +thrill of the impulse which had given it birth. It was but seldom that +the moment revived in memory. If Anne had accounted to herself for that +day, she would have said that they had taken the nine-fifty train to +Westleydale, that they had had a nice luncheon, that the weather was +exceptionally fine, and that well, yes, certainly, that day had been the +beginning of their entirely satisfactory relations. Anne's mind had a +tendency to lapse into the commonplace when not greatly stirred. Happily +for her, she had a refuge from it in her communion with the Unseen. + +Only at times was she conscious of a certain foiled expectancy. For the +greater while it seemed to her that she had attained an indestructible +spiritual content. + +She conceived a profound affection for her home. The house in Prior +Street became the centre of her earthward thoughts, and she seldom left +it for very long. Her health remained magnificent; her nature being +adapted to an undisturbed routine, appeased by the well-ordered, even +passage of her days. + +She had made a household religion for herself, and would have suffered in +departing from it. To be always down before her husband for eight-o'clock +breakfast; to sit with Edith from twelve till luncheon time, and in the +early afternoon; to spend her evenings with her husband, reading aloud or +talking, or sitting silent when silence soothed him; these things had +become more sacred and imperative than her attendance at St. Saviour's. +The hours of even-song struck for her no more. + +For, above all, she had made a point of always being at home in time for +Majendie's return from his office. At five o'clock she was ready for him, +beside her tea-table, irreproachably dressed. Her friends complained that +they had lost sight of her. Regularly at a quarter to five she would +forsake the drawing-rooms of Thurston Square. However absorbing Mrs. +Eliott's conversation, towards the quarter, the tender abstraction of +Anne's manner showed plainly that her spirit had surrendered to another +charm. Mrs. Eliott, in letting her go, had the air of a person serenely +sane, indulgent to a persistent and punctual obsession. Anne divided her +friends into those who understood and those who didn't. Fanny Eliott +would never understand. But little Mrs. Gardner, through the immortality +of her bridal spirit, understood completely. And for Anne Mrs. Gardner's +understanding of her amounted to an understanding of her husband. Anne's +heart went out to Mrs. Gardner. + +Not that she saw much of her, either. She had grown impatient of +interests that lay outside her home. Once she had decided to give herself +up to her husband, other people's claims appeared as an impertinence +beside that perfection of possession. + +She was less vividly aware of her own perfect possession of him. Majendie +was hardly aware of it himself. His happiness was so profound that he had +not yet measured it. He, too, had slipped into the same imperturbable +routine. It was seldom that he kept her waiting past five o'clock. He +hated the people who made business appointments with him for that hour. +His old associates saw little of him, and his club knew him no more. +He preferred Anne's society to that of any other person. They had no more +fear of each other. He saw that she was beginning to forget. + +In one thing only he was disappointed. The trembling woman who had held +him in her arms at Westleydale had never shown herself to him again. She +had been called, created, for an end beyond herself. The woman he had +married again was pure from passion, and of an uncomfortable reluctance +in the giving and taking of caresses. He forced himself to respect her +reluctance. He had simply to accept this emotional parsimony as one of +the many curious facts about Anne. He no longer went to Edith for an +explanation of them, for the Anne he had known in Westleydale was too +sacred to be spoken of. An immense reverence possessed him when he +thought of her. As for the actual present Anne, loyalty was part of the +large simplicity of his nature, and he could not criticise her. +Remembering Westleydale, he told himself that her blanched susceptibility +was tenderness at white heat. If she said little, he argued that (like +himself) she felt the more. And at times she could say perfect things. + +"I wonder, Nancy," he once said to her, "if you know how divinely sweet +your voice is?" + +"I shall begin to think it is, if you think so," said she. + +"And would you think yourself beautiful, if I thought so?" + +"Very beautiful. At any rate, as beautiful as I want to be." + +He could not control the demonstration provoked by that admission, and +she asked him if he were coming to church with her to-morrow. + +His Nancy chose her moments strangely. + +But not for worlds would he have admitted that she was deficient in +a sense of humour. She had her small hilarities that passed for it. +Keenness in that direction would have done violence to the repose and +sweetness of her blessed presence. The peace of it remained with him +during his hours of business. + +Anne did not like his business. But, in spite of it, she was proud +of him, of his appearance, his charm, his distinction, his entire +superiority to even the aristocracy of Scale. + +She no longer resented his indifference to her friends in Thurston +Square, since it meant that he desired to have her to himself. Of his own +friends he had seen little, and she nothing. If she had not pressed Fanny +Eliott on him, he had spared her Mrs. Lawson Hannay and Mrs. Dick +Ransome. She had been fortunate enough to find both these ladies out when +she returned their calls. And Majendie had spoken of his most intimate +friend, Charlie Gorst, as absent on a holiday in Norway. + +It was, therefore, in a mood of more than usual concession that she +proposed to return, now in October, the second advance made to her by +Mrs. Hannay in July. + +Majendie was relieved to think that he would no longer be compelled to +perjure himself on Anne's account. The Hannays had frequently reproached +him with his wife's unreadiness in response, and (as he had told her) he +had exhausted all acceptable explanations of her conduct. He had "worked" +her headaches "for all they were worth" with Hannay; for weeks he had +kept Hannay's wife from calling, by the fiction, discreetly presented, of +a severe facial neuralgia; and his last shameless intimation, that Anne +was "rather shy, you know," had been received with a respectful +incredulity that left him with nothing more to say. + +Mrs. Hannay was not at home when Anne called, for Anne had deliberately +avoided her "day." But Mrs. Hannay was irrepressibly forgiving, and Anne +found herself invited to dine at the Hannays' with her husband early in +the following week. It was hardly an hour since she had left Mrs. +Hannay's doorstep when the pressing, the almost alarmingly affectionate +little note came hurrying after her. + +"I'll go, dear, if you really want me to," said she. + +"Well--I think, if you don't mind. The Hannays have been awfully good to +me." + +So they went. + +"Don't snub the poor little woman too unmercifully," was Edith's parting +charge. + +"I promise you I'll not snub her at all," said Anne. + +"You can't," said Majendie. "She's like a soft sofa cushion with lots of +frills on. You can sit on her, as you sit on a sofa cushion, and she's as +plump, and soft, and accommodating as ever the next day." + +The Hannays lived in the Park. + +Majendie talked a great deal on the way there. His supporting and +attentive manner was not quite the stimulant he had meant it to be. Anne +gathered that the ordeal would be trying; he was so eager to make it +appear otherwise. + +"Once you're there, it won't be bad, you know, at all. The Hannays are +really all right. They'll ask the very nicest people they know to meet +you. They think you're doing them a tremendous honour, you know, and +they'll rise to it. You'll see how they'll rise." + +Mrs. Hannay had every appearance of having risen to it. Anne's entrance +(she was impressive in her entrances) set the standard high; yet Mrs. +Hannay rose. When agreeably excited Mrs. Hannay was accustomed to move +from one end of her drawing-room to the other with the pleasing and +impalpable velocity of all soft round bodies inspired by gaiety. So +exuberant was the softness of the little lady and so voluminous her +flying frills, that at these moments her descent upon her guests appeared +positively winged like the descent of cherubim. To-night she advanced +slowly from her hearth-rug with no more than the very slightest swaying +and rolling of all her softness, the very faintest tremor of her downy +wings. Mrs. Hannay's face was the round face of innocence, the face of +a cherub with blown cheeks and lips shaped for the trumpet. + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie--at last." She retained Mrs. Majendie's hand for +the moment of presenting her to her husband. By this gesture she +appropriated Mrs. Majendie, taking her under her small cherubic wing. +"Wallie, how d'you do?" Her left hand furtively appropriated Mrs. +Majendie's husband. Anne marked the familiarity with dismay. It was +evident that at the Hannays' Walter was in the warm lap of intimacy. + +It was evident, too, that Mr. Hannay had married considerably beneath +him. Anne owned that he had a certain dignity, and that there was +something rather pleasing in his loose, clean-shaven face. The sharp +slenderness of youth was now vanishing in a rosy corpulence, corpulence +to which Mr. Hannay resigned himself without a struggle. But above it the +delicate arch of his nose attested the original refinement of his type. +His mouth was not without sweetness, Mr. Hannay being as indulgent to +other people as he was to himself. + +He received Anne with a benign air; he assured her of his delight in +making her acquaintance; and he refrained from any allusions to the long +delay of his delight. + +Little Mrs. Hannay was rolling softly in another direction. + +"Canon Wharton, let me present you to Mrs. Walter Majendie." + +She had risen to Canon Wharton. For she had said to her husband: "You +must get the Canon. She can't think us such a shocking bad lot if we have +him." Her face expressed triumph in the capture of Canon Wharton, triumph +in the capture of Mrs. Walter Majendie, triumph in the introduction. +Owing to the Hannays' determination to rise to it, the dinner-party, in +being rigidly select, was of necessity extremely small. + +"Miss Mildred Wharton--Sir Rigley Barker--Mr. Gorst. Now you all know +each other." + +The last person introduced had lingered with a certain charming +diffidence at Mrs. Majendie's side. He was a man of about her husband's +age, or a little younger, fair and slender, with a restless, flushed face +and brilliant eyes. + +"I can't tell you what a pleasure this is, Mrs. Majendie." + +He had an engaging voice and a still more engaging smile. + +"You may have heard about me from your husband. I was awfully sorry to +miss you when I called before I went to Norway. I only came back this +morning, but I _made_ Hannay invite me." + +Anne murmured some suitable politeness. She said afterwards that her +instinct had warned her against Mr. Gorst, with his restlessness and +brilliance; but, as a matter of fact, her instinct had done nothing of +the sort, and his manners had prejudiced her in his favour. Fanny Eliott +had told her that he belonged to a very old Lincolnshire family. There +was a distinction about him. And he really had a particularly engaging +smile. + +So she received him amiably; so amiably that Majendie, who had been +observing their encounter with an intent and rather anxious interest, +appeared finally reassured. He joined them, releasing himself adroitly +from Sir Rigley Barker. + +"How's Edith?" said Mr. Gorst. + +His use of the name and something in his intonation made Anne attentive. + +"She's better," said Majendie. "Come and see her soon." + +"Oh, rather. I'll come round to-morrow. If," he added, "Mrs. Majendie +will permit me." + +"Mrs. Majendie," said her husband, "will be delighted." + +Anne smiled assent. Her amiability extended even to Mrs. Hannay, who had +risen to it, so far, well. + +During dinner Anne gave her attention to her right-hand neighbour, Canon +Wharton; and Mrs. Hannay, looking down from her end of the table, saw her +selection justified. In rising to the Canon she had risen her highest; +for the ex-member hardly counted; he was a fallen star. But Canon +Wharton, the Vicar of All Souls, stood on an eminence, social and +spiritual, in Scale. He had built himself a church in the new quarter of +the town, and had filled it to overflowing by the power of his eloquence. +Lawson Hannay, in a moment of unkind insight, had described the Canon as +"a speculative builder"; but he lent him money for his building, and +liked him none the less. + +Out of the pulpit the Vicar of All Souls was all things to all men. In +the pulpit he was nothing but the Vicar of All Souls. He stood there for +a great light in Scale, "holding," as he said, "the light, carrying the +light, battling for light in the darkness of that capital of commerce, +that stronghold of materialism, founded on money, built up in money, +cemented with money!" He snarled out the word "money," and flung it in +the face of his fashionable congregation; he gnashed his teeth over it; +he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in +little Tommy Wharton's pluck in "giving it them hot." He was always +giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire. And then little +Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock, +and into the Hannays' house for whiskey and soda. He could drink peg for +peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned +many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid the whiskey and shook her +handkerchief at the little Canon, and "shooed" him merrily away. And +Lawson, big, good-natured Lawson, would lend him more "money" to build +his church with. + +So the Vicar of All Souls, who aspired to be all things to all men, was +hand in glove with the Lawson Hannays. He had occasionally been known to +provide for the tables of the poor, but he dearly loved to sit at the +tables of the rich; and he justified his predilection by the highest +example. + +Anne, who knew the Canon by his spiritual reputation only, turned to him +with interest. Her eye, keen to discern these differences, saw at once +that he was a man of the people. He had the unfinished features, the +stunted form of an artisan; his body sacrificed, his admirers said, to +the energies of his mighty brain. His face was a heavy, powerful oval, +bilious-coloured, scarred with deep lines, and cleft by the wide mouth of +an orator, a mouth that had acquired the appearance of strength through +the Canon's habit of bringing his lips together with a snap at the close +of his periods. His eyes were a strange, opaque grey, but the clever +Canon made them seem almost uncomfortably penetrating by simply knitting +his eyebrows in a savage pent-house over them. They now looked forth at +Anne as if the Canon knew very well that her soul had a secret, and that +it would not long be hidden from him. + +They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon's catholicity bridged the +gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fashionable +Scale. He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning +over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour's to All Souls. He hoped also to win +over Mrs. Eliott's distinguished friend. For the Canon was mortal. He had +yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying +other men's churches. Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson's success, +hoping (he said) to see his money back again. + +Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie. Ladies, +when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate +decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he +loved his dinner more. He loved it with a certain pure extravagance, +illuminated by thought and imagination. Mrs. Hannay was one with him in +this affection. Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising +higher and higher in unwearying flights. It was a link between them; +almost (so fine was the passion) an intellectual tie. But reticence was +not in Hannay's nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly. +She missed the high lyric note in it. All epicurean pleasures, even so +delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay's in his dinner, appeared gross +to Anne. + +Majendie at the other end of the table caught sight of her detached, +unhappy look, and became detached and unhappy himself, till Mrs. Hannay +rallied him on his abstraction. + +"If you _are_ in love, my dear Wallie," she whispered, "you needn't show +it so much. It's barely decent." + +"Isn't it? Anyhow, I hope it's quite decently bare," he answered, tempted +by her folly. They were gay at Mrs. Hannay's end of the table. But Anne, +who watched her husband intently, looked in vain for that brilliance +which had distinguished him the other night, when he dined in Thurston +Square. These Hannays, she said to herself, made him dull. + +Now, though Anne didn't in the least want to talk to Mr. Hannay, Mr. +Hannay displeased her by not wanting to talk more to her. Not that he +talked very much to anybody. Now and then the Canon's niece, Mildred +Wharton, the pretty girl on his left, moved him to a high irrelevance, in +those rare moments when she was not absorbed in Mr. Gorst. Pretty Mildred +and Mr. Gorst were flirting unabashed behind the roses, and it struck +Anne that the Canon kept an alarmed and watchful eye upon their +intercourse. + +To Anne the dinner was intolerably long. She tried to be patient with it, +judging that its length was a measure of the height her hosts had risen +to. There she did them an injustice; for in the matter of a menu the +Hannays could not rise; for they lived habitually on a noble elevation. + +At the other end of the table Mrs. Hannay called gaily on her guests +to eat and drink. But, when the wine went round, Anne noticed that she +whispered to the butler, and after that, the butler only made a feint +of filling his master's glass, and turned a politely deaf ear to his +protests. And then her voice rose. + +"Lawson, that pineapple ice is delicious. Gould, hand the pineapple ice +to Mr. Hannay. I adore pineapple ice," said Mrs. Hannay. "Wallie, you're +drinking nothing. Fill Mr. Majendie's glass, Gould, fill it--fill it." +She was the immortal soul of hospitality, was Mrs. Hannay. + +In the drawing-room Mrs. Hannay again took possession of Anne and led her +to the sofa. She fairly enthroned her there; she hovered round her; she +put cushions at her head, and more cushions under her feet; for Mrs. +Hannay liked to be comfortable herself, and to see every one comfortable +about her. "You come," said she, "and sit down by me on this sofa, +and let's have a cosy talk. That's it. Only you want another cushion. +No?--Do--Won't you really? Then it's four for me," said Mrs. Hannay, +supporting herself in various postures of experimental comfort, "one for +my back, two for my fat sides, and one for my head. Now I'm comfy. I +adore cushions, don't you? My husband says I'm a little down cushion +myself, so I suppose that's why." + +Anne, in her mood, had crushed many innocent vulgarities before now; but +she owned that she could no more have snubbed Mrs. Hannay effectually +than you could snub a little down cushion. It would be impossible, she +thought, to make any impression at all on that yielding surface. +Impossible to take any impression from her, to say where her gaiety ended +and her vulgarity began. + +"Isn't it funny?" the little lady went on, unconscious of Mrs. Majendie's +attitude. "My husband's your husband's oldest friend. So I think you and +I ought to be friends too." + +Anne's face intimated that she hardly considered the chain of reasoning +unbreakable; but Mrs. Hannay continued to play cheerful elaborations on +the theme of friendship, till her husband appeared with the other three +men. He had his hand on Majendie's shoulder, and Mrs. Hannay's soft smile +drew Mrs. Majendie's attention to this manifestation of intimacy. And it +dawned on Anne that Mrs. Hannay's gaiety would not end here; though it +was here, with the mixing of the company, that her vulgarity would begin. + +"Did you ever see such a pair? I tell Lawson he's fonder of Wallie than +he is of me. I believe he'd go down on his knees and black his boots for +nothing, if he asked him. I'd do it myself, only you mustn't tell Lawson +I said so." She paused. "I think Lawson wants to come and have a little +talk with you." + +Hannay approached heavily, and his wife gave up her place to him, +cushions and all. He seated himself heavily. His eyes wandered heavily to +the other side of the room, following Majendie. And as they rested on his +friend there was a light in them that redeemed their heaviness. + +He had come to Mrs. Majendie prepared for weighty utterance. + +"That man," said Hannay, "is the best man I know. You've married, dear +lady, my dearest and most intimate friend. He's a saint--a Bayard." He +flung the name at her defiantly, and with a gesture he emphasised the +crescendo of his thought. "A _preux chevalier, sans peur_" said Mr. +Hannay, "_et sans reproche_." + +Having delivered his soul, he sat, still heavily, in silence. + +Anne repressed the rising of her indignation. To her it was as if he had +been defending her husband against some accusation brought by his wife. + +And so, indeed, he was. Poor Hannay had been conscious of her +attitude--conscious under her pure and austere eyes, of his own +shortcomings, and it struck him that Majendie needed some defence against +her judgment of his taste in friendship. + +When the door closed behind the Majendies, Mr. Gorst was left the last +lingering guest. + +"Poor Wallie," said Mrs. Hannay. + +"_Poor_ Wallie," said Mr. Hannay, and sighed. + +"What do you think of her?" said the lady to Mr. Gorst. + +"Oh, I think she's magnificent." + +"Do you think he'll be able to live up to it?" + +"Why not?" said Mr. Gorst cheerfully. + +"Well, it wasn't very gay for him before he married, and I don't imagine +it's going to be any gayer now." + +"_Now_" said Mr. Hannay, "I understand what's meant by the solemnisation +of holy matrimony. That woman would solemnise a farce at the Vaudeville, +with Gwen Richards on." + +"She very nearly solemnised my dinner," said Mrs. Hannay. + +"She doesn't know," said Mr. Hannay, "what a dinner is. She's got no +appetite herself, and she tried to take mine away from me. A regular +dog-in-the-manger of a woman." + +"Oh, come, you know," said Gorst. "She can't be as bad as all that. +Edith's awfully fond of her." + +"And _that's_ good enough for you?" said Mrs. Hannay. + +"Yes. That's good enough for me. _I_ like her," said Gorst stoutly; and +Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth. + +But Gorst, as he departed, turned on the doorstep and repeated, +"Honestly, I like her." + +"Well, honestly," said Mr. Hannay, "I don't." And, lost in gloomy +forebodings for his friend, he sought consolation in whiskey and soda. + +Mrs. Hannay took a seat beside him. + +"And what did you think of the dinner?" said she. + +"It was a dead failure, Pussy." + +"You old stupid, I mean the dinner, not the dinner-party." + +Mrs. Hannay rubbed her soft, cherubic face against his sleeve, and as she +did so she gently removed the whiskey from his field of vision. She was a +woman of exquisite tact. + +"Oh, the dinner, my plump Pussy-cat, was a dream--a happy dream." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +"There are moments, I admit," said Majendie, "when Hannay saddens me." + +Anne had drawn him into discussing at breakfast-time their host and +hostess of the night before. + +"Shall you have to see very much of them?" She had made up her mind that +she would see very little, or nothing, of the Hannays. + +"Well, I haven't, lately, have I?" said he, and she owned that he had +not. + +"How you ever could--" she began, but he stopped her. + +"Oh well, we needn't go into that." + +It seemed to her that there was something dark and undesirable behind +those words, something into which she could well conceive he would not +wish to go. It never struck her that he merely wished to put an end to +the discussion. + +She brooded over it, and became dejected. The great tide of her trouble +had long ago ebbed out of her sight. Now it was as if it had turned, +somewhere on the edge of the invisible, and was creeping back again. She +wished she had never seen or heard of the Hannays--detestable people. + +She betrayed something of this feeling to Edith, who was impatient for an +account of the evening. (It was thus that Edith entered vicariously into +life.) + +"Did you expect me to enjoy it?" she replied to the first eager question. + +"No, I don't know that I did. _I_ should have enjoyed it very much +indeed." + +"I don't believe you." + +"Was there anybody there that you disliked so much?" + +"The Hannays were there. It was enough." + +"You liked Mr. Gorst?" + +"Yes. He was different." + +"Poor Charlie. I'm glad you liked him." + +"I don't like him any better for meeting him there, my dear." + +"Don't say that to Walter, Nancy." + +"I have said it. How Walter can care for those people is a mystery to +me." + +"He ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't. Lawson Hannay has been a +good friend to him." + +"Do you mean that he's under any obligation to him?" + +"Yes. Obligations, my dear, that none of us can ever repay." + +"It's intolerable!" said Anne. + +"Is it? Wait till you know what the obligations are. That man you dislike +so much stood by Walter when your friends the Eliotts, my child, turned +their virtuous backs on him--when none of his own people, even, would +lend him a helping hand. It was Lawson Hannay who saved him." + +"Saved him?" + +"Saved him. Moved heaven and earth to get him out of that woman's +clutches." + +Anne shook her head, and put her hands over her eyes to dispel her vision +of him. Edith laughed. + +"You can't see Mr. Hannay moving heaven?" + +"No, really I can't." + +"Well, _I_ saw him. At least, if he didn't move heaven, he moved earth. +When nothing else could shake her hold, he bought her off." + +"Bought--her--off?" + +"Yes, bought her--paid her money to go. And she went." + +"He owes him money, then?" + +"Money, and a great many other things beside. You don't like it?" + +"I can't bear it." + +"Of course you can't. It hurts your pride. It hurt mine badly. But my +pride has had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay." + +Anne raised her head as if she refused to lower her pride an inch to him. +She was trying to put the whole episode behind her, as it had come before +her. She had nothing whatever to do with it. Edith, of course, had to be +grateful. _She_ was not bound by the same obligation. But she was +determined that they should be quit of the Hannays. She would make Walter +pay back that money. + +Meanwhile Edith's eyes filled with tears at the recollection. "Lawson +Hannay may not have been a very good man himself--I believe at one time +he wasn't. But he loved his friend, and he didn't want to see him going +the same way." + +"The same way? That means that, if it hadn't been for Mr. Hannay, he +would never have met her." + +"Mr. Hannay did his best to prevent his meeting her. He knew what she +was, and Walter didn't. He took him off in his yacht for weeks at a time, +to get him out of her way. When she followed him he brought him back. +When she persecuted him--well, I've told you what he did." + +Anne lifted her hand in supplication, and rose and went to the open +window, as if, after that recital, she thirsted for fresh air. Edith +smiled, in spite of herself, at her sister-in-law's repudiation of the +subject. + +"Poor Mr. Hannay," said she, "the worst you can say of him now is that he +eats and drinks a little more than's good for him." + +"And that he's married a wife who sets him the example," said Anne, +returning from the window-sill refreshed. + +"She keeps him straight, dear." + +"Edith! I shall never understand you. You're angelically good. But it's +horrible, the things you take for granted. 'She keeps him straight!'" + +"You think I take for granted a natural tendency to crookedness. I +don't--I don't. What I take for granted is a natural tendency to +straightness, when it gets its way. It doesn't always get it, though, +especially in a town like Scale." + +"I wish we were out of it." + +"So did I, dear, once; but I don't now. We must make the best of it." + +"Has Walter paid any of that money back to Mr. Hannay?" + +Edith looked up at her sister-in-law, startled by the hardness in her +voice. She had meant to spare Anne's pride the worst blow, but something +in her question stirred the fire that slept in Edith. + +"No," she said, "he hasn't. He was going to, but Mr. Hannay cancelled the +debt, in order that he might marry--that he might marry you." + +Anne drew back as if Edith had struck her bodily. She, then, had been +bought, too, with Mr. Hannay's money. Without it, Walter could not have +afforded to marry her; for she was poor. + +She sat silent, until her self-appointed hour with Edith ended; and then, +still silently, she left the room. + +And Edith turned her cheek on her cushions and sobbed weakly to herself. +"Walter would never forgive me if he knew I'd told her that. It was awful +of me. But Anne would have provoked the patience of a saint." + +Anne owned that Edith was a saint, and that the provocation was extreme. + +In the afternoon, Edith, at her own request, was forgiven, and Anne, by +way of proving and demonstrating her forgiveness, announced her amiable +intention of calling on Mrs. Hannay on her "day." + +The day fell within a week of the dinner. It was agreed that Majendie was +to meet his wife at the Hannays, and to take her home. There was a good +mile between Prior Street and the Park; and Anne was a leisurely walker; +so it happened that she was late, and that Majendie had arrived a few +minutes before her. She did not notice him there all at once. Mrs. Hannay +was a sociable little lady; the radius of her circle was rapidly +increasing, and her "day" drew crowds. The lamps were not yet lit, and as +Anne entered the room, it was dim to her after the daylight of the open +air. She had counted on an inconspicuous entrance, and was astonished to +find that the announcement of her name caused a curious disturbance and +division in the assembly. A finer ear than Anne's might have detected an +ominous sound, something like the rustling of leaves before a storm. But +Anne's self-possession rendered her at times insensible to changes in the +social atmosphere. In any case the slight commotion was no more than she +had come prepared for in a whole roomful of ill-bred persons. + +"Pussy," said a lady who stood near Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had her back +to the doorway. The lady's voice rang on a low note of warning, and she +brought her mouth close to Mrs. Hannay's ear. + +The hostess started, turned, and came at once towards Mrs. Majendie, +rolling deftly between the persons who obstructed her perturbed and +precipitate way. The perfect round of her cheeks had dropped a little; it +was the face of a poor cherub in vexation and dismay. + +"Dear Mrs. Majendie,"--her voice, once so triumphant, had dropped too, +almost to a husky whisper,--"how very good of you." + +She led her to a sofa, the seat of intimacy, set back a little from the +central throne. (Majendie could be seen fairly immersed in the turmoil, +struggling desperately through it, with a plate in his hand.) + +Mrs. Hannay was followed by her husband, by the other lady, and by +Gorst. She introduced the other lady as Mrs. Ransome, and they seated +themselves, one on each side of Anne. The two men drew up in front of +the sofa, and began to talk very fast, in loud tones and with an +unnatural gaiety. The women, too, closed in upon her somewhat with their +knees; they were both a little confused, both more than a little +frightened, and the manner of both was mysteriously apologetic. + +Anne, with her deep, insulating sense of superiority, had no doubt as to +the secret of the situation. She felt herself suitably protected, guarded +from contact, screened from view, distinguished very properly from +persons to whom it was manifestly impossible, even for Mrs. Hannay, to +introduce her. She was very sorry for poor Mrs. Hannay, she tried to make +it less difficult for her, by ignoring the elements of confusion and +fright. But poor Mrs. Hannay kept on being frightened; she refused to +part with her panic and be natural. So terrified was she, that she hardly +seemed to take in what Mrs. Majendie was saying. + +Anne, however, conversed with the utmost amiability, while her thoughts +ran thus: "Dear lady, why this agitation? You cannot help being vulgar. +As for your friends, what do you think I expected?" + +The other lady, Mrs. Dick Ransome, could not be held accountable for +anything but her own private vulgarity; and it struck Anne as odd that +Mrs. Dick Ransome, who was not responsible for Mrs. Hannay, seemed, if +anything, more terrified than Mrs. Hannay, who was responsible for her. + +Mrs. Dick Ransome did not, at the first blush, inspire confidence. She +was a woman with a great deal of blonde hair, and a fresh-coloured, +conspicuously unspiritual face; coarse-grained, thick-necked, ruminantly +animal, but kind; kind to Mrs. Hannay, kind to Anne, kinder even than +Mrs. Hannay who was responsible for all the kindness. + +Charlie Gorst hurried away to get Mrs. Majendie some tea, and Lawson's +Hannay's large form moved into the gap thus made, blocking Anne's view of +the room. He stood looking down upon her with an extraordinary smile of +mingled apology and protection. Gorst's return was followed by Majendie, +wandering uneasily with his plate. He smiled at Anne, too; and his smile +conveyed the same suggestion of desperation and distress. It was as if he +said to her: "I'm sorry for letting you in for such a crew, but how can +I help it?" She smiled back at him brightly, as much as to say; "Don't +mind. It amuses me. I'm taking it all in." + +He wandered away, and Anne felt that the women exchanged looks across her +shoulders. + +"I think I'll be going, Pussy dear," said Mrs. Ransome, nodding some +secret intelligence. She elbowed her way gently across the room, and came +back again, shaking her head hopelessly and helplessly. "She says I can +go if I like, but she'll stay," said Mrs. Ransome under her breath. + +"Oh-h-h," said Mrs. Hannay under hers. + +"What am I to do?" said Mrs. Ransome, flurried into audible speech. + +"Stay--stay. It's much better." Mrs. Hannay plucked her husband by the +sleeve, and he lowered an attentive ear. Mrs. Ransome covered the +confidence with a high-pitched babble. + +"You find Scale a very sociable place, don't you, Mrs. Majendie?" said +Mrs. Ransome. + +"Go," said Mrs. Hannay, "and take her off into the conservatory, or +somewhere." + +"More sociable in the winter-time, of course." (Mrs. Ransome, in her +agitation, almost screamed it.) + +"I can't take her off anywhere, if she won't go," said Mr. Hannay in a +thick but penetrating whisper. He collapsed into a chair in front of +Anne, where he seemed to spread himself, sheltering her with his supine, +benignant gaze. + +Mrs. Hannay was beside herself, beholding his invertebrate behaviour. +"Don't sit down, stupid. Do something--anything." + +He went to do it, but evidently, whatever it was, he had no heart for it. + +A maid came in and lit a lamp. There was a simultaneous movement of +departure among the nearer guests. + +"Oh, heavens," said Mrs. Hannay, "don't tell me they're all going to go!" + +Anne, serenely contemplating these provincial manners, was bewildered by +the horror in Mrs. Hannay's tone. There was no accounting for provincial +manners, or she would have supposed that Mrs. Hannay, mortified by the +presence of her most undesirable acquaintance, would have rejoiced to see +them go. + +Their dispersal cleared a space down the middle of the room to the +bay-window, and disclosed a figure, a woman's figure, which occupied, +majestically, a settee. The settee, set far back in the bay of the +window, was in a direct line with Anne's sofa. That part of the room was +still unlighted, and the figure, sitting a little sideways, remained +obscure. + +A servant went round lighting lamps. + +The first lamp to be lit stood beside Anne's sofa. The effect of the +illumination was to make the lady in the window turn on her settee. +Across the space between, her eyes, obscure lights in a face still +undefined, swept with the turning of her body, and fastened upon Anne's +face, bared for the first time to their view. They remained fixed, as if +Anne's face had a peculiar fascination for them. + +"Who is the lady sitting in the window?" asked Anne. + +"It's my sister." Mrs. Ransome blinked as she answered, and her blood ran +scarlet to the roots of her blonde hair. + +A cherub, discovering a horrible taste in his trumpet, would have looked +like Mrs. Hannay. + +"Do let me give you some more tea, Mrs. Majendie?" said she, while Mrs. +Ransome signalled to her husband. "Here, Dick, come and make yourself +useful." + +Mr. Ransome, a little stout man with a bald head, a pale puffy face, a +twinkling eye and a severe moustache, was obedient to her summons. + +"Let me see," said she, "have you met Mrs. Majendie?" + +"I have not had that pleasure," said Mr. Ransome, and bowed profoundly. +He waited assiduously on Mrs. Majendie. The Ransomes might have been +responsible for the whole occasion, they so rallied around and supported +her. + +Hannay and Gorst, Ransome and another man were gathered together in a +communion with the lady of the settee. There was a general lull, and her +voice, a voice of sweet but somewhat penetrating quality, was heard. + +"Don't talk to me," said she, "about women being jealous of each other. +Do you suppose I mind another woman being handsome? I don't care how +handsome she is, so long as she isn't handsome in my style. Of course, +I don't say I could stand it if she was the very moral of me." + +"I say, supposing Toodles met the very moral of herself?" + +"Could Toodles have a moral? I doubt it." + +"I want to know what she'd do with it." + +"Yes, by Jove, what _would_ you do?" + +"Do? I should do my worst. I should make her sit somewhere with a good +strong light on her." + +"Hold hard there," said her brother-in-law (the man who called her +Toodles), "Lady Cayley doesn't want that lamp lit just yet" + +In the silence of the rest, the name seemed to leap straight across the +room to Anne. + +The two women beside her heard it, and looked at each other and at her. +Anne sickened under their eyes, struck suddenly by the meaning of their +protection and their sympathy. She longed to rise, to sweep them aside +and go. But she was kept motionless by some superior instinct of disdain. + +Outwardly she appeared in no way concerned by this revelation of the +presence of Lady Cayley. She might never have heard of her, for any +knowledge that her face betrayed. + +Majendie, not far from the settee in the window, was handing cucumber +sandwiches to an old lady. And Lady Cayley had taken the matches from the +maid and was lighting the lamp herself, and was saying, "I'm not afraid +of the light yet, I assure you. There--look at me." + +Everybody looked at her, and she looked at everybody, as she sat in the +lamplight, and let it pour over her. She seemed to be offering herself +lavishly, recklessly, triumphantly, to the light. + +Lady Cayley was a large woman of thirty-seven, who had been a slender and +a pretty woman at thirty. She would have been pretty still if she had +been a shade less large. She had tiny upward-tilted features in her large +white face; but the lines of her jaw and her little round prominent chin +were already vanishing in a soft enveloping fold, flushed through its +whiteness with a bloom that was a sleeping colour. Her forehead and +eyelids were exceedingly white, so white that against them her black +eyebrows and blue eyes were vivid and emphatic. Her head carried high a +Gainsborough hat of white felt, with black plumes and a black line round +its brim. Under its upward and its downward curve her light brown hair +was tossed up, and curled, and waved, and puffed into an appearance of +great exuberance and volume. Exuberance and volume were the note of this +lady, a note subdued a little by the art of her dressmaker. A gown of +smooth black cloth clung to her vast form without a wrinkle, sombre, +severe, giving her a kind of slenderness in stoutness. She wore a white +lace vest and any quantity of lace ruffles, any number of little black +velvet lines and points set with paste buttons. And every ruffle, every +line, every point and button was an accent, emphasising some beauty of +her person. + +And Anne looked at Lady Cayley once and no more. + +It was enough. The trouble that she had put from her came again upon her, +no longer in its merciful immensity, faceless and formless (for she had +shrunk from picturing Lady Cayley), but boldly, abominably defined. She +grasped it now, the atrocious tragedy, made visible and terrible for her +in the body of Lady Cayley, the phantom of her own horror made flesh. + +A terrible comprehension fell on her of that body, of its power, its +secret, and its sin. + +For the first moment, when she looked from it to her husband, her mind +refused to associate him with that degradation. Reverence held her, and +a sudden memory of her passion in the woods at Westleydale. Mercifully, +they veiled her intelligence, and made it impossible for her to realise +that he should have sunk so low. + +Then she remembered. She had known that it was, that it would be so, +that, sooner or later, the woman would come back. Her brain conceived a +curious two-fold intuition of the fact. + +It was all foreappointed and foreknown, that she should come to this +hateful house, and should sit there, and that her eyes should be opened +and that she should see. + +And the woman's voice rose again. "Do I see cucumber sandwiches?" said +Lady Cayley. "Dick, go and tell Mr. Majendie that if he doesn't want all +those sandwiches himself, I'll have one." + +Ransome gave the message, and Majendie turned to the lady of the settee, +presenting the plate with the finest air of abstraction. Her large arm +hovered in selection long enough for her to shoot out one low quick +speech. + +"I only wanted to see if you'd cut me, Wallie. Topsy bet me two to ten +you wouldn't." + +"Why on earth should I?" + +"Oh, on earth I know you wouldn't. But didn't I hear just now you'd +married and gone to heaven?" + +"Gone to----?" + +"Sh--sh--sh--I'm sure she doesn't let you use those naughty words. You +needn't say you're not in heaven, for I can see you are. You didn't +expect to meet me there, did you?" + +"I certainly didn't expect to meet you here." + +"How can you be so rude? Dick, take that tiresome plate from him, he +doesn't know what to do with it. Yes. I'll have another before it goes +away for ever." + +Majendie had given up the plate before he realised that he was parting +with the link that bound him to the outer world. He turned instantly to +follow it there; but she saw his intention and frustrated it. + +"Butter? Ugh! You might hold my cup for me while I take my gloves off." + +She peeled two skin-tight gloves from her plump hands, so carefully that +the operation gave her all the time she wanted. + +"I believe you're still afraid of me?" said she. + +He was doing his best to look over her head; but she smiled a smile so +flashing that it drew his eyes to her involuntarily; he felt it as +positively illuminating their end of the room. + +"You're not? Well, prove it." + +"Is it possible to prove anything to you?" + +Again he was about to break from her impatiently. Nothing, he had told +himself, would induce him to stay and talk to her. But he saw Anne's +face across the room; it was pale and hard, fixed in an expression of +implacable repulsion. And she was not looking at Lady Cayley, but at him. + +"You can prove it," said Lady Cayley, "to me and everybody else--they're +all looking at you--by sitting down quietly for one moment, and trying to +look a little less as if we compromised each other." + +He stayed, to prove his innocence before Anne; and he stood, to prove +his independence before Lady Cayley. He had longed to get away from the +woman, to stand by his wife's side--to take her out of the room, out of +the house, into the open air. And now the perversity that was in him kept +him where he hated to be. + +"That's right. Thank heaven one of us has got some presence of mind." + +"Presence of _mind_?" + +"Yes. You don't seem to think of _me_," she added softly. + +"Why should I?" he replied with a brutality that surprised himself. + +She looked at him with blue eyes softly suffused, and the curve of a red +mouth sweet and tremulous. "Why?" her whisper echoed him. "Because I'm a +woman." + +Her eyelids dropped ever so little, but their dark lashes (following the +upward trend of her features) curled to such a degree that the veil was +ineffectual. He saw a large slit of the wonderful, indomitable blue. + +"I'm a woman, and you're a man, you see; and the world's on your side, my +friend, not on mine." + +She said it sweetly. If she had been bitter she would have (as she +expressed it) "choked him off"; but Lady Cayley knew better than to be +bitter now, at thirty-seven. She had learnt that her power was in her +sweetness. + +His face softened (from the other end of the room Anne saw it soften), +and Lady Cayley pursued with soundless feet her fugitive advantage. + +"Poor Wallie, you needn't look so frightened. I'm quite safe now, or +soon will be. Didn't I tell you I was going there too? I'm going to be +married." + +"I'm delighted to hear it," he said stiffly. + +"To a perfect angel," said she. + +"Really? If you're going up to heaven, he, I take it, is not coming down +to earth." + +"Nothing is settled," said Lady Cayley, with such monstrous gravity that +his stiffness melted, and he laughed outright. + +Anne heard him. + +"Who, if I may ask, is this celestial, this transcendent being?" + +She shook her head. "I can't tell you, yet." + +"What, isn't even that settled?" + +Majendie was so genuinely diverted at that moment that he would not have +left her if he could. + +She took the sting of it, and flushed, dumbly. Remorse seized him, and he +sought to soothe her. + +"My dear lady, I had a vision of heavenly hosts standing round you in +such quantities that it might be difficult to make a selection, you +know." + +She rallied finely under the reviving compliment. "My dear, it's a case +of quality, not quantity--" Her past was so present to them both that he +almost understood her to say, "this time." + +"I see," he said. "The wings. But nothing's settled?" + +"It's settled right enough," said she, by which he understood her to +imply that the "angel's" case was. She had settled him. Majendie could +see her doing it. His imagination played lightly with the preposterous +idea. He conceived her in the act of bringing down her bird of heaven, +actually "winging him." + +"But it's not given out yet." + +"I see." + +"You're the first I've told, except Topsy. Topsy knows it. So you mustn't +tell anybody else." + +"I never tell anybody anything," said he. + +He gathered that it was not quite so settled as she wished him to +suppose, and that Lady Cayley anticipated some possible dashing of the +cup of matrimony from her lips. + +"So I'm not to have panics, in the night, and palpitations, every time +I think of it?" + +"Certainly not, if it rests with me." + +"I wanted you to know. But it's so precious, I'm afraid of losing it. +Nothing," said Lady Cayley, "can make up for the loss of a good man's +love. Except," she added, "a good woman's." + +"Quite so," he assented coldly, with horror at his perception of her +drift. + +His coldness riled her. + +"Who," said she with emphasis, "is the lady who keeps making those awful +eyes at us over Pussy's top-knot?" + +"That lady," said Majendie, "as it happens, is my wife." + +"Why didn't you tell me that before? That's what comes, you see, of not +introducing people. I'll tell you one thing, Wallie. She's awfully +handsome. But you always had good taste. Br-r-r, there's a draught +cutting my head off. You might shut that window, there's a dear." + +He shut it. + +"And put my cup down." + +He put it down. + +Anne saw him. She had seen everything. + +"And help me on with my cape." + +He lifted the heavy sable thing with two fingers, and helped her +gingerly. A scent, horrid and thick, and profuse with memories, was +shaken from her as she turned her shoulder. He hoped she was going. But +she was not going; not she. Her body swayed towards him sinuously from +hips obstinately immobile, weighted, literally, with her unshakable +determination to sit on. + +She rewarded him with a smile which seemed to him, if anything, more +atrociously luminous than the last. "I must keep you up to the mark," +said she, as she turned with it. "Your wife's looking at you, and I feel +responsible for your good behaviour. Don't keep her waiting. Can't you +see she wants to go?" + +"And I want to go, too," said he savagely. And he went. + +And as she watched Mrs. Walter Majendie's departure, Lady Cayley smiled +softly to herself; tasting the first delicious flavour of success. + +She had made Mrs. Walter Majendie betray herself; she had made her +furious; she had made her go. + +She had sat Mrs. Walter Majendie out. + +If the town of Scale, the mayor and the aldermen, had risen and given her +an ovation, she could not have celebrated more triumphally her return. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Anne and her husband walked home in silence across the Park, grateful for +its darkness. Majendie could well imagine that she would not want to +talk. He made allowance for her repulsion; he respected it and her +silence as its sign. She had every right to her resentment. He had let +her in for the Hannays, who had let her in for the inconceivable +encounter. On the day of her divorce Sarah Cayley had removed herself +from Scale, and he had shrunk from providing for the supreme +embarrassment of her return. He had looked on her as definitely, +consummately departed. She had disappeared, down dingy vistas, into +unimaginable obscurities. He pictured her as sunk, in Continental +abysses, beyond all possibility of resurgence. And she had emerged (from +abominations) smiling that indestructible smile. The incident had been +unpleasant, so unpleasant that he didn't want to talk about it. All the +same, he would have done violence to his feelings and apologised for it +then and there, but that he really judged it better to let well alone. It +was well, he thought, that Anne was so silent. She might have had a great +deal to say, and it was kind of her not to say it, to let him off so +easily. + +Anne's interpretation of Majendie's silence was not so favourable. After +being exposed to the pain and insult of Lady Cayley's presence she had +expected an immediate apology, and she inferred from its omission an +unpardonable complicity. Any compliance with the public toleration of +that person would have been inexcusable, and he had been more than +compliant, more than tolerant; he had been solicitous, attentive, +deferent. And deference to such a woman was insolence to his wife. Anne +was struck dumb by the shameless levity of the proceedings. The two had +behaved as if nothing had happened, or rather (she bitterly corrected +herself) as if everything had happened, and might happen any day again +(she inferred as much from his silence). It would--it would happen. _Her_ +intentions were, to Anne's mind, unmistakable; that was plainly what she +had come back for. As to his intentions, Anne was not yet clear. She had +not made up her mind that they were bad; but she shuddered as she said to +herself that he was "weak." He had come at that woman's call; he had hung +round her; he had waited on her at her bidding; at her bidding he had sat +down beside her; he had listened to her, attracted, charmed, delighted; +he had talked to her in the low voice Anne knew. How could she tell what +had or had not passed between them there, what intimacies, what +recognitions, what resurrections of the corrupt, ill-buried past? He had +been "weak--weak--weak." Henceforth she must reckon with his weakness, +and reckoning with it, she must keep him from that woman by any method, +and at any cost! It was something that he had the grace to be ashamed of +himself (another inference from his silence). No wonder, after that +communion, if he was ashamed to look at his wife or speak to her. + +He went straight to Edith when they reached home, and Anne went upstairs +to her bedroom. + +She had a great desire to be alone. She wanted to pray, as she had +prayed in that room at Scarby on the morning of her discovery. Not that +she felt in the least as she had felt then. She was more profoundly +wounded--wounded beyond passion and beyond tears, calm and self-contained +in her vision of the inevitable, the fore-ordained reality. She had to +get rid of her vision; it was impossible to live with it, impossible to +live through another hour like the last. Her desire to pray was a +terrible, urgent longing that consumed her, impatient of every minute +that kept her from her prayer. She controlled it, moving slowly as she +took off her outdoor clothes and put them decorously away; feeling that +the force of her prayer gathered and mounted behind these minute +obstructions and delays. + +She knelt down by her bed. She had been used to pray there with her eyes +fixed upon the crucifix which he had given her. It hung low, almost +between the pillows of their bed. Now she closed her eyes to shut it from +her sight. It was then that she realised what had been done to her. With +the closing of her eyes she opened some back room in her brain, a hot +room, now dark, and now charged with a red light, vaporous and vivid, +that ran in furious pulses, as it were the currents of her blood made +visible. The room thus opened was tenanted by the revolting image of Lady +Cayley. Now it loomed steadily in the dark, now it leapt quiveringly into +the red, vaporous light. She could not see her husband, but she had a +sickening sense that he was there, looming, and that his image, too, +would leap into sight at some signal of her unwilling thought. She knew +that that back room would remain, built up indestructibly in the fabric +of her mind. It would be set apart for ever for the phantom of her +husband and her husband's mistress. By a tremendous effort of will she +shut the door on it. There it must be for ever, but wherever she looked, +she would not look there; much less allow herself to dwell in the unclean +place. It was not to think of that woman, his mistress, that she had gone +down on her knees. To think of her was contamination. After all, the +woman had no power over her inner life. She was not forced to think of +her. She had her sanctuary and her way of escape. + +But before she could get there she had to struggle against the fatigue +which came of her effort not to think. Once she would have resigned +herself to this physical lassitude, mistaking it for the sinking of the +soul in the beatific self-surrender. But Anne's sufferings had brought +her a little further on her path. She had come to recognise that supine +state as a great danger to the spiritual life. It was not by lassitude, +but by concentration that the intense communion was attained. She lifted +her bowed head as a sign of her exaltation. + +And as she lifted it, she caught, as it were, the approach of triumphal +music. Words gathered, as on wings, from the clean-swept heavenly +spaces--they went by her like the passing of an immense processional: +"Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting +doors, and the King of Glory shall come in...." It came on, that heavenly +invasion, and all her earthly barriers went down before it. And it was as +if something strong in her, something solitary and pure, had cloven its +way through the mesh of the throbbing nerves, through the beating +currents of the blood, through the hot red lights of the brain, and had +escaped into the peaceful blank. She remained there a moment, in the +place of bliss, the divine place of the self-surrendered soul, where +mortal emptiness draws down immortality. + +She said to herself, "I have my refuge; no one can take it from me. +Nothing matters so long as I can get there." + +She rose from her knees more calm and self-contained than ever, barely +conscious of her wound. + +So calm and so self-contained was she at dinner that Majendie had an +agreeable rebound; he supposed that she had recovered from the abominable +encounter, and had put Lady Cayley out of her head like a sensible woman. +Edith had received his account of that incident with a gravity that had +made him profoundly uncomfortable; and his relief was in proportion to +his embarrassment. Unfortunately it gave him the appearance of +complacency; and complacency in the circumstances was more than Anne +could bear. Coming straight from her exaltation and communion, she was +crushed by the profound, invisible difference that separated them, the +perpetual loneliness of her unwedded, unsubjugated soul. They lived a +whole earth and a whole heaven apart. He was untouched by the fires that +burnt and purified her. The tragic crises that destroyed, the spiritual +moments that built her up again, passed by him unperceived. If she were +to tell him how she had attained her present serenity of mind, by what +vision, by what effort, by what sundering of body and soul, he would not +understand. + +And that was not the worst. She had learnt not to look for that spiritual +understanding in him. It mattered little that her unique suffering and +her unique consolation should remain alike ignored. The terrible thing +was that he should have come out of his own ordeal so smiling and so +unconcerned; that he could have sinned as he had sinned, and that he +could meet, after seven years, in his wife's presence, the partner of his +sin (whose face was a revelation of its grossness)--meet her, and not be +shaken by the shame of it. It showed how lightly he held it, how low his +standard was. She recalled, shuddering, the woman's face. Nothing in the +visions she had so shrunk from could compare with the violent reality. +For one moment of repulsion she saw him no less gross. She wondered, +would she have to reckon with that, henceforth, too? + +She looked up, and met across the table the engaging innocence that she +recognised as the habitual expression of his face. He had no idea of what +dreadful things she was thinking of him. She put her thoughts from her, +admitting that she had never had to reckon with that, yet. But it was +terrible to her that, while he forced her to such thinking, he could sit +there so unconscious, and so unashamed. He sat there, bright-eyed, +smiling, a little flushed, playing with a light topic in a manner that +suggested a conscience singularly at ease. He went on sitting there, +absolutely unembarrassed, eating dessert. The eating of dinner was bad +enough, it showed complacency. But dessert argued callousness. She had +wondered how he could have any appetite at all. Her dinner had almost +choked her. + +And she sat waiting for him to finish, hardly looking at him, detached, +saint-like, and still. + +At last her silence struck him as a little ominous. He had distinct +misgivings as they turned into the study for coffee and his cigarette. +Anne sat up in her chair, refusing the support and luxury of cushions, +leaning a little forward with a brooding air. + +"Well, Nancy," said he, "are you going to read to me?" + +(Better to read than talk.) + +"Not now," said she. "I want to talk to you." + +He saw that it was not to be avoided. "Won't you let me have my coffee +and a cigarette first?" + +She waited, silent, with a strained air of patience more uncomfortable +than words. + +"Well," said he, lighting a second cigarette, and settling in the +position that would best enable him to bear it, "out with it, and get it +over." + +"I want to know," said she, "what you are going to do." + +"To do?" He was genuinely bewildered. + +"Yes, to do." + +"But about what?" + +"About that woman." + +He was so charmed with the angelic absurdity of the question that he +paused while he took it in, smiling. + +"I can't see," he said presently, "that I'm called upon to take action. +Why should I?" + +She drew herself up proudly. + +"For my sake." + +He was instantly grave. "For your sake, dear, I would do a great deal. +But"--he smiled again--"what action should I take?" + +"Is it for me to say?" + +"Well, I hardly know. I should be glad, at any rate, if you'd make a +suggestion. I can't, for instance, get up and turn the lady out of her +own sister's house. Do you want me to do that? Would you like me to--to +take her away in a cab?" + +There was a long silence, so awful that he forced himself to speak. "I am +extremely sorry. It was, of course, outrageous that you should have had +to sit in the same room with her for five minutes. But what could I do?" + +"You could have taken _me_ away." + +"I did, as soon as I got the chance." + +"Not before you had"--she paused for her phrase--"condoned her +appearance." + +"Condoned her appearance? How?" + +"By your whole manner to her." + +"Would you have had me uncivil?" + +"There are degrees," said she, "between incivility and marked attention." + +He coloured. "Marked attention! There was nothing marked about it. What +could I do? Would you, I say, have had me turn my back on the unfortunate +woman? That would have been marked attention, if you like." + +"I don't know what I would have had you do. One has no rules beforehand +for inconceivable situations. It was inconceivable that I should have met +her as I did, in your friend's house. Inconceivable that I should meet +such people anywhere. What I do ask is that you will not let me be +exposed in that way again." + +"That I certainly will not. The Ransomes did their best to get her out +of the room to-day. They won't annoy you. I can't conceive why they +called--except that they have always been rather fond of me. You can't +hold people accountable for all the doings of all their relations, can +you?" + +"In this case I should say you could--perfectly well." + +"Well, I don't, as it happens. But you needn't have anything to do with +them; not, at least, while she's living in their house." + +"It was in the Hannays' house I met her. But I'm not thinking of myself." + +"I'm thinking of you, and of nothing else." + +"You needn't," said she, cold to his warmth. "I can take care of myself. +It's you I'm thinking of." + +"Me? Why me?" + +"Because I'm your wife and have a right to. It's out of the question that +I should call on Mrs. Hannay or receive her calls. I must also beg of you +to give up going there, and to the Ransomes, and to every place where you +will be brought into contact with Lady Cayley." + +He stared at her in amazement. "My dear girl, you don't expect me to cut +the Ransomes because she isn't brute enough to turn her sister out of +doors?" + +"I expect you to give up going to them, and to the Hannays, as long as +Lady Cayley is in Scale. Promise me." + +"I can't promise you anything of the sort. Heaven knows how long she's +going to stay." + +"I ought not to have to explain that by countenancing her you insult me. +You should see it for yourself." + +"I can't see it. In the first place, with all due regard to you, I don't +insult you by countenancing her, as you call it. In the second place, I +don't countenance her by going into other people's houses. If I went into +her house, you might complain. She hasn't got a house, poor lady." + +She ignored his pity. "In spite of your regard for me, then, you will +continue to meet her?" + +"I shan't if I can help it. But if I must, I must. I can't be rude to +people." + +"You can be firm." + +He laughed. "What have I got to be firm about?" + +"Not meeting her." + +"What if I do meet her? I sincerely hope I shan't; but what if I do?" + +Her mouth trembled; her eyes filled with tears. He sprang up and leaned +over her, resting his arms on the back of her chair, bringing his face +close to hers and smiling into her eyes. + +"No--no--no!" She drew back her head and shrank away from him. He put out +his hand and turned her face to him, gazing into her eyes, as if for the +first time he saw and could fathom the sorrow and the fear in them. + +"What if I do?" he repeated. + +She tried to push his hand from her, but she could not. + +"You stupid child," he said, "do you mean to say that you're still afraid +of that?" + +"It's you who have made me--" + +"My sweetheart--" + +"No, no. Don't touch me." + +"What do you mean?" he asked gravely, still leaning over and looking down +at her. + +"I mean--I mean--I can't bear it!" she cried, gasping for breath under +the oppression of his nearness. + +He realised her repugnance, and removed himself. + +"Do you mean," he said, "because of her?" + +"Yes," she said, "because of her." + +He laughed softly. "Dear child--she doesn't exist. She doesn't exist." He +swept her out of existence with a gesture of his hand. "Not for me at any +rate." + +The emphasis was lost upon her. "It's all nonsense to talk in that way. +If she doesn't exist for you, you shouldn't have gone near her, you +shouldn't have sat talking--to her." + +"What do you suppose we were talking about?" + +"I don't know. I don't want to know. I saw and heard enough." + +"Look here, Anne. You wanted me to be rude to her, didn't you? I _was_ +rude. I was brutal. She had to remind me that she was a woman. By heaven, +I'd forgotten it. If you're always to be going back on that--" + +"I'm not going back. She has come back." + +"It doesn't matter. She doesn't exist. What difference does she make?" + +She rose for better delivery of what she had to say. + +"She makes the whole difference. It's not that I'm afraid of her. I don't +think I am. I believe that you love me." + +"Ah--if you believe that--" He came nearer. + +"I do believe it. It's to me that it makes the difference. I must be +honest with you. It's not that I'm afraid. It is--I think--that I'm +disgusted." + +He lowered his eyes and moved from her uneasily. + +"I was horrified enough when I first knew of it, as you know. You know, +too, that I forgave you, and that I forgot. That was because I didn't +realise it. