A Pair of Patient Lovers | Page 9

was so intensely in our minds, and presently I
heard her and my wife speaking of other things. The power to do this is
from some heroic quality in women's minds that we do not credit them
with; we think it their volatility, and I dare say I thought myself much
better, or at least more serious in my make, because I could not follow
them, and did not lose one of those hoarse gasps of the sufferer
overhead. Occasionally there came a stifling cry that made me jump,
inwardly if not outwardly, but those women had their drama to play,
and they played it to the end.
Miss Bentley came hospitably to the door with us, and waited there till
she thought we could not see her turn and run swiftly up-stairs.

"Why did you stay, my dear?" I groaned. "I felt as if I were personally
smothering Mrs. Bentley every moment we were there."
"I had to do it. She wished it, and, as she said, it was a relief to have us
there, though she was wishing us at the ends of the earth all the time.
But what a ghastly life!"
"Yes; and can you wonder that the poor woman doesn't want to give
her up, to lose the help and comfort she gets from her? It's a wicked
thing for that girl to think of marrying."
"What are you talking about, Basil? It's a wicked thing for her not to
think of it! She is wearing her life out, tearing it out, and she isn't doing
her mother a bit of good. Her mother would be just as well, and better,
with a good strong nurse, who could lift her this way and that, and
change her about, without feeling her heart-strings wrung at every gasp,
as that poor child must. Oh, I wish Glendenning was man enough to
make her run off with him, and get married, in spite of everything. But,
of course, that's impossible--for a clergyman! And her sacrifice began
so long ago that it's become part of her life, and she'll simply have to
keep on."
VIII.
When her attack passed off, Mrs. Bentley sent and begged my wife to
come again and see her. She went without me, while I was in town, but
she was so circumstantial in her report of her visit, when I came home,
that I never felt quite sure I had not been present. What most interested
us both was the extreme independence which the mother and daughter
showed beyond a certain point, and the daughter's great frankness in
expressing her difference of feeling. We had already had some hint of
this, the first day we met her, and we were not surprised at it now, my
wife at first hand, or I at second hand. Mrs. Bentley opened the way for
her daughter by saying that the worst of sickness was that it made one
such an affliction to others. She lived in an atmosphere of devotion, she
said, but her suffering left her so little of life that she could not help
clinging selfishly to everything that remained.

My wife perceived that this was meant for Miss Bentley, though it was
spoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of
the fact. She said: "We needn't use any circumlocution with Mrs.
March, mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say
whatever you wish, though I don't know why you should wish to say
anything. You have made your own terms with us, and we are keeping
them to the letter. What more can you ask? Do you want me to break
with Mr. Glendenning? I will do that too, if you ask it. You have got
everything but that