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't before I had seen her. +Now I have seen her, and I know." + +"What do you know?" he said coldly. + +"The awfulness of it." + +"Do you! Do you!" + +"Yes--and if you had realised it yourself--But you don't, and your not +realising it is what shocks me most." + +"I don't realise it?" His smile, this time, was grim. "I should think I +was in a better position for realising it than you." + +"You don't realise the shame, the sin of it" + +"Oh, don't I?" He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all +over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But +you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me +that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth +and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you +are never--never--going to forget it. And you are going to make me +remember it every day of my life. Is that it?" + +"It is not." She could not see herself thus hard and implacable. She had +vowed that there was no duty that she would omit; and it was her duty to +forgive; if possible, to forget. "I am going to try to forget it, as I +have forgotten it before. But it will be very hard, and you must be +patient with me. You must not remind me of it more than you can help." + +"When have I--?" + +She was silent. + +"When?" he insisted. + +She shook her head and turned away. A sudden impulse roused him, and he +sprang after her. He grasped her wrist as she laid her hand on the door +to open it. He drew her to him. "When?" he repeated. "How? Tell me." + +She paused, gazing at him. He would have kissed her, hoping thus to make +his peace with her; but she broke from him. + +"Ah," she cried, "you are reminding me of it now." + +He opened the door, dumb with amazement, and turned from her as she went +through. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +It was a fine day, early in November, and Anne was walking alone along +one of the broad flat avenues that lead from Scale into the country +beyond. Made restless by her trouble, she had acquired this pedestrian +habit lately, and Majendie encouraged her in it, regarding it less as a +symptom than as a cure. She had flagged a little in the autumn, and he +was afraid that the strain of her devotion to Edith was beginning to tell +upon her health. On Saturdays and Sundays they generally walked together, +and he did his best to make his companionship desirable. Anne, given now +to much self-questioning as to their relations, owned, in an access of +justice, that she enjoyed these expeditions. Whatever else she had found +her husband, she had never yet found him dull. But it did not occur to +her, any more than it occurred to Majendie, to consider whether she +herself were brilliant. + +She made a point of never refusing him her society. She had persuaded +herself that she went with him for his own good. If he wanted to take +long walks in the country, it was her duty as his wife to accompany him. +She was sustained perpetually by her consciousness of doing her duty as +his wife; and she had persuaded herself also that she found her peace in +it. She kept his hours for him as punctually as ever; she aimed more +than ever at perfection in her household ways. He should never be able +to say that there was one thing in which she had failed him. + +No; she knew that neither he nor Edith, if they tried, could put their +finger on any point, and say: There, or there, she had gone wrong. Not +in her understanding of him. She told herself that she understood him +completely now, to her own great unhappiness. The unhappiness was the +price she paid for her understanding. + +She was absorbed in these reflections as she turned (in order to be home +by five o'clock), and walked towards the town. She was awakened from +them by the trampling of hoofs and the cheerful tootling of a horn. A +four-in-hand approached and passed her; not so furiously but that she had +time to recognise Lady Cayley on the box-seat, Mr. Gorst beside her, +driving, and Mr. Ransome and Mr. Hannay behind amongst a perfect +horticultural show in millinery. + +Anne had no acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Scale and +Beesly Four-in-hand Club, and her intuition stopped short of recognising +Miss Gwen Richards, of the Vaudeville, and the others. All the same her +private arraignment of these ladies refused them whatever benefit they +were entitled to from any doubt. Not that Anne wasted thought on them. +In spite of her condemnation, they barely counted; they were mere +attendants, accessories in the vision of sin presented by Lady Cayley. + +Nothing could have been more conspicuous than her appearance, more +unabashed than the proclamation of her gay approach. Mounted high, +heralded by the tootling horn, her hair blown, her cheeks bright with +speed, her head and throat wrapped in a rosy veil that flung two broad +streamers to the wind (as it were the banners of the red dawn flying and +fluttering over her), she passed, the supreme figure in the pageant of +triumphal vice. + +Her face was turned to Gorst's face, his to hers. He looked more than +ever brilliant, charming and charmed, laughing aloud with his companion. +Hannay and Ransome raised their hats to Mrs. Majendie as they passed. +Gorst was too much absorbed in Lady Cayley. + +Anne shivered, chilled and sick with the resurgence of her old disgust. +These were her husband's chosen associates and comrades; they stood by +one another; they were all bound up together in one degrading intimacy. +His dear friend Mr. Gorst was the dear friend of Lady Cayley. He knew +what she was, and thought nothing of it. Mr. Ransome, her brother-in-law, +knew, and thought nothing of it. As for Mr. Hannay, Walter's other dear +friend, you only had to look at the women he was with to see how much Mr. +Hannay thought. There could have been nothing very profound in his +supposed repudiation of Lady Cayley. If it was true that he had once paid +her money to go, he was doing his best to welcome her, now she had come +back. But it was Gorst, with his vivid delight in Lady Cayley, who amazed +her most. Anne had identified him with the man of whom Walter had once +told her, the man who was "fond of Edith," the man of whom Walter +admitted that he was not "entirely straight." And this man was always +calling on Edith. + +She was resolved that, if she could prevent it, he should call no more. +It should not be said that she allowed her house to be open to such +people. But it required some presence of mind to state her determination. +Before she could speak with any authority she would have to find out all +that could be known about Mr. Gorst. She would ask Fanny Eliott, who had +seemed to know, and to know more than she had cared to say. + +Instead of going straight home, she turned aside into Thurston Square; +and had the good luck to find Fanny Eliott at home. + +Fanny Eliott was rejoiced to see her. She looked at her anxiously, and +observed that she was thin. She spoke of her call as a "coming back"; the +impression conveyed by Anne's manner was so strikingly that of return +after the pursuit of an illusion. + +Anne smiled wearily, as if it had been a long step from Prior Street to +Thurston Square. + +"I thought," said Mrs. Eliott, "I was never going to see you again." + +"You might have known," said Anne. + +"Oh yes, I might have known. And you're not going to run away at five +o'clock?" + +"No. I can stay a little--if you're free." + +Mrs. Eliott interpreted the condition as a request for privacy, and rang +the bell to ensure it. She knew something was coming; and it came. + +"Fanny, I want you to tell me what you know of Mr. Gorst." + +Mrs. Eliott looked exceedingly embarrassed. She avoided gossip as +inconsistent with the intellectual life. And unpleasant gossip was +peculiarly distasteful to her. Therefore she hesitated. "My dear, I +don't know much--" + +"Don't put me off like that. You know something. You must tell me." + +Mrs. Eliott reflected that Anne had no more love of scandalous histories +than she had; therefore, if she asked for knowledge, it must be because +her need was pressing. + +"My dear, I only know that Johnson won't have him in the house." + +She spoke as if this were nothing, a mere idiosyncrasy of Johnson's. + +"Why not?" said Anne. "He has very nice manners." + +"I dare say, but Johnson doesn't approve of him." (Another eccentricity +of Johnson's.) + +"And why doesn't he?" + +"Well, you know, Mr. Gorst has a very unpleasant reputation. At least he +goes about with most objectionable people." + +"You mean he's the same sort of person as Mr. Hannay?" + +"I should say he was, if anything, worse." + +"You mean he's a bad man?" + +"Well--" + +"So bad that you won't have him in the house?" + +"Well, dear, you know we are particular." (A singularity that she shared +with Johnson.) + +"So am I," said Anne. + +"And this," she said to herself, "is the man whom Edie's fond of, +Walter's dearest friend. And my friends won't have him in their house." + +"Charming, I believe, and delightful," said Mrs. Eliott, "but perhaps a +little dangerous on that account. And one has to draw the line. I want to +know about you, dear. You're well, though you're so thin?" + +"Oh, very well." + +"And happy?" (She ventured on it.) + +"Could I be well if I weren't happy? How's Mrs. Gardner?" + +The thought of happiness called up a vision of the perpetually radiant +bride. + +"Oh, Mrs. Gardner, she's as happy as the day is long. Much too happy, she +says, to go about paying calls." + +"_I_ haven't called much, have I?" said Anne, hoping that her friend +would draw the suggested inference. + +"No, you haven't. _You_ ought to be ashamed of yourself." + +"Why I any more than Mrs. Gardner? But I am." + +Mrs. Eliott perceived her blunder. "Well, I forgive you, as long as +you're happy." + +Anne kissed her more tenderly than usual as they said good-bye, so +tenderly that Mrs. Eliott wondered "Is she?" + +Majendie was late that afternoon, and Anne had an hour alone with Edith. +She had made up her mind to speak seriously to her sister-in-law on the +subject of Mr. Gorst, and she chose this admirable opportunity. + +"Edith," said she with the abruptness of extreme embarrassment, "did you +know that Lady Cayley had come back?" + +"Come back?" + +"She's here, living in Scale." + +There was a pause before Edith answered. Anne judged from the quiet of +her manner that this was not the first time that she had heard of the +return. + +"Well, dear, after all, if she is, what does it matter? She must live +somewhere." + +"I should have thought that for her own sake it was a pity to have chosen +a town where she was so well known." + +"Oh well, that's her own affair. I suppose she argues that most people +here know the worst; and that's always a comfort." + +"Oh, for all they appear to care--" Her face became tragic, and she lost +her unnatural control. "I can't understand it. I never saw such people. +She's received as if nothing had happened." + +"By her own people. It's decent of them not to cast her off." + +"Oh, as for decency, they don't seem to have a shred of it amongst them. +And the Hannays are not her own people. I thought I should be safe in +going there after what you told me. And it was there I met her." + +"I know. They were most distressed about it." + +"And yet they received her, too, as if nothing had happened." + +"Because nothing can happen now. They got rid of her when she was +dangerous. She isn't dangerous any more. On the contrary, I believe her +great idea now is to be respectable. I suppose they're trying to give her +a lift up. You must admit it's nice of them." + +"You think them nice?" + +"I think _that's_ nice of them. It's the sort of thing they do. They're +kind people, if they're not the most spiritual I have met." + +"You may call it kindness, I call it shocking indifference. They're worse +than the Ransomes. I don't believe the Ransomes know what's decent. The +Hannays know, but they don't care. They're all dreadful people; and their +sympathy with each other is the most dreadful thing about them. They hold +together and stand up for each other, and are 'kind' to each other, +because they all like the same low, vulgar, detestable things. That's why +Mr. Hannay married Mrs. Hannay, and Mr. Ransome married Lady Cayley's +sister. They're all admirably suited to each other, but not, my dear +Edie, to you or me." + +"They're certainly not your sort, I admit." + +"Nor yours either." + +"No, nor mine either," said Edith, smiling. "Poor Anne, I'm sorry we've +let you in for them." + +"I'm not thinking only of myself. The terrible thing is that you should +be let in, too." + +"Oh, me--how can they harm me?" + +"They have harmed you." + +"How?" + +"By keeping other people away." + +"What people?" + +"The nice people you should have known. You were entitled to the very +best. The Eliotts and the Gardners--those are the people who should have +been your friends, not the Hannays and the Ransomes; and not, believe me, +darling, Mr. Gorst." + +For a moment Edith unveiled the tragic suffering in her eyes. It passed, +and left her gaze grave and lucid and serene. + +"What do you know of Mr. Gorst?" + +"Enough, dear, to see that he isn't fit for you to know." + +"Poor Charlie, that's what he's always saying himself. I've known him too +long, you see, not to know him now. Years and years, my dear, before I +knew you." + +"It was through Mrs. Eliott that I knew you, remember." + +"Because you were determined to know me. It was through you that I knew +Mrs. Eliott. Before that, she never made the smallest attempt to know me +better or to show me any kindness. Why should she?" + +"Well, my dear, if you kept her at arm's length--if you let her see, for +instance, that you preferred Mr. Gorst's society to hers--" + +"Do you think I let her see it?" + +"No, I don't. And it wouldn't enter her head. But, considering that she +can't receive Mr. Gorst into her own house--" + +"Why should she?" + +"Edie--if she cannot, how can you?" + +Edith closed her eyes. "I'll tell you some day, dear, but not now." + +Anne did not press her. She had not the courage to discuss Mr. Gorst with +her, nor the heart to tell her that he was to be received into her house +no more. She saw Edith growing tender over his very name; she felt that +there would be tears and entreaties, and she was determined that no +entreaties and no tears should move her to a base surrender. Her pause +was meant to banish the idea of Mr. Gorst from Edith's mind, but it only +served to fix it more securely there. + +"Edith," she said presently, "I will keep my promise." + +"Which promise?" Edith was mystified. Her mind unwillingly renounced the +idea of Mr. Gorst, and the promise could not possibly refer to him. + +"The promise I made to you about Walter." + +"My dear one, I never thought you would break it." + +"I shall never break it. I've accepted Walter once for all, and in spite +of everything. But I will not accept these people you say I've been let +in for. I will not know them. And I shall have to tell him so." + +"Why should you tell him anything? He doesn't want you to take them to +your bosom. He sees how impossible they are." + +"Ah--if he sees that." + +"Believe me" (Edith said it wearily), "he sees everything." + +"If he does," thought Anne, "it will be easier to convince him." + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +The task was so far unpleasant to her that she was anxious to secure the +first opportunity and get it over. Her moment would come with the two +hours after dinner in the study. + +It did not come that evening; for Majendie telegraphed that he had been +detained in town, and would dine at the Club. He did not come home till +Anne (who sat up till midnight waiting for that opportunity) had gone +tired to bed. + +Her determination gathered strength with the delay, and when her moment +came with the next evening, it came gloriously. Majendie gave himself +over into her hands by bringing Gorst, of all people, back with him to +dine. + +The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarrassed youthful +air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his +confidence over something unfortunate and absurd. He had evidently +counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with +her. He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease, +his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his +knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile +candour. It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday's +encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he +had been seen. His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was +a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give +a poor prodigal away. His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it +amounted to, that awful prodigality of his. + +But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging +smiles and beautiful manners. And with every tick of the clock he +deepened the impression of his insolence and levity. His very charm +and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the +prodigal's account. The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, +the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the +paraphernalia of triumphant sin. She turned upon her guest the cold eyes +of a condign destiny. + +By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking +in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there. He might even have had +some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend's table so +consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating +his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved +house. + +Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his +wife's protesting presence. The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne +had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained +behind to preserve her protest. Gorst had changed his oppression for a +nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie. + +"My dear fellow," he said, "what is the matter with you?" + +"How should I know?" said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper. "I'm not a +nerve specialist." + +Majendie looked at him attentively. "I say, _you_ mustn't go in for +nerves, you know; you can't afford it." + +"My dear Walter, I can't afford anything, if it comes to that." He paused +with an obscure air of injury and foreboding. "Not even, it seems, the +most innocent amusements. At the rate," he added, "I have to pay for +them." Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly +anxiety. "I suppose," Gorst said suddenly, "I can go up and see Edith, +can't I?" + +He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all +his "innocent amusements," that supreme consolation would be still open +to him. + +"Of course you can," said Majendie. "It's the best thing you can do. +I told her you were coming." + +"Thanks," said Gorst, checking the alacrity with which he rose to go to +Edith. + +Oh yes, he knew it was the best thing he could do. + +Edith's voice called gladly to him as he tapped at her door. He entered +noiselessly, wearing the wondering and expectant look with which a new +worshipper enters a holy place. Perpetual backslidings kept poor Gorst's +worship perpetually new. + +Colour came slowly back into Edith's face and a tender light into her +eyes, as if from the springing of some deep untroubled well of life. She +seemed more than ever a creature of imperial vitality, bound by some +cruel enchantment to her couch. She held out her hands to him; and he +raised them to his lips and kissed her fingers lightly. + +"It's weeks since I've seen you," said she. + +"Months, isn't it?" said he. + +"Weeks, three weeks, by the calendar." + +"I say--tell me--I _am_ to come and see you, just the same?" + +"Just the same? Why, what's different?" + +"Oh, I don't know. But it seems to me, when a man's married, it's bound +to make a difference." + +Edith's colour mounted; she made an effort to control the trembling of +her mouth, the soft woman's mouth where all that was bodily in her love +still lingered. But the sweetness deepened in her eyes, which were the +dwelling-place of the immortal, immaterial power. They met Gorst's eyes +steadily, laying on his restlessness their peace. + +"Are you going to be married, Charlie?" said she, and smiled bravely. + +He laughed. "Oh, Lord, no; not I." + +"Who is, then?" + +"Walter, of course. I mean he is married, don't you know." + +"Yes, and is there any difference in him to you?" + +"In him? Oh, rather not." + +"In whom, then?" + +"Well--I don't think, Edie, that Mrs. Walter--I like her--" he stuck +to it--"I like her, you know, she's charming, but--I don't think she +particularly cares for _me_." + +"How do you know that?" + +"How do I know anything? By the way she looks at me." + +"Oh, the way Anne looks at people--" + +"Well, you know, it's something tremendous, something terrible. +Unutterable things, you know. She knocks the Inquisition and the day of +judgment all to pieces. They're simply not in it. It's awfully hard lines +on me, you see, because I like her." + +"I'm glad you like her." + +"Oh, I only like her because she likes you, I think." + +"And I like her. Please remember that." + +"I do remember it. I say, Edie, tell me, is she awfully devoted and all +that?" + +"To Walter? Yes, very devoted." + +"That's all right, then. I don't think I mind so much now. As long as +I can come and see you just the same." + +"Of course you'll come and see me, just the same." + +He pondered for a long time over that. Seeing Edith was the best thing he +could do. To-night it seemed the only good thing left for him to do. He +lived in a state of alternate excitement and fatigue, forever craving his +innocent amusements, and forever tired of them. None of them were worth +while. Seeing Edith was the only thing that was worth while. He refused +to contemplate with any calmness a life in which it would be impossible +for him to see her. If the poor prodigal had not chosen the most elevated +situation for the building of his house of life, he was always making +desperate efforts to leave the insalubrious spot, and return to the high +and windswept mansions of his youth. To be with Edith was to nourish the +illusion of return. Return itself seemed possible, when goodness, in the +person of Edith, looked at him with such tender and alluring eyes. In +spirit he prostrated himself before it, while he cursed the damnable +cruelty that had prevented him from marrying her. Through that act of +adoration he was enabled to live through his alien and separated days. +It kept him, as he phrased it, "going," which meant that, wherever his +rebellious feet might carry him, he continued to breathe, through it, the +diviner air. + +And Edith had lain for ten years on her back, and every year the hours +had gone more lightly, through the hope of seeing him. She had outlived +her time of torment and rebellion. There was a sense in which her life, +in spite of its frustration, was complete. The love through which her +womanhood struggled for victory in defeat had fulfilled itself by gradual +growth into something like maternal passion. There was no selfishness in +her attitude to him and his devotion. By accepting it she took his best +and offered it to God for him. With fragile, dedicated hands she nursed +and sheltered the undying votive flame. She seemed a saint who had +foregone heaven and remained on earth to help him. Her womanhood, wrapped +from him in veil upon veil of her mysterious suffering, had never removed +itself from him. She held him by all that was indomitable in her own +nature, and in spite of his lapses, he remained her lover. + +She was aware of these lapses and grieved over them and forgave them, +laying them, as she had laid her brother's sin, to the account of her +unhappy spine. In Edith's tender fancy her spine had become responsible +for all the shortcomings of these beloved persons. If Walter could have +married Anne seven years ago there would have been no dreadful Lady +Cayley; and if she could have married poor Charlie she would not have had +to think of him as "poor Charlie" now. It had been hard on him. + +That was precisely what poor Charlie was thinking. And if that +sister-in-law was to come between them, too, it would be harder still. +But Edith insisted that she would make no difference. + +"In fact," said she, "you can come more than ever. For if Walter's +absorbed in Anne, and Anne's absorbed in Walter--" + +He took it up gaily. "Then I may be absorbed in you? So, after all, it +turns out to my advantage." + +"Yes. You can console me. You can console me now, this minute, if you'll +play to me." + +He was always lamenting that he could do nothing for her. Playing to her +was the one thing he could do, and he did it well. + +He rose joyously and went to the piano, removing the dust from the keys +with his handkerchief. "How will you have it? Sentimental and soporific? +Or loud and strong?" + +"Oh, loud and strong, please. Very strong and very loud." + +"Right you are. You shall have it hot and strong, and loud enough to wake +the dead." + +That was his rendering of Chopin's "Grande Polonaise." He let himself +loose in it, with a rush, a vehemence, a diabolic brilliance and clamour. +The quiet room shook with the sounds he wrenched out of the little humble +piano in the corner. And as Edith lay and listened, her spirit, too, +triumphed, and was free; it rode gloriously on the storm of sound. It +was, she said, laughing, quite enough to wake the dead. This was the +miracle that he alone could accomplish for her. + +And downstairs in the study, Anne heard his music and started, as the +dead may start in their sleep. It seemed to her, that Polonaise of +Chopin, the most immoral music, the music of defiance and revolt. It +flung abroad the prodigal's prodigality, his insolent and iniquitous +joy. That was what he, a bad man, made of an innocent thing. + +Majendie's face lit up, responsive to the delight and challenge of the +opening chord. "He's all right," said he, "as long as he can play." + +He listened, glancing now and then at Anne with a smile of pride in his +friend's performance. It was as if he were asking her to own that there +must be some good in a fellow who could play like that. + +Anne was considering in what words she would intimate to him that Mr. +Gorst's music was never to be heard again in that house. Some instinct +told her that she was courting danger, but the approval of her conscience +urged her on. She waited till the Polonaise was over before she spoke. + +"You say," said she, "he's all right as long as he can play like that. To +me, it's the most convincing proof that he's all wrong." + +"How do you make that out?" + +"I don't want to go into it," said Anne. "I don't approve of Mr. Gorst; +but I should think better of him if he had only better taste." + +"You're the first person who ever accused Gorst of bad taste." + +"Do you call it good taste to live as he does, as I know he does, and you +know he does, and yet to come here, and sit with Edie, and behave as if +he'd never done anything to be ashamed of? It would be infinitely better +taste if he kept away." + +"Not at all. There are a great many very nice things about Gorst, and his +caring to come here is one of the nicest. He has been faithful to Edith +for ten years. That sort of thing isn't so common that one can afford to +despise it." + +"Faithful to her? Poor darling, does she think he is?" + +"She doesn't think. She knows." + +"Preserve me from such faithfulness." + +"You don't know what you're talking about." + +"I do know. And you know that I know." In proof of her contention she +offered him the incident of the four-in-hand. + +Majendie made a movement of impatience. "Oh, that's nothing," he said. +"He doesn't like her. He likes driving, and she likes a front seat at any +show (I can't see her taking a back one); and if she insisted on climbing +up beside him, he couldn't very well knock her off, you know. You don't +seem to realise how difficult it is to knock a woman off any seat she +takes a fancy to sit on. You simply can't do it." + +Anne was silent. She felt weak and helpless before his imperturbable +levity. + +He smoked placidly. "No," he said presently. "Gorst mayn't be a saint, +but I will acquit him of an unholy passion for poor Sarah." + +Anne fired. "He may be a very bad man for all that." + +"There again, you show that you don't know what you're talking about. He +is not a 'very bad man'. You've no discrimination in these things. You +simply lump us all together as a bad lot. And so we may be, compared with +the angels and the saints. But there are degrees. If Gorst isn't as good +as--as Edie, it doesn't necessarily follow that he's bad." + +"Please--I would rather not argue the point. But I am not going to have +anything to do with Mr. Gorst." + +"Of course not. You disapprove of him. There's nothing more to be said." + +He spoke placably as if he made allowance for her attitude while he +preserved his own. + +"There is a great deal more to be said, dear. And I may as well say it +now. I disapprove of him so strongly that I cannot have him received in +this house if I am to remain in it." + +Astonishment held him dumb. + +"You have no right to expect me to," said she. + +"To expect you to remain, or what?" + +"To receive a man of Mr. Gorst's character." + +"My dear girl, what right have you to expect me to turn him out?" + +"My right as your wife." + +"My wife has a right to ask me a great many things, but not that." + +"I ought not to have to ask you. You should have thought of it yourself. +You should have had more care for my reputation." + +At this he laughed, greatly to his own annoyance and to hers. + +"Your reputation? Your reputation, I assure you, is in no danger from +poor Gorst." + +"Is it not? My friends--the Eliotts--will not receive him." + +"There's no reason why they should." + +"Is there any reason why I should? Do you want me to be less fastidious +than they are? You forget that I was brought up with very fastidious +people. My father wouldn't have allowed me to speak to a man like Mr. +Gorst. Do you want me to accept a lower standard that his, or my +mother's?" + +"Have you considered what my standard would look like if I turned my best +friend out of the house--a man I've known all my life--just because my +wife doesn't happen to approve of him? I know nothing about your Eliotts; +but if Edie can stand him, I should think you might." + +"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him." + +He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say, +your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like +that." + +"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself." + +"What did I tell you?" + +"That Edith cared for him." + +He remembered. + +"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie." + +"I do care for her." + +"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how +much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What +it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal +hardship of it?" + +"I know it was hard." + +"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them." + +"It isn't I who am hard." + +"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?" + +"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on +himself, and he is hard on her. There's nobody else to blame." + +"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come +any more?" + +"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after--" + +"After what?" + +"After everything." + +"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor +Edie was to blame for that, it's the least _she_ can do for you to give +him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to +her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?" + +She was silent. + +"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?" + +"I cannot _help_ what you think of me," said she with the stress of +despair. + +"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of +understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a +hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your +extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to +turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do +it--No, that's beyond me." + +"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house, +I shall go out of it." + +"Well--" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a +wise solution. + +"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'." + +"Well--and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst, +and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be +pleased." + +Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it +seemed the very cry of his delight. + +"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right." + +Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He +broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit +of levity ran riot in immortal sounds. + +"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on +him." + +"If all good women were to reason that way--" + +"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would +happen?" + +"There would be more good men in the world." + +"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because, +don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to." + +"If you're thinking of his good--" + +"Have you thought of hers?" + +"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do +then?--poor Edie!" + +"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear +little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to +heaven." + +Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing +the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch. + +Majendie rose, placid and benignant. + +"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Majendie could never be angry with any woman for more than five minutes. +And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen, +as Edith had said, "everything." + +But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He +thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel." + +She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward +eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the +eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of +a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her +encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral +force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be +described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She +believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral +deadness that he carried. + +It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair. +But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly +impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to +understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if +he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr. +Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the +fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have known that, if +she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past, +she would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer. + +She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman +and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her +own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the +sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the +burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such +presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had +married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn. + +She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once +persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was +driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the +question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to +them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal. + +If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew +which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender +to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at +once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was +peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had +not invited him at once. + +At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and +remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress +upon the name) to dinner on Friday. + +The day was Tuesday. + +"And is he coming?" said Anne. + +"He is," said Majendie. + +When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine +with Mrs. Eliott. + +"I thought you would," said Majendie. + +She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't. + +They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in +Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst +came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as +her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such +weather. + +He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door. + +"Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella +and held it over her. + +"Not at all," said she significantly. + +At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab. + +Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished +the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's +manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her +tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as +she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep, +with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding +rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on. + +Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a +pathetic spectacle. + +"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry." + +He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in +the cab, with Anne's boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing +hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood +in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped +with its passage from the cab to their doorstep. + +"I think my feet are wet," said she. + +"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he. + +He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and +stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands +to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and +kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for +a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her +shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission, +to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then +magnanimously forgive. + +It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the +downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing +gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head. + +"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he. + +"What was worth while?" + +"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?" + +There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in +sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she +would have found that her attitude of protest was a moral luxury, and +that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne +had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her +to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual +voluptuary. + +Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband's manner. +He seemed positively to pander to her curious passion, while preserving +an attitude of superior purity. He multiplied her opportunities. A week +had hardly passed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne +again took refuge in Thurston Square. + +This time Majendie made no comment on her action. He seemed to take it +for granted. + +But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a +sense of moving in a divine combat. Every time she dined in Thurston +Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that +Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up. Thus +unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in +him. + +When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the +Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on +Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and +looked for some irritating maneuver in response. He would, of course, +proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect +a retreat to Mr. Gorst's rooms, or to his club. + +But Majendie lacked her passion and her inspiration. He simply said he +was delighted to hear it, and that he would make a point of being at +home. He would have to give up an engagement which he would not have made +if he had known. But that did not greatly matter. + +They came, the Eliotts and the rest, and Miss Proctor again pronounced +him charming. To be sure, he was not half so amusing as he had been on +his first appearance in Thurston Square; but it was only becoming that +he should repress himself a little at his own table and in the presence +of the Canon. _He_, the Canon, was brilliant, if you like. + +For that night the Canon was, as usual, all things to all men, and +especially to all women. He was the man of the world for Miss Proctor; +the fine epicure of books for Mrs. Eliott; for Mr. Eliott and Dr. +Gardner, the broad-minded searcher and enthusiast, the humble +camp-follower of the conquering sciences. "You are the pioneers," +said he; "you go before us on the march. But we keep up, we keep up. +We can step out--cassock and all." + +But he spread out all his spiritual lures for Mrs. Majendie. His eyes +seemed more than ever to pursue her, to search her, to be gazing +discreetly at the secret of her soul. They drew her with the clear and +candid flattery of their understanding. She could feel the clever little +Canon taking her in and making notes on her. "Sensitive. Unhappy. +Intensely spiritual nature. Too fine and pure for _him_." And over the +unhallowed, half-abandoned table, flushed slightly with Majendie's good +wine, the Canon drew up his chair to his host, and stretched his little +legs, and let his spirit expand in a rosy, broad humanity. As he had +charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to +flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in +his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the +versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous +eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his +after-dinner moments, made him sick.) + +Anne heard nothing more of Mr. Gorst for over a fortnight. It was on a +Saturday, and Majendie asked her suddenly, during luncheon, if she +thought the Eliotts would be disengaged that evening. + +"Why?" + +"Because I've asked Gorst" (again that disagreeable emphasis) "to dine +to-night." + +"Very well. I will ask Mrs. Eliott if she can have me." + +"Can you?" + +"Perfectly." + +"Oh--and I must prepare you for something quite horrible. Some time, you +know" (he smiled provokingly), "I shall have to ask the Hannays. Do you +think you can arrange that?" + +"I shall have to," said she. + +This time (it was the third) she was obliged to take Mrs. Eliott into her +confidence. She fairly flung herself on her friend's mercy. + +"I feel as if I were making use of you," said she. + +"My dear, make any use of me you please. I'm always here. You can come to +me any time you want to escape." + +"To escape?" Anne's face flew a colour that was a flag of defiance to +any reflection on her husband. She would be loyal to him as long as she +lived. Not one of her friends should know of her trouble and her fear. + +"From your Gorsts and Hannays and people." + +"Oh, from them." Anne felt that she was shielding him. + +Mrs. Eliott marked the flag of defiance and the attitude of defence. If +Anne had meant to "give him away," she could not have given him more +lavishly. Mrs. Elliott's sad inward comment was that there was more in +all this than met the eye. + +And Anne's life now continued on this rather uncomfortable footing. The +Hannays came to dinner, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. The Ransomes +came, and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. Mr. Gorst came (for the fourth +time in as many weeks), and she dined with Mrs. Eliott. She began to +wonder whether the Eliotts' hospitality would stand the strain. She also +wondered whether her other friends in Thurston Square were wondering; and +what Canon Wharton must think of it. It had not occurred to her to wonder +what Mr. Gorst would think. + +At first he thought nothing of it. When he found that he had not to +encounter the terrible eyes of Mrs. Majendie, Mr. Gorst's relief was so +great that it robbed him of reflection. And when he began to think, he +merely thought that Majendie had asked him because his wife was absent, +rather than that Majendie's wife was absent because he had been asked. +Majendie had calculated on this. He was not in the least distressed by +Anne's absences. He believed that she was thoroughly enjoying both her +own protest and Mrs. Eliott's society. And the arrangement really solved +the problem nicely. Otherwise the whole thing was trivial to him. He +remained unaware of the tremendous spiritual conflict that was being +waged round the person of the unhappy Gorst. + +But Christmas was now at hand and Christmas brought the problem back +again in a terrific form. For ten years poor Gorst had dined with his +friends in Prior Street on Christmas Day. His presence was considered +by Edith to borrow a peculiar significance and sanctity from the +festival. Did they not celebrate on that day the birth of the Divine +Humanity, the solemn advent of redeeming love? Punctually on Christmas +Day the prodigal returned from his farthest wanderings, and made for +Prior Street as for his home. He had never missed a Christmas. And how +could they expel him now? His coming was such a sacred and established +thing, that he had spoken of it to Edith as a certainty. And it was as +a certainty that Edith spoke of it to Majendie. + +She asked him how they were to break the news to Anne. + +"Better not break it at all," said he. "Just let him come." + +"If he does," said Edith, "she'll walk straight out of the house." + +"Oh no, she won't." + +"Yes, she will. On principle. I understand her." + +"I confess I don't." + +"But I believe," said she, "if you explained it all to her, she'd give in +for once." + +Rather against his judgment, he endeavoured to explain, "We simply can't +not ask him, you know." + +"Ask him by all means. But I shall have to put myself on the Gardners, or +the Proctors, for the Eliotts are away." + +"Don't be absurd. You know you won't be allowed to do anything of the +sort." + +"There's nothing else left for me to do." + +He looked at her gravely; but his speech was light, for it was not in him +to be weighty. "Don't you think that, at this holy season, for the sake +of peace, and good-will, and all the rest of it, you might drop it just +for once? And let the poor chap have a happy Christmas?" + +She seemed to be considering it. "You think me very hard," said she. + +"Oh no, no, not hard." But he was wondering for the first time what this +wife of his was made of. + +"Yes, hard. I don't want you to think me hard. If you could understand +why I cannot meet that man--what it means to me--the effect it has on +me." + +"What," he said, "is the precise effect?" He was really interested. He +had always been curious to know how different men affected different +women, and to get his knowledge at first hand. + +"It's the effect," said she, "of being brought into contact with +something terribly painful and repulsive, the effect of intense +suffering--of unbearable disgust." + +He listened with his thoughtful, interested air. "I know. The effect that +your friend Canon Wharton sometimes has on me." + +"I see no resemblance between Canon Wharton and your friend Mr. Gorst." + +"And I see no resemblance between my friend Mr. Gorst and Canon Wharton." + +She was silent, gathering all her strength to deliver her spirit's last +appeal. + +"Dear," said she (for she wished to be very gentle with him, since he had +thought her hard), "dear, I wonder if you ever realise what the thing we +call--purity is?" + +He blushed violently. + +"I only know it's one of those things one doesn't speak about." + +"I must speak," said she. + +"You needn't," he said curtly; "I understand all right." + +"If you did you wouldn't ask me. All the same, Walter--" She lifted to +him the set face of a saint surrendered to the torture--"If you compel +me--" + +"Compel you? I can't compel you. Especially if you're going to look like +that." + +"It's no use," he said to Edith. "First she talks of dining with the +Gardners--" + +"She will, too--" + +"No. She'll stay--if I compel her." + +"Oh, I see. That's worse. She'd let him see it. He wouldn't enjoy his +Christmas if he came." + +"No, poor fellow, I really don't think he would. She's awfully funny +about him." + +"You still think her funny?" + +"My dear--it's the only way to take her. I'm sorry, but I can't let +Charlie spoil her Christmas; nor," he added, "Anne his." + +So Mr. Gorst did not come to Prior Street that Christmas. There came +instead of him whole sheaves and stacks of flowers, Christmas roses and +white lilies, the sacred flowers which, at that festival, the poor +prodigal brought as his tribute to his adored and beloved lady. + +He spent the greater part of his Christmas Day in the society of Mr. Dick +Ransome, and the greater part of his Christmas Night in the society of +pretty Maggie Forrest, the new girl in Evans's shop who had sold him the +Christmas roses and the lilies. "For," said he, "if I can't go and see +Edie, I'll go and see Maggie." And he enjoyed seeing Maggie as much as it +was possible to enjoy anything that was not seeing Edie. + +And Edie lay among her Christmas roses and her lilies, and smiled, with +a high courage, at Nanna, at Majendie, and Anne; and did her best to make +everybody believe that she was having a very happy Christmas. But at +night, when it was all over, Majendie held a tremulous and tearful Edie +in his arms. + +"Don't think me a brute, darling," he said. "I would have insisted, only +if he'd come to-day he'd have found out he wasn't wanted." + +"I know; and he never would have come again." + +He didn't come. For Canon Wharton enlightened Mrs. Hannay, and Mrs. +Hannay enlightened Mr. Hannay, and Mr. Hannay enlightened Mr. Gorst. + +"Of course," said the prodigal, "if she walks out of the house when +I walk into it, I can't very well go." + +"Well, not at present, perhaps, for the sake of peace," said Hannay. "It +strikes me poor old Majendie's in a pretty tight place with that wife of +his." + +So, for the sake of peace, Mr. Gorst kept away from Prior Street and his +Edie, and spent a great deal of time in Evans's shop, cultivating the +attention of Miss Forrest. + +And, for the sake of peace, Majendie kept silence, and his sister +concealed her trembling and her tears. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +Gloom fell on the house in Prior Street in the weeks that followed +Christmas. The very servants went heavily in the shadow of it. Anne began +to have her bad headaches again. Deep lines of worry showed on Majendie's +face. And on her couch by the window, looking on the blackened winter +garden, Edith fought day after day a losing battle with her spine. + +The slow disease that held her captive there seemed to be quickening its +pace. In January there came a whole procession of bad nights, without, as +she pathetically said, "anything to show for it," for her hands could +make nothing now. She lay flatter than ever; each day she seemed to sink +deeper into her couch. + +Anne, between her headaches, devoted herself to her sister with a kind +of passion. Her keenest experience of passion came to her through the +emotion wakened in her by the sight of Edith's suffering. She told +herself that her love for Edith satisfied her heart completely; that she +fulfilled herself in it as she never could have fulfilled herself in any +other way. Nothing could degrade or spoil the spiritual beauty of this +relation. It served as a standard by which she could better judge her +relation to her husband. "I love her more than I ever loved him," she +thought. "I cannot help it. If it had been possible to love him as I love +her--but I have lowered myself by loving him. I will raise myself by +loving her." + +She was never tired of being with Edith, sewing silently by her fireside, +or reading aloud to her (for Edith's hands were too tremulous now to hold +a book), or sitting close up against her couch, nursing her hands in +hers, as if she would have given them her own strength. + +And thus her ardour spent and renewed itself, and left her colder than +ever to her husband. + +At times she mourned, obscurely, the destruction of the new soul that had +been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again +to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect +thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events +that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of +her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in +consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he +always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At +times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she slipped from +her trouble, and turned, with her arms stretched towards him, where he +lay. In her dreams he came to her with the low cry she had heard in the +wood at Westleydale. And in her dreams she was tender; but her waking +thoughts were sad and hard. + +Majendie found it more than ever difficult to realise that she had ever +shown him kindness, that her arms had opened to him and her pulses beaten +with his own. Her face and her body were changing with this change of +soul. Her health suffered. Her eyes became dull, her skin dry; her small, +reticent mouth had taken on the tragic droop; she was growing austerely +thin. She had abandoned the pleasing and worldly fashion of her dress, +and arrayed herself now in straight-cut, sombre garments, very +serviceable in the sick-room, but mournfully suggestive, to her husband's +fancy, of her renunciation of the will to please. + +On her first appearance in this garb he enquired whether she had embraced +the religious life. + +"I always have embraced it," said she in her ringing voice. + +"I believe it's about the only thing you ever wanted to embrace." + +"You need not say so," she returned. + +"Then why, oh why, do you wear those awful clothes?" + +"My clothes are suitable," said she. + +"Suitable? My dear girl, they suggest a divorce-suit, Majendie _versus_ +Majendie, if you like. You're a walking prosecution. Your face, with that +expression on it, is a decree _nisi_ with costs. You don't want to be a +libel on your husband, do you?" + +"How can you say such things?" + +"Well--look in the glass, dear, if you don't believe me." + +She looked. The dress was certainly not becoming. She greeted the joyless +apparition with her thin, unwilling smile. + +He put his arm around her and drew her to him. He loved her dearly, for +all her sadness and unsweetness. + +"Poor Nancy," he said, "I _am_ a brute. Forgive me." + +"I do forgive you." + +The words seemed the refrain of her life's sad song. + +And as he kissed her he said to himself, "That's all very well; but if I +only knew what I'm supposed to have done to her! Her friends must think +me a perfect monster." + +And, indeed, there was more truth than Majendie was aware of in his +extravagant jests. His wife's face was so eloquent of misery that her +friends were not slow in drawing their conclusions. Thurston Square +prepared itself to rally round her. Mrs. Eliott was loyal in keeping what +she supposed to be Anne's secret, but when she found that the Gardners +also understood that young Mrs. Majendie wasn't very happy with her +husband, discussion became free in Thurston Square, though it went no +further. + +"The kindest thing we can do is to give her a refuge sometimes from his +dreadful friends," said Mrs. Eliott. "I have to ask her here every time +they're there." + +Mrs. Gardner declared that she also would ask her gladly. Miss Proctor +said that she would ask Mr. Majendie and Mr. Gorst, which would come to +the same thing for Anne, but that she would not have Anne without her +husband. Miss Proctor could be depended on to take a light view of any +situation, a view entirely her own. + +So the Gardners, as well as the Eliotts, rallied round Mrs. Majendie, and +offered their house also as her refuge. And thus poor Anne, whose ideal +was an indestructible loyalty, contrived to build up the most undesirable +reputation for her husband in Thurston Square. Of this reputation she now +became aware, and it reacted on her own estimate of him. She said to +herself, "They don't approve of him. They seem to know something. They +are sorry for me." And she was humbled in her pride. + +The one who seemed to know most, and to be sorriest of all, was Canon +Wharton. She was always meeting him now. It was positively as if he lay +in wait for her. His eyes seemed more than ever to have penetrated her +secret. They held it safe under the pent-house of his brows. They seemed +to be always making allusions to it, while his tongue preserved a +delicate reticence. At meeting they said to her, "It doesn't matter if I +know your secret. Do you suppose it is so evident to everybody? Why, in +all this town, there is no one--no one, dear lady--capable of discovering +it but I. It is a spiritual secret." And at parting they said, "When you +can bear it no longer you must come to me. Sooner or later you will come +to me." + +And the weeks went on towards Lent. Anne longed for the time of +cleansing, and absolution and communion; for the peace of the week-day +services; and for the sweet, sharp, grey light of the young Spring at +evening, a light that recalled, piercingly, the long Lent of her +girlhood, and the passing of its pure and consecrated days. + +She had not yet completely forsaken St. Saviour's for All Souls. She +loved the grey old church in the market-place. Set in the midst of that +sordid scene of chaffering and grime, St. Saviour's perpetuated for her +the ancient beauty and the majesty of her faith. When she desired to +forget herself, to sink humbly back into the ages, passive to a superb +tradition, she went to St. Saviour's. When she wished to be stirred and +strengthened, to realise her spiritual value, to feel the grip of divine +forces centring on her, she went to All Souls. + +On the Sunday before Lent she was fairly possessed by this ardent +personal mood. In obedience to it she attended Matins at the Canon's +church. + +She had had a scruple about going, for Edith had been worse that morning, +and more evidently unhappy. She went alone. Majendie had admitted lately +that he liked going to St. Saviour's, but he refused to accompany her to +All Souls. + +She went in a strange, premonitory mood, expectant of some great +illumination. It came with the Collect for the day. Anne was deeply moved +by the Collect. She prayed inaudibly, with parted lips thirsting for the +sources of her spiritual help. Her light went up with the ascending, +sentence by sentence, of the prayer. + +"Oh, Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are +nothing worth; + +"Send Thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of +charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues; + +"Without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before Thee; + +"Grant this for thine only Son, Jesus Christ's sake." The ritual rang +upon that note. The music of the hymns of charity was part of the light +that penetrated her, poignant, but tender. + +Poignant but tender, too, were the aspect and the mood of the Canon as he +ascended the pulpit and looked upon his congregation. + +There was a rustling, sliding sound as the congregation turned to listen +to their vicar. + +"Though I speak,'" said the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of +angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a +tinkling cymbal." + +He gripped his hearers with the stress he laid upon certain words, +"angels," and "cymbal." He bade them mark that it was not by hazard that +the great prayer for Charity was appointed for the Sunday before Lent. +"The Church," he said, "has such care for her children that she does +nothing by hazard. This call is made to us on the eve of the great battle +against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Why, but that those among us +who come off victors may have mercy upon those weakly ones who are +worsted and fallen in the fight. The life of the spirit has its own +unique temptations. It is against these that we pray to-day. We are all +prepared to repent, to use abstinence, to mortify the body with its +corrupt affections. Are we prepared to bear the burden of our brother's +and our sister's unrepentance? Of their self-indulgence? Of their sin? To +follow in all things the Divine Example? We are told that the Saviour of +the world was the friend of publicans and sinners. We accept the +statement, we have gone on accepting it, year after year, as the +statement of a somewhat remote, but well-authenticated historical fact. +Have we yet realised its significance? Have we pictured, are we able to +picture to ourselves, what company He kept? Among what surroundings His +divine figure was actually seen? In what purlieus of degenerate +Jerusalem? In what iniquitous splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles? +And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich +young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven +devils? Which is the divinest of the divine parables? The parable of the +prodigal son who devoured his father's living with harlots!" + +The Canon's voice rose and fell, and rose again; thrilling, as his breast +heaved with the immense pathos and burden of the world. + +Anne had a vision of the Hannays and the Ransomes, and of the prodigal +cast out from the house that loved him. And she said to herself for the +first time: "Have I done right? Have I done what Christ would have me +do?" The light that went up in her was a light by which her deeds looked +doubtful. If she had failed in this, in charity? She pondered the +problem, while the Canon approached, gloriously, his peroration. + +"Therefore we pray for charity"--the Canon's voice rang tears--"for +charity, oh, dear and tender Lord, lest, having known Thy love, we fall, +ourselves, into the sins of unpity and of pride." + +Tears came into Anne's eyes. She was overcome, bowed, shaken by the +Canon's incomparable pleading. The Canon was shaken by it himself, his +voice trembled in the benediction that followed. No one had a clearer +vision of the spiritual city. It was his tragedy that he saw it, and +could not enter in. Many, remembering that sermon, counted it, long +afterwards, to him for righteousness. It had conquered Anne. The tongues +of men and of angels, of all spiritual powers, human and divine, spoke to +her in that vibrating, indomitable voice. + +The problem it had raised remained with her, oppressed, tormented her. +What she had done had seemed to her so good. But if, after all, she had +done wrong? If she had failed in charity? + +She had come to a turning in her way when she could no longer see for +herself, or walk alone. She was prepared to surrender, meekly, her own +judgment. She must ask help of the priest whose voice told her that he +had suffered, and whose eyes told her that he knew. + +She sent a note to All Souls Vicarage, requesting an interview, at Canon +Wharton's house rather than her own. She did not want Edith or the +servants to know that she had been closeted with the Canon. The answer +came that night, making an appointment after early Evensong on the +morrow. + +After early Evensong, Anne found herself in the Canon's library. He did +not keep her waiting, and, as he entered, he held out to her, literally, +the hand of help. For the Canon never wasted a gesture. There was no +detail of social observance to which he could not give some spiritual +significance. This was partly the secret of his power. His face had lost +the light that illuminated it in the pulpit, but his eyes gleamed with a +lambent triumph. They said, "Sooner or later. But rather sooner than I +had expected." + +Anne presented her case in a veiled form, as a situation in the abstract. +She scrupulously refrained from mentioning any names. + +The Canon smiled at her precautions. "We are working in the dark," said +he. "I think I can help you a little bit more if you'll allow me to come +down to the concrete. You are speaking, I fancy, of our poor friend, Mr. +Gorst?" + +She looked at him helplessly, startled at his penetration and her own +betrayal, but appeased by the pitying adjective which brought Gorst into +the regions of pardonable discussion. + +"You needn't be afraid," he said. "I had to be certain before I could +advise you. I can now tell you with confidence that you are doing right. +I--know--the--man." + +He uttered the phrase with measured emphasis, and closed his teeth upon +the last words with a snap. It was impossible to convey a stronger effect +of moral reprobation. "But I see your difficulty," he continued. "I +understand that he is a rather intimate friend of Miss Majendie." + +Anne noticed that he deliberately avoided all mention of her husband. + +"She has known him for a very long time." + +"Ah yes. And it is your affection, your pity for your sister that makes +you hesitate. You do not wish to be hard, and at the same time you wish +to do right. Is it not so?" + +She murmured her assent. (How well he understood her!) + +"Ah, my dear Mrs. Majendie, we have sometimes to be a little hard, in +order that we may not be harder. You have thought, perhaps, that you +should be tender to this friendship? Now, I am an old man, and I have had +a pretty large experience of men and women, and I tell you that such +friendships are unwholesome. Unwholesome. Both for the woman and the +man." + +"If I thought that--" + +"You may think it. Look at the man--What has it done for him? Has it made +him any better, any stronger, any purer? Has it made her any happier?" + +"I think so. It is all she has--" + +"How can you say that, my dear Mrs. Majendie, when she has you?" + +"And her brother." + +The Canon gave her a keen glance. He seemed to be turning a little extra +light on to her secret, to see it the better by. And under that light her +mind conceived again a miserable suspicion. + +"He knows something," she thought. "What is it that he knows? They all +seem to know." + +She turned the subject back again to her sister-in-law and Mr. Gorst. +"She thinks she can save him." + +"Her brother?" + +It was another turn of the searchlight, but this time the Canon veiled +his eyes, as if in mercy. He really knew nothing, nothing at all; but, as +a man of the world, he felt that there was a great deal more than Mr. +Gorst and Miss Majendie at the back of this discussion, and he was very +curious to know what it might be. + +Anne recoiled from the veiled condemnation of his face more than she had +from its open intimations. She was not clever enough to see that the +clever Canon had simply laid a trap for her. + +She was now convinced that there was something that he knew. She lifted +her head in loyal defiance of his knowledge. "No," said she proudly, "Mr. +Gorst. It was of him I was speaking." + +"Ah," said the Canon, as if his mind had come down with difficulty from +the contemplation of another and more interesting personality; and again +the significance of his manner was not lost upon Anne. + +"I do not know Miss Majendie," he went on, still with the air of forcing +himself to deal equitably with a subject of minor interest; "but if I am +not much mistaken, she is, is she not, a little morbid?" + +"She is a hopeless invalid." + +"I know she is" (his voice dropped pity). "Poor thing--poor thing! And +she thinks that she can save him? Mark me, I put no limit to the saving +grace of God, and I would not like to say whom He may not choose as +His instrument. But before we presume to act for Him, we should be +very sure about the choice. Judging by the fruits--the fruits of this +friendship"--he paused, as if seeking for a perfect justice--"Yes. That +is what we must look at. I imagine Miss Majendie has been morbid on this +subject. Morbid; and, perhaps, a little weak?" + +Anne flushed. She was distressed to think she had given such an +impression. "Indeed, indeed she isn't. You wouldn't say that if you knew +her." + +"I do not know her. But the strongest of us may be sometimes weak. You +must be strong for her. And I"--he smiled--"must be strong for you. And I +tell you that you have been--so far--wise and right. As long as this man +continues in his evil courses, go on as you are doing. Do not encourage +him by admitting him to your house and to your friendship. But"--(the +Canon stood up, both for the better emphasis of his point, and as a +gentle reminder to Mrs. Majendie that his dinner-hour was now +approaching)--"but let him repent; let him give up his most objectionable +companions; let him lead a pure life--and _then_--accept him--welcome +him--"(the Canon opened his arms, as if he were that moment receiving a +repentant sinner) "rejoice over him"--(the Canon's face became fairly +illuminated) "as--as much as you like." + +The peroration was rapid, valedictory, complete. He thrust out his hand, +displaying the whole palm of it as a sign of openness, honesty, and +good-will. + +"God bless you." + +The solemn benediction atoned for any little momentary brusquerie. + +Anne went away with a conscience wholly satisfied, in an exalted mood, +fortified by all the ramparts of the spiritual life. + +She was very gentle with Edith that evening. She said to herself that her +love must make up to Edie for the loss her conscience had been compelled +to inflict. "After all," she said to herself, "it's not as if she hadn't +me." Measuring her services with those of the disreputable Mr. Gorst, it +seemed to her that she was amply making up. She had a hatred of moral +indebtedness, as of any other, and she loved to spend. In reckoning the +love she had spent so lavishly on Edie, she had not allowed for the +amount of forgiveness that Edie had spent on her. Forgiveness is a gift +we have to take, whether we will or no, and Anne was blissfully unaware +of what she took. + +Majendie watched her ministrations curiously. Her tenderness was the +subtlest lure to the love in him that still watched and waited for its +hour. That night, in the study, he was silent, nervous, and unhappy. She +shrank from the unrest and misery in his eyes. They followed or were +fixed on her, rousing in her an obscure resentment and discomfort. She +was beginning to be afraid of him. It had come to that. + +She left him earlier than usual, and went very miserably to bed. She +prayed, to-night, with her eyes fixed on the crucifix. It had become for +her the symbol of her life, and of her marriage, which was nothing to her +now but a sacrifice, a martyrdom, a vicarious expiation of her husband's +sin. + +As she lay down, the beating of her pulses told her that she was not to +sleep. She longed for sleep, and tried to win it to her by repeating the +Psalm which had been her comfort in all times of her depression. "I will +lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh +from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." + +She closed her eyes under the peace of the beloved words. And as she +closed them she felt herself once more in the arms of the green hills, +the folding hills of Westleydale. + +She shook off the obsession and prayed another prayer. She longed to be +alone; but, to her grief, she heard the opening and shutting of a door +and her husband's feet moving in the room beyond. + +A few blessed moments of solitude were left her during Majendie's +undressing. She devoted them to the final expulsion of all lingering +illusions. She had long ago lost the illusion of her husband's immaculate +goodness; and now she cast off, once for all, the dear and pitiful belief +that had revived in her under her brief enchantment in the wood at +Westleydale. She told herself that she had married a man who had, not +only a lower standard than her own, but an entirely different code of +morals, a man irremediably contaminated, destitute of all perception of +spiritual values. And she had got to make the best of him, that was all. +Not quite all; for she had still to make the best of herself; and the two +things seemed, at moments, incompatible. To guard herself from all +contact with the invading evil; to take her stand bravely, to raise the +spiritual ramparts and retire behind them, that was no more than her bare +duty to herself and him. She must create a standard for him by keeping +herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he +must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness--the +highest goodness--in her. + +Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was +untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It +was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world. + +Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She +tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay +still as a stone, stiff with her fear. Once, at midnight, she felt him +stir, and turn, and raise himself on his elbow. She was conscious through +all her unhappy being of the adoring tenderness with which he watched her +sleep. + +At last she slept, and sleeping, she dreamed a strange dream. She found +herself again in Westleydale, walking in green aisles of the holy, +mystic, cathedral woods. The tall beech-stems were the pillars of the +temple. A still light came through them, guiding her to the beech-tree +that she knew. And she saw an angel lying under the beech-tree. It lay on +its side, with its wings stretched out so that the right wing covered the +left. As she approached, it raised the covering wing, and in the warm +hollow of the other she saw that it cradled a little naked child. And at +the sight there came a thorn in her breast that pricked her. The child +stirred in its sleep, and crawled to the place of the angel's breast, and +it fondled it with searching lips and hands. Then it wailed, and as she +heard its cry the thorn pressed sharper into Anne's breast; and the +angel's eyes turned to her with an immortal anguish, and pity, and +despair. She looked, and saw that its breast was as the breast of the +little child. And she was moved to compassion at the helplessness of them +both, of the heavenly and of the earthly thing; and she stooped and +lifted the child, and laid it to her own breast, and nourished it; and +had peace from her pain. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +It was the first day in Lent. Anne had come down in a state of +depression. She was silent during breakfast, and Majendie became absorbed +in his morning paper. So much wisdom he had learnt. Presently he gave a +sudden murmur of interest, and looked up with a smile. "I see," said he, +"your friend Mrs. Gardner has got a little son." + +"Has she?" said Anne coldly. + +The blood flushed in her cheeks, and a sudden pang went through her and +rose to her breasts with a pricking pain, such pain as she had felt once +in her dream, and only once in her waking life before. She thought of +dear little Mrs. Gardner, and tried to look glad. She failed miserably, +achieving an expression of more than usual austerity. It was the +expression that Majendie had come to associate with Lent. He thought he +saw in it the spiritual woman's abhorrence of her natural destiny. And +with the provocation of it the devil entered into him. + +"Is there anything in poor Mrs. Gardner's conduct to displease you?" + +She looked at him in a dull passion of reproach. + +"Oh," she said, "how can you be so unkind to me!" + +Her breast heaved, her lower lip trembled. She rose suddenly, pressing +her handkerchief to her mouth, and left the room. He heard the study door +open hastily and shut again. And he said to himself, as if with a sudden +lucid freshness, "What an extraordinary woman my wife is. If I only knew +what I'd done." + +As she had left her breakfast unfinished, he waited a judicious interval +and then went to fetch her back. + +He found her standing by the window, holding her hands tight to her +heaving sides, trying by main force to control the tempest of her sobs. +He approached her gently. + +"Go away," she whispered, through loose lips that shook with every word. +"Go away. Don't come near me." + +"Nancy--what is it?" + +She turned from him, and leaned up against the folded window shutter. Her +emotion was the more terrible to him because she was so seldom given to +these outbursts. She had seemed to him a woman passionless, and of almost +superhuman self-possession. He removed himself to the hearth-rug and +waited for five minutes. + +"Poor child," he said at last. "Can't you tell me what it is?" + +No answer. + +He waited another five minutes, thinking hard. + +"Was it--was it what I said about Mrs. Gardner?" + +He still waited. Then he conceived a happy idea. He would try to make her +laugh. + +"Just because I said she'd had a little son?" + +Her tears fell to answer him. + +She gathered herself together with a supreme effort, and steadied her +lips to speak. "Please leave me. I came here to be alone." + +A light broke in on him, and he left her. + +He shut himself up in the dining-room with his light. He had pushed his +breakfast aside, too preoccupied to eat it. + +"So that's it?" he said to himself. "That's it. Poor Nancy. That's what +she's wanted all the time. What a fool I was never to have thought of +it." + +He breathed with an immense relief. He had solved the enigma of Anne with +all her "funniness." It was not that she had turned against him, nor +against her destiny. She had been disappointed of her destiny, that was +all. It was enough. She must have been fretting for months, poor darling, +and just when she could bear it no longer, Mrs. Gardner, he supposed, had +come as the last straw. No wonder that she had said he was unkind. + +And in that hour of his enlightenment a great chastening fell upon +Majendie. He told himself that he must be as gentle with her as he knew +how; gentler than he had ever yet known how. And his heart smote him as +he thought how he had hurt her, how he might hurt her again unknowingly, +and how the tenderness of the tenderest male was brutality when applied +to these wonderful, pitiful, incomprehensible things that women were. +He accepted the misery of the last three months as a fit punishment for +his lack of understanding. + +His light brought a great longing to him and a great hope. From that +moment he watched her anxiously. He had never realised till now, after +three months of misery, quite what she meant to him, how sacred and dear +she was, and how much he loved her. + +The depth of this feeling left him for the most part dumb before her. His +former levity forsook him, and Anne wondered at this change in him, and +brooded over the possible cause of his serious and unintelligible +silences. She attributed them to some deep personal preoccupation of +which she was not the object. + +Meanwhile her days went on much as before, a serene and dignified +procession to the outward eye. She was thankful that she had so +established her religion of the household that its services could still +continue in their punctual order, after the joy of the spirit had +departed from them. The more she felt that she was losing, hour by hour, +her love of the house in Prior Street, the more she clung to the +observances that held her days together. She had become a pale, sad-eyed, +perfunctory priestess of the home. Majendie protested against what he +called her base superstition, her wholesale sacrifice to the gods of the +hearth. He forbade her to stay so much indoors, or to sit so long in +Edith's room. + +One afternoon he came home unexpectedly and found her there, doing +nothing, but watching Edith, who dozed. He touched her gently, and told +her to get up and go out for a walk. + +"I'm too tired," she whispered. + +"Then go upstairs and lie down." + +She went; but, instead of lying down, she wandered through the house, +restless and unsettled. She was possessed by a terrible sense of +isolation. It came over her that this house of which she was the +mistress did not in the least belong to her. She had not been consulted +or thought of in any of its arrangements. There was no place in it that +appealed to her as her own. She went into the little grave old-fashioned +drawing-room. It had a beauty she approved of, a dignity that was in +keeping with her own traditions, but to-day its aspect roused in her +discontent and irritation. The room had remained unchanged since the days +when it was inhabited, first by her husband's mother, then by his aunt, +then by his sister. He had handed it over, just as it stood, to his wife. +It was full, the whole house was full, of portraits of the Majendies; +Majendies in oils; Majendies in water-colours; Majendies in crayons, in +miniatures and silhouettes. She thought of Mrs. Eliott's room in Thurston +Square, of the bookcases, the bronzes, the triptych with its saints in +glory, and of how Fanny sat enthroned among these things that reflected +completely her cultured individuality. Fanny had counted. Her rarity had +been appreciated by the man who married her; her tastes had been studied, +consulted, exquisitely indulged. Anne did not want more books, nor +bronzes, nor a triptych in her drawing-room. But such things were +symbols. Their absence stood for the immense spiritual want through which +her marriage had been made void. Brooding on it, she closed her heart to +her unspiritual husband. She looked round the room with her cold +disenchanted eyes. Numberless signs of his thought and care for her +rebuked her, and rebuking, added to her misery. As her restlessness +increased, it occurred to her that she might find some satisfaction in +arranging the furniture on an entirely different plan. She rang the bell +and sent for Walter. He came, and found her sitting on the high-backed +chair whose cover had been worked by his grandmother. He smiled at the +uncomfortable figure she presented. + +"So that's what you call resting, is it?" + +"Walter--do you mind if I move some of the furniture in this room?" + +"Move it? Of course I don't. But why?" + +"Because I don't very much like the room as it is." + +"Why don't you like it?" (He really wanted to know.) + +"Because I don't feel comfortable in it." + +"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. Perhaps--we'd better have some new things." + +"I don't want any new things." + +"What do you want, then?" His voice was gentleness itself. + +"Just to move all the old ones--to move everything." + +She spoke with an almost infantile petulance that appealed to him as +pathetic. There was something terrible about Anne when armoured in the +cold steel of her spirituality, taking her stand upon a lofty principle. +But Anne, sitting on a high-backed chair, uttering tremulous absurdities, +Anne, protected by the unconscious humour of her own ill-temper, was +adorable. He loved this humanly captious and capricious, childishly +unreasonable Anne. And her voice was sweet even in petulance. + +"My darling," he said, "you shall turn the whole house upside down if it +makes you any happier. But"--he looked round the room in quest of its +deficiencies--"what's wrong with it?" + +"Nothing's wrong. You don't understand." + +"No, I don't." His eye fell upon the corner where the piano once stood +that was now in Edith's room. + +"There are three things," said he, "that you certainly ought to have. A +piano, and a reading-stand, and a comfortable sofa. You shall have them." + +She threw back her head and closed her eyes to shut out the stupidity, +and the mockery, and the misery of that idea. + +"I--don't--want"--she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high +petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note--"I don't want a +piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can +call my own." + +"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and +every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors +and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for +myself." + +She passed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating +impression of his folly. + +"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?" + +She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its +place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was +delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be +able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and +waistcoat, turned up his shirt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he +laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as +perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable. + +When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the +windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled shirt and with +his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the +perspiration from his forehead. + +"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a +chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where +it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit +better pleased with it to-morrow." + +He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you +don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?" + +"The trouble?" + +"Yes, Nancy, the trouble. Do you think I'm such a fool that I don't see +it? It's been coming on a long time. I know you're not happy. You're not +satisfied with things as they are. As they are, you know, there's a sort +of incompleteness, something wanting, isn't there?" + +She sighed. "It's you who are putting it that way, not I." + +"Of course I'm putting it that way. How am I to put it any other way? Let +me think now--well--of course I know perfectly well that it's not a +piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do. +We want the same thing, sweetheart." + +She smiled sadly. "Do we? I should have said the trouble is that we don't +want the same thing, and never did." + +"I don't understand you." + +"Nor I you. You think I'm always wanting something. What is it that you +think I want?" + +"Well--do you remember Westleydale?" + +She drew back. "Westleydale? What has put that into your head?" + +He grew desperate under her evasions, and plunged into his theme. "Well, +that jolly baby we saw there--in the wood--you looked so happy when you +grabbed it, and I thought, perhaps--" + +"There's no use talking about that," said she. "I don't like it." + +"All right--only--it's still a little soon, you know, isn't it, to give +it up?" + +"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly. "It isn't that. It never has +been. If I want anything, Walter, that you haven't given me, it's +something that you cannot give me. I've long ago made up my mind to +that." + +"But why make up your mind to anything? How do you know I can't give it +you--whatever it is--if you won't tell me anything about it? What _do_ +you want, dear?" + +"Ah, my dear, I want nothing, except not to have to feel like this." + +"What do you feel like?" + +"Like what I am. A stranger in my husband's house." + +"And is that my fault?" he asked gently. + +"It is not mine. But there it is. I feel sometimes as if I'd never been +married to you. That's why you must never talk to me as you did just +now." + +"Good God, what a thing to say!" + +He hid his face in his hands. The pain she had inflicted would have been +unbearable but for the light that was in him. + +He rose to leave her. But before he left, he took one long, scrutinising +look at her. It struck him that she was not, at the moment, entirely +responsible for her utterances. And again his light helped him. + +"Look here," said he, "I don't think you're feeling very well. This isn't +exactly a joyous life for you." + +"I want no other," said she. + +"You don't know what you want. You're overstrained--frightfully--and +you ought to have a long rest and a change. You're too good, you know, +to my little sister. I've told you before that I won't allow you to +sacrifice yourself to her. I shall get some one to come and stay, and I +shall take you down this week to the south coast, or wherever you like to +go. It'll do you all the good in the world to get away from this beastly +place for a month or two." + +"It'll do me no good to get away from poor Edie." + +"It will, dearest, it will, really." + +"It will not. If you go and take me away from Edie I shall get ill +myself." + +"You only think so because you're ill already." + +"I am not ill." She turned to him her sombre, tragic face. +"Walter--whatever you do, don't ask me to leave Edie, for I can't." + +"Why not?" he asked gently. + +"Because I love her. And it's--it's the only thing." + +"I see," he said; and left her. + +He went back to Edith. She smiled at his disarray and enquired the cause +of it. He entertained her with an account of his labours. + +"How funny you must both have looked," said Edith, "and, oh, how funny +the poor drawing-room must feel." + +"The fact is," said Majendie gravely, "I don't think she's very well. I +shall get her to see Gardner." + +"I would, if I were you." + +He wrote to Dr. Gardner that night and told Anne what he had done. She +was indignant, and expounded his anxiety as one more instance of his +failure to understand her nature. But she did not refuse to receive the +doctor when he called the next morning. + +When Majendie came back from the office he found his wife calm, but +disposed to a terrifying reticence on the subject of her health. "It's +nothing--nothing," she said; and that was all the answer she would give +him. In the evening he went round to Thurston Square to get the truth out +of Gardner. + +He stayed there an hour, although a very few words sufficed to tell him +that his hope had become a certainty. The President of the Scale +Philosophic Society had cast off all his vagueness. His wandering eyes +steadied themselves to grip Majendie as they had gripped Majendie's +wife. To Gardner Majendie, with his consuming innocence and anxiety, was, +at the moment, by far the more interesting of the two. The doctor brought +all his grave lucidity to bear on Majendie's case, and sent him away +unspeakably consoled; giving him a piece of advice to take with him. "If +I were you," said he, "I wouldn't say anything about it until she speaks +to you herself. Better not let her know you've consulted me." + +In one hour Majendie had learnt more about his wife than he had found out +in the year he had lived with her; and the doctor had found out more +about Majendie than he had learnt in the ten years he had been practising +in Scale. + +And upstairs in her drawing-room, little Mrs. Gardner waited impatiently +for her husband to come back and finish the very interesting conversation +that Majendie had interrupted. + +"Who is the fiend," she said, "who's been keeping you all this time? One +whole hour he's been." + +"The fiend, my dear, is Mr. Majendie." The doctor's face was thoughtful. + +"Is he ill?" + +"No; but I think he would have been if he hadn't come to me. I've been +revising my opinion of Majendie to-night. Between you and me, our friend +the Canon is a very dangerous old woman. Don't you go and believe those +tales he's told you." + +"I don't believe the tales," said Mrs. Gardner, "but I can't help +believing poor Mrs. Majendie's face. _That_ tells a tale, if you like." + +"Poor Mrs. Majendie's face is a face of poor Mrs. Majendie's own making, +I'm inclined to think." + +"I don't think Mrs. Majendie would make faces. I'm sure she isn't happy." + +"Are you? Well then, if you're fond of her, I think you'd better try and +see a little more of her, Rosy. You can help her a good deal better than +I can now." + +Professional honour forbade him to say more than that. He passed to a +more absorbing topic. + +"I must say I can't see the force of this fellow's reasoning. What's +that?" + +"I thought I heard baby crying." + +"You didn't. It was the cat. You must learn the difference, my dear. +Don't you see that these pragmatists are putting the cart before the +horse? Conduct is one of the things to be explained. How can you take it, +then, as the ground of the explanation?" + +"I don't," said Mrs. Gardner. + +"But you do," said Dr. Gardner. It was in such bickerings that they +lived and moved and had their happy being. Each was the possessor of a +strenuous soul, made harmless by its extreme simplicity. They were united +by their love of argument, divided only by their adoration of each other. +They now plunged with joy into the heart of a vast metaphysical +contention; and Majendie, his conduct and the explanation of it, were +forgotten until another cry was heard and, this time, Mrs. Gardner fled. + +She came back full of reproach. "Oh, Philip, to think that you can't +recognise the voice of your little son!" + +Dr. Gardner looked guilty. "I really thought," said he, "it was the cat." +He hated these interruptions. + +He looked for Mrs. Gardner to take up the thread of the delicious +argument where she had dropped it; but something had reminded Mrs. +Gardner that she must write a note to Mrs. Majendie. She sat down and +wrote it at once while she remembered. She could think of nothing to say +but, "When will you come and take tea with me, and see my little son?" + +Anne came that week, and saw the little son, and rejoiced over him. She +kept on coming to see him. She always had been fond of Mrs. Gardner, now +she was growing fonder of her than ever. In her happy presence she felt +wonderfully at peace. There had been a time when the spectacle of Mrs. +Gardner's happiness would have given her sharp pangs of jealousy; but +that time was over now for Anne. She liked to sit and look at her and +watch the happiness flowering in Mrs. Gardner's face. She thought Mrs. +Gardner's face was more beautiful than any woman's she had ever seen, +except Edie's. Edie's face was perfect; but Mrs. Gardner's was a simple +oval that sacrificed perfection in the tender amplitude of her chin. +There were no lines on it; for Mrs. Gardner was never worried, nor +excited, nor perplexed. How could she be worried when Dr. Gardner was +well and happy? Or excited, when, having Dr. Gardner, there was nothing +left to be excited about? Or perplexed, when Dr. Gardner held the +solution of all problems in his mighty brain? + +Mrs. Gardner's bridal aspect had not disappeared with the advent of her +motherhood. She was not more wrapped up in the baby than she was in Dr. +Gardner and his metaphysics. She even admitted to Anne that the baby had +been something of a disappointment. Anne was sitting in the nursery with +her when Mrs. Gardner ventured on this confidence. + +"You know I'd rather have had a little daughter." + +Anne confessed that her own yearning was for a little son. + +"Oh," said Mrs. Gardner, "I wouldn't have him different now. He's going +to have as happy a life as ever I can give him. I've got so much to make +up for." + +"To make up for?" Anne wondered what little Mrs. Gardner could possibly +have to make up for. + +"Well, you see it's a shocking confession to make; but I didn't care for +him at all before he came. I didn't want him. I didn't want anybody but +Philip, and Philip didn't want anybody but me. Are you horrified?" + +"I think I am," said Anne. She had difficulty in believing that dear +little Mrs. Gardner could ever have taken this abnormal, this monstrous +attitude. + +"You see our life was so perfect as it was. And we have so little time +to be together, because of his tiresome patients. I grudged every minute +taken from him. And, when I knew that this little creature was coming, +I sat down and cried with rage. I felt that he was going to spoil +everything, and keep me from Philip. I hadn't a scrap of tenderness for +him, poor little darling." + +"Oh," said Anne. + +"I hadn't really. I was quite happy with my husband." She paused, feeling +that the ground under her was perilous. "I don't know why I'm telling you +all this, dear Mrs. Majendie. I've never told another soul. But I +thought, perhaps, you ought to know." + +"Why," Anne wondered, "does she think I ought to know?" + +"You see," Mrs. Gardner went on, "_I_ thought I couldn't be any happier +than I was. But I am. Ten times happier. And I didn't think I _could_ +love my husband more than I did. But I do. Ten times more, and quite +differently. Just because of this tiny, crying thing, without an idea in +his little soft head. I've learned things I never should have learned +without him. He takes up all my time, and keeps me from enjoying Philip; +and yet I know now that I never was really married till he came." + +Mrs. Gardner looked up at Anne with shy, beautiful eyes that begged +forgiveness if she had said too much. And Anne realised that it was for +her that the little bride had been singing that hymn of hope, for her +that she had been laying out the sacred treasures of her mysteriously +wedded heart. + +In the same spirit Mrs. Gardner now laid out her fine store of clothing +for the little son. And Anne's heart grew soft over the many little +vests, and the jackets, and the diminutive short-waisted gowns. + +She was busy with a pile of such things one evening up in her bedroom +when Majendie came in. The bed was strewn with the absurd garments, and +Anne sat beside side it, sorting them, and smiling to herself that small, +pure, shy smile of hers. Her soft face drew him to her. He thought it was +his hour. He took up one of the little vests and spanned it with his +hand. "I'm so glad," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +She shook her head. + +"Nancy--" + +"I can't talk about it." + +"Not to me?" + +"No," she said. "Not to you." + +"I should have thought--" + +Her face hardened. "I can't. Please understand that, Walter. I don't +think I ever can, now. You've made everything so that I can't bear it." + +She took the little vest from him and laid it with the rest. + +And as he left her his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another +sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating +in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was +too clever for him. + +"Has she said anything to you about it?" he asked. + +"Yes. Has she not to you?" + +"Not yet. She won't let me speak about it. She's funnier than ever. She +treats me as if I were some obscene monster just crawled up out of the +primeval slime." + +"Poor Wallie!" + +"Well, but it's pretty serious. Do you think she's going to keep it up +for all eternity?" + +"No, I don't, dear. I don't think she'll keep it up at all." + +"I'm not so sure. I'm tired out with it. I give her up." + +"No, you don't, dear, any more than I do." + +"But what can I do? Is it, honestly, Edie, is it in any way my fault?" + +"Well--I think, perhaps, if you'd approached her in another spirit at the +first--she told me that what shocked her more than anything that night at +Scarby, was, darling, your appalling flippancy. You know, if you'd taken +that tone when you first spoke to me about it, I think it would have +killed me. And she's your wife, not your sister. It's worse for her. +Think of the shock it must have been to her." + +"Think of the shock it was to me. She sprang the whole thing on me at +four o'clock in the morning--before I was awake. What could I do? +Besides, she got over all that in the summer. And now she goes back to +it worse than ever, though I haven't done anything in between." + +"It was all brought back to her in the autumn, remember." + +"Granted that, it's inconceivable how she can keep it up. It isn't as if +she was a hard woman." + +"No. She's softer than any woman I know, in some ways. But she happens to +be made so that that is the one thing she finds it hardest to forgive. +Besides, think of her health." + +"I wonder if that really accounts for it." + +"I think it may." + +"I don't know. It began before, and I'm afraid it's come to stay." + +"What has come to stay?" + +"The dislike she's taken to me." + +"I don't believe in her dislike. Give her time." + +"Oh, the time I have given her! A year and more." + +"What's a year? Wait," said Edith. "Wait." + +He waited; and as the months went on, Anne schooled herself, for her +child's sake, into strength and calm. Her white, brooding face grew full +and tender; but its tenderness was not for him. He remained shut out from +the sanctuary where she sat nursing her dream. + +He suffered indescribably; but he told himself that Anne had merely taken +one of those queer morbid aversions of which Gardner had told him. And at +the birth of their child he looked for it to pass. + +The child was born in mid-October. Majendie had sat up all night; and +very early in the morning he was sent for to her room. He came, stealing +in on tiptoe, dumb, with his head bowed in terror and a certain awe. + +He found Anne lying in the big bed under the crucifix. Her face was dull +and white, and her arms were stretched out by her sides in utter +exhaustion. When he bent over her she closed her eyes, but her lips moved +as if she were trying to speak to him. He felt her breath upon his face, +but he could hear no words. + +"What is it?" he whispered to the nurse who stood beside him. She held in +one arm the new-born child, hooded and folded in a piece of flannel. + +The nurse touched him on the shoulder. "She's trying to tell you to look +at your little daughter, sir." + +He turned and saw something--something queer and red between two folds of +flannel, something that stirred and drew itself into puckers, and gave +forth a cry. + +And as he touched the child, his strength melted in him, as it melted +when he laid his hands for the first time upon its mother. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +After the birth of her child Anne was restored to her normal poise and +self-possession. She appeared the large, robust, superb creature she had +once been. The serenity of her bearing proclaimed that in her motherhood +her nature was fulfilled. She had given herself up to the child from the +first moment that she held it to her breast. She had found again her +tenderness, her gladness, and her peace. + +Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so +happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father. + +In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this +hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more +certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices +for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change. +Such as his wife was now, she always would be. + +She had settled down. + +And he had accepted the situation. + +He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and +sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It +kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came +to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell +asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It +had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small +tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had +abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said +to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use +for me." + +Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from +him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to +ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the +idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too. + +But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was +conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the +imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded +her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood +strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal +father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had +loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and +towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while +she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never +swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to +him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the +spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and +a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but +dimly understood. + +Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy +touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he +could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him +back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She +made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him. + +By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete. + +As yet their good taste shrank from any acknowledgment of the rupture. +Majendie did his best to cover it by a certain fineness of transition, +and by a high smooth courtesy punctiliously applied. Anne responded on +the same pure note; for, tried by courtesy, her breeding rang golden to +the test. + +She was not a woman (as Majendie had reflected several times already) to +trail an untidy tragedy through the house; she had never desired to play +a passionate part; and she was glad to exchange tragedy for the decent +drama of convention. She was helped both by her weakness and her +strength. Her soul was satisfied with its secret communion with the +Unseen; her heart was filled with its profound affection for her child; +her mind was appeased by appearances, and she had no doubt as to her +ability to keep them up. + +It was Majendie who felt the strain. His mind had an undying contempt for +appearances; his heart and soul had looked to one woman for satisfaction, +and could not be appeased with anything but her. Among all the things he +had accepted, he accepted most of all the fact that she was perfect. Too +perfect to be the helpmate of his imperfection. He shuddered at the years +that were in store for him. Always to do without her, always to be +tortured by the fairness of her presence and the sweetness of her voice; +always to sit up late and rise up early, in order to get away from the +thought of them; to come down and find her fairness and sweetness smiling +politely at him over the teapot; to hunt in the morning-paper for news to +interest her; to mix with business men all day, and talk business, and to +return at five o'clock and find her, punctual and perfect, smiling in her +duty, over another teapot; to rack his brains for something to talk about +to her; not to be allowed to mention his own friends, but to have to +feign indestructible interest in the Eliotts and the Gardners; to dine +with the inspiration drawn again from the paper; and then, perhaps, to be +read aloud to all evening, till it was time to go to bed again. That was +how his days went on. The child and Edie were his only accessible sources +of consolation. But Edie was dying by inches; and he had to suppress his +affection for the child, as well as his passion for the mother. + +For that was the thorn in Anne's side now. The child was content with her +only when Majendie was not there. The moment he came into the room she +would struggle from her mother's lap, and crawl frantically to his feet. +Her tiny face curled in its white, angelic smile as soon as he lifted her +in his arms. Little Peggy had an adorable way of turning her back on her +mother and tucking her face away under Majendie's chin. When she was +cross or ailing she cried for Majendie, and refused to take food or +medicine from any one but him. + +He was sitting one day in the nursery with the little year-old thing on +his knees, feeding her deftly from a cup of warm milk that she had pushed +away when presented by her mother. The nurse and Nanna looked kindly on +the spectacle of Majendie's success, while his wife watched him steadily +without a word. The nurse, presuming on her privileges, made an +injudicious remark. + +"She won't do anything for anybody but her daddy. I never saw such a +funny little girl." + +"I never saw such a shocking little flirt," said Majendie; "she takes +after her mother." + +"She's the living image of you, ma'am," said Nanna, conscious of the +other's blunder. + +"I wish she had my strength," said Anne, in a voice fine and trenchant as +a sword. + +Nanna and the nurse retired discreetly. + +The parents looked at each other over the frail body of the little girl. +Majendie's face had flushed under his wife's blow. He knew that she was +thinking of Edith and her fate. The same malady had appeared in more +than one member of his family, as Anne was well aware. (Her own strain +was pure.) Instinctively he put his hand to the child's spine. Little +Peggy sat up straight and strong enough. And another thought passed +through him. His eyes conveyed it to Anne as plainly as if he had said, +"I don't know about her mother's strength. She's the child of her +mother's coldness." + +He set the child down on Anne's lap, told her to be good there, and left +them. + +Anne saw how she had hurt him, and was visited with an unfamiliar pang of +self-reproach. She was very nice to him all that evening. And out of his +own pain a kinder thought came to him. He had been the cause of great +unhappiness to Anne. There might be a sense in which the child was +suffering from her mother's martyrdom. He persuaded himself that the +least he could do was to leave Anne in supreme possession of her. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +What with anxiety about his daughter and his sister, and a hopeless +attachment to his wife, Majendie's misery became so acute that it told +upon his health. His friends, Gorst and the Hannays, noticed the change +and spent themselves in persistent efforts to cheer him. And, at times +when his need of distraction became imperious, he declined from Anne's +lofty domesticities upon the Hannays. He liked to go over in the evening, +and sit with Mrs. Hannay, and talk about his child. Mrs. Hannay was never +tired of listening. The subject drew her out quite remarkably, so that +Mrs. Hannay, always soft and kind, showed at her very softest and +kindest. To talk to her was like resting an aching head upon the down +cushion to which it was impossible not to compare her. It was the +Hannays' bitter misfortune that they had no children; but this +frustration had left them hearts more hospitably open to their friends. + +Mrs. Hannay called in Prior Street, at stated intervals, to see Edith and +the baby. On these occasions Anne, if taken unaware by Mrs. Hannay, was +always perfect and polite, but when she knew that Mrs. Hannay was coming, +she contrived adroitly to be out. Her attitude to the Hannays was one of +the things she undoubtedly meant to keep up. The natural result was that +Majendie was driven to an increasing friendliness, by way of making up +for the slights the poor things had to endure from his wife. He was +always meaning to remonstrate with Anne, and always putting off the +uncomfortable moment. The subject was so mixed with painful matters that +he shrank from handling it. But, with the New Year following Peggy's +first birthday, circumstances forced him to take, once for all, a firm +stand. Certain entanglements in the affairs of Mr. Gorst had called for +his intervention. There had been important developments in his own +business; Majendie was about to enter into partnership with Mr. Hannay. +And Anne had given him an opportunity for protest by expressing her +unqualified disapprobation of Mrs. Hannay. Mrs. Hannay had offended +grossly; she had passed the limits; having no instincts, Anne maintained, +to tell her where to stop. Mrs. Hannay had a passion for Peggy which she +was wholly unable to conceal. Moved by a tender impulse of vicarious +motherhood, she had sent her at Christmas a present of a little coat. +Anne had acknowledged the gift in a note so frigid that it cut Mrs. +Hannay to the heart. She had wept over it, and had been found weeping by +her husband, who mentioned the incident to Majendie. + +It was more than Majendie could bear; and that night, in the drawing-room +(Anne had left off sitting in the study. She said it smelt of smoke), he +entered on an explanation, full, brief, and clear. + +"I must ask you," he said, "to behave a little better to poor Mrs. +Hannay. You've never known her anything but kind, and sweet, and +forgiving; and your treatment of her has been simply barbarous." + +"Indeed?" + +"I think so. There are reasons why you will have to ask the Hannays to +dinner next week, and reasons why you will have to be nice to them." + +"What reasons?" + +"One's enough. I'm going into partnership with Lawson Hannay." + +She stared. The announcement was a blow to her. + +"Is that a reason why I should make a friend of Mrs. Hannay?" + +"It's a reason why you should be civil to her. You will send an +invitation to Gorst at the same time." + +She winced. "That I cannot do." + +"You can, dear, and you will. Gorst's in a pretty bad way. I knew he +would be. He's got entangled now with some wretched girl, and I've got to +disentangle him. The only way to do it is to get him to come here again." + +"And _I_ am to write to him?" Her tone proclaimed the idea preposterous. + +"It will come best from you, as it's you who have kept him out of the +house. You must, please, put your own feelings aside, and simply do what +I ask you." + +He rose and went to the writing-place, and prepared a place for her +there. + +Anne said nothing. She was considering how far it was possible to oppose +him. It had always been his way to yield greatly in little things; to +drift and let "things" drift till he created an illusory impression of +his weakness. Then when "things" had gone too far, he would rise, as +he had risen now, and take his stand with a strength the more formidable +because it came as a complete surprise. + +"Come," said he, "it's got to be done; and you may as well do it at once +and get it over." + +She gave one glance at him, as if she measured his will against hers. +Then she obeyed. + +She handed the notes to him in silence. + +"That's all right," said he, laying down her note to Gorst. "And this +couldn't be better. I'm glad you've written so charmingly to Mrs. +Hannay." + +"I'm sorry that I ever seemed ungracious to her, Walter. But the other +note I wrote under compulsion, as you know." + +"I don't care how you did it, my dear, so long as it's done." He slipped +the note to Mrs. Hannay into his pocket. + +"Where are you going?" she asked anxiously. + +"I'm going to take this myself to Mrs. Hannay." + +"What are you going to say to her?" + +"The first thing that comes into my head." + +She called him back as he was going. "Walter--have you paid Mr. Hannay +that money you owed him?" + +He stood still, astounded at her knowledge, and inclined for one moment +to dispute her right to question him. + +"I have," he said sternly. "I paid it yesterday." + +She breathed freely. + +Majendie found Mrs. Hannay by her fireside, alone but cheerful. She gave +him a little anxious look as she took his hand. "Wallie," said she, +"you're depressed. What is it?" + +He owned to the charge, but declined to give an account of himself. + +She settled him comfortably among her cushions; she told him to light his +pipe; and while he smoked she poured out consolation as she best knew +how. She drew him on to talk of Peggy. + +"That child's going to be a comfort to you, Wallie. See if she isn't. +I wanted you to have a little son, because I thought he'd be more of +a companion. But I'm glad now it's been a little daughter." + +"So am I. Anne would have fidgeted frightfully about a son. But Peggy'll +be a help to her." + +"And what helps her will help you, my dear; mind that." + +"Oh, rather," he said vaguely. "The worst of it is she isn't very strong. +Peggy, I mean." + +"Oh, rubbish," said Mrs. Hannay. "_I_ was a peaky, piny baby, and look at +me now!" + +He looked at her and laughed. + +"Sarah's coming in this evening," said she. "I hope you won't mind." + +"Why should I?" + +"Why, indeed? Nobody need mind poor Sarah now. I don't know what's +happened. She went abroad last year, and came back quite chastened. I +suppose you know it's all come to nothing?" + +"What has?" + +"Her marriage." + +"Oh, her marriage. She has told _you_ about it?" + +"My dear, she's told everybody about it. He was an angel; and he's been +going to marry her for the last four years. I say, Wallie, do you think +he really was?" + +"Do I think he really was an angel? Or do I think he really was going to +marry her?" + +"If he _was_, you know, perhaps he wouldn't." + +"Oh no, if he was, he would; because he wouldn't know what he was in +for. Anyhow the angel has flown, has he? I fancy some rumour must have +troubled his bright essence." + +Mrs. Hannay suppressed her own opinion, which was that the angel, wings +and all, was merely a stage property in the comedy of respectability that +poor Sarah had been playing in so long. He was one of many brilliant and +entertaining fictions which had helped to restore her to her place in +society. "And you really," she repeated, "don't mind meeting her?" + +"I don't think I mind anything very much now." + +The entrance of the lady showed him how very little there really was to +mind. Lady Cayley had (as her looking-glass informed her) both gone off +and come on quite remarkably in the last three years. Her face presented +a paler, softer, larger surface to the eye. Her own eye had gained in +meaning and her mouth in sensuous charm; while her figure had acquired a +quality to which she herself gave the name of "presence." Other women +of forty might go about looking like incarnate elegies on their dead +youth; Lady Cayley's "presence" was as some great ode, celebrating the +triumph of maturity. + +She took the place Mrs. Hannay had vacated, settling down by Majendie +among the cushions. "How delightfully unexpected," she murmured, "to +meet _you_ here." + +She ignored the occasion of their last meeting, just as she had then +ignored the circumstances of their last parting. Lady Cayley owed her +success to her immense capacity for ignoring. In her way, she lived the +glorious life of fantasy, lapped in the freshest and most beautiful +illusions. Not but what she saw through every one of them, her own and +other people's; for Lady Cayley's intelligence was marvellously subtle +and astute. But the fierce will by which she accomplished her desires +urged her intelligence to reject and to destroy whatever consideration +was hostile to the illusion. It was thus that she had achieved +respectability. + +But respectability accomplished had lost all the charm of its young +appeal to the imagination; and it was not agreeing very well with Lady +Cayley just at present. The sight of Majendie revived in her memories of +the happy past. + +"Mr. Majendie, why have I not met you here before?" + +Some instinct told her that if she wished him to approve of her, she must +approach him with respect. He had grown terribly unapproachable with +time. + +He smiled in spite of himself. "We did meet, more than three years ago." + +"I remember." Lady Cayley's face shone with the illumination of her +memory. "So we did. Just after you were married?" + +She paused discreetly. "You haven't brought Mrs. Majendie with you?" + +"N--no--er--she isn't very well. She doesn't go out much at night." + +"Indeed? I _did_ hear, didn't I, that you had a little--" She paused, if +anything, more discreetly than before. + +"A little girl. Yes. That history is a year old now." + +"Wallie!" cried Mrs. Hannay, "it's a year and three months. And a darling +she is, too." + +"I'm sure she is," said Sarah in the softest voice imaginable. There was +another pause, the discreetest of them all. "Is she like Mr. Majendie?" + +"No, she's like her mother." Mrs. Hannay was instantly transported with +the blessed vision of Peggy. "She's got blue, blue eyes, Sarah; and the +dearest little goldy ducks' tails curling over the nape of her neck." + +Majendie's sad face brightened under praise of Peggy. + +"Sweet," murmured Sarah. "I love them when they're like that." She saw +how she could flatter him. If he loved to talk about the baby, _she_ +could talk about babies till all was blue. They talked for more than half +an hour. It was the prettiest, most innocent conversation in which Sarah +had ever taken part. + +When Majendie had left (he seldom kept it up later than ten o'clock), she +turned to Mrs. Hannay. + +"What's the matter with him?" said she. "He looks awful." + +"He's married the wrong woman, my dear. That's what's the matter with +him." + +"I knew he would. He was born to do it." + +"Thank goodness," said Mrs. Hannay, "he's got the child." + +"Oh--the child!" + +She intimated by a shrug how much she thought of that consolation. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +The new firm of Hannay & Majendie promised to do well. Hannay had a +genius for business, and Majendie was carried along by the inspiration +of his senior partner. Hannay was the soul of the firm and Majendie its +brain. He was, Hannay maintained, an ideal partner, the indefatigable +master of commercial detail. + +The fourth year of his marriage found Majendie supremely miserable at +home; and established, in his office, before a fair, wide prospect of +financial prosperity. The office had become his home. He worked there +early and late, with a dumb, indomitable industry. For the first time in +his life Majendie was beginning to take an interest in his business. +Disappointed in the only form of happiness that appealed to him, he +applied himself gravely and steadily to shipping, finding some personal +satisfaction in the thought that Anne and Peggy would benefit by this +devotion. There was Peggy's education to be thought of. When she was +older they would travel. There would be greater material comfort and a +wider life for Anne. He himself counted for little in his schemes. At +thirty-five he found himself, with all his flames extinguished, settling +down into the dull habits and the sober hopes of middle age. + +To the mind of Gorst, the spectacle of Majendie in his office was, as he +informed him, too sad for words. To Majendie's mind nothing could well be +sadder than the private affairs of Gorst, to which he was frequently +required to give his best attention. + +The prodigal had been at last admitted to Prior Street on a footing of +his own. He blossomed out in perpetual previous engagements whenever he +was asked to dine; but he had made a bargain with Majendie by which he +claimed unlimited opportunity for seeing Edie as the price of his promise +to reform. This time Majendie was obliged to intimate to him that his +reform must be regarded as the price of his admission. + +For, this time, in the long year of his exile, the prodigal's prodigality +had exceeded the measure of all former years. And, to his intense +surprise, he found that Majendie drew the line somewhere. In consequence +of this, and of the "entanglement" to which Majendie had once referred, +the aspect of Gorst's affairs was peculiarly dark and threatening. + +In the spring of the year they gathered to their climax. One afternoon +Gorst appeared in Majendie's office, sat down with a stricken air, and +appealed to his friend to help him out. + +"I thought you _were_ out," said Majendie. + +"So I am. It's because I'm so well out that I'm in for it. Evans's have +turned her off. She's down on her luck--and--well--you see, _now_ she +wants me to marry her." + +"I see. Well--" + +"Well, of course I can't. Maggie's a dear little thing, but--you see--I'm +not the first." + +"You're sure of that?" + +"Certain. She confessed, poor girl. Besides, I knew it. I'm not a brute. +I'd marry her if I'd been the first and only one. I'd marry her if I were +sure I'd be the last. I'd marry her, as it is, if I cared enough for her. +Always provided I could keep her. But you know--" + +"You don't care and you can't keep her. What are you going to do for +her?" + +Gorst in his anguish glared at Majendie. + +"I can't do anything. That's the damnedest part of it. I'm simply cleaned +out, till I get a berth somewhere." + +Majendie looked grave. This time the prodigal had devoured his living. +"You're going to leave her there, then. Is that it?" + +"No, it isn't. There's another fellow who'd marry her, if she'd have him, +but she won't. That's it." + +"Because she's fond of you, I suppose?" + +"Oh, I don't know about being fond," said Gorst sulkily. "She's fond of +anybody." + +"And what do you want me to do?" + +"I'd be awfully glad if you'd go and see her." + +"See her?" + +"Yes, and explain the situation. I can't. She won't let me. She goes mad +when I try. She keeps on worrying at it from morning to night. When I +don't go, she writes. And it knocks me all to pieces." + +"If she's that sort, what good do you suppose I'll do by seeing her?" + +"Oh, she'll listen to reason from any one but me. And there are things +you can say to her that I can't. I say, will you?" + +"I will if you like. But I don't suppose it will do one atom of good. It +never does, you know. Where does the woman live?" + +He took down the address on the visiting-card that Gorst gave him. + +Between six and seven that evening he presented himself at one of many +tiny, two-storied, red brick and stucco houses that stood in a long flat +street, each with a narrow mat of grass laid before its bay-window. It +was the new quarter of the respectable milliners and clerks; and Majendie +gathered that the prodigal had taken some pains to lodge his Maggie with +decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be +possible, given the complete rupture of their relations. + +A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of +hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room +on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress +rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again. + +Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent +occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach. + +The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely +embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see +anybody." + +He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it. + +Then Maggie came to him. + +He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her +blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on +the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she +approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her +sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him +against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little +hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to +spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable +grace. + +He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in +Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's +shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under +Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost +(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor +inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed +delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her +colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face +was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure +cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a +sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little +high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and +that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her +little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest +feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him, +preposterously, of Anne. The likeness bothered him, till he discovered +that it lay in that trick of the lifted lip. But the small charm that +was so brief and divine an accident in Anne was perpetual in Maggie. He +thought he should get tired of it in time. + +Maggie had been crying. Her sobs had left her lips still parted; her +eyelids were swollen; there were little ashen shades and rosy flecks all +over her pretty face. Her diminutive muslin handkerchief was limp with +her tears. As he looked at her he realised that he had a painful and +disgusting task before him, and that there would be no intelligence in +the girl to help him out. + +He bade her sit down; for poor Maggie stood before him humbly. He told +her briefly that his friend, Mr. Gorst, had asked him to explain things +to her, and he was beginning to explain them, very gently, when Maggie +cut him short. + +"It's not that I want to be married," she said sadly. "Mr. Mumford would +_marry_ me." + +"Well--then--" he suggested, but Maggie shook her head. "Isn't he nice to +you, Mr. Mumford?" + +"He's nice enough. But I can't marry 'im. I won't. I don't love 'im. I +can't--Mr. Magendy--because of Charlie." + +She looked at him as if she thought he would compel her to marry Mr. +Mumford. + +"Oh dear--" said Maggie, surprised at herself, as she began to cry again. + +She pressed the little muslin handkerchief to her eyes; not making a show +of her grief; but furtive, rather, and ashamed. + +And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined +nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out, +fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature +of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be +crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had +followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs. +Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only +felt. + +"See here," he said. "Charlie _can't_ marry you. He can't marry anybody." + +"Why not?" + +"Well, for one thing, he's too poor." + +"I know he's poor." + +"And you wouldn't be happy if he did marry you. He couldn't make you +happy." + +"I'd be unhappy, then." + +"Yes. And he'd be unhappy, too. Is that what you want?" + +"No--no--no! You don't understand." + +"I'll try to. What do you want? Tell me." + +"To help him." + +"You can't help him," he said softly. + +"I couldn't help him if 'e was rich. I can help him if he's poor." + +He smiled. "How do you make that out, Maggie?" + +"Well--he ought to marry a lady, I know. But he can't marry a lady. She'd +cost him pounds and pounds. If he married me I'd cost him nothing. I'd +work for him." + +Majendie was startled at this reasoning. Maggie was more intelligent than +he had thought. + +She went on. "I can cook, I can do housework, I can sew. I'm learning +dressmaking. Look--" She held up a coarse lining she had been stitching +at when he came. From its appearance he judged that Maggie was as yet a +novice in her art. + +"I'd work my fingers to the bone for him." + +"And you think he'd be happy seeing you do that? A gentleman can't let +his wife work for him. He has to work for her." He paused. "And there's +another reason, Maggie, why he can't marry you." + +Maggie's head drooped. "I know," she said. "But I thought--if he was +poor--he wouldn't mind so much. They don't, sometimes." + +"I don't think you quite know what I mean." + +"I do. You mean he's afraid. He won't trust me. He doesn't think I'm very +good. But I would be--if he married me--I would--I would indeed." + +"Of course you would. Whatever happens you're going to be good. That +wasn't what I meant by the other reason." + +Her face flamed. "Has he left off caring for me?" + +He was silent, and the flame died in her face. + +"Does he care for somebody else?" + +"It would be better for you if you could think so." + +"_I_ know," she said; "it's the lady he used to send flowers to. I +thought it was all right. I thought it was funerals." + +She sat very still, taking it in. + +"Is he going to marry her?" + +"No. He isn't going to marry her." + +"She's not got enough money, I suppose. _She_ can't help him." + +"You must leave him free to marry somebody who can." + +He waited to see what she would do. He expected tears, and a storm of +jealous rage. But all Maggie did was to sit stiller than ever, while her +tears gathered, and fell, and gathered again. + +Majendie rose. "I may tell Mr. Gorst that you accept his explanation? +That you understand?" + +"Am I never to see him again?" + +"I'm afraid not." + +"Nor write to him?" + +"It's better not. It only worries him." + +She looked round her, dazed by the destruction of her dream. + +"What am I to do, then? Where am I to go to?" + +"Stay where you are, if you're comfortable. Your rent will be paid for +you, and you shall have a small allowance." + +"But who's going to give it me?" + +"Mr. Gorst would, if he could. As he cannot, I am." + +"You mustn't," said she. "I can't take it from you." + +He had approached this point with a horrible dread lest she should +misunderstand him. + +"Better to take it from me than from him, or anybody else," he said +significantly; "if it must be." + +But Maggie had not misunderstood. + +"I can work," she said. "I can pay a little _now_." + +"No, no. Never mind about that. Keep it--keep all you earn." + +"I can't keep it. I'll pay you back again. I'll work my fingers to the +bone." + +"Oh, not for me" he said, laughing, as he took up his hat to go. + +Maggie lifted her sad head, and faced him with all her candour. + +"Yes," she said, "for you." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Majendie owned to a pang of shame as he turned from Maggie's door. In +justice to Gorst it could not be said that he had betrayed the +passionate, perverted creature. And yet there was a sense in which +Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent. +Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing +and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary +taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little +vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's +honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him +to the vision. And Maggie had come to him, helpless as an injured child, +and feverish from her hurt. He had asked her what she had wanted with +Gorst, and it seemed that what Maggie wanted was "to help him." + +He said to himself that he wouldn't be in Gorst's place for a good deal, +to have that on his conscience. + +As it happened, the prodigal's conscience was by no means easy. He called +in Prior Street that evening to learn the result of his friend's +intervention. He submitted humbly to Majendie's judgment of his conduct. +He agreed that he had been a brute to Maggie, that he might certainly do +worse than marry her, and that his best reason for not marrying her was +his knowledge that Maggie was ten times too good for him. He was only +disposed to be critical of his friend's diplomacy when he learned that +Majendie had not succeeded in persuading Maggie to marry Mr. Mumford. +But, in the end, he allowed himself to be convinced of the futility, not +to say the indecency, of pressing Mr. Mumford upon the girl at the moment +of her fine renunciation. He admitted that he had known all along that +Maggie had her own high innocence. And when he realised the extent to +which Majendie had "got him out of it," his conscience was roused by a +salutary shock of shame. + +But it was to Edith that he presented the perfection of his penitence. +From his stillness and abasement she gathered that, this time, her +prodigal had fallen far. That night, before his departure, he confirmed +her sad suspicions. + +"It's awfully good of you," he said stiffly, "to let me come again." + +"Good of me? Charlie!" Her eyes and voice reproached him for this +strained formality. + +"Yes. Mrs. Majendie's perfectly right. I've justified her bad opinion of +me." + +"I don't know that you've justified it. I don't know what you've done. No +more does she, my dear. And you didn't think, did you, that Walter and I +were going to give you up?" + +"I'd have forgiven you if you had." + +"I couldn't have forgiven myself, or Walter." + +"Oh, Walter--if it hadn't been for him I should have gone to pieces this +time. He's pulled me out of the tightest place I ever was in." + +"I'm sure he was very glad to do it." + +"I wish to goodness I could do the same for him." + +"Why do you say that, Charlie?" + +The prodigal became visibly embarrassed. He seemed to be considering the +propriety of a perfect frankness. + +"I say, you don't mind my asking, do you? Has anything gone wrong with +him and Mrs. Majendie?" + +"What makes you think so?" + +"Well, you see, I've got a sort of notion that she doesn't understand +him. She's never realised in the least the stuff he's made of. He's the +finest man I know on God's earth, and somehow, it strikes me that she +doesn't see it." + +"Not always, I'm afraid." + +"Well--see here--you'll tell her, won't you, what he's done for me? +That ought to open her eyes a bit. You can give me away as much as +ever you like, if you want to rub it in. Only tell her that I've chucked +it--chucked it for good. He's made me loathe myself. Tell her that I'm +not as bad as she thinks me, but that I probably would be if it hadn't +been for him. And you, Edie, only I'm going to leave you out of it." + +"You certainly may." + +"It's because she knows all that already; and the point is to get her to +appreciate him." + +Edith smiled. "I see. And I'm to make what I like of you, if I can only +get her to appreciate him?" + +"Yes. Tell her that, as far as I'm concerned, I respect her attitude +profoundly." + +"Very well. I'll tell her just what you've told me." + +She spoke of it the next day, when Anne came to read to her in the +afternoon. Anne was as punctual as ever in her devotion, but the passion +of it had been transferred to Peggy. The child was with them, playing +feebly at her mother's knee, and Anne's mood was propitious. She listened +intently. It was the first time that she had brought any sympathy into a +discussion of the prodigal. + +"Did he tell you," said she, "what Walter did for him?" + +"No." + +"Nor what had happened?" + +"No. I didn't like to ask him. Whatever it was, it has gone very deep +with him. Something has made a tremendous difference." + +"Has it made him change his ways?" + +"I believe it has. You see, Nancy, that's what Walter was trying for. He +always had that sort of hold on him. That was why he was so anxious not +to have him turned away." + +Anne's face was about to harden, when Peggy gave the sad little cry that +brought her mother's arms about her. Peggy had been trying vainly to +climb into Anne's lap. She was now lifted up and held there while her +feet trampled the broad maternal knees, and her hands played with Anne's +face; stroking and caressing; smoothing her tragic brow to tenderness; +tracing with soft, attentive fingers the line of her small, close mouth, +until it smiled. + +Anne seized the little hands and kissed them. "My lamb," she said, "what +are you doing to your poor mother's face?" She did not see, as Edith saw, +that Peggy, a consummate little sculptor, was moulding her mother's face +into the face of love. + +"I should never have dreamed," said Anne, "of turning him away, if I had +thought he was really going to reform. Besides, I was afraid he would be +bad for Walter." + +"It didn't strike you that Walter might be good for him?" + +"It struck me that I had to be strong for Walter." + +"Ah, Walter can be strong for all of us." She paused on that, to let it +sink in. Anne's face was thoughtful. + +"Anne, if you believed that all I've said to you was true, would you +still object to having Charlie here?" + +"Certainly not. I would be the first to welcome him." + +"Then, will you write to him of your own accord, and tell him that, if +what I've told you is true, you'll be glad to see him? He knows why you +couldn't receive him before, dear, and he respects you for it." + +Anne thought better of Mr. Gorst for that respect. It was the proper +attitude; the attitude she had once vainly expected Majendie to take. + +"After all, what have I to do with it? He comes to see you." + +"Yes, dear; but I shan't always be here for him to see. And if I thought +that you would help Walter to look after him--will you?" + +"I will do what I can. My little one!" + +Anne bowed her head over the soft forehead of her little one. She had a +glad and solemn vision of herself as the protector of the penitent. It +was in keeping with all the sanctities and pieties she cherished. She had +not forgotten that Canon Wharton (a saint if ever there was one) had +enjoined on her the utmost charity to Mr. Gorst, should he turn from his +iniquity. + +She was better able to admit the likelihood of that repentance because +Mr. Gorst had never stood in any close relation to her. His iniquity had +not profoundly affected her. But she found it impossible to realise that +Majendie's influence could count for anything in his redemption. Where +her husband was concerned Anne's mind was made up, and it refused to +acknowledge so fine a merit in so gross a man. She was by this time +comfortably fixed in her attitude, and any shock to it caused her +positive uneasiness. Her attitude was sacred; it had become one of the +pillars of her spiritual life. She was constrained to look for +justification lest she should put herself wrong with God. + +She considered that she had found it in Majendie's habits, his silences, +his moods, the facility of his decline upon the Hannays and the Ransomes. +He was determined to deteriorate, to sink to their level. + +To-night, when he remarked tentatively that he thought he would dine at +the Hannays', she made an effort to stop him. + +"Must you go?" said she. "You are always dining with them." + +"Why?--do you mind?" said he. + +"Well--when it's night after night--" + +"Is it that you mind my dining with the Hannays, or my leaving you?" + +"I mind both." + +"Oh--if I'd thought you wanted me to stay--" + +She made no answer, but rose and led the way to the dining-room. + +He followed. Her arm had touched him as she passed him in the doorway, +and his heart beat thickly, as he realised the strength of her dominion +over him. She had only to say "Stay," and he stayed; or "Come," and she +could always draw him to her. He had never turned away. His very mind was +faithful to her. It had not even conceived, and it would have had +difficulty in grasping, the idea of happiness without her. + +To-night he was profoundly moved by this intimation of his wife's desire +to have him with her. His surprise and satisfaction made him curiously +shy. He sat through two courses without speaking, without lifting his +eyes from his plate; brooding over their separation. He was wondering +whether, after all, it had been so inevitable; whether he had +misunderstood her; whether, if he had had the sense to understand, he +might not have kept her. It was possible she had been wounded by his +absences. He had never explained them. He could not tell her that she +had made him afraid to be alone with her. + +The situation, which he had accepted so obediently, had been more than +a mere mortal man could endure. Especially in the terrible five minutes +after dinner, before they settled for the evening, when each sat waiting +to see if the other had anything to say. Sometimes Majendie would take up +his book and Anne her work. She would sew, and sew, patient, persistent, +in her tragic silence. And when he could bear it no longer, he would put +down his book and go quietly away, to relieve the intolerable constraint +that held her. Sometimes it was Anne who read, while he smoked and +brooded. Then, in the warm, consenting stillness of the summer evenings +(they were now in June), her presence seemed to fill the room; he was +possessed by the sense of it; by the sound of her breathing; by the +stirring of her body in the chair, or of her fingers on the pages of her +book; and he would get up suddenly and leave her, dragging his passion +from the sight of her. + +As he considered these things, many perplexities, many tendernesses, +stirred in him and kept him still. + +Anne watched him from the other end of the table, and her thoughts +debased him. He seemed to her disagreeably incommunicative, and she had +found an ignoble explanation of his mood. There had been too much salt in +the soup, and now there was something wrong with the salmon. He had not +responded to her apology for these accidents, and she supposed that they +had been enough to spoil his evening with her. + +She had come to consider him a creature grossly wedded to material +things. + +"It's a pity you stayed," said she. "Mrs. Hannay would have given you a +better dinner." + +He had nothing to say to so preposterous a charge. His eyes were fixed +more than ever on his plate. She saw his face flush as he bowed his head +in eating; she allowed her fancy to rest in its morbid abhorrence of the +act, and in its suspicion of its grossness. She went on, lashed by her +fancy. "I cannot understand your liking to go there so much, when you +might go to the Eliotts or the Gardners. They're always asking you, and +you haven't been near them for a year." + +"Well, you see, the Hannays let me do what I like. They don't bother me." + +"Do the Eliotts bother you?" + +"They bore me. Horribly." + +"And the Gardners?" + +"Sometimes--a little." + +"And Canon Wharton? No. I needn't ask." + +He laughed. "You needn't. _He_ bores me to extinction." + +"I'm sorry it is my friends who are so unfortunate." + +"It's your husband who's unfortunate. He is not an intellectual person. +Nor a spiritual one, either, I'm afraid." + +He looked up. Anne had finished her morsel, and her fingers played +irritably with the hand-bell at her side. Poor Majendie's abstraction had +combined with his appetite to make him deplorably slow over his dinner. +She still sat watching him, pure from appetite, in resignation that +veiled her contempt of the male hunger so incomprehensibly prolonged. He +had come to dread more than anything those attentive, sacrificial eyes. + +"I'm awfully sorry," he said, "to keep you waiting." + +She rang the bell. "Will you have the lamp lit in the drawing-room or the +study?" + +He looked at her. There was no lamp for him in her eyes. + +"Whichever you like. I think I shall go over to the Hannays', after all." + +He went; and by the lamp in the drawing-room Anne sat and brooded in her +turn. + +She said to herself: "It's no use my trying to keep him from them. It +only irritates him. He lets me see plainly that he prefers their society +to mine. I don't wonder. They can flatter him and kow-tow to him, and I +cannot. He can be a little god to them; and he must know what he is to +me. We haven't a thought in common--not a feeling--and he cannot bear to +feel himself inferior. As for me--if I've married beneath me, I must pay +the penalty." + +But there was no penalty for her in these reflections. They satisfied +her. They were part of the curious mental process by which she justified +herself. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne, +Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance +had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted +that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a +bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His +immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of +Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of +inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself +so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all +situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The +discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost +brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began, +and here, therefore, it shall end." + +He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure +by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he +believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's +prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not +make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his +claim to her respect. + +And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen +things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their +separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible +repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation +(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and +complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her. + +Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts. + +"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that +evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him +to understand. + +He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he +was good enough, who were good enough for him. + +He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst, +oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with +Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she +presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of +simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little +better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and +her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body +leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast, +listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to +Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little +dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem +to mind. + +There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't +consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it +more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected. They did worship him; +and their worship did make him feel superior, perhaps when he was least +so. They did flatter him; for, as Mrs. Hannay said, "He needed a little +patting on the back, now and then, poor fellow." And perhaps he was +really sinking a little to her level; he had so lost his sense of her +vulgarity. + +He used to wonder how it was that she had kept Lawson straight. Perfectly +straight, Lawson had been, ever since his marriage. Possibly, probably, +if he had married a wife too inflexibly refined, he would have deviated +somewhat from that perfect straightness. His tastes had always been a +little vulgar. But there was no reason why he should go abroad to gratify +them when he possessed the paragon of amenable vulgarity at home. The +Gardners, whose union was almost miraculously complete, were not in their +way more admirably mated. And Lawson's reform must have been a stiff job +for any woman to tackle at the start. + +A woman of marvellous ingenuity and tact. For she had kept Lawson +straight without his knowing it. She had played off one of Lawson's +little weaknesses against the other; had set, for instance, his fantastic +love of eating against his sordid little tendency to drink. Lawson +was now a model of sobriety. + +And as she kept Lawson straight without his knowing it, she helped +Majendie, too, without his knowing it, to hold his miserable head up. She +ignored, resolutely, his attitude of dejection. She reminded him that if +he could make nothing else out of his life he could make money. She +convinced him that life, the life of a prosperous ship-owner in Scale, +was worth living, as long as he had Edith and Anne and Peggy to make +money for, especially Peggy. + +And Majendie became more and more absorbed in his business, and more and +more he found his pleasure in it; in making money, that is to say, for +the persons whom he loved. + +He had come even to find pleasure in making it for a person whom he did +not love, and hardly knew. He provided himself with one punctual and +agreeable sensation every week when he sent off the cheque for the small +sum that was poor Maggie's allowance. Once a week (he had settled it), +not once a month. For Maggie might (for anything he knew) be thriftless. +She might feast for three days, and then starve; and so find her sad way +to the street. + +But Maggie was not thriftless. First at irregular intervals, weeks it +might be, or months, she had sent him various diminutive sums towards the +payment of her debt. Maggie was strictly honourable. She had got a little +work, she said, and hoped soon to have it regularly. And soon she began +to return to him, weekly, the half of her allowance. These sums he put by +for her, adding the interest. Some day there would be a modest hoard for +Maggie. He pleased himself, now and then, by wondering what the girl +would do with it. Buy a wedding-gown perhaps, when she married Mr. +Mumford. Time, he felt, was Mr. Mumford's best ally. In time, when she +had forgotten Gorst, Maggie would marry him. + +Maggie's small business entailed a correspondence out of all proportion +to it. He had not yet gone to see her. Some day, he supposed, he would +have to go, to see whether the girl, as he phrased it vaguely, was +"really all right." With little creatures like Maggie you never could be +sure. There would always be the possibility of Gorst's successor, and he +had no desire to make Maggie's maintenance easier for him. He had made +her independent of all iniquitous sources of revenue. + +At last, suddenly, the postal orders and the letters ceased; for three +weeks, four, five weeks. Then Majendie began to feel uneasy. He would +have to look her up. + +Then one morning, early in September, a letter was brought to him at the +office (Maggie's letters were always addressed to the office, never to +his house). There was no postal order with it. For three weeks Maggie +had been ill, then she had been very poorly, very weak, too weak to sit +long at work. And so she had lost what work she had; but she hoped to get +more when she was strong again. When she was strong the repayments would +begin again, said Maggie. She hoped Mr. Majendie would forgive her for +not having sent any for so long. She was very sorry. But, if it wasn't +too much to ask, she would be very glad if Mr. Majendie would come some +day and see her. + +He sent her an extra remittance by the bearer, and went to see her the +next day. His conscience reproached him for not having gone before. + +Mrs. Morse, the landlady, received him with many appearances of relief. +In her mind he was evidently responsible for Maggie. He was the guardian, +the benefactor, the sender of rent. + +"She's been very ill, sir," said Mrs. Morse; "but she wouldn't 'ave you +written to till she was better." + +"Why not?" + +"I'm sure I can't say, sir, wot 'er feeling was." + +It struck him as strange and pathetic that Maggie could have a feeling. +He was soon to know that she had little else. + +He found her sitting by a fire, wrapped in a shawl. It slipped from her +as she rose, as she leaped, rather, from her seat like one unnerved by a +sudden shock. He stooped and picked up the shawl before he spoke, that he +might give the poor thing time to recover herself. + +"Did I startle you?" he said. + +Maggie was still breathing hard. "I didn't think you'd come." + +"Why not?" + +"I don't know," she said weakly, and sat down again. Maggie was very +weak. She was not like the Maggie he remembered, the creature of +brilliant flesh and blood. Maggie's flesh was worn and limp; it had a +greenish tint; her blood no longer flowed in the cream rose of her face. +She had parted with the sources of her radiant youth. + +She seemed to him to be suffering from severe anaemia. A horrible thought +came to him. Had the little thing been starving herself to save enough to +repay him? + +"What have you been doing to yourself, Maggie?" he said brusquely. + +Maggie looked frightened. "Nothing," she said. + +"Working your fingers to the bone?" + +She shook her head. "I was no good at dressmaking. They wouldn't have +me." + +"Well--" he said kindly. + +"There are a great many things I can do. I can make wreaths and crosses +and bookays. I made them at Evans's. I could go back there. Mr. Evans +would have me. But Mrs. Evans wouldn't." She paused, surveying her +immense resources. "Or I could do the flowers for people's parties. +I used to. Do you think--perhaps--they'd have me?" + +Maggie's pitiful doubt was always whether "they" would "have" her. + +"Yes," he said, smiling at her pathos, "perhaps they would." + +"Or I could do embroidery. I learned, years ago, at Madame Ponting's. +I could go back. Only Madame wouldn't have me." (Maggie was palpably +foolish; but her folly was adorable.) + +"Why wouldn't she have you?" + +Maggie reddened, and he forbore to press the unkind inquiry. He gathered +that Maggie's ways had been not unknown to Madame Ponting, "years ago." + +"Would you like to see some of my embroidery?" + +He assented gravely. He did not want to turn Maggie from the path of +industry, which was to her the path of virtue. + +She went to a cupboard, and returned with her arms full of little rolls +and parcels wrapped in paper. She unfolded and spread on the table +various squares, and strips, and little pieces, silk and woollen stuffs, +and canvas, exquisitely embroidered. There were flowers in most of the +patterns--flowers, as it appeared, of Maggie's fancy. + +"I say, did you do all that yourself, Maggie?" + +"Yes, that's what I _can_ do. I make the patterns out of me head, and +they're mostly flowers, because I love 'em. It's pretty, isn't it?" said +Maggie, stroking tenderly a pattern of pansies, blue pansies, such as she +had never sold in Evans's shop. + +"Very pretty--very beautiful." + +"I've sold lots--to a lady, before I was ill. See here." + +Maggie unfolded something that was pinned in silver paper with a peculiar +care. It was a small garment, in some faint-coloured silk, embroidered +with blue pansies (always blue pansies). + +"That's a frock," said she, "for a little girl. You've got a little +girl--a little fair girl." + +He reddened. How the devil, he wondered, does she know that I have a +little fair girl? "I don't think it would fit her," he said. + +Maggie reddened now. + +"Oh--I don't want you to buy it. I don't want you to buy anything. Only +to tell people." + +So much he promised her. He tried to think of all the people he could +tell. Mrs. Hannay, Mrs. Ransome, Mrs. Gardner--no, Mrs. Gardner was +Anne's friend. If Anne had been different he could have told Anne. He +could have told her everything. As it was--No. + +He rose to go, but, instead of going, he stayed and bought several pieces +of embroidery for Mrs. Hannay, and the frock, not for Peggy, but for Mrs. +Ransome's little girl. They haggled a good deal over the price, owing +to Maggie's obstinate attempts to ruin her own market. (She must always +have been bent on ruining herself, poor child.) Then he tried to go +again, and Mrs. Morse came in with the tea-tray, and Maggie insisted on +making him a cup of tea, and of course he had to stay and drink it. + +Maggie revived over her tea-tray. Her face flushed and rounded again to +an orb of jubilant content. And he asked her if she were happy. If she +liked her work. + +She hesitated. "It's this way," she said. "Sometimes I can't think of +anything else. I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end. I don't want +anything else. Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I +can't put in another stitch. Sometimes--when it comes--I'm that tired, +it's as if I 'ad weights on me arms, and I couldn't 'old them up to sew. +And sometimes, again, I'm that restless, it's as if you'd lit a fire +under me feet. I'm frightened," said Maggie, "when I feel it coming. But +I'm only tired now." + +She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her +thoughts ran underground. He wondered where they would come out again. + +"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months." + +"Not even Mr. Mumford?" + +"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to +where they started from. + +"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long +time." + +"What hasn't come?" + +"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of." + +"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father +or the doctor.) + +"If it does, it'll be worse now." + +"Why should it be?" + +"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls +have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there +isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea." + +"You'll make friends." + +She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom. + +Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again. + +"Is that woman kind to you?" + +"Yes, very kind." + +"She looks after you well?" + +"Looks after me? I don't want looking after." + +"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to +eat?" + +"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes." + +"You like her?" + +"I love her." + +"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all." + +"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with +Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?" + +Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead. + +"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to +me." + +"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to +understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more +amusing for you." + +"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't. +I only wanted you to know--" + +"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's +no reason why you should be dull. Is there?" + +"I don't know," said Maggie simply. + +"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep +some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to +places." + +"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you." + +He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you +should." + +"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly, +tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's +metaphysics. There was no assurance in her tone, nothing to remind him +that Maggie had been the spoiled child of pleasure whose wants were +always reasons; nothing to suggest the perverted consciousness of power. + +"Well--" He straightened himself stiffly for departure. + +"Are you going?" she said. + +"I must." + +"Will you--come again?" + +"Yes, I'll come, if you want me." + +He saw again how piteous, how ill she looked. A pang of compassion went +through him. And after the pang there came a warm, delicious tremor. It +recalled the feeling he used to have when he did things for Edith, a +sensation singularly sweet and singularly pure. + +It was consolation in his misery to realise that any one could want him, +even poor, perverted Maggie. + +Maggie said nothing. But the flame rose in her face. + +Downstairs Majendie found Mrs. Morse waiting for him at the door. "What's +been the matter with her?" he asked. + +"I don't rightly know, sir. But between you and me, I think she's fretted +herself ill." + +"Well, you've got to see that she doesn't fret, that's all." + +He gave into her palm an earnest of the reward of vigilance. + +That night he sent off the embroidered pieces to Mrs. Hannay, and the +embroidered frock to Mrs. Ransome; with a note to each lady recommending +Maggie, and Maggie's beautiful and innocent art. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +As Majendie declined more and more on his inferior friendships, Anne +became more and more dependent on the Eliotts and the Gardners. Her +evenings would have been intolerable without them. Edith no longer +needed her. Edith, they still said, was growing better, or certainly no +worse; and Mr. Gorst spent his evenings in Prior Street with Edie. The +prodigal had made his peace with Anne, and came and went unquestioned. He +was bent on making up for his long loss of Edie, and for the still longer +loss of her that had to be. They felt that his brilliant presence kept +the invading darkness from her door. + +Autumn passed, and winter and spring, and in summer Edith was still with +them. + +Anne was no longer a stranger in her husband's house since her child had +been born in it; but in the long light evenings, after Peggy had been put +to bed at six o'clock, Peggy's mother was once more alien and alone. It +was then that she would get up and leave her husband (why not, since he +left her?) and slip from Prior Street to Thurston Square; then that she +moved once more superbly in her superior circle. She was proud of her +circle. It was so well defined; and if the round was small, that only +meant that there was no room in it for borderlands and other obscure and +undesirable places. The commercial world, so terrifying in its +approaches, remained, and always would remain, outside it. Sitting in +Mrs. Eliott's drawing-room she forgot that the soul of Scale on Humber +was given over to tallow, and to timber, and Dutch cheeses. But for her +constant habit of depreciation, she could almost have forgotten that her +husband was only a ship-owner, and a ship-owner who had gone into a +horrible partnership with Lawson Hannay. It appeased her to belittle him +by comparisons. He had no spiritual fineness and fire like Canon Wharton, +no intellectual interests like Mr. Eliott and Dr. Gardner. She had long +ago noticed his inability to converse with any brilliance; she was now +aware of the heaviness, the physical slowness, that was growing on him. +He was losing the personal distinction that had charmed her once, and +made her proud to be seen with him at gatherings of the fastidious in +Thurston Square. + +Her fancy, still belittling him, ranked him now with the dull business +men of Scale. In a few years, she said, he will be like Lawson Hannay. + +A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she +saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to +his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when +she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was +touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up +in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to +be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to +be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal +memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably +mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so +familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing +goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great +longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even +for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the +growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile +sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was +softer. + +At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed +to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other +measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its +divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could +not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let +him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie +between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced +difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something +threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual +life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and +winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous +petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning +the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for +her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense +of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil, +opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She +thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's +deterioration. + +Yet Anne was softer. + +Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as +Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had +seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take +Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs, +and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender +body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as +if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw, +wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship +with earth. + +She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each +some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing +of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now +the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its +puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was +Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language. +A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and +Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would +have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking +backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang. + +But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood +and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted +for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You +couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word +she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told +her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne +was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between +right and wrong. + +In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement, +proved more effectual than Anne. + +They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time. +It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her +parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to +Majendie, shivering with delight. + +"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my +own self, and eated it all up." + +Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very +miserable day. + +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy," said her mother, "that was very naughty." + +"No, mummy, it wasn't. It wasn't naughty 't all." + +She pondered, gravely working out her case. "I'd be sorry if it was +naughty." + +Majendie laughed. + +"If you laugh every time she's naughty, how am I to make her learn?" + +Majendie held out his hand. "Come here, Peggy." + +Peggy came and cuddled against him, smiling sidelong mischief at her +mother. + +"Look here, Peggy, if you eat too much sugar, you'll be ill; and if +you're ill, mummy'll be unhappy. See?" + +"I'm sorry, daddy." + +Peggy's mouth shook; she turned, and hid her face against his breast. + +"There, there," he said, petting her. "Look at mummy; she's happy now." + +Peggy's face peeped out, but it was not at her mother that she looked. + +"Are you happy, daddy?" + +He stooped, and kissed her, and left the room. + +And then Peggy said, "I'm sorry, mummy. Why did daddy go away?" + +"I don't know, darling." + +"Do you think he will come back again?" + +"Darling, I don't know." + +"You'd like him to come back, wouldn't you, mummy?" + +"Of course, Peggy." + +"Then I'll go and tell him." + +She trotted downstairs to the study, and came back shaking her head +sadly. + +"Daddy isn't coming. Naughty daddy." + +"Why do you say that, Peggy?" + +"Because he won't come when you want him to." + +"Perhaps he's busy." + +"Yes," said Peggy thoughtfully. "I fink he's busy." She sat very quiet on +a footstool, thinking. "I fink," she said presently, "I'd better go and +tell daddy he isn't naughty, else he'll be dreff'ly unhappy." + +And she trotted downstairs and up again. + +"Daddy sends his love, mummy, and he _is_ busy. S'all I take your love to +him?" + +That was how it went on, now Peggy was older. That was how she made her +mother's heart ache. + +Anne was in terror for the time when Peggy would begin to see. For that, +and for her own inability to teach her the stupendous difference between +right and wrong. + +But one day Peggy ran to her mother, crying as if her heart would break. + +"Oh, muvver, muvver, kiss me," she sobbed. "I did kick daddy! Kiss me." + +She flung her arms round Anne's knees, as if clinging for protection +against the pursuing vision of her sin. + +"Hush, hush, darling," said Anne. "Perhaps daddy didn't mind." + +But Peggy howled in agony. "Y-y-yes, he did. I hurted him, I hurted him. +He minded ever so." + +"My little one," said Anne, "my little one!" and clung to her and +comforted her. + +She saw that Peggy's little mind recognised no sin except the sin against +love; that Peggy's little heart could not conceive that love should +refuse to forgive her and kiss her. + +And Anne did not refuse. + +Thus her terror grew. If it was to come to Peggy that way, her knowledge +of the difference, what was Peggy to think when she grew older? When she +began to see? + +That was how Anne grew soft. + +Her very body was changing into the beauty of her motherhood. The +sweetness of her face, arrested in its hour of blossom, had unfolded and +flowered again. Her mouth had lost its sad droop, and for Peggy there +came many times laughter, and many times that lifting of the upper lip, +the gleam of the white teeth, and the play of the little amber mole that +Majendie loved and Anne was ashamed of. + +She had become for her child that which she had been for her husband +in her strange, immortal moments of surrender, a woman warmed and +transfigured by a secret fire. Her new beauty remained, like a brooding +charm, when the child was not with her. + +And as the seasons, passing, made her more and more a woman dear and +desirable, Majendie's passion for her became almost insane through its +frustration. + +Anne was aware of the insanity without realising its cause. He avoided +her touch, and she wondered why. Her voice, heard in another room, drew +his heart after her in longing. At the worst moments, to get away from +her, he went out of the house. And she wondered where. Hours of +stupefying depression were followed by fits of irritability that +frightened her. And then she wished that he would not go to the Hannays, +and eat things that disagreed with him. + +Little Peggy helped to make his misery more unendurable. She was always +running to and fro between her father and her mother, with questions +concerning kisses and other endearments, till he, too, wondered what she +would make of it when she began to see. Everything conspired against him. +Peggy's formidable innocence was re-enforced by the still more formidable +innocence of her mother. Anne positively flaunted before him the +spectacle of her maternal passion. She showered her tendernesses on the +child, without measuring their effect on him, for whom she had none. She +did not allow herself to wonder how he felt, when he sat there hungry, +looking on, while the little creature, greedy for caresses, was given her +fill of love. + +And when he was tortured by headache, she brought him an effervescing +drink, and considered that she had done her duty. + +A worse headache than usual had smitten him one late Sunday afternoon in +August. A Sunday afternoon that made (but for Majendie and his headache) +a little sacred idyl, so golden was it, so holy and so happy, with Peggy +trotting between her father's and mother's knees, and the prodigal, +burning with penitence, upstairs in Edie's room, singing _Lead, Kindly +Light_, in a heavenly tenor. + +Peggy tugged at Majendie's coat. + +"Sing, daddy, sing! Mummy, make daddy sing." + +"I can't make him sing, darling," said Anne, who was making soft eyes at +Peggy, and curling her mouth into the shape it took when it sent kisses +to her across the room. + +Instead of singing, Majendie, with his eyes on Anne, flung his arms round +Peggy and lifted her up and covered her little face with kisses. The +child lay across his knees with her head thrown back and her legs +struggling, and laughed for terror and delight. + +Anne spoke with some austerity. "Put her down, Walter; I don't care for +all this hugging and kissing. It excites the child." + +Peggy was put down. But when bed-time came she achieved an inimitable +revenge. Anne had to pick her up from the floor to carry her to bed. At +first Peggy refused to be carried; then she surrendered on conditions +that brought the blood to her mother's face. + +From her mother's arms Peggy's head hung down as she struggled to say +good-night a second time to daddy. He rose, and for a moment he and Anne +stood linked together by the body of their child. + +And Peggy reiterated, "I'll be a good girl, mummy, if you'll kiss daddy." + +Anne raised her face to his and closed her eyes, and Majendie felt her +soft lips touch his forehead without parting. + +That night, when he refused his supper, she looked up anxiously. + +"Are you not well, Walter?" + +"I've got a splitting headache." + +"You'd better take some anti-pyrine." + +"I'm damned if I'll take any anti-pyrine." + +"Well, don't, dear; but you needn't be so violent." + +"I beg your pardon." + +He cooled his hands against a jug of iced water, and pressed them to his +forehead. + +She left her place and came and sat beside him. "Come," she said in the +sweet voice that pierced him, "come and lie down in the study." She laid +her hand on his shoulder, and he rose and followed her. + +She made him lie down on the sofa in the study, and put cushions under +his head, and brought him the anti-pyrine. She sat beside him and dabbed +eau-de-cologne all over his forehead, and blew on it with her soft +breath. She paused, and sat very still, watching him, for a moment that +seemed eternity. She didn't like the flush on his cheek nor the queer +burning brilliance in his eyes. She was afraid he was in for a bad +illness, and fear made her kind. + +"Tell me how you feel, dear," she said gently. She was determined to be +very gentle with him. + +"Can't you see how I feel?" he answered. + +She laid her firm, cool hand upon his forehead; and he gave a cry, the +low cry she had once heard and dreamed of afterwards. He flung up his +arm, and caught at her hand, and dragged it down, and held it close +against his mouth, and kissed it. + +She drew in her breath. Her hand stiffened against his in her effort to +withdraw it; and when he had let it go, she turned from him and left him +without a word. + +He threw himself face downwards on the cushions, wounded and ashamed. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +It was Friday evening, the Friday that followed that Sunday when +Majendie's hope had risen at the touch of his wife's hand, and died +again under her repulse. + +Friday was the day which Maggie Forrest marked in her calendar sometimes +with a query and sometimes with a cross. The query stood for "Will he +come?" The cross meant "He came." To-night there was no cross, though +Maggie had brushed her hair till it shone again, and put on her best +dress, and laid out her little table for tea, and sat there waiting, like +the ladies in those houses where he went; like Mrs. Hannay or Mrs. +Ransome who bought her embroidery; or like that grand lady with the +title, who had come with Mrs. Ransome--the lady who had bought more +embroidery than anybody, the scent on whose clothes was enough, Maggie +said, to take your breath away. + +Maggie loved her tea-table. She embroidered beautiful linen cloths for +it. Every Friday it was decked as an altar dedicated to the service of a +god--in case he came. + +He hadn't come. It was past eight, yet Maggie left the altar standing +with the cloth on it, and waited. It would be terrible if the god should +come and find no altar. Once, even at this late hour, he had come. + +The house was very quiet. Mrs. Morse was out marketing, and Maggie was +alone. Friday was market night in Scale. She wondered if he would +remember that, and come. Her heart beat violently with the thought that +he might be beginning to come late. The others had come late when they +began to love her. + +She had forgotten them, or only cared to remember such of their ways as +threw light on Mr. Majendie's. For he was, as yet, obscure to her. + +It seemed to her that a new thing had come to her, a thing marvellously +and divinely new, this, that she should be waiting, counting hours, and +marking days on calendars, measuring her own pulses with a hand, now on +her heart, now on her throbbing forehead, and wondering what could be the +matter with her. Maggie was six-and-twenty; but ever since she was nine +she had been waiting and wondering. For there always had been somebody +whom Maggie loved insanely. First it was the little boy who lived in the +house opposite, at home. He had abandoned Maggie's society, and broken +her heart on the day when he "went into trousers." Then it was the big +boy in her father's shop who gave her chocolates one day and snubbed her +cruelly the next. Then it was the young man who came to tune the piano +in the back parlour. Then the arithmetic master in the little +boarding-school they sent her to. And then (for Maggie's infatuations +rose rapidly in the social scale) it was one of the young gentlemen who +"studied" at the Vicarage. He was engaged to Maggie for a whole term; and +he went away and jilted her, so that Maggie's heart was broken a second +time. At last, on an evil day for Maggie, it was one of the gentlemen +(not so young) staying up at "the big house." He watched for Maggie in +dark lanes, and followed her through the fields at evening, till one +evening he made her turn and follow her heart and him. And so Maggie went +on her predestined way. + +For after him there was the gentleman who came to Madame Ponting's, and +after him, Mr. Gorst, who came to Evans's, and after Mr. Gorst--Last year +Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For +each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her +soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and +driven by the wind. + +As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's +soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in +tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went +from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply +dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. She left off living when +she had to leave off loving. To be sure there was always Mr. Mumford. He +was a tobacconist, and he lived over the shop in a house fronting the +pier, a unique and dominant situation. And he was prepared to overlook +the past and make Maggie his wife and mistress of the house fronting the +pier. Unfortunately, Maggie did not love him. You couldn't love Mr. +Mumford. You could only be sorry for him. + +But though Maggie went from flame to flame, there were long periods of +placidity when she loved nothing but her work, and was as good as gold. +Maggie's father wouldn't believe it. He had never forgiven her, not even +when the doctor told him that there was no sense in which the poor girl +could be held responsible; they should have looked after her better, that +was all. Maggie's father, the grocer, did not deal in smooth, extenuating +phrases. He called such madness sin. So did Maggie in her hours of peace +and sanity. She was terrified when she felt it coming on, and hid her +face from her doom. But when it came she went to meet it, uplifted, +tremulous, devoted, carrying her poor scorched heart in her hand for +sacrifice. + +Each time that she loved, it was as if her former sins had been blotted +out; for there came a merciful forgetfulness that renewed, almost, her +innocence. Her heart had its own perverted constancy. No lover was like +her last lover, and for him she rejected and repudiated the past. + +And each time that she loved she was torn asunder. She gave herself in +pieces; her heart first, then her soul, then, if it must needs be, her +body. The finest first, then all that was left of her. That was her +unique merit, what marked her from the rest. + +Majendie, she divined by instinct, had recognised her quality. He was the +only one who had. And he had asked nothing of her. She would have lived +miserably for Charlie Gorst. She would have died with joy for Mr. +Majendie. And Maggie feared death worse than life, however miserable. + +But there was something in her love for Majendie that revealed it as a +thing apart. It had not made her idle. Her passion for Mr. Majendie +blossomed and flowered, and ran over in beautiful embroidery. That +industry ministered to it. Her heart was set on having those little sums +to send him every week; for that was the only way she could hope to +approach him of her own movement. She loved the curt little notes in +which Majendie acknowledged the receipt of each postal order. She tied +them together with white ribbon, and treasured them in a little box under +lock and key. All the time, she knew he had a wife and child, but her +fancy refused to recognise Mrs. Majendie's existence. It allowed him to +have a child, but not a wife. She knew that he spent his Saturdays and +Sundays with them at his home. He never came, or could come, on a +Saturday or Sunday, and Maggie refused to consider the significance of +this. She simply lived from Friday to Friday. No other day in the week +existed for Maggie. All other days heralded it, or followed in its train. +The blessed memory of it rested upon Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday and +Thursday glowed and vibrated with its coming; Mondays and Tuesdays were +forlorn and grey. Terrible were the days which followed a Friday when he +had not come. + +He had not come last Friday, nor the Friday before that. She had always a +comfortable little theory to cheat herself with, to account for his not +coming. He had been ill last Friday; that, of course, was why he had not +come, Maggie knew. She did not like to think he was ill; but she did like +to think that only illness could prevent his coming. And she had always +believed what she liked. + +The presumption in Maggie's mind amounted to a certainty that he would +come to-night. + +And at nine o'clock he came. + +Her eyes shone as she greeted him. There was nothing about her to remind +him of the dejected, anaemic girl who had sat shivering over the fire last +September. Maggie had got all her lights and colours back again. She was +lifted from her abasement, glorified. And yet, for all her glory, Maggie, +on her good behaviour, became once more the prim young lady of the lower +middle class. She sat, as she had been used to sit on long, dull Sunday +afternoons in the parlour above the village shop, bolt upright on her +chair, with her meek hands folded in her lap. But her eyes were fixed on +Majendie, their ardent candour contrasting oddly with the stiff modesty +of her deportment. + +"Have you been ill?" she asked. + +"Why should I have been ill?" + +"Because you didn't come." + +"You mustn't suppose I'm ill every time I don't come. I might be a +chronic invalid at that rate." + +He hadn't realised how often he came. _He_ didn't mark the days with +crosses in a calendar. + +"But you _were_ ill, this time, I know." + +"How do you know?" + +The processes of Maggie's mind amused him. It was such a funny, fugitive, +burrowing, darting thing, Maggie's mind, transparent and yet secret in +its ways. + +"I know, because I saw--" she hesitated. + +"Saw what?" + +"The light in your window." + +"My window?" + +"Yes. The one that looks out on the garden at the back. It was twelve +o'clock on Sunday night, and on Monday night the light was gone, and I +knew that you were better." + +"As it happens, you saw the light in my sister's room. She's always ill." + +"Oh," said Maggie; and her face fell with the fall of her great argument. + +"Sometimes," he said, "the light burns all night long." + +"Yes," said Maggie, musing; "sometimes it burns all night long. But in +the room above that room, there's a little soft light that burns all +night, too. That's your room." + +"No, that's my wife's room." + +Maggie became thoughtful. "I used to think that was where your little +girl sleeps, because of the night-light. Then your room's next it." +Maggie desired to know all about the blessed house that contained him. + +"That's the spare room," he said, laughing. + +"Goodness! what a lot of rooms. Then yours is the one next the nursery, +looking on the street. Fancy! That little room." + +Again she became thoughtful. So did he. + +"I say, Maggie, how did you know those lights burned all night?" + +"Because I saw them." + +"You can't see them." + +"Yes, you can; from the little alley that goes along at the back." + +He hadn't thought of the alley. Nobody ever passed that way after dark; +it ended in a blind wall. + +"What were you doing there at twelve o'clock at night?" + +He looked for signs of shame and confusion on Maggie's face. But Maggie's +face was one flame of joy. Her eyes were candid. + +"Walking up and down," she said. "I was watching." + +"Watching?" + +"Your window." + +"You mustn't, Maggie. You mustn't watch people's windows. They don't like +it. It doesn't do." + +The flame was troubled; but not the lucid candour of Maggie's eyes. "I +had to. I thought you were ill. I came to make sure. I was all alone. I +didn't let anybody see me. And when I saw the light I was frightened. And +I came again the next night to see. I didn't think you'd mind. It's not +as if I'd come to the front door, or written letters, was it?" + +"No. But you must never do that again, mind. How did you know the house?" + +Maggie hung her head. "I saw your little girl go in there." + +"Were you 'watching'?" + +"N-no. It was an accident." + +"How did you know it was my little girl?" + +"I saw you walking with her, one Saturday, in the Park. It was an +accident--really. I was taking my work to that lady who buys from +me--Mrs. 'Anny." + +"I see." + +"You're not angry with me, Mr. Magendy?" + +"Of course not. What made you think I was?" + +"Your face. You would be angry if I followed you. But I wouldn't do such +a thing. I've never followed any one--never. And I wouldn't do it now, +not if I was paid," she protested. + +"It's all right, Maggie, it's all right." + +Maggie clasped her knees and sat thinking. She seemed to know by +intuition when it was advantageous to be silent, and when to speak. But +Majendie was thinking, too. He was wondering whether he was not being a +little too kind to Maggie; whether a little unkindness would not be a +salutary change for both of them. Why couldn't the girl marry Mr. +Mumford? He didn't want to profit by the transaction. He would have +gladly paid Mr. Mumford to marry her, and take her away. + +He put his hand over his eyes as a veil for his thoughts; and when he +took it away again, Maggie had risen and was going on soundless feet +towards the door. + +"Don't go," she said, "I'll be back in a minute." + +He flung himself back in the chair and waited. The minutes dragged. He +had wanted Maggie away; and now she had gone he wanted her back again. + +Maggie did not stay away long enough to give him time to discover how +much he wanted her. She came back, carrying a tray with cups and a +steaming coffee pot, and set it on the table. + +A fragrance of strong coffee filled the room. The service of the god had +begun. + +She stood close against his side, yet humbly, as she handed him his cup. +"It's nice and strong," she said. "Drink it. It'll do your head good." + +And she sat down opposite him, and watched him drink it. + +Maggie's watching face was luminous and tender. In her eyes there was the +look that love gives for his signal--love that, in that moment, was pure +and sweet as a mother's. She was glad to think that the coffee was +strong, and would do his head good. She had no other thought in her mind, +at that moment. + +After the coffee she brought matches and cigarettes, which she offered +shyly. Nature had given her an immortal shyness, born of her extreme +humility. + +"They're all right," she said, "Charlie smoked them." (Charlie was at +times a useful memory.) + +She struck a match and prepared to light the cigarette. This she did +gravely and efficiently, with no sign of feminine consciousness or +coquetry. It was part of the solemn evening service of the god. And, as +he smoked, the devotee retreated to her chair and watched him. + +"Maggie," he said, "supposing Mr. Mumford was to come in?" + +"He won't. Sunday's _his_ day; or would be, if I let him 'ave a day." + +"Why don't you?" + +She shook her head. "I've seen nobody." + +There was silence for five minutes. + +"Mr. Magendy--" + +"Majendie, Maggie, Majendie." + +"Mr. Mashendy--I'm beginning to be afraid." + +"What are you afraid of?" + +"What I've always told you about. That awful feeling. It's coming on +again, I think." + +"It won't come, Maggie, it won't come. Don't think about it, and it won't +come." + +He didn't understand very clearly what Maggie was talking about; but he +remembered that, last September, after her illness, she had been afraid +of something. And he remembered that he had comforted her with some such +words as these. + +"Yes," said she, "but I feel it coming." + +"Maggie, you oughtn't to live alone like this. See here, you ought to +marry. You ought to marry Mr. Mumford. Why don't you?" + +"I don't want to marry anybody. And I don't love him." + +"Well, don't think about that other thing. Don't think about it. You'll +be all right." + +"I won't think," said Maggie, and thought profoundly. + +"Mr. Majendie," she said suddenly. + +"Madam." + +"You mustn't be afraid. I shall never do anything I know you wouldn't +like me to." + +"All right. Only don't think too much about that, either." + +"I can't help thinking. You've been so good to me." + +"I should try and forget that, too, a little more, if I were you. I'm +only paying some of Mr. Gorst's debts for him." + +The name called up no colour to her cheek. Maggie had forgotten Gorst, +and all _he_ had done for her. + +"And you're paying me back." + +She shook her head. "I can't ever pay you back." + +Poor little girl! Was that what her mind was always running on? + +There was silence again between them. And then Majendie looked at Maggie. + +She was sitting very still, as if she were waiting for something, and yet +content. Her eyes were swimming, as if with tears; but there were no +tears in them. Her face was reddening, as if with shame, but there was no +shame in it. She seemed to be listening, dazed and enchanted, to her own +secret, the running whisper of her blood. Her lips were parted, and, as +he looked at her, they closed and opened again in sympathy with the +delicate tremors that moved her throat under her rounded chin. In her +brooding look there was neither reminiscence nor foreboding; it was the +look of a creature surrendered wholly to her hour. + +As he looked at her his nerves sent an arrow of warning, a hot tremor +darting from heart to brain. + +"I must go now, Maggie," he said. + +When he stood up, his knees shook under him. + +"Not yet," said Maggie. "I'm all alone in the house, and I'm afraid." + +"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said roughly. "I've got to go." + +He strode towards the door while Maggie stared after him in terror. She +understood nothing but that he was going to leave her. What had she done +to drive him away? + +"You're ill," she cried, as she followed him, panting in her fright. + +He pushed her back gently from the threshold. + +"Don't be a little fool, Maggie. I'm not ill." + +Out in the street, five yards from Maggie's door, he battled with a +vision of her that almost drove him back again. "It was I who was a +fool," he thought. "I shall go back. Why not? She is predestined. Why not +I as well as anybody else?" + +All the way to his own door an insistent, abominable voice kept calling +to him, "Why not? Why not?" + +He went with noiseless footsteps up his own stairs, past the dark doors +below, past Edith's open door where the lamp still burned brightly beyond +the threshold. At Anne's door he paused. + +It stood ajar in a dim light. He pushed it softly open and went in. + +Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix. + +Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up +against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand +clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's +hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in +gold. + +His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart +stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why. + +As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of +thankfulness for a great deliverance. Above all, of thankfulness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +The light burned in Edith's room till morning; for her spine kept sleep +from her through many nights. They no longer said, "She is better, or +certainly no worse." They said, "She is worse, or certainly no better." +The progress of her death could be reckoned by weeks and measured by +inches. Soon they would be giving her morphia, to make her sleep. +Meanwhile she was terribly awake. + +She heard her brother's soft footsteps as he passed her door. She heard +him pause on the upper landing and creep into the room overhead. She +heard him go out again and shut himself up in the little room beyond. +There came upon her an awful intuition of the truth. + +The next day she sent for him. + +"What is it, Edie?" he said. + +She looked at him with loving eyes, and asked him as Maggie had asked, +"Are you ill?" + +He started. The question brought back to him vividly the scene of the +night before; brought back to him Maggie with her love and fear. + +"What is it? Tell me," she insisted. + +He owned to headaches. She knew he often had them. + +"It's not a bit of use," she said, "trying to deceive _me_. It's not +headaches. It's Anne." + +"Poor Anne. I think she's all right. After all, she's got the child, you +know." + +"Yes. _She_'s got Peggy. If I could see you all right, too, I should die +happy." + +"Don't worry about me. I'm not worth it." + +She gazed at him searchingly, confirmed in her intuition. That was the +sort of thing poor Charlie used to say. + +"It's my fault," she said. "It always has been." + +"Angel, if you could lay everybody's sins on your own shoulders, you +would." + +"I mean it. You were right and I was wrong. Ah, how one pays! Only +_you_'ve had to pay for my untruthfulness. I can see it now. If I'd done +as you asked me, in the beginning, and told her the truth--" + +"She wouldn't have married me. No, Edie. You're assuming that I've lived +to regret that I married her. I never have regretted it for one single +moment. Not for myself, that is. For her, yes. Granted that I'm as +unhappy as you please, I'd rather be unhappy with her than happy without +her. See?" + +"Walter--if you keep true to her, I believe you'll have your happiness +yet. I don't know how it's coming. It may come very late. But it's bound +to come. She's good--" + +He assented with a groan. "Oh, much _too_ good." + +"And the goodness in her must recognise the goodness in you; when she +understands. I believe she's beginning to understand. She doesn't know +how much she understands." + +"Understands what?" + +"Your goodness. She loved you for it. She'll love you for it again." + +"My dear Edie, you're the only person who believes in my goodness--you +and Peggy." + +"I and Peggy. And Charlie and the Hannays. And Nanna and the +Gardners--and God." + +"I wish God would give Anne a hint that He thinks well of me." + +"Dear--if you keep true to her--He will." + +If he kept true to her! It was the second time she had said it. It was +almost as if she had divined what had so nearly happened. + +"I think," she said, "I'd like to talk to Anne, now, while I can talk. +You see, once they go giving me morphia"--she closed her eyes. "Just let +me lie still for half an hour, and then bring Anne to me." + +She lay still. He watched her for an hour. And he knew that in that hour +she had prayed. + +He found Anne sitting on the nursery floor, playing with Peggy. "Edie +wants you," he said, loosening Peggy's little hands as they clung about +his legs. + +"Mother must go, darling," said she. + +But all Peggy said was, "Daddy'll stay." + +He did not stay long. He had to restrain himself, to go carefully with +Peggy, lest he should help her to make her mother's heart ache. + +Anne found Nanna busied about the bed. Nanna was saying, "Is that any +easier, Miss Edie?" + +"It's heavenly, Nanna," said Edie, stifling a moan. "Oh dear, I hope in +the next world I shan't feel as if my spine were still with me, like +people when their legs are cut off." + +"Miss Edie, what an idea!" + +"Well, Nanna, you can't tell whether it mayn't be so. Anne, dear, you've +got such a nice, pretty body, why have you such a withering contempt for +it? It behaves so well to you, too. That's more than I can say of mine; +and yet, I believe I shall quite miss it when it's gone. At any rate, I +shall be glad that I was decent to the poor thing while it was with me. +Run away now, please, Nanna, and shut the door." + +Nanna thought she knew why Miss Edie wanted the door shut. She, too, had +her intuitive forebodings. She was aware, the whole household was aware, +that the mistress cared more for her child than for the husband who had +given it her. Their master's life was not altogether happy. They wondered +many times how he was going to stand it. + +"Anne" said Edith, "I'm uneasy about Walter." + +"You need not be," said Anne. + +"Why? Aren't you?" + +"I know he hasn't been well lately--" + +"How can you expect him to be well when he's so unhappy?" + +Anne was silent. + +"How long is it going to last, dear? And where is it going to end?" + +"Edith, you needn't be afraid. I shall never leave him." + +That was not what Edith was afraid of, but she did not say so. + +"How can I," Anne went on, "when I believe the Church's doctrine of +marriage?" + +"Do you? Do you believe that love is a provision for the soul's +redemption of the body? or for the body's redemption of the soul?" + +"I believe that, having married Walter, whatever he is or does, I cannot +leave him without great sin." + +"Then you'll be shocked when I tell you that if your husband were a bad +man, I should be the first to implore you to leave him, though he is my +brother. Where there can be no love on either side there's no marriage, +and no sacrament. That's _my_ profane belief." + +"And when there's love on one side only?" + +"The sacrament is there, offered by the loving person, and refused by the +unloving. And that refusal, my dear child, may, if you like, be a great +sin--supposing, of course, that the love is pure and devoted. I hardly +know which is the worst sin, then, to refuse to give, or to refuse to +take it; or to take it, and then throw it away. What would you think if +Peggy hardened her little heart against you?" + +"My Peggy!" + +"Yes, your Peggy. It's the same thing. You'll see it some day. But I want +you to see it now, before it's too late." + +"Edie, if you'd only tell me where I've failed! If you're thinking of +our--our separation--" + +"I was not. But, since you _have_ mentioned it, I can't help reminding +you that you fell in love with Walter because you thought he was a saint. +And so I don't see what's to prevent you now. He's qualifying. He mayn't +be perfect; but, in some ways, a saint couldn't very well do more. Has it +never occurred to that you are indulging the virtue that comes easiest to +you, and exacting from him the virtue that comes hardest? And he has +stood the test." + +"It was his own doing--his own wish." + +"Is it? I doubt it--when he's more in love with you than he was before he +married you." + +"That's all over." + +"For you. Not for him. He's a man, as you may say, of obstinate +affections." + +"Ah, Edie--you don't know." + +"I know," said Edith, "you're perfectly sweet, the way you take my +scoldings. It's cowardly of me, when I'm lying here safe, and you can't +scold back again. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't love you." + +"I know--I know you love me." + +"But I couldn't love you so much, if I didn't love Walter more." + +"You well may, Edie. He's been a good brother to you." + +"Some day you'll own he's been as good a husband as he's been a brother. +Better; for it's a more difficult post, my dear. I don't really think my +body, spine and all, can have tried him more than your spirit." + +"What have I done? Tell me--tell me." + +"Done? Oh, Nancy, I hate to have to say it to you. What haven't you done? +There's no way in which you haven't hurt and humiliated him. I'm not +thinking of your separation--I'm thinking of the way you've treated him, +and his affection for you and Peggy. You won't let him love you. You +won't even let him love his little girl." + +"Does he say that?" + +"Would he say it? People in my peculiar position don't require to have +things said to them; they _say them_. You see, if I didn't say them now +I should have to get up out of my grave and do it, and that would be ten +times more disagreeable for you. It might even be very uncomfortable for +me." + +"Edie, I wish I knew when you were serious." + +"Well, if I'm not serious now, when _shall_ I be?" + +Anne smiled. "You're very like Walter." + +"Yes. He's every bit as serious as I am. And he's getting more and more +serious every day." + +"Oh, Edie, you don't understand. I--I've suffered so terribly." + +"I do understand. I've gone through it--every pang of it--and it's all +come back to me again through your suffering--and I know it's been worse +for you. I've told him so. It's because I don't want you to suffer more +that I'm saying these awful things to you." + +"Oh! _Am_ I to suffer more?" + +"I believe that's the only way your happiness can come to you--through +great suffering. I'm only afraid that the suffering may come through +Peggy, if you don't take care." + +"Peggy--" + +It was her own terror put into words. + +"Yes. That child has a terrible capacity for loving. And for her that +means suffering. She loves you. She loves her father. Do you suppose she +won't suffer when she sees? Her little heart will be torn in two between +you." + +"Oh, Edith--I cannot bear it." + +She hid her face from the anguish. + +"You needn't. That's it. It rests with you." + +"With me? If you would only tell me how." + +"I can't tell you anything. It'll come. Probably in the way you least +expect it. But--it'll come." + +"Edie, I feel as if you held us all together. And when you've gone--" + +"You mean when _it's_ gone. When it's 'gone,'" said Edie, smiling. "I +shall hold you together all the more. You needn't sigh like that." + +"Did I sigh?" + +As Anne stooped over the bed she sighed again, thinking how Edith's +loving arms used to leap up and hold her, and how they could never hold +anything any more. + +Of all the things that Edith said to her that afternoon, two remained +fixed in Anne's memory: how Peggy would suffer through overmuch +loving--she remembered that saying, because it had confirmed her terror; +and how love was a provision for the soul's redemption of the body, or +for the body's redemption of the soul. This she remembered, because she +did not understand it. + +That was in August. Before the month was out they were beginning to give +Edith morphia. + +In September Gorst came to see her for the last time. + +In October she died in her brother's arms. + +In the days that followed, it was as if her spirit, refusing to depart +from them, had rested on the sister she had loved. Spirit to spirit, +she stooped, kindling in Anne her own dedicated flame. In the white +death-chamber, and through the quiet house, the presence of Anne, moving +with a hushed footfall, was like the presence of a blessed spirit. Her +face was as a face long hidden upon the heart of peace. Her very grief +aspired; it had wings, lifting her towards her sister in her heavenly +place. + +For Anne, in the days that followed, was possessed by a great and burning +charity. Mrs. Hannay called and was taken into the white room to see +Edith. And Anne's heart went out to Mrs. Hannay, when she spoke of the +beauty and goodness of Edith; and to Lawson Hannay, when he pressed her +hand without speaking; and to Gorst, when she saw him stealing on tiptoe +from Edith's room, his face swollen and inflamed with grief. Her heart +went out to all of them, because they had loved Edith. + +And to her husband her heart went out with a tenderness born of an +immense pity and compassion. For the first three days, Majendie gave no +sign that he was shaken by his sister's death. But on the evening of the +day they buried her, Anne found him in the study, sitting in his low +chair by the fire, his head sunk, his body bowed forward over his knees, +convulsed with a nervous shivering. He started and stared at her +approach, and straightened himself suddenly. She held out her hand. He +looked at it dumbly, as if unwilling or afraid to take it. + +"My dear," she said softly. + +Then she knelt beside him, and drew his head down upon her breast, and +let it rest there. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +It was a Thursday night in October, three weeks after Edith's death. Anne +was in her room, undressing. She moved noiselessly, with many tender +precautions, for fear of waking Peggy, and for fear of destroying the +peace that possessed her own soul like heavenly sleep. It was the mystic +mood that went before prayer. + +In those three weeks Anne felt that she had been brought very near to +God. She had not known such stillness and content since the days at +Scarby that had made her life terrible. It was as if Edith's spirit in +bliss had power given it to help her sister, to draw Anne with it into +the divine presence. + +And the dead woman bound the living to each other also, as she had said. +How she bound them Anne had not realised until to-day. It was Mrs. +Elliott's day, her Thursday. Anne had spent half an hour in Thurston +Square, and had come away with a cold, unsatisfactory feeling towards +Fanny. Fanny, for the first time, had jarred on her. She had so plainly +hesitated between condolence and congratulation. She seemed to be +secretly rejoicing in Edith Majendie's death. Her manner intimated +clearly that a burden had been removed from her friend's life, and that +the time had now come for Anne to blossom out and enjoy herself. Anne had +been glad to get away from Fanny, to come back to the house in Prior +Street and to find Walter waiting for her. Fanny, in spite of her +intellectual rarity, lacked the sense that, after all, _he_ had, the +sense of Edith's spiritual perfection. Strangely, inconsistently, +incomprehensibly, he had it. He and his wife had that in common, if they +had nothing else. They were bound to each other by Edith's dear and +sacred memory, an immaterial, immortal tie. They would always share their +knowledge of her. Other people might take for granted that her terrible +illness had loosened, little by little, the bond that held them to her. +They knew that it was not so. They never found themselves declining on +the mourner's pitiful commonplaces, "Poor Edie"; "She is released"; "It's +a mercy she was taken." It was their tribute to Edith's triumphant +personality that they mourned for her as for one cut off in the fulness +of a strong, beneficent life. + +For those three weeks Anne remained to her husband all that she had been +on the night of Edith's burial. + +And, as she felt that nobody but her husband understood what she had lost +in Edith, she realised for the first time his kindred to his sister. She +forced herself to dwell on his many admirable qualities. He was +unselfish, chivalrous, the soul of honour. On his chivalry, which touched +her more nearly than his other virtues, she was disposed to put a very +high interpretation. She felt that, in his way, he acknowledged her +spiritual perfection, also, and reverenced it. If their relations only +continued as they were, she believed that she would yet be happy with +him. To think of him as she had once been obliged to think was to profane +the sorrow that sanctified him now. She was persuaded that the shock of +Edith's death had changed him, that he was ennobled by his grief. She +could not yet see that the change was in herself. She said to herself +that her prayers for him were answered. + +For it was no longer an effort, painful and perfunctory, to pray for her +husband. Since Edith's death she had prayed for him, as she had prayed in +the time of reconciliation that followed her first discovery of his sin. +She was horrified when she realised how in six years her passion of +redemption had grown cold. It was there that she had failed him, in +letting go the immaterial hold by which she might have drawn him with her +into the secret shelter of the Unseen. She perceived that in those years +her spiritual life had suffered by the invasion of her earthly trouble. +She had approached the silent shelter with cries of supplication for +herself and for her child, the sweet mortal thing she had loved above all +mortal things. Every year had made it harder for her to reach the sources +of her help, hardest of all to achieve the initiatory state, the +nakedness, the prostration, the stillness of the dedicated soul. Too many +miseries cried and strove in her. She could no longer shut to her door, +and bar the passage to the procession of her thoughts, no longer cleanse +and empty her spirit's house for the divine thing she desired to dwell +with her. + +And now she was restored to her peace; lifted up and swept, effortless, +into the place of heavenly help. Anne's soul had no longer to reach out +her hand and feel her way to God, for it was God who sought for her and +found her. She heard behind her, as it were, the footsteps of the divine +pursuing power. Once more, as in the mystic days before her marriage, she +had only to close her eyes, and the communion was complete. At night, +when her prayer was ended, she lay motionless in the darkness, till she +seemed to pass into the ultimate bliss, beyond the reach of prayer. There +were moments when she felt herself to be close upon the very vision of +God, the beatitude of the pure. + +After these moments Anne found herself contemplating her own inviolate +sanctity. + +There was in Anne an immense sincerity, underlying a perfect tangle of +minute deceptions and hypocrisies. She was not deceived as to the supreme +event. She was truly experiencing the great spiritual passion which, +alone of passions, is destined to an immortal satisfaction. She had all +but touched the end of the saint's progress. But she was ignorant, both +of the paths that brought her there, and the paths that had led and might +again lead, her feet astray. + +Each night, when she closed her bedroom door, she felt that she was +entering into a sanctuary. She was profoundly, tenderly grateful to her +husband for the renunciation that made that refuge possible to her. She +accepted her blessed isolation as his gift. + +This Thursday had been a day of little lacerating distractions. She had +gone through it thirsting for the rest and surrender, the healing silence +of the night. + +She undressed slowly, being by nature thorough and deliberate in all her +movements. + +She was standing before her looking-glass, about to unpin her hair, when +she heard a low knock at her door. Majendie had been detained, and was +late in coming to take his last look at Peggy before going to bed. + +Anne opened the door softly, and signed to him to make no noise. He stole +on tiptoe to the child's cot, and stood there for a moment. Then he came +and sat down in the chair by the dressing-table, where Anne was standing +with her arms raised, unpinning her hair. Majendie had always admired +that attitude in Anne. It was simple, calm, classic, and superbly +feminine. Her long white wrapper clothed her more perfectly than any +dress. + +He sat looking at the quick white fingers untwisting the braid of hair. +It hung divided into three strands, still rippling with the braiding, +still dull with its folded warmth. She combed the three into one sleek +sheet that covered her like a veil, drawn close over head and shoulders. +Her face showed smooth and saint-like between the cloistral bands. +Majendie thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than that face +and hair, with their harmonies of dull gold and sombre white. + +"I like you," he said; "but isn't the style just a trifle severe?" + +Anne said nothing. She was trying to forget his presence while she yet +permitted it. + +"Do you mind my looking at you like this?" + +"No." + +(They spoke in low voices, for fear of waking the sleeping child.) + +She took up her brush, and with a turn of her head swept her hair forward +over one shoulder. It hung in one mass to her waist. Then she began to +brush it. + +The first strokes of the brush stirred the dull gold that slept in its +ashen furrows. A shining undulation passed through it, and broke, at the +ends, as it were, into a curling golden foam. Then Anne stood up and +tossed it backwards. Her brush went deep and straight, like a +ploughshare, turning up the rich, smooth swell of the under-gold; it went +light on the top, till numberless little threads of hair rippled, and +rose, and knitted themselves, and lay on her head like a fine gold net; +then, with a few swift swimming movements, upwards and outwards. It +scattered the whole mass into drifting strands and flying wings and soft +falling feathers, and, under them, little tender curls of flaxen down. +With another stroke of the brush and a shake of her head, Anne's hair +rose in one whorl and fell again, and broke into a shower of woven spray; +pure gold in every thread. + +Majendie held out a shy hand and caught the receding curl of it. Its +faint fragrance reached him, winging a shaft of memory. His nerves shook +him, and he looked away. + +Anne had been cool and business-like in every motion, unconscious of her +effect, unconscious almost of him. Now she gathered her hair into one +mass, and began plaiting it rapidly, desiring thus to hasten his +departure. She flung back the stiff braid, and laid her finger on the +extinguisher of the shaded lamp, as a hint for him to go. + +"Anne," he whispered, "Anne--" + +The whisper struck fear into her. + +She faced him calmly, coldly; not unkindly. Unkindness would have given +him more hope than that pitiless imperturbability. + +"Have you anything to say to me?" she said. + +"No." + +"Well, then, will you be good enough to go?" + +"Do you really mean it?" + +"I always mean what I say. I haven't said my prayers yet." + +"And when you have said them?" + +She had turned out the lamp, so that she might not see his unhappy face. +She did not see it; she only saw her spiritual vision destroyed and +scattered, and the havoc of dreams, resurgent, profaning heavenly sleep. + +"Please," she whispered, "please, if you love me, leave me to myself." + +He left her; and her heart turned after him as he went, and blessed him. + +"He is good, after all," her heart said. + +But Majendie's heart had hardened. He said to himself, "She is too much +for me." As he lay awake thinking of her, he remembered Maggie. He +remembered that Maggie loved him, and that he had gone away from her +and left her, because he loved Anne. And now, because he loved Anne, he +would go to Maggie. He remembered that it was on Fridays that he used to +go and see her. + +Very well, to-morrow night would be Friday night. + +To-morrow night he would go and see her. + +And yet, when to-morrow night came, he did not go. He never went until +December, when Maggie's postal orders left off coming. Then he knew that +Maggie was ill again. She had been fretting. He knew it; although, this +time, she had not written to tell him so. + +He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come, +because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie +was good as gold again, placid and at peace. + +"Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?" + +And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody +else?" + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square +blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with +their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of +Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only +raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand. +Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown +belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey +gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and +earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and +sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds. + +Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's +length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing +hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and +straight as a dyke. + +Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of +land a narrow creek. + +Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the +open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to +the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The +farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline. +Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the +east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad +bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness. + +Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path +breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie +came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often +for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very +early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven +miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In +summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness +creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him. + +This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three +years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to +live there. + +The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all +the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated +endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy. +He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health, +that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and +complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time. +Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with +people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his +yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent +as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their +living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were +devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were +acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their +yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a +man who observed life dispassionately. He asked no questions and answered +none. + +It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three years +after Edith's death. Majendie had left the yacht lying in the creek with +Pearson, Steve, and the boatswain on board, and was hurrying along the +field path to Three Elms Farm. A thin rain fell, blurring the distances. +The house stood humbly, under its three elms. A light was burning in one +window. Maggie stood at the garden gate in the rain, listening for the +click of the field gate which was his signal. When it sounded she came +down the path to meet him. She put her hands upon his shoulders, drew +down his face and kissed him. He took her arm and led her, half clinging +to him, into the house and into the lighted room. + +A fire burned brightly on the hearth. His chair was set for him beside +it, and Maggie's chair opposite. The small round table in the middle +of the room was laid for supper. Maggie had decorated walls and +chimney-piece and table with chrysanthemums from the garden, and autumn +leaves and ivy from the hedgerows. The room had a glad light and welcome +for him. + +As he came into the lamplight Maggie gave one quick anxious look at him. +She had always two thoughts in her little mind between their meetings: Is +he ill? Is he well? + +He was, to the outward seeing eye, superlatively well. Three years of +life lived in the open air, life lived according to the will of nature, +had given him back his outward and visible health. At thirty-nine, +Majendie had once more the strength, the firm, upright slenderness, and +the brilliance of his youth. His face was keen and brown, fined and +freshened by wind and weather. + +Maggie, waiting humbly on his mood, saw that it was propitious. + +"What cold hands," said she. "And no overcoat? You bad boy." She felt his +clothes all over to feel if they were damp. "Tired?" + +"Just a little, Maggie." + +She drew up his chair to the fire, and knelt down to unlace his boots. + +"No, Maggie, I can't let you take my boots off." + +"Yes, you can, and you will. Does _she_ ever take your boots off?" + +"Never." + +"You don't allow her?" + +"No. I don't allow her." + +"You allow _me_" said Maggie triumphantly. She was persuaded that (since +his wife was denied the joy of waiting on him) hers was the truly +desirable position. Majendie had never had the heart to enlighten her. + +She pressed his feet with her soft hands, to feel if his stockings were +damp, too. + +"There's a little hole," she cried. "I shall have to mend that to-night." + +She put cushions at his back, and sat down on the floor beside him, and +laid her head on his knee. + +"There's a sole for supper," said she, in a dreamy voice, "and a roast +chicken. And an apple tart. I made it." Maggie had always been absurdly +proud of the things that she could do. + +"Clever Maggie." + +"I made it because I thought you'd like it." + +"Kind Maggie." + +"You didn't get any of those things yesterday, or the day before, did +you?" + +She was always afraid of giving him what he had had at home. That was one +of the difficulties, she felt, of a double household. + +"I forget," he said, a little wearily, "what I had yesterday." + +Maggie noticed the weariness and said no more. + +He laid his hand on her head and stroked her hair. He could always keep +Maggie quiet by stroking her hair. She shifted herself instantly into +a position easier for his hand. She sat still, only turning to the +caressing hand, now her forehead, now the nape of her neck, now her +delicate ear. + +Maggie knew all his moods and ministered to them. She knew to-night that, +if she held her tongue, the peace she had prepared for him would sink +into him and heal him. He was not very tired. She could tell. She could +measure his weariness to a degree by the movements of his hand. When he +was tired she would seize the caressing hand and make it stop. In a few +minutes supper would be ready, and when he had had supper, she knew, it +would be time to talk. + +Majendie was grateful for her silence. He was grateful to her for many +things, for her beauty, for her sweetness, for her humility, for her love +which had given so much and asked so little. Maggie had still the modest +charm that gave to her and to her affection the illusion of a perfect +innocence. It had been heightened rather than diminished by their +intimacy. + +Somehow she had managed so that, as long as he was with her, shame was +impossible for himself or her. As long as he was with her he was wrapped +in her illusion, the illusion of innocence, of happiness, of all the +unspoken sanctities of home. He knew that whether he was or was not with +her, as long as he loved her no other man would come between him and her; +no other man would cross his threshold and stand upon his hearth. The +house he came to was holy to her. There were times, so deep was the +illusion, when he could have believed that Maggie, sitting there at his +feet, was the pure spouse, the helpmate, and Anne, in the house in Prior +Street, the unwedded, unacknowledged mistress, the distant, the secret, +the forbidden. He had never disguised from Maggie the temporary and +partial nature of the tie that bound them. But the illusion was too +strong for both of them. It was strong upon him now. + +The woman, Mrs. Pearson, came in with supper, moving round the room in +silence, devoted and discreet. + +Majendie was hungry. Maggie was unable to conceal her frank joy in seeing +him eat and drink. She ate little and talked a great deal, drawn by his +questions. + +"What have you been doing, Maggie?" + +Maggie gave an account of her innocent days, of her labours in house and +farm and garden. She loved all three, she loved her flowers and her +chickens and her rabbits, and the little young pigs. She loved all things +that had life. She was proud of her house. Her hands were always busy in +it. She had stitched all the linen for it. She had made all the +tablecloths, sofa covers and curtains, and given to them embroidered +borders. She liked to move about among all these beautiful things and +feel that they were hers. But she loved those most which Majendie had +used, or noticed, or admired. After supper she took up her old position +by his chair. + +"How long can you stay?" said she. + +"I must go to-morrow." + +"Oh, why?" + +"I've told you why, dear. It's my little girl's birthday to-morrow." + +She remembered. + +"Her birthday. How old will she be to-morrow?" + +"Seven." + +"Seven. What does she do all day long?" + +"Oh, she amuses herself. We have a garden." + +"How she would love this garden, and the flowers, and the swing, and the +chickens, and all the animals, wouldn't she?" + +"Yes. Yes." + +Somehow he didn't like Maggie to talk about his child, but he hadn't the +heart to stop her. + +"Is she as pretty as she was?" + +"Prettier." + +"And she's not a bit like you." + +"Not a bit, not a little bit." + +"I'm glad," said Maggie. + +"Why on earth are you glad?" + +"Because--I couldn't bear _her_ child to be like you." + +"You mustn't say those things, Maggie, I don't like it." + +"I won't say them. You don't mind my thinking them, do you? I can't help +thinking." + +She thought for a long time; then she got up, and came to him, and put +her arm round his neck, and bowed her head and whispered. + +"Don't whisper. I hate it. Speak out. Say what you've got to say." + +"I can't say it." + +She said it very low. + +He bent forward, freeing himself from her mouth and clinging arm. + +"No, Maggie. Never. I told you that in the beginning. You promised me you +wouldn't think of it. It's bad enough as it is." + +"What's bad enough?" + +"Everything, my child. I'm bad enough, if you like; but I'm not as bad as +all that, I can assure you." + +"You don't think _me_ bad?" + +"You know I don't. You know what I think of you. But you must learn to +see what's possible and what isn't." + +"I do see. Tell me one thing. Is it because you love _her_?" + +"We can't go into that, Maggie. Can't you understand that it may be +because I love _you_?" + +"I don't know. But I don't mind so long as I know it isn't only because +you love _her_." + +"You're not to talk about her, Maggie." + +"I know. I won't. I don't want to talk about her, I'm sure. I try not to +think about her more than I can help." + +"But you must think of her." + +"Oh--must I?" + +"At any rate, you must think of me." + +"I do think of you. I think of you from morning till night. I don't think +of anything else. I don't want anything else. I'm contented as long as +I've got you. It wasn't that." + +"What was it, Maggie?" + +"Nothing. Only--it's so awfully lonely in between, when you're not here. +That was why I asked you." + +"Poor child, poor Maggie. Is it very bad to bear?" + +"Not when I know you're coming." + +"See here--if it gets too bad to bear, we must end it." + +"End it?" + +"Yes, Maggie. _You_ must end it; you must give me up, when you're +tired--" + +"Oh no--no," she cried. + +"Give me up," he repeated, "and go back to town." + +"To Scale?" + +"Well, yes; if it's so lonely here." + +"And give you up?" + +"Yes, Maggie, you must; if you go back to Scale." + +"I shall never go back. Who could I go to? There's nobody who'd 'ave me. +I've got nobody." + +"Nobody?" + +"Nobody but you, Wallie. Nobody but you. Have you never thought of that? +Why, where should _I_ be if I was to give you up?" + +"I see, Maggie. _I_ see. _I_ see." + +Up till then he had seen nothing. But Maggie, unwise, had put her hand +through the fine web of illusion. She had seen, and made him see, the +tragedy of the truth behind it, the real nature of the tie that bound +them. It was an inconsistent tie, permanent in its impermanence, with all +its incompleteness terribly complete. He could not give her up; he had +not thought of giving her up; but neither had he thought of keeping her. + +It was all wrong. It was wrong to keep her. It would be wrong to give her +up. He was all she had. Whatever happened he could not give her up. + +And so he said, "_I_ see. _I_ see." + +"See here," said she (she had adopted some of his phrases), "when I said +there was nobody, I meant nobody I'd have anything to do with. If I went +back to Scale, there are plenty of low girls in the town who'd make +friends with me, if I'd let 'em. But I won't be seen with them. You +wouldn't have me seen with them, would you?" + +"No, Maggie, not for all the world." + +"Well, then, 'ow can you go on talking about my giving you up?" + +No. He could not give her up. There was no tie between them but their +sin, yet he could not break it. Degraded as it was, it saved him from +deeper degradation. + +He loved Anne with his whole soul, with his heart and with his body, and +he had given his body to Maggie, with as much heart as went with it. In +the world's sight he loved Maggie and was bound to Anne. In his own sight +he loved Anne and was bound to Maggie. + +It had come to that. + +He did not care to look back upon the steps by which it had come. He only +knew that, seven years ago, he had been sound and whole, a man with one +aim and one passion and one life. Now he and his life were divided, cut +clean in two by a line not to be passed or touched upon by either +sundered half. All of him that Anne had rejected he had given to Maggie. + +As far as he could judge he had acted, not grossly, not recklessly, but +with a kind of passionate deliberation. He knew he would have to pay for +it. He had not stopped to haggle with his conscience or to ask: how much? +But he was prepared to pay. + +Up to this moment his conscience had not dunned him. But now he foresaw a +season when the bills would be falling due. + +Maggie had torn the veil of illusion, and he looked for the first time +upon his sin. + +Even his conscience admitted that he had not meant it to come to that. He +had had no ancient private tendency to sin. He wanted nothing but to live +at home, happy with the wife he loved, and with his child, his children. +And poor Maggie, she too would have asked no more than to be a good wife +to the man she loved, and to be the mother of his children. + +This life with Maggie, hidden away in Three Elms Farm, in the wilds of +Holderness, it could not be called dissipation, but it was division. +Where once he had been whole he was now divided. The sane, strong +affection that should have knit body and soul together was itself broken +in two. + +And it was she, the helpmate, she who should have kept him whole, who had +caused him to be thus sundered from himself and her. + +They were all wrong, all frustrated, all incomplete. Anne, in her sublime +infidelity to earth; Maggie, turned from her own sweet use that she might +give him what Anne could not give; and he, who between them had severed +his body from his soul. + +Thus he brooded. + +And Maggie, with her face hidden against his knee, brooded too, piercing +the illusion. + +He tried to win her from her sad thoughts by talking again of the house +and garden. But Maggie was tired of the house and garden now. + +"And do the Pearsons look after you well still?" he asked. + +"Yes. Very well." + +"And Steve--is he as good to you as ever?" + +Maggie brightened and became more communicative. + +"Yes, very good. He was all day mending my bicycle, Sunday, and he takes +me out in the boat sometimes; and he's made such a dear little house for +the old Angora rabbit." + +"Do you like going out in the boat?" + +"Yes, very much." + +"Do you like going out with him?" + +"No," said Maggie, making a little face, half of disgust and half of +derision. "No. His hands are all dirty, and he smells of fish." + +Majendie laughed. "There are drawbacks, I must own, to Steve." + +He looked at his watch, an action Maggie hated. It always suggested +finality, departure. + +"Ten o'clock, Maggie. I must be up at six to-morrow. We sail at seven." + +"At seven," echoed Maggie in despair. + +They were up at six. Maggie went with him to the creek, to see him sail. +In the garden she picked a chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole, +forgetting that he couldn't wear her token. There were so many things +he couldn't do. + +A little rain still fell through a clogging mist. They walked side by +side, treading the drenched grass, for the track was too narrow for them +both. Maggie's feet dragged, prolonging the moments. + +A white pointed sail showed through the mist, where the little yacht lay +in the river off the mouth of the creek. + +Steve was in the boat close against the creek's bank, waiting to row +Majendie to the yacht. He touched his cap to Majendie as they appeared on +the bank, but he did not look at Maggie when her gentle voice called +good-morning. + +Steve's face was close-mouthed and hard set. + +She put her hands on Majendie's shoulders and kissed him. Her cheek +against his face was pure and cold, wet with the rain. Steve did not look +at them. He never looked at them when they were together. + +Majendie dropped into the boat. Steve pushed off from the bank. Maggie +stood there watching them go. She stood till the boat reached the creek's +mouth, and Majendie turned, and raised his cap to her; stood till the +white sail moved slowly up the river and disappeared, rounding the spit +of land. + +Majendie, as he paced the deck and talked to his men of wind and weather, +turned casually, on his heel, to look at her where she stood alone in the +level immensity of the land. The world looked empty all around her. + +And he was touched with a sudden poignant realisation of her life; its +sadness, its incompleteness, its isolation. + +That was what he had brought her to. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +The rain cleared off, the mist lifted, and at nine o'clock it was a fine +day for Peggy's birthday. Even Scale, where it stretched its flat avenues +into the country, showed golden in the warm and brilliant air. + +The household in Prior Street had been up early, making preparations for +the day. Peggy had waked before it was light, to feel her presents which +lay beside her on her bed; and, by the time Majendie's sail had passed +Fawlness Point, she was up and dressed, waiting for him. + +Anne had to break it to her gently that perhaps he would not be home in +time for eight-o'clock breakfast. Then the child's mouth trembled, and +Anne comforted her, half-smiling and half-afraid. + +"Ah, Peggy, Peggy," she said, as she rocked her against her breast, "What +shall I do with you? Your little heart is too big for your little body." + +Anne's terror had not left her in three years. It was always with her +now. The child was bound to suffer. She was a little mass of throbbing +nerves, of trembling emotions. + +Yet Anne herself was happier. The three years had passed smoothly over +her. Her motherhood had laid its fine, soft, finishing touch upon her. +Her face, her body, had rounded and ripened, year after slow year, to an +abiding beauty, born of her tenderness. At thirty-five Anne Majendie had +reached the perfect moment of her physical maturity. + +Her mind was no longer harassed by anxiety about her husband. He seemed +to have settled down. He had ceased to be uncertain in his temper, by +turns irritable and depressed. He had parted with the heaviness which had +once roused her aversion, and had recovered his personal distinction, the +slender refinement of his youth. She rejoiced in his well-being. She +attributed it, partly to his open-air habits, partly to the spiritual +growth begun in him at the time of his sister's death. + +She desired no change in their relations, no further understanding, no +closer intimacy. + +To Anne's mind, her husband's attitude to her was perfect. The passion +that had been her fear had left him. He waited on her hand and foot, with +humble, heart-rending devotion. He let her see that he adored her with +discretion, at a distance, as a divinely, incomprehensibly high and holy +thing. + +Her household life had simplified itself. Her days passed in noiseless, +equable procession. Many hours had been given back to her empty after +Edith's death. She had filled them with interests outside her home, with +visiting the poor in the district round All Souls, with evening classes +for shop-girls, with "Rescue" work. Not an hour of her day was idle. At +the end of the three years Mrs. Majendie was known in Scale by her broad +charities and by her saintly life. + +She had fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In +three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. +She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time +when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. +She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat +fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though she +did not know it) the dupe of Mrs. Eliott's delight in her, of all the +sweet and dangerous ministrations of their mutual vanities. Mrs. Eliott +had been uplifted by Anne's preposterously grave approval. Anne had been +ravished by her own distinction as the audience of Fanny Eliott's loftier +and profounder moods. There could be no criticism of these heights and +depths. To have depreciated Fanny Eliott's rarity by a shade would have +been to call in question her own. + +But all this had ceased long ago, when she married Walter Majendie, and +his sister became her dearest friend. Fanny Eliott had always looked on +Edith Majendie as her rival; retreating a little ostentatiously before +her formidable advance. There should have been no rivalry, for there had +been no possible ground of comparison. Neither could Edith Majendie be +said to have advanced. The charm of Edith, or rather, her pathetic claim, +was that she never could have advanced at all. To Anne's mind, from the +first, there had been no choice between Edith, lying motionless on her +sofa by the window, and Fanny at large in the drawing-rooms of her +acquaintances, scattering her profuse enthusiasms, revolving in her +intellectual round, the prisoner of her own perfections. To come into +Edith's room had been to come into thrilling contact with reality; while +Fanny Eliott was for ever putting you off with some ingenious refinement +on it. Edith's personality had triumphed over death and time. Fanny +Eliott, poor thing, still suffered by the contrast. + +Of all Anne's friends, the Gardners alone stood the test of time. She had +never had a doubt of them. They had come later into her life, after the +perishing of her great illusion. The shock had humbled her senses and +disposed her to reverence for the things of intellect. Dr. Gardner's +position, as President of the Scale Literary and Philosophic Society, was +as a high rock to which she clung. Mrs. Gardner was dear to her for many +reasons. + +The dearness of Mrs. Gardner was significant. It showed that, thanks to +Peggy, Anne's humanisation was almost complete. + +To-day, which was Peggy's birthday, Anne's heart was light and happy. +She had planned, that, if the day were fine, the festival was to be +celebrated by a picnic to Westleydale. + +And the day was fine. Majendie had promised to be home in time to start +by the nine-fifty train. Meanwhile they waited. Peggy had helped Mary the +cook to pack the luncheon basket, and now she felt time heavy on her +little hands. + +Anne suggested that they should go upstairs and help Nanna. Nanna was in +Majendie's room, turning out his drawers. On his bed there was a pile of +suits of the year before last, put aside to be given to Anne's poor +people. When Peggy was tired of fetching and carrying, she watched her +mother turning over the clothes and sorting them into heaps. Anne's +methods were rapid and efficient. + +"Oh, mummy!" cried Peggy, "don't! You touch daddy's things as if you +didn't like them." + +"Peggy, darling, what do you mean?" + +"You're so quick." She laid her face against one of Majendie's coats and +stroked it. "Must daddy's things go away?" + +"Yes, darling. Why don't you want them to go?" + +"Because I love them. I love all his little coats and hats and shoes and +things." + +"Oh, Peggy, Peggy, you're a little sentimentalist. Go and see what +Nanna's got there." + +Nanna had given a cry of joyous discovery. "Look, ma'am," said she, "what +I've found in master's portmanteau." + +Nanna came forward, shaking out a child's frock. A frock of pure white +silk, embroidered round the neck and wrists with a deep border of +daisies, pink and white and gold. + +"Nanna!" + +"Oh, mummy, what is it?" + +Peggy touched a daisy with her soft forefinger and shrank back shyly. She +knew it was her birthday, but she did not know whether the frock had +anything to do with that, or no. + +"I wonder," said Anne, "what little girl daddy brought that for." + +"Did daddy bring it?" + +"Yes, daddy brought it. Do you think he meant it for her birthday, +Nanna?" + +"Well, m'm, he may have meant it for her birthday last year. I found it +stuffed into 'is portmanteau wot 'e took with him in the yacht a year +ago. It's bin there--poked away in the cupboard, ever since. I suppose he +bought it, meaning to give it to Miss Peggy, and put it away and forgot +all about it. See, m'm"--Nanna measured the frock against Peggy's small +figure--"it'd 'a' bin too large for her, last birthday. It'll just fit +her now, m'm." + +"Oh, Peggy!" said Anne. "She must put it on. Quick, Nanna. You shall wear +it, my pet, and surprise daddy." + +"What fun!" said Peggy. + +"_Is_n't it fun?" Anne was as gay and as happy as Peggy. She was smiling +her pretty smile. + +Peggy was solemnly arrayed in the little frock. The borders of daisies +showed like a necklace and bracelets against her white skin. + +"Well, m'm," said Nanna, "if master did forget, he knew what he was +about, at the time, anyhow. It's the very frock for her." + +"Yes. See, Peggy--it's daisies, marguerites. That's why daddy chose +it--for your little name, darling, do you see?" + +"My name," said Peggy softly, moved by the wonder and beauty of her +frock. + +"There he is, Peggy! Run down and show yourself." + +"Oh, muvver," shrieked Peggy, "it will be a surprise for daddy, won't +it?" + +She ran down. They followed, and leaned over the bannisters to listen to +the surprise. They heard Peggy's laugh as she came to the last flight of +stairs and showed herself to her father. They heard her shriek "Daddy! +daddy!" Then there was calm. + +Then Peggy's voice dropped from its high joy and broke. "Oh, daddy, are +you angry with me?" + +Anne came downstairs. Majendie had the child in his arms and was kissing +her. + +"Are you angry with me, daddy?" she repeated. + +"No, my sweetheart, no." He looked up at Anne. He was very pale, and a +sweat was on his forehead. "Who put that frock on her?" + +"I did," said Anne. + +"I think you'd better take it off again," he said quietly. + +Anne raised her eyebrows as a sign to him to look at Peggy's miserable +mouth. "Oh, let her wear it," she said. "It's her birthday." + +Majendie wiped his forehead and turned aside into the study. + +"Muvver," said Peggy, as they went hand in hand upstairs again; "do you +think daddy _really meant_ it as a surprise for _me_?" + +"I think he must have done, darling." + +"Aren't you sorry we spoiled his surprise, mummy?" + +"I don't think he minds, Peggy." + +"_I_ think he does. Why did he look angry, and say I was to take it off?" + +"Perhaps, because it's rather too nice a frock for every day." + +"My birthday isn't every day," said Peggy. + +So Peggy wore the frock that Maggie had made for her and given to +Majendie last year. He had hidden it in his portmanteau, meaning to give +it to Mrs. Ransome at Christmas. And he had thrown the portmanteau into +the darkest corner of the cupboard, and gone away and forgotten all about +it. + +And now the sight of Maggie's handiwork had given him a shock. For his +sin was heavy upon him. Every day he went in fear of discovery. Anne +would ask him where he had got that frock, and he would have to lie to +her. And it would be no use; for, sooner or later, she would know that he +had lied; and she would track Maggie down by the frock. + +He hated to see his innocent child dressed in the garment which was a +token and memorial of his sin. He wished he had thrown the damned thing +into the Humber. + +But Anne had no suspicion. Her face was smooth and tranquil as she came +downstairs. She was calling Peggy her "little treasure," and her eyes +were smiling as she looked at the frail, small, white and gold creature, +stepping daintily and shyly in her delicate dress. + +Peggy was buttoned into a little white coat to keep her warm; and they +set out, Majendie carrying the luncheon basket, and Peggy an enormous +doll. + +Peggy enjoyed the journey. When she was not talking to Majendie she was +singing a little song to keep the doll quiet, so that the time passed +very quickly both for her and him. There were other people in the +carriage, and Anne was afraid they would be annoyed at Peggy's singing. +But they seemed to like it as much as she and Majendie. Nobody was ever +annoyed with Peggy. + +In Westleydale the beech trees were in golden leaf. It was green +underfoot and on the folding hills. Overhead it was limitless blue above +the uplands; and above the woods, among the golden tree-tops, clear films +and lacing veins and brilliant spots of blue. + +Majendie felt Peggy's hand tighten on his hand. Her little body was +trembling with delight. + +They found the beech tree under which he and Anne had once sat. He looked +at her. And she, remembering, half turned her face from him; and, as she +stooped and felt for a soft dry place for the child to sit on, she +smiled, half unconsciously, a shy and tender smile. + +Then he saw, beside her half-turned face, the face of another woman, +smiling, shyly and tenderly, another smile; and his heart smote him with +the sorrow of his sin. + +They sat down, all three, under the beech tree; and Peggy took, first +Majendie's hand, then Anne's hand, and held them together in her lap. + +"Mummy," said she, "aren't you glad that daddy came? It wouldn't be half +so nice without him, would it?" + +"No," said Anne, "it wouldn't." + +"Mummy, you don't say that as if you meant it." + +"Oh, Peggy, of course I meant it." + +"Yes, but you didn't make it sound so." + +"Peggy," said Majendie, "you're a terribly observant little person." + +"She's a little person who sometimes observes all wrong." + +"No, mummy, I don't. You never talk to daddy like you talk to me." + +"You're a little girl, dear, and daddy's a big grown-up man." + +"That's not what I mean, though. You've got a grown-up voice for me, too. +I don't mean your grown-up voice. I mean, mummy, you talk to daddy as +if--as if you hadn't known him a very long time. And you talk to me as if +you'd known me--oh, ever so long. _Have_ you known me longer than you've +known daddy?" + +Majendie gazed with feigned abstraction at the shoulder of the hill +visible through the branches of the trees. + +"Bless you, sweetheart, I knew daddy long before you were ever thought +of." + +"When was I thought of, mummy?" + +"I don't know, darling." + +"Do you know, daddy?" + +"Yes, Peggy. _I_ know. You were thought of here, in this wood, under this +tree, on mummy's birthday, between eight and nine years ago." + +"Who thought of me?" + +"Ah, that's telling." + +"Who thought of me, mummy?" + +"Daddy and I, dear." + +"And you forgot, and daddy remembered." + +"Yes. I've got a rather better memory than your mother, dear." + +"You forgot my old birthday, daddy." + +"I haven't forgotten your mother's old birthday, though." + +Peggy was thinking. Her forehead was all wrinkled with the intensity of +her thought. + +"Mummy--am I only seven?" + +"Only seven, Peggy." + +"Then," said Peggy, "you _did_ think of me before I was born. How did you +know me before I was born?" + +Anne shook her head. + +"Daddy, how did you know me before I was born?" + +"Peggy, you're a little tease." + +"You brought it on yourself, my dear. Peggy, if you'll leave off teasing +daddy, I'll tell you a story." + +"Oh!--" + +"Once upon a time" (Anne's voice was very low) "mummy had a dream. She +dreamed she was in this wood, walking along that little path--just +there--not thinking of Peggy. And when she came to this tree she saw an +angel, with big white wings. He was lying under this very tree, on this +very bit of grass, just there, where daddy's sitting. And one of his +wings was stretched out on the grass, and it was hollow like a cradle. +It was all lined with little feathers, like the inside of a swan's wing, +as soft as soft. And the other wing was stretched over it like the top of +a cradle. And inside, all among the soft little feathers, there was a +little baby girl lying, just like Peggy." + +"Oh, mummy, was it me?" + +"Sh--sh--sh! Whoever it was, the angel saw that mummy loved it, and +wanted it very much--" + +"The little baby girl?" + +"Yes. And so he took the baby and gave it to mummy, to be her own little +girl. That's how Peggy came to mummy." + +"And did he give it to daddy, too, to be his little girl?" + +"Yes," said Majendie, "I was wondering where I came in." + +"Yes. He gave it to daddy to be his little girl, too." + +"I'm glad he gave me to daddy. The angel brought me to you in the night, +like daddy brought me my big dolly. You did bring my big dolly, and put +her on my bed, didn't you, daddy? Last night?" + +Majendie was silent. + +"Daddy wasn't at home last night, Peggy." + +"Oh, daddy, where were you?" + +Majendie felt his forehead getting damp again. + +"Daddy was away on business." + +"Oh, mummy, don't you wish he'd never go away?" + +"I think it's time for lunch," said Majendie. + +They ate their lunch; and when it was ended, Majendie went to the cottage +to find water, for Peggy was thirsty. He returned, carrying water in a +pitcher, and followed by a red-cheeked, rosy little girl who brought milk +in a cup for Peggy. + +Anne remembered the cup. It was the same cup that she had drunk from +after her husband. And the child was the same child whom he had found +sitting in the grass, whom he had shown to her and taken from her arms, +whose little body, held close to hers, had unsealed in her the first +springs of her maternal passion. It all came back to her. + +The little girl beamed on Peggy with a face like a small red sun, and +Peggy conceived a sudden yearning for her companionship. It seemed that, +at the cottage, there were rabbits, and a new baby, and a litter of +puppies three days old. And all these wonders the little girl offered +to show to Peggy, if Peggy would go with her. + +Peggy begged, and went through the wood, hand in hand with the little +beaming girl. Majendie and Anne watched them out of sight. + +"Look at the two pairs of legs," said Majendie. + +Anne sighed. Her Peggy showed very white and frail beside the red, +lusty-legged daughter of the woods. + +"I'm not at all happy about her," said she. + +"Why not?" + +"She gets so terribly tired." + +"All children do, don't they?" + +Anne shook her head. "Not as she does. It isn't a child's healthy +tiredness. It doesn't come like that. It came on quite suddenly the other +day, after she'd been excited; and her little lips turned grey." + +"Get Gardner to look at her." + +"I'm going to. He says she ought to be more in the open air. I wish we +could get a cottage somewhere in the country, with a nice garden." + +Majendie said nothing. He was thinking of Three Elms Farm, and the garden +and the orchard, and of the pure wind that blew over them straight from +the sea. He remembered how Maggie had said that the child would love it. + +"You could afford it, Walter, couldn't you, now?" + +"Of course I can afford it." + +He thought how easily it could be done, if he gave up his yacht and the +farm. His business was doing better every year. But the double household +was a drain on his fresh resources. He could not very well afford to take +another house, and keep the farm too. He had thought of that before. He +had been thinking of it last night when he spoke to Maggie about giving +him up. Poor Maggie! Well, he would have to manage somehow. If the worst +came to the worst they could sell the house in Prior Street. And he would +sell the yacht. + +"I think I shall sell the yacht," he said. + +"Oh no, you mustn't do that. You've been so well since you've had it." + +"No, it isn't necessary. I shall be better if I take more exercise." + +Peggy came back and the subject dropped. + +Peggy was very unhappy before the picnic ended. She was tired, so tired +that she cried piteously, and Majendie had to take her up in his arms and +carry her all the way to the station. Anne carried the doll. + +In the train Peggy fell asleep in her father's arms. She slept with her +face pressed close against him, and one hand clinging to his breast. Her +head rested on his arm, and her hair curled over his rough coat-sleeve. + +"Look--" he whispered. + +Anne looked. "The little lamb--" she said. + +Then she was silent, discerning in the man's face, bent over the sleeping +child, the divine look of love and tenderness. She was silent, held by an +old enchantment and an older vision; brooding on things dear and secret +and long-forgotten. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +Though Thurston Square saw little of Mrs. Majendie, the glory of Mrs. +Eliott's Thursdays remained undiminished. The same little procession +filed through her drawing-room as before. Mrs. Pooley, Miss Proctor, the +Gardners, and Canon Wharton. Mrs. Eliott was more than ever haggard and +pursuing; she had more than ever the air of clinging, desperate and +exhausted, on her precipitous intellectual heights. + +But Mrs. Pooley never flagged, possibly because her ideas were vaguer +and more miscellaneous, and therefore less exhausting. It was she who +now urged Mrs. Eliott on. This year Mrs. Pooley was going in for +thought-power, and for mind-control, and had drawn Mrs. Eliott in with +her. They still kept it up for hours together, and still they dreaded +the disastrous invasions of Miss Proctor. + +Miss Proctor rode roughshod over the thought-power, and trampled +contemptuously on the mind-control. Mrs. Gardner's attitude was +mysterious and unsatisfactory. She seemed to stand serenely on the shore +of the deep sea where Mrs. Eliott and Mrs. Pooley were for ever plunging +and sinking, and coming up again, bobbing and bubbling, to the surface. +Her manner implied that she would die rather than go in with them; it +also suggested that she knew rather more about the thought-power and the +mind-control than they did; but that she did not wish to talk so much +about it. + +Mr. Eliott, dexterous as ever, and fortified by the exact sciences, took +refuge from the occult under his covering of profound stupidity. He had a +secret understanding with Dr. Gardner on the subject. His spirit no +longer searched for Dr. Gardner's across the welter of his wife's +drawing-room, knowing that it would find it at the club. + +Now, in October, about four o'clock on the Thursday after Peggy's +birthday, Canon Wharton and Miss Proctor met at Mrs. Eliott's. The Canon +had watched his opportunity and drawn his hostess apart. + +"May I speak with you a moment," he said, "before your other guests +arrive?" + +Mrs. Eliott led him to a secluded sofa. "If you'll sit here," said she, +"we can leave Johnson to entertain Miss Proctor." + +"I am perplexed and distressed," said the Canon, "about our dear Mrs. +Majendie." + +Mrs. Eliott's eyes darkened with anxiety. She clasped her hands. "Oh why? +What is it? Do you mean about the dear little girl?" + +"I know nothing about the little girl. But I hear very unpleasant things +about her husband." + +"What things?" + +The Canon's face was reticent and grim. He wished Mrs. Eliott to +understand that he was no unscrupulous purveyor of gossip; that if he +spoke, it was under constraint and severe necessity. + +"I do not," said the Canon, "usually give heed to disagreeable reports. +But I am afraid that, where there is such a dense cloud of smoke, there +must be some fire." + +"I think," said Mrs. Eliott, "perhaps they didn't get on very well +together once. But they seem to have made it up after the sister's death. +_She_ has been happier these last three years. She has been a different +woman." + +"The same woman, my dear lady, the same woman. Only a better saint. For +the last three years, they say, he has been living with another woman." + +"Oh--it's impossible. Impossible. He is away a great deal--but--" + +"He is away a great deal too often. Running up to Scarby every week in +that yacht of his. In with the Ransomes and all that disreputable set." + +"Is Lady Cayley in Scale?" + +"Lady Cayley is at Scarby." + +"Do you mean to say--" + +"I mean," said the Canon, rising, "to say nothing." + +Mrs. Eliott detained him with her eyes of anguish. + +"Canon Wharton--do you think she knows?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +The Canon never told. He was far too clever. + +Mrs. Eliott wandered to Miss Proctor. + +"Do you know," said Miss Proctor, searching Mrs. Eliott's face with an +inquisitive gaze, "how our friends, the Majendies, are getting on?" + +"Oh, as usual. I see very little of her now. Anne is quite taken up with +her little girl and with her good works." + +"Oh! That," said Miss Proctor, "was a most unsuitable marriage." + +It was five o'clock. The Canon and Miss Proctor had drunk their two +cups of tea and departed. Mrs. Pooley had arrived soon after four; +she lingered, to talk a little more about the thought-power and the +mind-control. Mrs. Pooley was convinced that she could make things +happen. That they were, in fact, happening. But Mrs. Eliott was no longer +interested. + +Mrs. Pooley, too, departed, feeling that dear Fanny's Thursday had been a +disappointment. She had been quite unable to sustain the conversation at +its usual height. + +Mrs. Pooley indubitably gone, Mrs. Eliott wandered down to Johnson in his +study. There, in perfect confidence, she revealed to him the Canon's +revelations. + +Johnson betrayed no surprise. That story had been going the round of his +club for the last two years. + +"What will Anne do?" said Mrs. Eliott, "when she finds out?" + +"I don't suppose she'll do anything." + +"Will she get a separation, do you think?" + +"How can I tell you?" + +"I wonder if she knows." + +"She's not likely to tell you, if she does." + +"She's bound to know, sooner or later. I wonder if one ought to prepare +her?" + +"Prepare her for what?" + +"The shock of it. I'm afraid of her hearing in some horrid way. It would +be so awful, if she didn't know." + +"It can't be pleasant, any way, my dear." + +"Do advise me, Johnson. Ought I or ought I not to tell her?" + +Mr. Eliott's face told how his nature shrank from the agony of decision. +But he was touched by her distress. + +"Certainly not. Much better let well alone." + +"If I were only sure that it _was_ well I was letting alone." + +"Can't be sure of anything. Give it the benefit of the doubt." + +"Yes--but if you were I?" + +"If I were you I should say nothing." + +"That only means that I should say nothing if I were you. But I'm not." + +"Be thankful, my dear, at any rate, for that." + +He took up a book, _The Search for Stellar Parallaxes_, a book that he +understood and that his wife could not understand. That book was the sole +refuge open to him when pressed for an opinion. He knew that, when she +saw him reading it, she would realise that he was her intellectual +master. + +The front doorbell announced the arrival of another caller. + +She went away, wondering, as he meant she should, whether he were so very +undecided, after all. Certainly his indecisions closed a subject more +effectually than other people's verdicts. + +She found Anne in the empty, half-dark drawing-room waiting for her. She +had chosen the darkest corner, and the darkest hour. + +"Fanny," she said, and her voice trembled, "are you alone? Can I speak to +you a moment?" + +"Yes, dear, yes. Just let me leave word with Mason that I'm not at home. +But no one will come now." + +In the interval she heard Anne struggling with the sob that had choked +her voice. She felt that the decision had been made for her. The terrible +task had been taken out of her hands. Anne knew. + +She sat down beside her friend and put her hand on her shoulder. In that +moment poor Fanny's intellectual vanities dropped from her, like an +inappropriate garment, and she became pure woman. She forgot Anne's +recent disaffection and her coldness, she forgot the years that had +separated them, and remembered only the time when Anne was the girlfriend +who had loved her, and had come to her in all her griefs, and had made +her house her home. + +"What is it, dear?" she murmured. + +Anne felt for her hand and pressed it. She tried to speak, but no words +would come. + +"Of course," thought Mrs. Eliott, "she cannot tell me. But she knows I +know." + +"My dear," she said, "can I or Johnson help you?" + +Anne shook her head; but she pressed her friend's hand tighter. + +Wondering what she could do or say to help her, Mrs. Eliott resolved to +take Anne's knowledge for granted, and act upon it. + +"If there's trouble, dear, will you come to us? We want you to look on +our house as a refuge, any hour of the day or night." + +Anne stared at her friend. There was something ominous and dismaying in +her solemn tenderness, and it roused Anne to wonder, even in her grief. + +"You cannot help me, dear," she said. "No one can. Yet I had to come to +you and tell you--" + +"Tell me everything," said Mrs. Eliott, "if you can." + +Anne tried to steady her voice to tell her, and failed. Then Fanny had an +inspiration. She felt that she must divert Anne's thoughts from the grief +that made her dumb, and get her to talk naturally of other things. + +"How's Peggy?" said she. She knew it would be good to remind her that, +whatever happened, she had still the child. + +But at that question, Anne released Mrs. Eliott's hand, and laid her head +back upon the cushion and cried. + +"Dear," whispered Mrs. Eliott, with her inspiration full upon her, "you +will always have _her_." + +Then Anne sat up in her corner, and put away her tears, and controlled +herself to speak. + +"Fanny," she said, "Dr. Gardner has seen her. He says I shall not have +her very long. Perhaps--a few years--if we take the very greatest +care--" + +"Oh, my dear! What is it?" + +"It's her heart. I thought it was her spine, because of Edie. But it +isn't. She has valvular disease. Oh, Fanny, I didn't think a little child +could have it." + +"Nor I," said Mrs. Eliott, shocked into a great calm. "But surely--if you +take care--" + +"No. He gives no hope. He only says a few years, if we leave Scale and +take her into the country. She must never be overtired, never excited. We +must never vex her. He says one violent crying fit might kill her. And +she cries so easily. She cries sometimes till she's sick." + +Mrs. Eliott's face had grown white; she trembled, and was dumb before the +anguish of Anne's face. + +But it was Anne who rose, and put her arms about the childless woman, and +kissed and comforted her. + +It was as if she had said: Thank God you never had one. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +The rumour which was going the round of the clubs in due time reached +Lady Cayley through the Ransomes. It roused in her many violent and +conflicting emotions. + +She sat trembling in the Ransomes' drawing-room. Mrs. Ransome had just +asked whether there was anything in it; because if there was, she, Mrs. +Ransome, washed her hands of her. She intimated that it would take a good +deal of washing to get Sarah off her hands. + +Sarah had unveiled the face of horror, the face of outraged virtue, and +the wrath and writhing of propriety wounded in the uncertain, quivering, +vital spot. During the unveiling Dick Ransome had come in. He wanted +to know if Topsy had been bullying poor Toodles. Whereupon Topsy wept +feebly, and poor Toodles had a moment of monstrous calm. + +She wanted to get it quite clear, to make no mistake. They might as well +give her the details. Majendie had left his wife, had he? Well, she +wasn't surprised at that. The wonder was that, having married her, he had +stuck to her so long. He had left his wife, and was living at Scarby, was +he, with her? Well, she only wanted to get all the details clear. + +At this Sarah fell into a fit of laughter very terrifying to see. Since +her own sister wouldn't take her word for it, she supposed she'd have to +prove that it was not so. + +And, under the horror of her virtue and respectability, there heaved a +dull, dumb fury, born of her memory that it once was, her belief that +it might have been again, and her knowledge that it was not so. She +trembled, shaken by the troubling of the fire that ran underground, +the immense, unseen, unliberated, primeval fire. She was no longer a +creature of sophistries, hypocrisies, and wiles. She was the large woman +of the simple earth, welded by the dark, unspiritual flame. + +Dick Ransome turned on his sister-in-law a pale, puffy face in which two +little dark eyes twinkled with a shrewd, gross humour. Nothing could +possibly have pleased Dick Ransome more than an exhibition of indignant +virtue, as achieved by Sarah. He knew a great deal more about Sarah than +Mrs. Ransome knew, or than Sarah knew herself. To Dick Ransome's mind, +thus illumined by knowledge, that spectacle swept the whole range of +human comedy. He sat taking in all the entertainment it presented; and, +when it was all over, he remarked quietly that Toodles needn't bother +about her proofs. He had got them too. He knew that it was not so. He +could tell her that much, but he wasn't going to give Majendie away. No, +she couldn't get any more out of him than that. + +Sarah smiled. She did not need to get anything more out of him. She had +her proof; or, if it didn't exactly amount to proof, she had her clue. +She had found it long ago; and she had followed it up, if not to the end, +at any rate, quite far enough. She reflected that Majendie, like the dear +fool he always was, had given it to her himself, five years ago. + +Men's sins take care of themselves. It is their innocent good deeds that +start the hounds of destiny. When Majendie sent Maggie Forrest's +handiwork to Mrs. Ransome, with a kind note recommending the little +embroideress, by that innocent good deed he woke the sleeping dogs of +destiny. Mrs. Ransome's sister had tracked poor Maggie down by the long +trail of her beautiful embroidery. She had been baffled when the +embroidered clue broke off. Now, after three years, she leaped (and +it was not a very difficult leap for Lady Cayley) to the firm conclusion. +Maggie Forrest and her art had disappeared for three years; so, at +perilous intervals, had Majendie; therefore they had disappeared +together. + +Sarah did not like the look in Dick Ransome's eye. She removed herself +from it to the seclusion of her bedroom. There she bathed her heated face +with toilette vinegar, steadied her nerves with a cigarette, lay down +on a couch and rested, and, pure from passion, revised the situation +calmly. She was an eminently practical, sensible woman, who knew the +facts of life, and knew, also, how to turn them to her own advantage. + +Seen by the larger, calmer spirit that was Sarah now, the situation was +not as unpleasant as it had at first appeared. To be sure, the rumour in +which she had figured was fatal to the matrimonial vision, and to the +beautiful illusion of propriety in which she had once lived. But Sarah +had renounced the vision; she had abandoned the pursuit of the fugitive +propriety. She had long ago seen through the illusion. She might be a +deceiver, but she had no power to hoodwink her own indestructible +lucidity. Looking back on her life, after the joyous romances of her +youth, the years had passed like so many funeral processions, each +bearing some pleasant scandal to its burial. Then there had come the +dreary funeral feast, and then the days of mournful rehabilitation. Oh, +that rehabilitation! There had been three years of it. Three years of +exhausting struggle for a position in society, three years of crawling, +and pushing, and scrambling, and climbing. There had been a dubious +triumph. Then six years of respectable futility, ambiguous courtship, +and palpable frustration. After all that, there was something flattering +in the thought that, at forty-five, she should yet find her name still +coupled with Walter Majendie's in a passionate adventure. + +It might easily have been, but for Walter's imbecile, suicidal devotion +to his wife. He had got nothing out of his marriage. Worse than nothing. +He was the laughing-stock of all his friends who were in the secret; who +saw him grovelling at the heels of a disagreeable woman who had made him +conspicuous by her aversion. Of course, it might easily have been. + +Sarah's imagination (for she had an imagination) drew out all the +sweetness that there was for it in that idea. Then it occurred to her +sound, prosaic commonsense that a reputation is still a reputation, all +the more precious if somewhat precariously acquired; that, though you may +as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, hanging is very poor fun when for +years you have seen nothing of sheep or lamb either; that, in short, she +must take steps to save her reputation. + +The shortest way to save it was the straight way. She would go straight +to Mrs. Majendie with her proofs. Her duty to herself justified the +somewhat unusual step. And, more than her duty, Sarah loved a scene. She +loved to play with other people's emotions and to exhibit her own. She +wanted to see how Mrs. Majendie would take it; how the white-faced, +high-handed lady would look when she was told that her husband had +consoled himself for her high-handedness. She had always been possessed +by an ungovernable curiosity with regard to Majendie's wife. + +She did not know Majendie's wife, but she knew Majendie. She knew all +about the separation and its cause. That was where she had come in. She +divined that Mrs. Majendie had never forgiven her husband for his old +intimacy with her. It was Mrs. Majendie's jealousy that had driven him +out of the house, into the arms of pretty Maggie. Where, she wondered, +would Mrs. Majendie's jealousy of pretty Maggie drive him? + +Though Sarah knew Majendie, that was more than she would undertake to +say. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered; and the +more she wondered, the more she desired to know. + +She wondered whether Mrs. Majendie had heard the report. From all she +could gather, it was hardly likely. Neither Mrs. Majendie nor her friends +mixed in those circles where it went the round. The scandal of the clubs +and of the Park would never reach her in the high seclusion of the house +in Prior Street. + +Into that house Lady Cayley could not hope to penetrate except by guile. +Once admitted, straightforwardness would be her method. She must not +attempt to give the faintest social colour to her visit. She must take +for granted Mrs. Majendie's view of her impossibility. To be sure Mrs. +Majendie's prejudices were moral even more than social. But moral +prejudice could be overcome by cleverness working towards a formidable +moral effect. + +She would call after six o'clock, an hour incompatible with any social +intention. An hour when she would probably find Mrs. Majendie alone. + +She rested all afternoon. At five o'clock she fortified herself with +strong tea and brandy. Then she made an elaborate and thoughtful +toilette. + +At forty-five Sarah's face was very large and horribly white. She +restored, discreetly, delicately, the vanished rose. The beautiful, +flower-like edges of her mouth were blurred. With a thin thread of rouge +she retraced the once perfect outline. Wrinkles had drawn in the corners +of the indomitable eyes, and ill-health had dulled their blue. That +saddest of all changes she repaired by hand-massage, pomade, and +belladonna. The somewhat unrefined exuberance of her figure she laced in +an inimitable corset. Next she arrayed herself in a suit of dark blue +cloth, simple and severely reticent; in a white silk blouse, simpler +still, sewn with innocent daisies, Maggie's handiwork; in a hat, gay in +form, austere in colour; and in gloves of immaculate whiteness. + +Nobody could have possessed a more irreproachable appearance than Lady +Cayley when she set out for Prior Street. + +At the door she gave neither name nor card. She announced herself as a +lady who desired to see Mrs. Majendie for a moment on important business. + +Kate wondered a little, and admitted her. Ladies did call sometimes on +important business, ladies who approached Mrs. Majendie on missions of +charity; and these did not always give their names. + +Anne was upstairs in the nursery, superintending the packing of Peggy's +little trunk. She was taking her away to-morrow to the seaside, by Dr. +Gardner's orders. She supposed that the nameless lady would be some +earnest, beneficent person connected with a case for her Rescue +Committee, who might have excellent reasons for not announcing herself +by name. + +And, at first, coming into the low lit drawing-room, she did not +recognise her visitor. She advanced innocently, in her perfect manner, +with a charming smile and an appropriate apology. + +The smile died with a sudden rigour of repulsion. She paused before +seating herself, as an intimation that the occasion was not one that +could be trusted to explain itself. Lady Cayley rose to it. + +"Forgive me for calling at this unconventional hour Mrs. Majendie." + +Mrs. Majendie's silence implied that she could not forgive her for +calling at any hour. Lady Cayley smiled inimitably. + +"I wanted to find you at home." + +"You did not give me your name Lady Cayley." + +Their eyes crossed like swords before the duel. + +"I didn't, Mrs. Majendie, _because_ I wanted to find you at home. I can't +help being unconventional--" + +Mrs. Majendie raised her eyebrows. + +"It's my nature." + +Mrs. Majendie dropped her eyelids, as much as to say that the nature of +Lady Cayley did not interest her. + +"--And I've come on a most unconventional errand." + +"Do you mean an unpleasant one?" + +"I'm afraid I do, rather. And it's just as unpleasant for me as it is for +you. Have you any idea, Mrs. Majendie, why I've been obliged to come? +It'll make it easier for me if you have." + +"I assure you I have none. I cannot conceive why you have come, nor how I +can make anything easier for you." + +"I think I mean it would have made it easier for you." + +"For me?" + +"Well--it would have spared you some painful explanations." Sarah felt +herself sincere. She really desired to spare Mrs. Majendie. The part +which she had rehearsed with such ease in her own bedroom was impossible +in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room. She was charmed by the spirit of the +place, constrained by its suggestion of fair observances, high decencies, +and social suavities. She could not sit there and tell Mrs. Majendie that +her husband had been unfaithful to her. You do not say these things. And +so subdued was Sarah that she found a certain relief in the reflection +that, by clearing herself, she would clear Majendie. + +"I don't in the least know what you want to say to me," said Mrs. +Majendie. "But I would rather take everything for granted than have any +explanations." + +"If I thought you would take my innocence for granted--" + +"Your innocence? I should be a bad judge of it, Lady Cayley." + +"Quite so." Lady Cayley smiled again, and again inimitably. (It was +extraordinary, the things _she_ took for granted.) "That's why I've come +to explain." + +"One moment. Perhaps I am mistaken. But, if you are referring to--to what +happened in the past, there need be no explanation. I have put all that +out of my mind now. I have heard that you, too, have left it far behind +you; and I am willing to believe it. There is nothing more to be said." + +There was such a sweetness and dignity in Mrs. Majendie's voice and +manner that Lady Cayley was further moved to compete in dignity and +sweetness. She suppressed the smile that ignored so much and took so much +for granted. + +"Unfortunately a great deal more _has_ been said. Your husband is an +intimate friend of my sister, Mrs. Ransome, as of course you know." + +Mrs. Majendie's face denied all knowledge of the intimacy. + +"I might have met him at her house a hundred times, but, I assure you, +Mrs. Majendie, that, since his marriage, I have not met him more than +twice, anywhere. The first time was at the Hannays'. You were there. +You saw all that passed between us." + +"Well?" + +"The second time was at the Hannays', too. Mrs. Hannay was with us all +the time. What do you suppose he talked to me about? His child. He talked +about nothing else." + +"I suppose," said Mrs. Majendie coldly, "there was nothing else to talk +about." + +"No--but it was so dear and naif of him." She pondered on his naivete +with down-dropped eyes whose lids sheltered the irresponsibly hilarious +blue. + +"He talked about his child--your child--to _me_. I hadn't seen him for +two years, and that's all he could talk about. _I_ had to sit and listen +to _that_." + +"It wouldn't hurt you, Lady Cayley." + +"It didn't--and I'm sure the little girl is charming--only--it was so +delicious of your husband, don't you see?" + +Her face curled all over with its soft and sensual smile. + +"If we'd been two babes unborn there couldn't have been a more innocent +conversation." + +"Well?" + +"_Well_, since that night we haven't seen each other for more than five +years. Ask him if it isn't true. Ask Mrs. Hannay--" + +"Lady Cayley, I do not doubt your word--nor my husband's honour. I can't +think why you're giving yourself all this trouble." + +"Why, because they're saying _now_--" + +Mrs. Majendie rose. "Excuse me, if you've only come to tell me what +people are saying, it is useless. I never listen to what people say." + +"It isn't likely they'd say it to you." + +"Then why should _you_ say it to me?" + +"Because it concerns my reputation." + +"Forgive me, but--your reputation does not concern me." + +"And how about your husband's reputation, Mrs. Majendie?" + +"My husband's reputation can take care of itself." + +"Not in Scale." + +"There's no more scandal talked in Scale than in any other place. I never +pay any attention to it." + +"That's all very well--but you must defend yourself sometimes. And when +it comes to saying that I've been living with Mr. Majendie in Scarby for +the last three years--" + +Mrs. Majendie was so calm that Lady Cayley fancied that, after all, this +was not the first time she had heard that rumour. + +"Let them say it," said she. "Nobody'll believe it." + +"Everybody believes it. I came to you because I was afraid you'd be the +first." + +"To believe it? I assure you, Lady Cayley, I should be the last." + +"What was to prevent you? You didn't know me." + +"No. But I know my husband." + +"So do I." + +"Not _now_" said Mrs. Majendie quietly. + +Lady Cayley's bosom heaved. She had felt that she had risen to the +occasion. She had achieved a really magnificent renunciation. With almost +suicidal generosity, she had handed Majendie over intact, as it were, to +his insufferable wife. She was wounded in several very sensitive places +by the married woman's imperious denial of her part in him, by her +attitude of indestructible and unique possession. If _she_ didn't know +him she would like to know who did. But up till now she had meant to +spare Mrs. Majendie her knowledge of him, for she was not ill-natured. +She was sorry for the poor, inept, unhappy prude. + +Even now, seated in Mrs. Majendie's drawing-room, she had no impulse to +wound her mortally. Her instinct was rather to patronise and pity, to +unfold the long result of a superior experience, to instruct this woman +who was so incompetent to deal with men, who had spoiled, stupidly, her +husband's life and her own. In that moment Sarah contemplated nothing +more outrageous than a little straight talk with Mrs. Majendie. + +"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," she said, with an air of finely ungovernable +impulse, "you're a saint. You know no more about men than your little +girl does. I'm not a saint, I'm a woman of the world. I think I've had a +rather larger experience of men--" + +Mrs. Majendie cut her short. + +"I do not want to hear anything about your experience." + +"Dear lady, you shan't hear anything about it. I was only going to tell +you that, of all the men I've known, there's nobody I know better than +your husband. My knowledge of him is probably a little different from +yours." + +"That I can well believe." + +"You mean you think I wouldn't know a good man if I saw one? My +experience isn't as bad as all that. I can tell a good woman when I see +one, too. You're a good woman, Mrs. Majendie, and I've no doubt that +you've been told I'm a bad one. All I can say is, that Walter Majendie +was a good man when I first knew him. He was a good man when he left me +and married you. So my badness can't have hurt him very much. If he's +gone wrong now, it's that goodness of yours that's done it." + +Anne's lips turned white, but their muscles never moved. And the woman +who watched her wondered in what circumstances Mrs. Majendie would +display emotion, if she did not display it now. + +"What right have you to say these things to me?" + +"I've a right to say a good deal more. Your husband was very fond of me. +He would have married me if his friends hadn't come and bullied me to +give him up for the good of his morals. I loved him--" She suggested by +an adroit shrug of her shoulders that her love was a thing that Mrs. +Majendie could either take for granted or ignore. She didn't expect her +to understand it--"And I gave him up. I'm not a cold-blooded woman; and +it was pretty hard for me. But I did it. And" (she faced her) "what was +the good of it? Which of us has been the best for his morals? You or me? +He lived with me two years, and he married you, and everybody said how +virtuous and proper he was. Well, he's been married to you for nine +years, and he's been living with another woman for the last three." + +She had not meant to say it; for (in the presence of the social +sanctities) you do not say these things. But flesh and blood are stronger +than all the social sanctities; and flesh and blood had risen and claimed +their old dominion over Sarah. The unspeakable depths in her had been +stirred by her vision of the things that might have been. She was filled +with a passionate hatred of the purity which had captured Majendie, and +drawn him from her, and made her seem vile in his sight. She rejoiced +in her power to crush it, to confront it with the proof of its own +futility. + +"I do not believe it," said Mrs. Majendie. + +"Of course you don't believe it. You're a good woman." She shook her +meditative head. "The sort of woman who can live with a man for nine +years without seeing what he's like. If you'd understood your husband as +well as I do, you'd have known that he couldn't run his life on your +lines for six months, let alone nine years." + +Mrs. Majendie's chin rose, as if she were lifting her face above the +reach of the hand that had tried to strike it. Her voice throbbed on one +deep monotonous note. + +"I do not believe a word of what you say. And I cannot think what your +motive is in saying it." + +"Don't worry about my motive. It ought to be pretty clear. Let me tell +you--you can bring your husband back to-morrow, and you can keep him to +the end of time, if you choose, Mrs. Majendie. Or you can lose him +altogether. And you will, if you go on as you're doing. If I were you, +I should make up my mind whether it's good enough. I shouldn't think it +was, myself." + +Mrs. Majendie was silent. She tried to think of some word that would end +the intolerable interview. Her lips parted to speak, but her thoughts +died in her brain unborn. + +She felt her face turning white under the woman's face; it hypnotised +her; it held her dumb. + +"Don't you worry," said Lady Cayley soothingly. "You can get your husband +back from that woman to-morrow, if you choose." She smiled. "Do you see +my motive now?" + +Lady Cayley had not seen it; but she had seen herself for one beautiful +moment as the benignant and inspired conciliator. She desired Mrs. +Majendie to see her so. She had gratified her more generous instincts in +giving the unfortunate lady "the straight tip." She knew, perfectly well, +that Mrs. Majendie wouldn't take it. She knew, all the time, that +whatever else her revelation did, it would not move Mrs. Majendie to +charm her husband back. She could not say precisely what it would do. +Used to live solely in the voluptuous moment, she had no sense of drama +beyond the scene she played in. + +"Your motive," said Mrs. Majendie, "is of no importance. No motive could +excuse you." + +"You think not." She rose and looked down on the motionless woman. "I've +told you the truth, Mrs. Majendie, because, sooner or later, you'd have +had to know it; and other people would have told you worse things that +aren't true. You can take it from me that there's nothing more to tell. +I've told you the worst." + +"You've told me, and I do not believe it." + +"You'd better believe it. But, if you really don't, you can ask your +husband. Ask him where he goes to every week in that yacht of his. Ask +him what's become of Maggie Forrest, the pretty work-girl who made the +embroidered frock for Mrs. Ransome's little girl. Tell him you want one +like it for your little girl; and see what he looks like." + +Anne rose too. Her faint white face frightened Lady Cayley. She had +wondered how Mrs. Majendie would look if she told her the truth about her +husband. Now she knew. + +"My dear lady," said she, "what on earth did you expect?" + +Anne went blindly towards the chimney-piece where the bell was. Lady +Cayley also turned. She meant to go, but not just yet. + +"One moment, Mrs. Majendie, please, before you turn me out. I wouldn't +break my heart about it, if I were you. He might have done worse things." + +"He has done nothing." + +"Well--not much. He has done what I've told you. But, after all, what's +that?" + +"Nothing to you, Lady Cayley, certainly," said Anne, as she rang the +bell. + +She moved slowly towards the door. Lady Cayley followed to the threshold, +and laid her hand delicately on the jamb of the door as Mrs. Majendie +opened it. She raised to her set face the tender eyes of a suppliant. + +"Mrs. Majendie," said she, "don't be hard on poor Wallie. He's never been +hard on you. He might have been." The latch sprang to under her gentle +pressure. "Look at it this way. He has kept all his marriage vows--except +one. You've broken all yours--except one. None of your friends will tell +you that. That's why _I_ tell you. Because I'm not a good woman, and I +don't count." + +She moved her hand from the door. It opened wide, and Lady Cayley walked +serenely out. + +She had said her say. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +Anne sat in her chair by the fireside, very still. She had turned out the +light, for it hurt her eyes and made her head ache. She had felt very +weak, and her knees shook under her as she crossed the room. Beyond that +she felt nothing, no amazement, no sorrow, no anger, nor any sort of +pang. If she had been aware of the trembling of her body, she would have +attributed it to the agitation of a disagreeable encounter. She shivered. +She thought there was a draught somewhere; but she did not rouse herself +to shut the window. + +At eight o'clock a telegram from Majendie was brought to her. She was not +to wait dinner. He would not be home that night. She gave the message in +a calm voice, and told Kate not to send up dinner. She had a bad headache +and could not eat anything. + +Kate had stood by waiting timidly. She had had a sense of things +happening. Now she retired with curiosity relieved. Kate was used to her +mistress's bad headaches. A headache needed no explanation. It explained +everything. + +Anne picked up the telegram and read it over again. Every week, for +nearly three years, she had received these messages. They had always been +sent from the same post office in Scale, and the words had always been +the same: "Don't wait. May not be home to-night." + +To-night the telegram struck her as a new thing. It stood for something +new. But all the other telegrams had meant the same thing. Not a new +thing. A thing that had been going on for three years; four, five, six +years, for all she knew. It was six years since their separation; and +that had been his wish. + +She had always known it; and she had always put her knowledge away from +her, tried not to know more. Her friends had known it too. Canon Wharton, +and the Gardners, and Fanny. It all came back to her, the words, and the +looks that had told her more than any words, signs that she had often +wondered at and refused to understand. They had known all the depths of +it. It was only the other day that Fanny had offered her house to her as +a refuge from her own house in its shame. Fanny had supposed that it must +come to that. + +God knew she had been loyal to him in the beginning. She had closed her +eyes. She had forbidden her senses to take evidence against him. She had +been loyal all through, loyal to the very end. She had lied for him. If, +indeed, she _had_ lied. In denying Lady Cayley's statements, she had +denied her right to make them, that was all. + +Her mind, active now, went backwards and forwards over the chain of +evidence, testing each link in turn. All held. It was all true. She had +always known it. + +Then she remembered that she and Peggy would be going away to-morrow. +That was well. It was the best thing she could do. Later on, when they +were home again, it would be time enough to make up her mind as to what +she could do. If there was anything to be done. + +Until then she would not see him. They would be gone to-morrow before he +could come home. Unless he saw them off at the station. She would avoid +that by taking an earlier train. Then she would write to him. No; she +would not write. What they would have to say to each other must be said +face to face. She did not know what she would say. + +She dragged herself upstairs to the nursery, where the packing had been +begun. The room was empty. Nanna had gone down to her supper. + +Anne's heart melted. Peggy had been playing at packing. The little lamb +had gathered together on the table a heap of her beloved toys, things +which it would have broken her heart to part from. + +Her little trunk lay open on the floor, packed already. The embroidered +frock lay uppermost, carefully folded, not to be crushed. At the sight of +it Anne's brain flared in anger. + +A bright fire burned in the grate. She picked up the frock; she took a +pair of scissors and cut it in several places at the neck, then tore it +to pieces with strong, determined hands. She threw the tatters on the +fire; she watched them consume; she raked out their ashes with the tongs, +and tore them again. Then she packed Peggy's toys tenderly in the little +trunk, her heart melting over them. She closed the lid of the trunk, +strapped it, and turned the key in the lock. + +Then, crawling on slow, quiet feet, she went to bed. Undressing vexed +her. She, once so careful and punctilious, slipped her clothes like a +tired Magdalen, and let them fall from her and lie where they fell. Her +nightgown gaped unbuttoned at her throat. Her long hair lay scattered on +her pillow, unbrushed, unbraided. Her white face stared to the ceiling. +She was too spent to pray. + +When she lay down, reality gripped her. And, with it, her imagination +rose up, a thing no longer crude, but full-grown, large-eyed, and +powerful. It possessed itself of her tragedy. She had lain thus, nearly +nine years ago, in that room at Scarby, thinking terrible thoughts. Now +she saw terrible things. + +Peggy stirred in her sleep, and crept from her cot into her mother's bed. + +"Mummy, I'm so frightened." + +"What is it, darling? Have you had a little dream?" + +"No. Mummy, let me stay in your bed." + +Anne let her stay, glad of the comfort of the little warm body, and +afraid to vex the child. She drew the blankets round her. "There," she +said, "go to sleep, pet." + +But Peggy was in no mind to sleep. + +"Mummy, your hair's all loose," she said; and her fingers began playing +with her mother's hair. + +"Mummy, where's daddy? Is he in his little bed?" + +"He's away, darling. Go to sleep." + +"Why does he go away? Is he coming back again?" + +"Yes, darling." Anne's voice shook. + +"Mummy, did you cry when Auntie Edie went away?" + +Anne kissed her. + +"Auntie Edie's dead." + +"Lie still, darling, and let mother go to sleep." + +Peggy lay still, and Anne went on thinking. + +There was nothing to be done. She would have to take him back again, +always. Whatever shame he dragged her through, she must take him back +again, for the child's sake. + +Suddenly she remembered Peggy's birthday. It was only last week. Surely +she had not known then. She must have forgotten for a time. + +Then tenderness came, and with it an intolerable anguish. She was smitten +and was melted; she was torn and melted again. Her throat was shaken, +convulsed; then her bosom, then her whole body. She locked her teeth, +lest her sobs should break through and wake the child. + +She lay thus tormented, till a memory, sharper than imagination, stung +her. She saw her husband carrying the sleeping child, and his face +bending over her with that look of love. She closed her eyes, and let the +tears rain down her hot cheeks and fall upon her breast and in her hair. +She tried to stifle the sobs that strangled her, and she choked. That +instant the child's lips were on her face, tasting her tears. + +"Oh, mummy, you're crying." + +"No, my pet. Go to sleep." + +"Why are you crying?" + +Anne made no sound; and Peggy cried out in terror. + +"Mummy--is daddy dead?" + +Anne folded her in her arms. + +"No, my pet, no." + +"He is, mummy, I know he is. Daddy! Daddy!" + +If Majendie had been in the house she would have carried the child into +his room, and shown him to her, and relieved her of her terror. She had +done that once before when she had cried for him. + +But now Peggy cried persistently, vehemently; not loud, but in an agony +that tore and tortured her as she had seen her mother torn and tortured. +She cried till she was sick; and still her sobs shook her, with a sharp +mechanical jerk that would not cease. + +Gradually she grew drowsy and fell asleep. + +All night Anne lay awake beside her, driven to the edge of the bed, that +she might give breathing space to the little body that pushed, closer and +closer, to the warm place she made. + +Towards dawn Peggy sighed three times, and stretched her limbs, as if +awakening out of her sleep. + +Then Anne turned, and laid her hands on the dead body of her child. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +The yacht had lain all night in Fawlness creek. Majendie had slept on +board. He had sent Steve up to the farm with a message for Maggie. He had +told her not to expect him that night. He would call and see her very +early in the morning. That would prepare her for the end. In the morning +he would call and say good-bye to her. + +He had taken that resolution on the night when Gardner had told him about +Peggy. + +He did not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of +the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water +against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; +the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the +reeds and grasses of the creek. + +All night he thought of Peggy, who would not live, who was the child of +her father's passion and her mother's grief. + +At dawn he got up. It was a perfect day, with the promise of warmth in +it. Over land and water the white mist was lifting and drifting, +eastwards towards the risen sun. Inland, over the five fields, the drops +of fallen mist glittered on the grass. The Farm, guarded by its three +elms, showed clear, and red, and still, as if painted under an unchanging +light. A few leaves, loosened by the damp, were falling with a shivering +sound against the house wall, and lay where they fell, yellow on the +red-brick path. + +Maggie was not at the garden gate. She sat crouched inside, by the +fender, kindling a fire. Tea had been made and was standing on the table. +She was waiting. + +She rose, with a faint cry, as Majendie entered. She put her arms on his +shoulders in her old way. He loosened her hands gently and held her by +them, keeping her from him at arm's length. Her hands were cold, her +eyes had foreknowledge of the end; but, moved by his touch, her mouth +curled unaware and shaped itself for kissing. + +He did not kiss her. And she knew. + +Upstairs in the bedroom overhead, Steve and his mother moved heavily. +There was a sound of drawers opening and shutting, then a grating sound. +Something was being dragged from under the bed. Maggie knew that they +were packing Majendie's portmanteau with the things he had left behind +him. + +They stood together by the hearth, where the fire kindled feebly. He +thrust out his foot, and struck the woodpile; it fell and put out the +flame that was struggling to be born. + +"I'm sorry, Maggie," he said. + +Maggie stooped and built up the pile again and kindled it. She knelt +there, patient and humble, waiting for the fire to burn. + +He did not know whether he was going to have trouble with her. He was +afraid of her tenderness. + +"Why didn't you come last night?" she said. + +"I couldn't." + +She looked at him with eyes that said, "That is not true." + +"You couldn't?" + +"I couldn't." + +"You came last week." + +"Last week--yes. But since then things have happened, do you see?" + +"Things have happened," she repeated, under her breath. + +"Yes. My little girl is very ill." + +"Peggy?" she cried, and covered her face with her hands. Then with her +hands she made a gesture that swept calamity aside. Maggie would only +believe what she wanted. + +"She will get better," she said. + +"Perhaps. But I must be with my wife." + +"You weren't with her last night," said Maggie. "You could have come +then." + +"No, Maggie, I couldn't." + +"D'you mean--because of the little girl?" + +"Yes." + +"I see," she said softly. She had understood. + +"She will get better," she said, "and then you can come again." + +"No. I've told you. I must be with my wife." + +"I thought--" said Maggie. + +"Never mind what you thought," he said with a quick, fierce impatience. + +"Are you fond of her?" she asked suddenly. + +"You know I am," he said; and his voice was kind again. "You've known it +all the time. I told you that in the beginning." + +"But--since then," said Maggie, "you've been fond of me, haven't you?" + +"It's not the same thing. I've told you that, too, a great many times. +I don't want to talk about it. It's different." + +"How is it different?" + +"I can't tell you." + +"You mean--it's different because I'm not good." + +"No, my child, I'm afraid it's different because I'm bad. That's as near +as we can get to it." + +She shook her head in persistent, obstinate negation. + +"See here, Maggie, we must end it. We can't go on like this any more. We +must give it up." + +"I can't," she moaned. "Don't ask me to do that, Wallie dear. Don't ask +me." + +"I must, Maggie. _I_ must give it up. I told you, dear, before we took +this place, that it must end, sooner or later, that it couldn't last very +long. Don't you remember?" + +"Yes--I remember." + +"And you promised me, didn't you, that when the time came, you +wouldn't--" + +"I know. I said I wouldn't make a fuss." + +"Well, dear, we've got to end it now. I only came to talk it over with +you. There'll have to be arrangements." + +"I know. I've got to clear out of this." + +She said it sadly, without passion and without resentment. + +"No," he said, "not if you'd rather stay. Do you like the farm, Maggie?" + +"I love it." + +"Do you? I was afraid you didn't. I thought you hated the country." + +"I love it. I love it." + +"Oh, well then, you shan't leave it. I'll keep on the farm for you. And, +see here, don't worry about things. I'll look after you, all your life, +dear." + +"Look after me?" Her face brightened, "Like you used to?" + +"Provide for you." + +"Oh!" she cried. "_That_! I don't want to be provided for. I won't have +it. I'd rather be let alone and die." + +"Maggie, I know it's hard on you. Don't make it harder. Don't make it +hard for me." + +"You?" she sobbed. + +"Yes, me. It's all wrong. I'm all wrong. I can't do the right thing, +whatever I do. It's wrong to stay with you. It's wrong, it's brutally +wrong to leave you. But that's what I've got to do." + +"You said--you only said--just now--you'd got to end it." + +"That's it. I've got to end it." + +She stood up flaming. + +"End it then. End it this minute. Give up the farm. Send me away. I'll go +anywhere you tell me. Only don't say you won't come and see me." + +"See you? Don't you understand, Maggie, that seeing you is what I've got +to give up? The other things don't matter." + +"Ah," she cried, "it's you who don't understand. I mean--I mean--see me +like you used to. That's all I want, Wallie. Only just to see you. That +wouldn't be awful, would it? There wouldn't be any sin in that?" + +Sin? It was the first time she had ever said the word. The first time, he +imagined, she had formed the thought. + +"Poor little girl," he said. "No, no, dear, it wouldn't do. It sounds +simple, but it isn't." + +"But," she said, bewildered, "I love you." + +He smiled. "That's why, Maggie, that's why. You've been very sweet and +very good to me. And that's why I mustn't see you. That's how you make it +hard for me." + +Maggie sat down and put her elbows on the table and hid her face in her +hands. + +"Will you give me some tea?" he said abruptly. + +She rose. + +"It's all stewed. I'll make fresh." + +"No. That'll do. I can't wait." + +She gave him his tea. Before he tasted it he got up and poured out a cup +for her. She drank a little at his bidding, then pushed the cup from her, +choking. She sat, not looking at him, but looking away, through the +window, across the garden and the fields. + +"I must go now," he said. "Don't come with me." + +She started to her feet. + +"Ah, let me come." + +"Better not. Much better not." + +"I must," she said. + +They set out along the field-track. Steve, carrying his master's luggage, +went in front, at a little distance. He didn't want to see them, still +less to hear them speak. + +But they did not speak. + +At the creek's bank Steve was ready with the boat. + +Majendie took Maggie's hand and pressed it. She flung herself on him, and +he had to loose her hold by main force. She swayed, clutching at him to +steady herself. He heard Steve groan. He put his hand on her shoulder, +and kept it there a moment, till she stood firm. Her eyes, fixed on his, +struck tears from them, tears that cut their way like knives under his +eyelids. + +Her body ceased swaying. He felt it grow rigid under his hand. + +Then he went from her and stepped into the boat. She stood still, looking +after him, pressing one hand against her breast, as if to keep down its +heaving. + +Steve pushed off from the bank, and rowed towards the creek's mouth. And +as he rowed, he turned his head over his right shoulder, away from the +shore where Maggie stood with her hand upon her breast. + +Majendie did not look back. Neither he nor Steve saw that, as they neared +the mouth of the creek, Maggie had turned, and was going rapidly across +the field, towards the far side of the spit of land where the yacht lay +moored out of the current. As they had to round the point, her way by +land was shorter than theirs by water. + +When they rounded the point they saw her standing on the low inner shore, +watching for them. + +She stood on the bank, just above the belt of silt and sand that divided +it from the river. The two men turned for a moment, and watched her from +the yacht's deck. She waited till the big mainsail went up, and the +yacht's head swung round and pointed up stream. Then she began to run +fast along the shore, close to the river. + +At that sight Majendie turned away and set his face toward the +Lincolnshire side. + +He was startled by an oath from Steve and a growl from Steve's father at +the wheel. "Eh--the--little--!" At the same instant the yacht was pulled +suddenly inshore and her boom swung violently round. + +Steve and the boatswain rushed to the ropes and began hauling down the +mainsail. + +"What the devil are you doing there?" shouted Majendie. But no one +answered him. + +When the sail came down he saw. + +"My God," he cried, "she's going in." + +Old Pearson, at the wheel, spat quietly over the yacht's side. "Not she," +said old Pearson. "She's too much afraid o' cold water." + +Maggie was down on the lower bank close to the edge of the river. +Majendie saw her putting her feet in the water and drawing them out +again, first one foot, and then the other. Then she ran a little way, +very fast, like a thing hunted. She stumbled on the slippery, slanting +ground, fell, picked herself up again, and ran. Then she stood still and +tried the water again, first one foot and then the other, desperate, +terrified, determined. She was afraid of life and death. + +The belt of sand sloped gently, and the river was shallow for a few feet +from the shore. She was safe unless she threw herself in. + +Majendie and Steve rushed together for the boat. As Majendie pushed +against him at the gangway, Steve shook him off. There was a brief +struggle. Old Pearson left the wheel to the boatswain and crossed to the +gangway, where the two men still struggled. He put his hand on his +master's sleeve. + +"Excuse me, sir, you'd best stay where you are." + +He stayed. + +The captain went to the wheel again, and the boatswain to the boat. +Majendie stood stock-still by the gangway. His hands were clenched in his +pockets: his face was drawn and white. The captain slewed round upon him +a small vigilant eye. "You'd best leave her to Steve, sir. He's a good +lad and he'll look after 'er. He'd give his 'ead to marry her. Only she +wuddn't look at 'im." + +Majendie said nothing. And the captain continued his consolation. + +"_She's_ only trying it on, sir," said he. "_I_ know 'em. She'll do nowt. +She'll do nubbut wet 'er feet. She's afeard o' cold water." + +But before the boat could put off, Maggie was in again. This time her +feet struck a shelf of hard mud. She slipped, rolled sideways, and lay, +half in and half out of the water. There she stayed till the boat reached +her. + +Majendie saw Steve lift her and carry her to the upper bank. He saw +Maggie struggle from his arms and beat him off. Then he saw Steve seize +her by force, and drag her back, over the fields, towards Three Elms +Farm. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +Majendie landed at the pier and went straight to the office. There he +found a telegram from Anne telling him of his child's death. + +He went to the house. The old nurse opened the door for him. She was +weeping bitterly. He asked for Anne, and was told that she was lying down +and could not see him. It was Nanna who told him how Peggy died, and all +the things he had to know. When she left him, he shut himself up alone in +his study for the first hour of his grief. He wanted to go to Anne; but +he was too deeply stupefied to wonder why she would not see him. + +Later they met. + +He knew by his first glance at her face that he must not speak to her of +the dead child. He could understand that. He was even glad of it. In this +she was like him, that deep feeling left her dumb. And yet, there was a +difference. It was that he could not speak, and she, he felt, would not. + +There were things that had to be done. He did them all, sparing her as +much as possible. Once or twice she had to be consulted. She gave him a +fact, or an opinion, in a brief methodic manner that set him at a +distance from her sacred sorrow. She had betrayed more emotion in +speaking to Dr. Gardner. + +But for these things they went through their first day in silence, like +people who respect each other's grief too profoundly for any speech. + +In the evening they sat together in the drawing-room. There was nothing +more to do. + +Then he spoke. He asked to see Peggy. His voice was so low that she did +not hear him. + +"What did you say, Walter?" + +He had to say it again. "Where is she? Can I see her?" + +His voice was still low, and it was thick and uncertain, but this time +she understood. + +"In Edie's room," she said. "Nanna has the key." + +She did not go with him. + +When he came back to her she was still cold and torpid. He could +understand that her grief had frozen her. + +At night she parted from him without a word. + +So the days went on. + +Sometimes he would sit in the study by himself for a little while. His +racked nerves were soothed by solitude. Then he would think of the woman +upstairs in the drawing-room, sitting alone. And he would go to her. She +did not send him away. She did not leave him. She did nothing. She said +nothing. + +He began to be afraid. It would do her good, he said to himself, if she +could cry. He wondered whether it was wise to leave her to her terrible +torpor; whether he ought to speak to her. But he could not. + +Yet she was kind to him for all her coldness. Once, when his grief was +heaviest upon him, he thought she looked at him with anxiety, with pity. +She came to him once, where he sat downstairs, alone. But though she +came to him, she still kept him from her. And she would not go with him +into the room where Peggy lay. + +Now and then he wondered if she knew. He was not certain. He put the +thought away from him. He was sure that for nearly three years she had +not known anything. She had not known anything as long as she had had the +child, when her knowing would not, he thought, have mattered half so +much. It would be horrible if she knew now. And yet sometimes her eyes +seemed to say to him: "Why not now? When nothing matters." + +On the night before the funeral, the night they closed the coffin, he +came to her where she sat upstairs alone. He put his hand on her shoulder +and spoke her name. She shrank from him with a low cry. And again he +wondered if she knew. + +The day after the funeral she told him that she was going away for a +month with Mrs. Gardner. + +He said he was glad to hear it. It would do her good. It was the best +thing she could do. + +He had meant to take her away himself. She knew it. Yet she had arranged +to go with Mrs. Gardner. + +Then he was certain that she knew. + +She went, with Mrs. Gardner, the next day. He and Dr. Gardner saw them +off at the station. He thanked Mrs. Gardner for her kindness, wondering +if she knew. The little woman had tears in her eyes. She pressed his hand +and tried to speak to him, and broke down. He gathered that, whatever +Anne knew, her friend knew nothing. + +The doctor was inscrutable. He might or he might not know. If he did, +he would keep his knowledge to himself. They walked together from the +station, and the doctor talked about the weather and the municipal +elections. + +Anne was to be away a month. Majendie wrote to her every week and +received, every week, a precise, formal little letter in reply. She told +him, every week, of an improvement in her own health, and appeared +solicitous for his. + +While she was away, he saw a great deal of the Hannays and of Gorst. When +he was not with the Hannays, Gorst was with him. Gorst was punctilious, +but a little shy in his inquiries for Mrs. Majendie. The Hannays made no +allusion to her beyond what decency demanded. They evidently regarded her +as a painful subject. + +About a week before the day fixed for Anne's return, the firm of Hannay & +Majendie had occasion to consult its solicitor about a mortgage on some +office buildings. Price was excited and assiduous. Excited and assiduous, +Hannay thought, beyond all proportion to the trivial affair. Hannay +noticed that Price took a peculiar and almost morbid interest in the +junior partner. His manner set Hannay thinking. It suggested the legal +instinct scenting the divorce-court from afar. + +He spoke of it to Mrs. Hannay. + +"Do you think she knows?" said Mrs. Hannay. + +"Of course she does. Or why should she leave him, at a time when most +people stick to each other if they've never stuck before?" + +"Do you think she'll try for a separation?" + +"No, I don't." + +"I do," said Mrs. Hannay. "Now that the dear little girl's gone." + +"Not she. She won't let him off as easily as all that. She'll think of +the other woman. And she'll live with him and punish him for ever." + +He paused pondering. Then he delivered himself of that which was within +him, his idea of Anne. + +"I always said she was a she-dog in the manger." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +Anne was not expected home before the middle of November. She wrote to +her husband, fixing Saturday for the day of her return. + +Majendie, therefore, was surprised to find her luggage in the hall when +he entered the house at six o'clock on Friday evening. Nanna had +evidently been waiting for the sound of his latchkey. She hurried to +intercept him. + +"The mistress has come home, sir," she said. + +"Has she? I hope you've got things comfortable for her." + +"Yes, sir. We had a telegram this afternoon. She said she would like to +see you in the study, sir, as soon as you came in." + +He went at once into the study. Anne was sitting there in her chair by +the hearth. Her hat and jacket were thrown on the writing-table that +stood near in the middle of the room. She rose as he came in, but made no +advance to meet him. He stood still for a moment by the closed door, and +they held each other with their eyes. + +"I didn't expect you till to-morrow." + +"I sent a telegram," she said. + +"If you'd sent it to the office I'd have met you." + +"I didn't want anybody to meet me." + +He felt that her words had some reference to their loss, and to the +sadness of her home-coming. A sigh broke from him; but he was unaware +that he had sighed. + +He sat down, not in his accustomed seat by the hearth, opposite to hers, +but in a nearer chair by the writing-table. He saw that she had been +writing letters. He pushed them away and turned his chair round so as to +face her. His heart ached looking at her. + +There were deep lines on her forehead; and she was very pale, even her +small close mouth had no colour in it. She kept her sad eyes half hidden +under their drooping lids. Her lips were tightly compressed, her narrow +nostrils white and pinched. It was a face in which all the doors of life +were closing; where the inner life went on tensely, secretly, behind the +closing doors. + +"Well," he said, "I'm very glad you've come back." + +"Walter--have you any idea why I went away?" + +"Why you went? Obviously, it was the best thing you could do." + +"It was the only thing I could do. And I am glad I did it. My mind has +become clearer." + +"_I_ see. I thought it would." + +"It would not have been clear if I had stayed." + +"No," he said vaguely, "of course it wouldn't." + +"I've seen," she continued, "that there is nothing for me but to come +back. It is the right thing." + +"Did you doubt it?" + +"Yes. I even doubted whether it were possible--whether, in the +circumstances, I could bear to come back, to stay--" + +"Do you mean--to--the house?" + +"No. I mean--to you." + +He turned away. "I understand," he said. "So it came to that?" + +"Yes. It came to that. I've been here three hours; and up to the last +hour, I was not sure whether I would not pack the rest of my things and +go away. I had written a letter to you. There it is, under your arm." + +"Am I to read it?" + +"Yes." + +He turned his back on her, and read the letter. + +"I see. You say here you want a separation. If you want it you shall have +it. But hadn't you better hear what I have to say, _first_?" + +"I've come back for that. What have you to say?" + +He bowed his head upon his breast. + +"Not very much, I'm afraid. Except that I'm sorry--and ashamed of +myself--and--I ask your forgiveness. What more can I say?" + +"What more indeed? I'm to understand, then, that everything I was told is +true?" + +"It _was_ true." + +"And is not now?" + +"No. Whoever told you, omitted to tell you that." + +"You mean you have given up living with this woman?" + +"Yes. If you call it living with her." + +"You have given it up--for how long?" + +"About five weeks." His voice was almost inaudible. + +She winced. Five weeks back brought her to the date of Peggy's death. + +"I dare say," she said. "You could hardly--have done less in the +circumstances." + +"Anne," he said. "I gave it up--I broke it off--before that. I--I broke +with her that morning--before I heard." + +"You were away that night." + +"I was not with her." + +"Well--And it was going on, all the time, for three years before that?" + +"Yes." + +"Ever since your sister's death?" + +He did not answer. + +"Ever since Edie died," she repeated, as if to herself rather than to +him. + +"Not quite. Why don't you say--since you sent me away?" + +"When did I ever send you away?" + +"That night. When I came to you." + +She remembered. + +"Then? Walter, that is unforgivable. To bring up a little thing like +that--" + +"You call it a little thing? A little thing?" + +"I had forgotten it. And for you to remember it all these years--and to +cast it up against me--_now_--" + +"I haven't cast anything up against you." + +"You implied you held me responsible for your sin." + +"I don't hold you responsible for anything. Not even for that." + +Her face never changed. She did not take in the meaning of his emphasis. + +He continued. "And, if you want your separation, you shall have it. +Though I did hope that you might consider that six years was about enough +of it." + +"I did want it. But I do not want it now. When I wrote that letter I had +forgotten my promise." + +"You shall have your promise back again if you want it. I shall not hold +you to it, or to anything, if you'd rather not." + +"I can never have my promise back--I made it to Edie." + +"To Edie?" + +"Yes. A short time before she died." + +His face brightened. + +"What did you promise her?" he said softly. + +"That I would never leave you." + +"Did she make you promise not to?" + +"No. It did not occur to her that I could leave you. She did not think it +possible." + +"But _you_ did?" + +"I thought it possible--yes." + +"Even then. There was no reason then. I had given you no cause." + +"I did not know that." + +"Do you mean that you suspected me--then?" + +"I never accused you, Walter, even in my thoughts." + +"You suspected?" + +"I didn't know." + +"And--afterwards--did you suspect anything?" + +"No. I never suspected anything--afterwards." + +"I see. You suspected me when you had no cause. And when I gave you cause +you suspected nothing. I must say you are a very extraordinary woman." + +"I didn't know," she answered. + +"Who told you? Or must I not ask that?" + +"I cannot tell you. I would rather not. I was not told much. And there +are some things that I have a right to know." + +"Well--" + +"Who is this woman?--the girl you've been living with?" + +"I've no right to tell you--that. Why do you want to know? It's all +over." + +"I must know, Walter. I have a reason." + +"Can you give me your reason?" + +"Yes. I want to help her." + +"You would--really--help her?" + +"If I can. It is my duty." + +"It isn't in the least your duty." + +"And I want to help you. That also is my duty. I want to undo, as far as +possible, the consequences of your sin. We cannot let the girl suffer." + +Majendie was moved by her charity. He had not looked for charity from +Anne. + +"If you will give me her name, and tell me where to find her, I will see +that she is provided for." + +"She is provided for." + +"How?" + +"I am keeping on the house for her." + +Anne's face flushed. + +"What house?" + +"A farm, out in the country." + +"That house is yours? You were living with her there?" + +"Yes." + +Her face hardened. She was thinking of her dead child, who was to have +gone into the country to get strong. + +He was tortured by the same thought. Maggie, his mistress, had grown fat +and rosy in the pure air of Holderness. Peggy had died in Scale. + +In her bitterness she turned on him. + +"And what guarantee have I that you will not go to her again?" + +"My word. Isn't that sufficient?" + +"I don't know, Walter. It would have been once. It isn't now. What proof +have I of your honour?" + +"My--" + +"I beg your pardon. I forgot. A man's honour and a woman's honour are two +very different things." + +"They are both things that are usually taken for granted, and not +mentioned." + +"I will try to take it for granted. You must forgive my having mentioned +it. There is one thing I must know. Has she--that woman--any children?" + +"She has none." + +Up till that moment, the examination had been conducted with the coolness +of intense constraint. But for her one burst of feeling, Anne had +sustained her tone of business-like inquiry, her manner of the woman of +committees. Now, as she asked her question, her voice shook with the +beating of her heart. Majendie, as he answered, heard her draw a long, +deep breath of relief. + +"And you propose to keep on this house for her?" she said calmly. + +"Yes. She has settled in there, and she will be well looked after." + +"Who will look after her?" + +"The Pearsons. They're people I can trust." + +"And, besides the house, I suppose you will give her money?" + +"I _must_ make her a small allowance." + +"That is a very unwise arrangement. Whatever help is given her had much +better come from me." + +"From _you_?" + +"From a woman. It will be the best safeguard for the girl." + +He saw her drift and smiled. + +"Am I to understand that you propose to rescue her?" + +"It's my duty--my work." + +"Your work?" + +"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the +last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered +through my husband's fault." + +"What do you want to do with her?" + +"I want, if possible, to reclaim her." + +He smiled again. + +"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?" + +"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her." + +"And so you want to reclaim her?" + +"I do, indeed." + +"You couldn't reclaim her." + +"She is very young, isn't she?" + +"N--no--She's eight--and--twenty." + +"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that--and bad--" + +"Bad? Bad?" + +He rose and looked down on her in anger. + +"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady, +but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and +kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever +met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was +absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she +possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you +blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought +for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk +of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous +committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and +shut up in one of your beastly institutions! No. On the whole, I think +she'll be better off if you leave her to me." + +"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think +her perfect." + +"She _was_ perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't +very well do more." + +"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin." + +"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?" + +"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can +you defend yourself, Walter?" + +He was silent. + +"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. _That_ you +would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?" + +"My sin against her was not caring for her. _You_ needn't call me to +account for it." + +"I am to believe that you did not care for her?" + +"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing, +and I left her like a brute." + +"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?" + +"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same +reason. And she knew it." + +"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman, +because you cared for me?" + +"For no earthly reason except that." + +"You deceived me--you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three +years--and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of +her--and I am to believe that you cared for me!" + +"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I +wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You +mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but +that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married +you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but +you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six +years--can you say that I put another woman in your place?" + +She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a +hopeless, helpless gesture. + +"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it +was wrong." + +"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the +beginning. How are we going to make it right?" + +"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best." + +"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?" + +"I have told you that I am not going to leave you." + +"We are to go on, then, as we did before?" + +"Yes--as far as possible." + +"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't +you see _now_ that it's all wrong?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?" + +"Does it rest with me?" + +"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it. +What is your notion of the best?" + +"I don't know, Walter." + +"I _must_ know. You say you'll take me back--you'll never leave me. What +are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for +me, dear. It was bad for both of us." + +She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went +to his heart and stirred in it a passion of pity. + +"God knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep +straight. You needn't be afraid. Only--See here. There's no reason why +you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring +for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie. +You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along. +There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up--" + +"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for." + +"I know--I know. But still--we mightn't be so unhappy--perhaps, in +time--And if we had children--" + +"Never," she cried sharply, "never!" + +He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she +drew back, flinching. + +"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me." + +"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation--of your +sin--three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken +you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought +to have." + +She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her +face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him. + +"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything." + +"I have never compelled you, as you know." + +"I know. I know you have been good in that way." + +"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?" + +"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will +not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it +will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself. +To save some other woman, perhaps--" + +"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I +appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms. +I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are +trying to tell me is that you do not care for me." + +She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I +do not care for you. Not in that way." + +He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any +way--your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that. +I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all." + +Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if +trying to see the truth inside herself. + +"No--no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there +is _no_ way in which I can care for you again. Or--well--I can care +perhaps--I'm caring now--but--" + +"I see. You do not love me." + +She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and--I do not love you." + +"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said." + +"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you." + +"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping +things from me." + +"I had meant to spare you." + +At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me." + +She still hesitated. + +"What is it?" + +She spoke low. + +"If you had been here--that night--Peggy would not have died." + +He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly. + +"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for +you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were +not dead." + +She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain. + +He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for +her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compassion. + +"Why have you told me this?" he said. + +"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when +nothing else will." + +"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?" + +Anne closed her eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +He did not know whether he believed what she had said, nor whether she +believed it herself, neither could he understand her motive in saying it. + +At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from +time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must +have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could +bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he +knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she +the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be +responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that +could have made him charge her with it. + +Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty +of the blow had brutalised his imagination. + +He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed +on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in +his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into +the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey, +measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become +necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of +Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted. + +He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and +cleared it. + +He went back into the study and began to think. He remained thinking for +some time, consecutively, and with great lucidity. He asked himself what +he was to do now, and he saw clearly that he could do nothing. If Anne +had been a passionate woman, hurling her words in a fury of fierce grief, +he would have thought no more of it. If she had been the tender, tearful +sort, dropping words in a weak, helpless misery, he would have thought +no more of it. He could imagine poor little Maggie saying a thing like +that, not knowing what she said. If it had been poor little Maggie he +could have drawn her to him and comforted her, and reasoned with her till +he had made her see the senselessness of her idea. Maggie would have +listened to reason--his reason. Anne never would. + +She had been cold and slow, and implacably deliberate. It was not blind +instinct, but illuminated reason that had told her what to say and when +to say it. Nothing he could ever do or say would make her take back her +words. And if she took back her words, her thought would remain +indestructible. She would never give it up; she would never approach him +without it; she would never forget that it was there. It would always +rise up between them, unburied, unappeased. + +His brain swam and clouded again. He went again to the dining-room and +drank more whiskey. Kate was in the dining-room and she saw him drinking. +He saw Kate looking at him; but he didn't care. He was past caring for +what anybody might think of him. + +His brain was clearer than ever now. He realised Anne's omnipotence to +harm him. He saw the hard, imperishable divinity in her. His wife was a +spiritual woman. He had not always known what that meant. But he knew +now; and now for the first time in his life he judged her. For the first +time in his life his heart rose in a savage revolt against her power. + +His head grew hot. The air of the study was stifling. He opened the +window and went out into the cool, dark garden. He paced up and down, +heedless of where he trod, trampling the flowerless plants down into +their black beds. At the end of the path a little circle of white stones +glimmered in the dark. That was Peggy's garden. + +An agony of love and grief shook him as he thought of the dead child. + +He thought, with his hot brain, of Anne, and his anger flared like hate. +It was through the child that she had always struck him. She was a fool +to refuse to have more children, to sacrifice her boundless opportunities +to strike. + +There was a light in the upper window. He thought of Maggie, walking up +and down in the back alley behind the garden, watching the lights of his +house burning to the dawn. The little thing had loved him. She had given +him all she had to give; and he had given her nothing. He had compelled +her to live childless; and he had cast her off. She had been sacrificed +to his passion, and to his wife's coldness. + +Up there he could see Anne's large shadow moving on the lighted +window-blind. She was dressing for dinner. + +Kate was standing on the step, looking for him. As he came to the study +window he saw Nanna behind her, going out of the room. His servants had +been watching him. Kate was frightened. Her voice fluttered in her throat +as she told him dinner was served. + +He sat opposite his wife, with the little oblong table between them. +Twice, sometimes three times a day, as long as they both lived, they +would have to sit like that, separated, hostile, horribly conscious of +each other. + +Anne talked about the Gardners, and he stared at her stupidly, with eyes +that were like heavy burning balls under his aching forehead. He ate +little and drank a good deal. Half an hour after dinner he followed her +to the drawing-room, dazed, not knowing clearly where he went. + +Anne was seated at her writing-table. The place was strewn with papers. +She was absorbed in the business of her committee, working off five weeks +of correspondence in arrears. + +He lay on the sofa and dozed, and she took no notice of him. He left the +room, and she did not hear him go out. + +He went to the Hannays. They were out. He went on to the Ransomes and +found them there. He found Canon Wharton there, too, drinking whiskey and +soda. + +"Here's Wallie," some one said. Mrs. Hannay (it _was_ Mrs. Hannay) gave a +cry of delight, and made a little rush at him which confused him. Ransome +poured out more whiskey, and gave it to him and to the Canon. The Canon +drank peg for peg with them, while he eyed Majendie austerely. He used to +drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, in the days when Hannay drank; now +he drank peg for peg with Majendie, eyeing him austerely. + +Then the Hannays came between them. They closed round Majendie and hemmed +him in a corner, and kept him there talking to him. He had no clear idea +what they were saying or what he was saying to them; but their voices +were kind and they soothed him. Dick Ransome brought him more whiskey. He +refused it. He had a sort of idea that he had had enough, rather more, in +fact, than was quite good for him; and ladies were in the room. Ransome +pressed him, and Lawson Hannay said something to Ransome; he couldn't +tell what. He was getting drowsy and disinclined to answer when people +spoke to him. He wished they would let him alone. + +Lawson Hannay put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "Come along with +us, Wallie," and he wished Lawson Hannay would let him alone. Mrs. Hannay +came and stooped over him and whispered things in his ear, and he tried +to rouse himself so far as to stare into her face and try to understand +what she was saying. + +She was saying, "Wallie, get up--Come with us, Wallie, dear." And she +laid her hand on his arm. He took her hand in his, and pressed it, and +let it drop. + +Then Ransome said, "Why can't you let the poor chap alone? Let him stay +if he likes." + +That was what he wanted. Ransome knew what he wanted--to be let alone. + +He didn't see the Hannays go. The only thing he saw distinctly was the +Canon's large grey face, and the eyes in it fixed unpleasantly on him. He +wished the Canon would let him alone. + +He was getting really _too_ sleepy. He would have to rouse himself +presently and go. With a tremendous effort he dragged himself up and +went. Ransome walked with him to the club and left him there. + +The club-room was in an hotel opposite the pier. He could get a bedroom +there for the night; and when the night was over he would be able to +think what he would do. He couldn't go back to Prior Street as he was. He +was too sleepy to know very much about it, but he knew that. He knew, +too, that something had happened which might make it impossible for him +to go back at all. + +Ransome had told the manager of the hotel to take care of him. Every now +and then the manager came and looked at him; and then the drowsiness +lifted from his brain with a jerk, and he knew that something horrible +had happened. That was why they kept on looking at him. + +At last he dragged himself to his room. He rang the bell and ordered +more whiskey. This time he drank, not for lucidity, but for blessed +drunkenness, for kind sleep and pitiful oblivion. + +He slept on far into the morning and woke with a headache. At twelve +Hannay and Ransome called for him. It was a fine warm day with a +southerly wind blowing and sails on the river. Ransome's yacht lay off +the pier, with Mrs. Ransome in it. The sails were going up in Ransome's +yacht. Hannay's yacht rocked beside it. Dick took Majendie by the arm. +Dick, outside in the morning light, looked paler and puffier than ever, +but his eyes were kind. He had an idea. Dick's idea was that Majendie +should run up with him and Mrs. Ransome to Scarby for the week-end. +Hannay looked troubled as Dick unfolded his idea. + +"I wouldn't go, old man," said he, "with that head of yours." + +Dick stared. "Head? Just the thing for his head," said Dick. "It'll do +him all the good in the world." + +Hannay took Dick aside. "No, it won't. It won't do him any good at all." + +"I say, you know, I don't know what you're driving at, but you might let +the poor chap have a little peace. Come along, Majendie." + +Majendie sent a telegram to Prior Street and went. + +The wind blew away his headache and put its own strong, violent, gusty +life into him. He felt agreeably excited as he paced the slanting deck. +He stayed there in the wind. + +Downstairs in the cabin the Ransomes were quarrelling. + +"What on earth," said she, "possessed you to bring him?" + +"And why not?" + +"Because of Sarah." + +"What's she got to do with it?" + +"Well, you don't want them to meet again, do you?" + +Dick made his face a puffy blank. "Why the devil shouldn't they?" said +he. + +"Well, you know the trouble he's had with his wife already about Sarah." + +"It wasn't about Sarah. It was another woman altogether!" + +"I know that. But she was the beginning of it." + +"Let her be the end of it, then. If you're thinking of _him_. The sooner +that wife of his gets a separation the better it'll be for him." + +"And you want my sister to be mixed up in _that_?" + +Mrs. Ransome began to cry. + +"She can't be mixed up in it. He's past caring for Sarah, poor old girl." + +"She isn't past caring for him. She isn't past anything," sobbed Mrs. +Ransome. + +"Don't be a fool, Topsy. There isn't any harm in poor old Toodles. +Majendie's a jolly sight safer with Toodles, I can tell you, than he is +with that wife of his." + +"Has she come home, then?" + +"She came yesterday afternoon. You saw what he was like last night. If +I'd left him to himself this morning he'd have drunk himself into a fit. +When a sober--a fantastically sober man does that--" + +"What does it mean?" + +"It generally means that he's in a pretty bad way. And," added Dick +pensively, "they call poor Toodles a dangerous woman." + +All night the yacht lay in Scarby harbour. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + + +It was nine o'clock on Sunday evening. Majendie was in Scarby, in the +hotel on the little grey parade, where he and Anne had stayed on their +honeymoon. + +Lady Cayley was with him. She was with him in the sitting-room which had +been his and Anne's. They were by themselves. The Ransomes were dining +with friends in another quarter of the town. He had accepted Sarah's +invitation to dine with her alone. + +The Ransomes had tried to drag him away, and he had refused to go with +them. He had very nearly quarrelled with the Ransomes. They had been +irritating him all day, till he had been atrociously rude to them. He had +told Ransome to go to a place where, as Ransome had remarked, he could +hardly have taken Mrs. Ransome. Then he had explained gently that he had +had enough knocking about for one day, that his head ached abominably, +and that he wished they would leave him alone. It was all he wanted. Then +they had left him alone, with Sarah. He was glad to be with her. She was +the only person who seemed to understand that all he wanted was to be let +alone. + +She had been with him all day. She had sat beside him on the deck of the +yacht as they cruised up and down the coast till sunset. Afterwards, when +the Ransomes' friends had trooped in, one after another, and filled the +sitting-room with insufferable sounds, she had taken him into a quiet +corner and kept him there. He had felt grateful to her for that. + +She had been angelic to him during dinner. She had let him eat as little +and drink as much as he pleased. And she had hardly spoken to him. She +had wrapped him in a heavenly silence. Only from time to time, out of the +divine silence, her woman's voice had dropped between them, soothing and +pleasantly indistinct. He had been drinking hard all day. He had been +excited, intolerably excited; and she soothed him. He was aware of her +chiefly as a large, benignant presence, maternal and protecting. + +His brain felt brittle, but extraordinarily clear, luminous, transparent, +the delicate centre of monstrous and destructive energies. It burned +behind his eyeballs like a fire. His eyes were hot with it, the pupils +strained, distended, gorged with light. + +This monstrous brain of his originated nothing, but ideas presented to +it became monstrous, too. And their immensity roused no sense of the +incredible. + +The table had been cleared of everything but coffee-cups, glasses, and +wine. They still sat facing each other. Sarah had her arms on the table, +propping her chin up with her clenched hands. Her head was tilted back +slightly, in a way that was familiar to him; so that she looked at him +from under the worn and wrinkled white lids of her eyes. And as she +looked at him she smiled slightly; and the smile was familiar, too. + +And he sat opposite her, with his chin sunk on his breast. His bright, +dark, distended eyes seemed to strain upwards towards her, under the +weight of his flushed forehead. + +"Well, Wallie," she said, "I didn't get married, you see, after all." + +"Married--married? Why didn't you?" + +"I never meant to. I only wanted you to think it." + +"Why? Why did you want me to think it?" + +He was no longer disinclined to talk. Though his brain lacked +spontaneity, it responded appropriately to suggestion. + +"I didn't want you to think something else." + +"What? What should I think?" + +His voice was thick and rapid, his eyes burned. + +"That you'd made a mess of my life, my dear." + +"When did I make a mess of your life?" + +"Never mind when. I _might_ have married, only I didn't. That's the +difference between me and you." + +"And that's how I made a mess of your life, is it? I haven't made a +furious success of my own, have I?" + +"I wouldn't have brought it up against you, if you had. The awful thing +was to stand by, and see you make a sinful muddle of it" + +"A sinful muddle?" + +"Yes. That's what it's been. A sinful muddle." + +"Which is worse, d'you think, a sinful muddle? or a muddling sin?" + +"Oh, don't ask me, my dear. I can't see any difference." + +"My God--nor I!" + +"There's no good talking. You're so obstinate, Wallie, that I believe, if +you could live your life over again, you'd do just the same." + +"I would, probably. Just the same." + +"There's nothing you'd alter?" + +"Nothing. Except one thing." + +"What thing?" + +"Never mind what." + +"I don't mind, if the one thing wasn't _me_--was it?" + +He did not answer. + +"Was it?" she insisted, turning the full blue blaze of her eyes on him. + +He started. "Of course it wasn't. You don't suppose I'd have said so if +it had been, do you?" + +"A-ah! So, if you could live your life over again, you wouldn't turn me +out of it? I didn't take up much room, did I? Only two years." + +"Two years?" + +"That was all. And you'd let me stay in for my two poor little years. +Well, that's something. It's a great deal. It's more than some women +get." + +"Yes. More than some women get." + +"Poor Wallie. I'm afraid you wouldn't live your life again." + +"No. I wouldn't." + +"I would. I'd live mine, horrors and all. Just for those two little +years. I say, if we'd keep each other in for those two years, we needn't +turn each other out now, need we?" + +"Oh no, oh no." + +His brain followed her lead, originating nothing. + +"See here," she said, "if I come in--" + +"Yes, yes," he said vaguely. + +He was bending forward now, with his hands clasped on the table. She +stretched out her beautiful white arms and covered his hands with hers, +and held them. Her eyes were full-orbed, luminous, and tender. They held +him, too. + +"I come in on my own terms, this time, not yours." + +"Oh, of course." + +"I mean I can't come in on the same terms as before. All that was over +nine years ago, when you married. You and I are older. We have had +experience. We've suffered horribly. We know." + +"What do we know?" + +She let go his hands. + +"At least we know the limits--the lines we must draw. Fifteen years ago +we didn't know anything, either of us. We were innocents. You were an +innocent when you left me, when you married." + +"When I married?" + +"Yes, when you married. You were a blessed innocent, or you couldn't have +done it. You married a good woman." + +"I know." + +"So do I. Well, I've given one or two men a pretty bad time, but you may +write it on my tombstone that I never hurt another woman." + +"Of course you haven't." + +"And I'm not going to hurt your wife, remember." + +"I'm stupid, I don't think I understand." + +"Can't you understand that I'm not going to make trouble between you and +her?" + +"Me? And her?" + +"You and her. You've come back to me as my friend. We'll be better +friends if you understand that, whatever I let you do, dear, I'm not +going to let you make love to me." + +She drew herself back and faced him with her resolution. + +She knew the man with whom she had to deal. His soul must be off its +guard before she could have any power over his body. In presenting +herself as unattainable she would make herself desired. She would bring +him back. + +She knew what fires he had passed through on his way to her. She saw that +she could not bring him back by playing poor, tender Maggie's part. She +could not move him by appearing as the woman she once was, by falling at +his feet as she had once fallen. This time, it was he who must fall at +hers. + +Anne Majendie had held her empire, and had made herself for ever +desirable, by six years of systematic torturings and deceptions and +denials, by all the infidelities of the saint in love with her own +sanctity. The woman who was to bring him back now would have to borrow +for a moment a little of Anne Majendie's spiritual splendour. She saw by +his flaming face that she had suggested the thing she had forbidden. + +"You think," said she, "there isn't any danger? I don't say there is. But +if there was, you'd never see it. You'd never think of it. You'd be up to +your neck in it before you knew where you were." + +He moved impatiently. "At any rate I know where I am now." + +"And I," said she, in response to his movement, "mean that you shall stay +there." She paused. "I know what you're thinking. You'd like to know what +right I have to say these things to you." + +"Well--I'm awfully stupid--" + +"I earned the right fifteen years ago. When a woman gives a man all she +has to give, and gets nothing, there are very few things she hasn't a +right to say to him." + +"I've no doubt you earned your right." + +"I'm not reproaching you, dear. I'm simply justifying the plainness of my +speech." + +He stared at her, but he did not answer. + +"Don't think me hard," said she. "I'm saying these things because I care +for you. Because--" She rose, and flung her arms out with a passionate +gesture towards him. "Oh, my dear--my heart aches for you so that I can't +bear it." + +She came over to where he sat staring at her, staring half stupefied, +half inflamed. She stood beside him, and passed her hand lightly over his +hair. + +"I only want to help you." + +"You can't help me." + +"I know I can't. I can only say hard things to you." + +She stooped, and her lips swept his hair. For a moment love gave her back +her beauty and the enchantment of her youth; it illuminated the house of +flesh it dwelt in and inspired. And yet she could not reach him. His soul +was on its guard. + +"You've come back," she whispered. "You've come back. But you never came +till you were driven. That's how I thought you'd come. When you were +driven. When there was nobody but me." + +He heard her speaking, but her words had no significance that pierced his +thick and swift sensations. + +"What have you done that you should have to pay so?" + +"What have I done?" + +"Or I?" she said. + +He did not hear her. There was another sound in his ears. + +Her voice ceased. Her eyes only called to him. He pushed back his chair +and laid his arms on the table, and bowed his head upon them, hiding his +face from her. She knelt down beside him. Her voice was like a warm wind +in his ears. He groaned. She drew a short sharp breath, and pressed her +shoulder to his shoulder, and her face to his hidden face. + +At her touch he rose to his feet, violently sobered, loathing himself and +her. He felt his blood leap like a hot fountain to his brain. When she +clung he raged, and pushed her from him, not knowing what he did, +thrusting his hands out, cruelly, against her breasts, so that he wrung +from her a cry of pain and anger. + +But when he would have gone from her his feet were loaded; they were +heavy weights binding him to the floor. He had a sensation of intolerable +sickness; then a pain beat like a hammer on one side of his head. He +staggered, and fell, headlong, at her feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + + +Anne, left alone at her writing-table, had worked on far into Friday +night. The trouble in her was appeased by the answering of letters, the +sorting of papers, the bringing of order into confusion. She had always +had great practical ability; she had proved herself a good organiser, +expert in the business of societies and committees. + +In her preoccupation she had not noticed that her husband had left the +house, and that he did not return to it. + +In the morning, as she left her room, the old nurse came to her with a +grave face, and took her into Majendie's room. Nanna pointed out to her +that his bed had not been slept in. Anne's heart sank. Later on, the +telegram he sent explained his absence. She supposed that he had slept +at the Ransomes' or the Hannays', and she thought no more of it. The +business of the day again absorbed her. + +In the afternoon Canon Wharton called on her. It was the recognised visit +of condolence, delayed till her return. In his manner with Mrs. Majendie +there was no sign of the adroit little man of the world who had drunk +whiskey with Mrs. Majendie's husband the night before. His manner was +reticent, reverential, not obtrusively tender. He abstained from all the +commonplaces of consolation. He did not speak of the dead child; but +reminded her of the greater maternal work that God had called upon her +to do, and told her that the children of many mothers would rise up and +call her blessed. He bade her believe that her life, which seemed to her +ended, had in reality only just begun. He said that, if great natures +were reserved for great sorrows, great afflictions, they were also +dedicated to great uses. Uses to which their sorrows were the unique and +perfect training. + +He left her strengthened, uplifted, and consoled. + +On Sunday morning she attended the service at All Souls. In the afternoon +she walked to the great flat cemetery of Scale, where Edith's and Peggy's +graves lay side by side. In the evening she went again to All Souls. + +The church services were now the only link left between her soul and +God. She clung desperately to them, trying to recapture through these +consecrated public methods the peace that should have been her most +private personal possession. + +For, all the time, now, she was depressed by a sense of separation from +the Unseen. She struggled for communion; she prostrated herself in +surrender, and was flung back upon herself, an outcast from the spiritual +world. She was alone in that alien place of earth where everything had +been taken from her. She almost rebelled against the cruelty of the +heavenly hand, that, having smitten her, withheld its healing. She had +still faith, but she had no joy nor comfort in her faith. Therefore she +occupied herself incessantly with works; appeasing, putting off the hours +that waited for her as their prey. + +It was at night that her desolation found her most helpless. For then she +thought of her dead child and of the husband whom she regarded as worse +than dead. + +She had one terrible consolation. She had once doubted the justice of her +attitude to him. Now she was sure. Her justification was complete. + +She was sitting at work again early on Monday morning, in the +drawing-room that overlooked the street. + +About ten o'clock she heard a cab drive up to the door. + +She thought it was Majendie come back again, and she was surprised when +Kate came to her and told her that it was Mr. Hannay, and that he wished +to speak to her at once. + +Hannay was downstairs, in the study; standing with his back to the +fireplace. He did not come forward to meet her. His rosy, sensual face +was curiously set. As she approached him, his loose lips moved and closed +again in a firm fold. + +He pressed her hand without speaking. His heaviness and immobility +alarmed her. + +"What is it?" she asked. + +Her heart was like a wild whirlpool that sucked back her voice and +suffocated it. + +"I've come with very bad news, Mrs. Majendie." + +"Tell me," she whispered. + +"Walter is ill--very dangerously ill." + +"He is dead." + +The words seemed to come from her without grief, without any feeling. She +felt nothing but a dull, dragging pain under her left breast, as if the +doors of her heart were closed and its chambers full to bursting. + +"No. He is not dead." + +Her heart beat again. + +"He's dying, then." + +"They don't know." + +"Where is he?" + +"At Scarby." + +"Scarby? How much time have I?" + +"There's a train at ten-twenty. Can you be ready in five--seven minutes?" + +"Yes." + +She rang the bell. + +"Tell Kate where to send my things," she said as she left the room. Her +mind took possession of her, so that she did not waste a word of her +lips, or a single motion of her feet. She came back in five minutes, +ready to start. + +"What is it?" she said as they drove to the station. + +"Haemorrhage of the brain." + +"The brain?" + +"Apoplexy." + +"Is he unconscious?" + +"Yes." + +She closed her eyes. + +"He will not know me," she said. + +Hannay was silent. She lay back and kept her eyes closed. + +A van blocked the narrow street that led to the East Station. The driver +reined in his horse. She opened her eyes in terror. + +"We shall miss the train--if we stop." + +"No, no, we've plenty of time." + +They waited. + +"Oh, tell him to drive round the other way." + +"We shall miss the train if we do _that_." + +"Well, make that man in front move on. Make him turn--up there." + +The van turned into a side street, and they drove on. + +The Scarby train was drawn up along the platform. They had five minutes +before it started; but she hurried into the nearest compartment. They had +it to themselves. + +The train moved on. It was a two hours' journey to Scarby. + +A strong wind blew through the open window and she shivered. She had +brought no warm wrap with her. Hannay laid his overcoat over her knees +and about her body. His large hands moved gently, wrapping it close. +She thanked him and tried to smile. And when he saw her smile, Hannay was +sorry for the things he had thought and said of her. His voice when he +spoke to her vibrated tenderly. She resigned herself to his hands. Grief +made her passive now. + +Hannay sank back in the far corner and left her to her grief. He covered +his eyes with his hands that he might not see her. Poor Hannay hoped +that, if he removed his painful presence, she would allow herself the +relief of tears. + +But no tears fell from under her closed eyelids. Her soul was withdrawn +behind them into the darkness where the body's pang ceased, and there was +help. She started when the train stopped at Scarby Station. + +As they stopped at the hotel there came upon her that reminiscence which +is foreknowledge and the sense of destiny. + +A woman was coming down the staircase as they entered. She did not see +her at first. She would not have seen her at all if Hannay had not taken +her arm and drawn her aside into the shelter of a doorway. Then, as the +woman passed out, she saw that it was Lady Cayley. + +She looked helplessly at Hannay. Her eyes said, "Where is he?" She +wondered where, in what room, she should find her husband. + +She found him upstairs in the room that had been their bridal chamber. He +lay on their bridal bed, motionless and senseless. There was a deep flush +on one side of his face, one corner of his mouth was slightly drawn, and +one eyelid drooped. He was paralysed down his left side. + +His lips moved mechanically as he breathed, and his breath came with a +deep grating sound. His left arm was stretched outside, upon the blanket. +A nurse stood at the head of the bed. She moved as Anne entered and gave +place to her. Anne put out her hand and touched his arm, caressing it. + +The nurse said, "There has been no change." She lifted his arm by the +wrist and laid it in his wife's hand that she might see that he was +paralysed. + +And Anne sat still by the bedside, staring at her husband's face, and +holding his heavy arm in her hand, as if she could thus help him to bear +the weight of it. + +Hannay gave one look at her as she sat there. He said something to the +nurse and went out of the room. The woman followed him. + +After they went Anne bowed her head and laid it on the pillow beside her +husband's, with her cheek against his cheek. She stayed so for a moment. +Then she lifted her head and looked about her. Her eyes took note of +trifles. She saw that the blankets were drawn straight over his body, as +if over the body of a dead man. The pillow-cases and the end of the +sheet, which was turned down over the blankets, were clean and +creaseless. + +He could not move. He was paralysed. They had not told her that. + +She saw that he wore a clean white nightshirt of coarse cotton. It must +have been lent by one of the people of the hotel. His illness must have +come upon him last night, when he was still up and dressed. They must +have carried him in here, and laid him in the clean bed. Everything about +him was very white and clean. She was glad. + +She sat there till the nurse came back again. She had to move away from +him then. It hurt her to see the woman bending over his bed, looking at +him, to see, her hands touching him. + +A bell rang somewhere in the hotel. Hannay came in and told her that +there was luncheon in the sitting-room. She shook her head. He put his +hand on her shoulder and spoke to her as if she had been a child. She +must eat, he said; she would be no good if she did not eat. She got up +and followed him. She ate and drank whatever he gave her. Then she went +back to her husband, and watched beside him while the nurse went to her +meal. The terrible thing was that she could do nothing for him. She could +only wait and watch. The nurse came back in half an hour, and they sat +there together, all the afternoon, one on each side of the bed, waiting +and watching. + +Towards evening the doctor, who had come at midnight and in the morning, +came again. He looked at Anne keenly and kindly, and his manner seemed +to her to say that there was no hope. He made experiments. He brought +a lighted candle and held it to the patient's eyes, and said that the +pupils were still contracted. The nurse said nothing. She looked at Anne +and she looked at the doctor, and when he went away, she made a sign to +Anne to keep back while she followed him. Anne heard them talking +together in low voices outside the door, and her heart ached with fear +of what he would say to her presently. + +He sent for her, and she came to him in the sitting-room. He said, "There +is no change." Her brain reeled and righted itself. She had thought he +was going to say "There is no hope." + +"Will he get better?" she said. + +"I cannot tell you." + +The doctor seated himself and prepared to deal long and leisurely with +the case. + +"It's impossible to say. He _may_ get better. He may even get well. But +I should do wrong if I let you hope too much for that." + +"You can give _no_ hope?" she said, thinking that she uttered his real +thought. + +"I don't say that. I only say that the chances are not--exclusively--in +favour of recovery." + +"The chances?" + +"Yes. The chances." The doctor looked at her, considering whether she +were a woman who could bear the truth. Her eyes assured him that she +could. "I don't say he won't recover. It's this way," said he. "There's +a clot somewhere on the brain. If it absorbs completely he may get +well--perfectly well." + +"And if it does not absorb?" + +"He may remain as he is, paralysed down the left side. The paralysis may +be only partial. He may recover the use of one limb and not the other. +But he will be paralysed. Partially or completely." + +She pictured it. + +"Ah--but," she said, laying hold on hope again, "he will not die?" + +"Well--there may be further lesions--in which case--" + +"He will die?" + +"He may die. He may die any moment." + +She accepted it, abandoning hope. + +"Will there be any return of consciousness? Will he know me?" + +"I'm afraid not. If consciousness returns we may begin to hope. As it +is, I don't want you to make up your mind to the worst. There are two +things in his favour. He has evidently a sound constitution. And he has +lived--up till now--Mr. Hannay tells me, a rather unusually temperate +life. That is so?" + +"Yes. He was most abstemious. Always--always. Why?" + +The doctor recalled his eyes from their examination of Mrs. Majendie's +face. It was evident that there were some truths which she could not +bear. + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie, there is no _why_, of course. That is in his +favour. There seems to have been nothing in his previous history which +would predispose to the attack." + +"Would a shock--predispose him?" + +"A shock?" + +"Any very strong emotion--" + +"It might. Certainly. If it was recent. Mr. Hannay told me that he--that +you--had had a sudden bereavement. How long ago was that?" + +"A month--nearly five weeks." + +"Ah--so long ago as that? No, I think it would hardly be likely. If there +had been any recent violent emotion--" + +"It would account for it?" + +"Yes, yes, it might account for it." + +"Thank you." + +He was touched by her look of agony. "If there is anything else I can--" + +"No. Thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know." + +She went back into the sick-room. She stayed there all evening, and they +brought her food to her there. She stayed, watching for the sign of +consciousness that would give hope. But there was no sign. + +The nurse went to bed at nine o'clock. Anne had insisted on sitting up +that night. Hannay slept in the next room, on a sofa, within call. + +When they had left her alone with her husband, she knelt down beside his +bedside and prayed. And as she knelt, with her bowed head near to that +body sleeping its strange and terrible sleep, she remembered nothing but +that she had once loved him; she was certain of nothing but that she +loved him still. His body was once more dear and sacred to her as in her +bridal hour. She did not ask herself whether it were paying the penalty +of its sin; her compassion had purged him of his sin. She had no memory +for the past. It seemed to her that all her life and all her suffering +were crowded into this one hour while she prayed that his soul might come +back and speak to her, and that his body might not die. The hour trampled +under it that other hour when she had knelt by the loathed bridal bed, +wrestling for her own spiritual life. She had no life of her own to pray +for now. She prayed only that he might live. + +And though she knew not whether her prayer were answered she knew that it +was heard. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + + +It was the evening of the third day. There was no change in Majendie. + +Dr. Gardner had been sent for. He had come and gone. He had confirmed the +Scarby doctor's opinion, with a private leaning to the side of hope. +Hannay, who had waited to hear his verdict, was going back to Scale +early the next morning. Mrs. Majendie had been in her husband's room all +day, and he had seen little of her. + +He was sitting alone by the fire after dinner, trying to read a paper, +when she came in. Her approach was so gentle that he was unaware of it +till she stood beside him. He started to his feet, mumbling an apology +for his bewilderment. He pulled up an arm-chair to the fire for her, +wandered uneasily about the room for a minute or two, and would have left +it, had she not called him back to her. + +"Don't go, Mr. Hannay. I want to speak to you." + +He turned, with an air of frustrated evasion, and remained, a supremely +uncomfortable presence. + +"Have you time?" she asked. + +"Plenty. All my time is at your disposal." + +"You have been very kind--" + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie--" + +"I want you to be kinder still. I want you to tell me the truth." + +"The truth--" Hannay tried to tighten his loose face into an expression +of judicial reserve. + +"Yes, the truth. There's no kindness in keeping things from me." + +"My dear Mrs. Majendie, I'm keeping nothing from you, I assure you. The +doctors have told me no more than they have told you." + +"I know. It's not that." + +"What is it that's troubling you?" + +"Did you see Walter before he came here?" + +"Yes." + +"Did you see him on Friday night?" + +"Yes." + +"Was he perfectly well then?" + +"Er--yes--he was well. Quite well." + +Anne turned her sorrowful eyes upon him. + +"No. There was something wrong. What was it?" + +"If there was he didn't tell me." + +"No. He wouldn't. Why did you hesitate just now?" + +"Did I hesitate?" + +"When I asked you if he was well." + +"I thought you meant did I notice any signs of his illness coming on. I +didn't. But of course, as you know, he was very much shaken by---by your +little girl's death." + +"You noticed that while I was away?" + +"Y-es. But I certainly noticed it more on the night you were speaking +of." + +"You would have said, then, that he must have received a severe shock?" + +"Certainly--certainly I would." + +Hannay responded quite cheerfully in his immense relief. + +It was what they were all trying for, to make poor Mrs. Majendie believe +that her husband's illness was to be attributed solely to the shock of +the child's death. + +"Do you think that shock could have had anything to do with his illness?" + +"Of course I do. At least, I should say it was indirectly responsible for +it." + +She put her hand up to hide her face. He saw that in some way +incomprehensible to him, so far from shielding her, he had struck a blow. + +"Dr. Gardner told you that much," said he. He felt easier, somehow, in +halving the responsibility with Gardner. + +"Yes. He told me that. But he had not seen him since October. You saw him +on Friday, the day I came home." + +Hannay was confirmed in his suspicion that on Friday there had been a +scene. He now saw that Mrs. Majendie was tortured by the remembrance of +her part in it. + +"Oh well," he said consolingly. "He hadn't been himself for a long time +before that." + +"I know. I know. That only makes it worse." + +She wept slowly, silently, then stopped suddenly and held herself in a +restraint that was ten times more pitiful to see. Hannay was unspeakably +distressed. + +"Perhaps," said he, "if you could tell me what's on your mind, I might be +able to relieve you." + +She shook her head. + +"Come," he said kindly, "what is it, really? What do you imagine makes it +worse?" + +"I said something to him that I didn't mean." + +"Of course you did," said Hannay, smiling cheerfully. "We all say things +to each other that we don't mean. That wouldn't hurt him." + +"But it did. I told him he was responsible for Peggy's death. I didn't +know what I was saying. I let him think he killed her." + +"He wouldn't think it." + +"He did. There was nothing else he could think. If he dies I shall have +killed him." + +"You will have done nothing of the sort. He wouldn't think twice about +what a woman said in her anger or her grief. He wouldn't believe it. He's +got too much sense. You can put that idea out of your head for ever." + +"I cannot put it out. I had to tell you--lest you should think--" + +"Lest I should think--what?" + +"That it was something else that caused his illness." + +"But, my dear lady--it _was_ something else. I haven't a doubt about it." + +"I know what you mean," she said quickly. "He had been drinking--poor +dear." + +"How do you know that?" + +"The doctor asked me. He asked me if he had been in the habit of taking +too much." + +Hannay heaved a deep sigh of discomfort and disappointment. + +"It's no good," said she, "trying to keep things from me. And there's +another thing that I must know." + +"You're distressing yourself most needlessly. There is nothing more to +know." + +"I know that woman was here. I do not know whether he came here to meet +her." + +"Ah well--that I can assure you he did not." + +"Still--he must have met her. She was here." + +"How do you know that she was here?" + +"You saw her yourself, coming out of the hotel. You were horrified, and +you pulled me back so that I shouldn't see her." + +"There's nothing in that, nothing whatever." + +"If you'd seen your own face, Mr. Hannay, you would have said there was +everything in it." + +"My face, dear Mrs. Majendie, does not prove that they met. Or that there +was any reason why they shouldn't meet. It only proves my fear lest Lady +Cayley should stop and speak to you. A thing she wouldn't be very likely +to do if they had met--as you suppose." + +"There is nothing that woman wouldn't do." + +"She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that." + +"I don't know." + +"No. You don't know. So you're bound to give her the benefit of the +doubt. I advise you to do it. For your own peace of mind's sake. And for +your husband's sake." + +"It was for his sake that I asked you for the truth. Because--" + +"You wanted me to clear him?" + +"Yes. Or to tell me if there is anything I should forgive." + +"I can assure you he didn't come here to see Sarah Cayley. As to +forgiveness--you haven't got to forgive him that; and if you only +understood, you'd find that there was precious little you ever had to +forgive." + +"If I only understood. You think I don't understand, even yet?" + +"I'm sure you don't. You never did." + +"I would give everything if I could understand now." + +"Yes, if you could. But can you?" + +"I've tried very hard. I've prayed to God to make me understand." + +Poor Hannay was embarrassed at the name of God. He fell to contemplating +his waistcoat buttons in profound abstraction for a while. Then he spoke. + +"Look here, Mrs. Majendie. Poor Walter always said you were much too good +for him. If you'll pardon my saying so, I never believed that until now. +Now, upon my soul, I do believe it. And I believe that's where the +trouble's been all along. There are things about a man that a woman like +you cannot understand. She doesn't try to understand them. She doesn't +want to. She'd die rather than know. So--well--the whole thing's wrapped +up in mystery, and she thinks it's something awful and iniquitous, +something incomprehensible." + +"Yes. If she thinks about it at all." + +"My dear lady, very often she thinks about it a great deal more than is +good for her, and she thinks wrong. She's bound to, being what she is. +Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there's certain to +be trouble." + +He paused, pondering. "My wife's a dear, good, little woman," he said +presently; "she's the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare +say to outsiders, she's a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I +don't call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn't a good +man at all before she married me. D'you mind my talking about myself like +this?" + +"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don't think I do." + +"You do, I'm afraid. I don't much like it myself. But, you see, I'm +trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn't you?" + +"Yes. I want to understand." + +"Well, then, I'm not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I'd no +more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would +of committing a murder. But, if she'd been 'too good' for me, there's +no knowing what I mightn't have done. D'you see?" + +"I see. You're trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband +left me." + +"Your fault? No. It was hardly your _fault_, Mrs. Majendie." + +He meditated. "There's another thing. You good women are apt to run away +with the idea that--that this sort of thing is so tremendously important +to us. It isn't. It isn't." + +"Then why behave as if it were?" + +"We don't. That's your mistake. Ten to one, when a man's once married +and happy, he doesn't think about it at all. Of course, if he isn't +happy--but, even then, he doesn't go thinking about it all day long. The +ordinary man doesn't. He's got other things to attend to--his business, +his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are _the_ +important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up +his time." + +"I see. I see. The woman doesn't count." + +"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the +woman may _be_ his religion, his superstition. In your husband's case it +certainly was so." + +Her face quivered. + +"Of course," he said, "what beats you is--how a man can love his wife +with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her." + +"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once, +long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn't understand." + +"Well--well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are +brutes, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about Walter." + +"Yes. We're talking about Walter." + +"And Walter is my dearest friend, so dear that I hardly know how to talk +to you about him." + +"Try," she said. + +"Well, I suppose I know more about him than anybody else. And I never +knew a man freer from any weakness for women. He was always so awfully +sorry for them, don't you know. Sarah Cayley could never have fastened +herself on him if he hadn't been sorry for her. No more could that +girl--Maggie Forrest." + +"How did he come to know her?" + +"Oh, some fellow he knew had behaved pretty badly to her, and Walter had +been paying for her keep, years before there was anything between them. +She got dependent on him, and he on her. We are pathetically dependent +creatures, Mrs. Majendie." + +"What was she like?" + +"She? Oh, a soft, simple, clinging little thing. And instead of shaking +her off, he let her cling. That's how it all began. Then, of course, the +rest followed. I'm not excusing him, mind you. Only--" Poor Hannay became +shy and unhappy. He hid his face in his hands and lifted it from them, +red, as if with shame. "The fact is," he said, "I'm a clumsy fellow, Mrs. +Majendie. I want to help you, but I'm afraid of hurting you." + +"Nothing can hurt me now." + +"Well--" He pondered again. "If you want to get down to the root of it, +it's as simple as hunger and thirst." + +"Hunger and thirst," she murmured. + +"It's what I've been trying to tell you. When you're not thirsty you +don't think about drinking. When you are thirsty, you do. When you're +driven mad with thirst, you think of nothing else. And sometimes--not +always--when you can't get clean water, you drink water that's--not +so clean. Though you may be very particular. Walter was--morally--the +most particular man I ever knew." + +"I know. I know." + +"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he'll be. And +supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he +goes out, some kind person offers him a drink--can you blame him very +much if, some day, he takes it?" + +"No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him. + +"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know _why_ I'm saying all +this." + +"To help me," she said humbly. + +"And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he's going to live or +die. And I've told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn't have +to judge him harshly, and if he doesn't die, you may feel that he's--he's +given back to you. D'you see?" + +"Yes, I see," she said softly. + +She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected. +She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him +coarse in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any +existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any +good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an +instant. Now she knew. + +She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that +her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now +she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He +had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the +gentlest woman could not have been more kind. + +She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration. +"Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to +me." + +She took up her third night's watch. + +The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her +own punctual sleep. + +There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the +sightless eyes. + +Anne sat by her husband's side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the +life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that +she had no right to touch him. + +She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she +had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her, +and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she +had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity +for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had +been merciless where she owed most mercy. + +Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and +that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the +same view of her. They had all told her the same thing. + +She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband's ruin. + +Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had +done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible +side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that +was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it +with him. + +Where she had wronged him most had been in the pitiless refusals of her +soul. And even there she had wronged him less by the things she had +refused to give than by the things that she had refused to take. There +were sanctities and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and +half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had +shut her eyes that she might justify herself. + +Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of +herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride. + +And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened +to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little +child's voice, nor to the voice of God in her own heart. Then, that she +might be humbled, she had had to take God's message from the persons +whom she had most detested and despised. + +She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted +by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs. +Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to God than she had +been, by her share of that one godlike thing. + +She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and +blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as +things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the +hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner +uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come +near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known. + +And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and +humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew. + +Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's +redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the +soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of +the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going +upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the +spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way. + +It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known +it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over +again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more +turning back. + +She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and +tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw +love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and +into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality. +She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not +been proven in the house of flesh. + +She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away +from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here. + +And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down +under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a +sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life. She saw what they +might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of +herself and him. She thought of his patience, his chivalry and +forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child. + +God had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him. God had +given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped, +she had not protected him. + +God had dealt justly with her. She had loved God; but God had rejected a +love that was owing to her husband. Looking back, she saw that she had +been nearest to God in the days when she had been nearest to her husband. +The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from God. +And she had not seen it. + +All the love that was in her she had given to her child. Her child had +been born that she might see that the love which was given to her was +holy; and she had not seen it. So God had taken her child from her that +she might see. + +And seeing that, she saw herself aright. That passion of motherhood was +not all the love that was in her. The love that was in her had sprung up, +full-grown, in a single night. And it had grown to the stature of the +diviner love she saw. And as she felt that great springing up of love, +with all its strong endurances and charities, she saw herself redeemed by +her husband's sin. + +There she paused, trembling. It was a great and terrible mystery, that +the sin of his body should be the saving of her soul. And as she thought +of the price paid for her, she humbled herself once more in her shame. + +She was no longer afraid that he would die. Something told her that he +would live, that he would be given back to her. She dared not think how. +He might be given back paralysed, helpless, and with a ruined mind. Her +punishment might be the continual reproach of his presence, her only +consolation the tending of the body she had tortured, humiliated, and +destroyed. She prayed God to be merciful and spare her that. + +And on the morning of the fifth day Majendie woke from his terrible +sleep. He could see light. Towards evening his breathing softened and +grew soundless. And on the dawn of the sixth day he called her name, +"Nancy." + +Then she knew that for a little time he would be given back to her. And, +as she nursed him, love in her moved with a new ardour and a new +surrender. For more than seven years her pulses had been proof against +his passion and his strength. Now, at the touch of his helpless body, +they stirred with a strange, adoring tenderness. But as yet she went +humbly, in her fear of the punishment that might be measured to her. She +told herself it was enough that he was aware of her, of her touch, of her +voice, of her face as it bent over him. She hushed the new-born hope in +her heart, lest its cry should wake the angel of the divine retribution. + +Then, week by week, slowly, a little joy came to her, as she saw the +gradual return of power to the paralysed body and clearness to the +flooded brain. She wondered, when he would begin to remember, whether +her face would recall to him their last interview, her cruelty, her +repudiation. + +At last she knew that he remembered. She dared not ask herself "How +much?" It was borne in on her that it was this way that her punishment +would come. + +For, as he gradually recovered, his manner to her became more +constrained; notwithstanding his helpless dependence on her. He was shy +and humble; grateful for the things she did for him; grateful with a +heart-rending, pitiful surprise. It was as if he had looked to come back +to the heartless woman he had known, and was puzzled at finding another +woman in her place. + +As the weeks wore on, and her hands had less to do for him, she felt that +his awakened spirit guarded itself from her, fenced itself more and more +with that inviolable constraint. And she bowed her head to the +punishment. + +When he was well enough to be moved she took him to the south coast. +There he recovered power rapidly. By the end of February he showed no +trace of his terrible illness. + +They were to return to Scale in the beginning of March. + +Then, at their home-coming, she would know whether he remembered. There +would be things that they would have to say to each other. + +Sometimes she thought that she could never say them; that her life was +secure only within some pure, charmed circle of inviolate silence; that +her wisdom lay in simply trusting him to understand her. She _could_ +trust him. After all, she had been most marvellously "let off"; she had +not had to pay the extreme penalty; she had been allowed, oh, divinely +allowed, to prove her love for him. He could not doubt it now; it +possessed her, body and soul; it was manifest to him in her eyes, and +in her voice, and in the service of her hands. + +And if he said nothing, surely it would mean that he, too, trusted her to +understand. + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +They had come back. They had spent their first evening together in the +house in Prior Street. Anne had dreaded the return; for the house +remembered its sad secrets. She had dreaded it more on her husband's +account than on her own. + +She had passed before him through the doorway of the study; and her heart +had ached as she thought that it was in that room that she had struck at +him and put him from her. As he entered, she had turned, and closed the +door behind them, and lifted her face to his and kissed him. He had +looked at her with his kind, sad smile, but he had said nothing. All that +evening they had sat by their hearth, silent as watchers by the dead. + +From time to time she had been aware of his eyes resting on her in their +profound and tragic scrutiny. She had been reminded then of the things +that yet remained unsaid. + +At night he had risen at her signal; and she had waited while he put the +light out; and he had followed her upstairs. At her door she had stopped, +and kissed him, and said good-night, and she had turned her head to look +after him as he went. Surely, she had thought, he will come back and +speak to me. + +And now she was still waiting after her undressing. She said to herself, +"We have come home. But he will not come to me. He has nothing to say to +me. There is nothing that can be said. If I could only speak to him." + +She longed to go to him, to kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive her +and take her back again, as if it had been she who had sinned. But she +could not. + +She stood for a moment before the couch at the foot of the bed, ready to +slip off her long white dressing-gown. She paused. Her eyes rested on the +silver crucifix, the beloved symbol of redemption. She remembered how he +had given it to her. She had not understood him even then; but she +understood him now. She longed to tell him that she understood. But she +could not. + +She turned suddenly as she heard his low knock at her door. She had been +afraid to hear it once; now it made her heart beat hard with longing and +another fear. He came in. He stood by the closed door, gazing at her with +the dumb look that she knew. + +She went to meet him, with her hands out-stretched to him, her face +glowing. + +"Oh, my dear," she said, "you've come back to me. You've come back." + +He looked down on her with miserable eyes. She put her arms about him. +His face darkened and was stern to her. He held her by her arms and put +her from him, and she trembled in all her body, humiliated and rebuked. + +"No. Not that," he said. "Not now. I can't ask you to take me back now." + +"Need you ask me--now?" + +"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know. Darling, you don't +know." + +At the word of love she turned to him, beseeching him with her tender +eyes. + +"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you." + +She sat down on the couch, and made room for him beside her. + +"I don't want," she said, "to know more than I do." + +"I'm afraid you must know. When you do know you won't talk about taking +me back." + +"I have taken you back." + +"Not yet. I'd no business to come back at all, without telling you." + +"Tell me, then," she said. + +"I can't. I don't know how." + +She put her hand on his. + +"Don't," he said, "don't. I'd rather you didn't touch me." + +She looked at him and smiled, and her smile cut him to the heart. + +"Walter," she said, "are you afraid of me?" + +"Yes." + +"You needn't be." + +"I am. I'm afraid of your goodness." + +She smiled again. + +"Do you think I'm good?" + +"I know you are." + +"You don't know how you're hurting me." + +"I've always hurt you. And I'm going to hurt you more." + +"You only hurt me when you talk about my goodness. I'm not good. I never +was. And I never can be, dear, if you're afraid of me. What is it that I +_must know_?" + +His voice sank. + +"I've been unfaithful to you. Again." + +"With whom?" she whispered. + +"I can't tell you. Only--it wasn't Maggie." + +"When was it?" + +"I think it was that Sunday--at Scarby." + +"Why do you say you think?" she said gently. "Don't you know?" + +"No. I don't know much about it. I didn't know what I was doing." + +"You can't remember?" + +"No. I can't remember." + +"Then--are you sure you _were_--?" + +"Yes. I think so. I don't know. That's the horrible part of it. I don't +know, I can't remember anything about it. I must have been drinking." + +She took his hand in hers again. "Walter, dear, don't think about it. +Don't think it was possible. Just put it all out of your head and forget +about it." + +"How can I when I don't know?" He rose. "See here--I oughtn't to look at +you--I oughtn't to touch you--I oughtn't to live with you, as long as I +don't know. You don't know, either." + +"No," she said quietly. "I don't know. Does that matter so very much when +I understand?" + +"Ah, if you could understand. But you never could." + +"I do. Supposing I had known, do you think I should not have forgiven +you?" + +"I'm certain you wouldn't. You couldn't. Not that." + +"But," she said, "I did know." + +His mouth twitched. His eyelids dropped before her gaze. + +"At least," she said, "I thought--" + +"You thought _that_?" + +"Yes." + +"What made you think it?" + +"I saw her there." + +"You saw her? You thought that, and yet--you would have let me come back +to you?" + +"Yes. I thought that." + +As he stood before her, shamed, and uncertain, and unhappy, the new +soul that had been born in her pleaded for him and assured her of his +innocence. + +"But," she said again, "I do not think it now." + +"You--you don't believe it?" + +"No. I believe in you." + +"You believe in me? After everything?" + +"After everything." + +"And you would have forgiven me that?" + +"I did forgive you. I forgave you all the time I thought it. There's +nothing that I wouldn't forgive you now. You know it." + +"I thought you might forgive me. But I never thought you'd let me come +back--after that." + +"You haven't. You haven't. You never left me. It's I who have come back +to you." + +"Nancy--" he whispered. + +"It's I who need forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me." + +"Forgive you? You?" + +"Yes, me." + +Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession. + +"I was unfaithful to you." + +"You don't know what you're saying, dear. You couldn't have been +unfaithful to me." + +"If I had been, would you have forgiven me?" + +He looked at her a long time. + +"Yes," he said simply. + +"You could have forgiven me that?" + +"I could have forgiven you anything." + +She knew it. There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity. "Well," she +said, "you have worse things to forgive me." + +"What have I to forgive?" + +"Everything. If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have +had to ask for forgiveness now." + +"Perhaps not, Nancy. But that wasn't your fault." + +"It was my fault. It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end." + +"No, no." + +"Yes, yes. Mr. Hannay knew that. He told me so." + +"When?" + +"At Scarby." + +Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart. + +"He was a brute," he said, "to tell you that." + +"He wasn't. He was kind. He knew." + +"What did he know?" + +"That I would rather think that I was bad than that you were." + +"And would you?" + +"Yes I would--now. Mr. Hannay spared me all he could. He didn't tell me +that if you had died at Scarby it would have been my fault. But it would +have been." + +He groaned. + +"Darling--you couldn't say that if you knew anything about it." + +"I know all about it." + +He shook his head. + +"Listen, Walter. You've been unfaithful to me--once, years after I gave +you cause. I've been unfaithful to you ever since I married you. And your +unfaithfulness was nothing to mine. A woman once told me that. She said +you'd only broken one of your marriage vows, and I had broken all of +them, except one. It was true." + +"Who said that to you?" + +"Never mind who. It needed saying. It was true. I sinned against the +light. I knew what you were. You were good and you loved me. You were +unhappy through loving me, and I shut my eyes to it. I've done more harm +to you than that poor girl--Maggie. You would never have gone to her if I +hadn't driven you. You loved me." + +"Yes, I loved you." + +She turned to him again; and her eyes searched his for absolution. "I +didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand." + +"No. A woman doesn't, dear. Not when she's as good as you." + +At that a sob shook her. In the passion of her abasement she had cast off +all her beautiful spiritual apparel. Now she would have laid down her +crown, her purity, at his feet. + +"I thought I was so good. And I sinned against my husband more that he +ever sinned against me." + +He took her hands and tried to draw her to him, but she broke away, and +slid to the floor and knelt there, bowing her head upon his knee. Her +hair fell, loosened, upon her shoulders, veiling her. + +He stooped and raised her. His hand smoothed back the hair that hid her +face. Her eyes were closed. + +Her drenched eyelids felt his lips upon them. They opened; and in her +eyes he saw love risen to immortality through mortal tears. She looked at +him, and she knew him as she knew her own soul. + + +The End + + + + + +By MAY SINCLAIR + +THE HELPMATE + +_The Literary Digest_ says: "The novels of May Sinclair make waste paper +of most of the fiction of a season." This new story, the first written +since "The Divine Fire," will strengthen the author's reputation. +It has been serialized in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and _The New York Sun_ +says of an early instalment: + +"Miss Sinclair's new novel, 'The Helpmate,' is attracting much attention. +It is a miniature painting of delicacy and skill, reproducing few +characters in a small space, with fine sincerity,--the invalid sister, +the man with a past, and the wife with strict convictions. The riddle is +to find which one of the women is the helpmate. In the vital situation +thus far developed the sister is leading in the race." + +As the plot develops the canvas is filled in with other characters as +finely drawn. The story grips the reader. Lovers of good literature and +of a good story will delight in its development. + + +THE DIVINE FIRE + +The story of the regeneration of a London poet and the degeneration of a +London critic. 15th printing. + + +MARY MOSS in the _Atlantic Monthly_: "Certain it is that in all +our new fiction I have found nothing worthy to compare with 'The Divine +Fire,' nothing even remotely approaching the same class." + + +AUDREY CRAVEN + +The story of a pretty little woman with the soul of a spoiled child, who +had a fatal fascination for most men. + +_Literary Digest_: "Humor is of the spontaneous sort and rings true, and +the lancet of her wit and epigram, tho keen, is never cruel.... An author +whose novels may be said to make waste paper of most of the fiction of a +season." + + +SUPERSEDED + +The story of two highly contrasted teachers in a girls' school. + +_New York Sun_: "It makes one wonder if in future years the quiet little +English woman may not be recognized as a new Jane Austen." + + +THE TYSONS + +(MR. AND MRS. NEVILL TYSON) + +_Chicago Record-Herald_: "Maintains a clinging grip upon the +mind and senses, compelling one to acknowledge the author's +genius." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HELPMATE*** + + +******* This file should be named 17867.txt or 17867.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/6/17867 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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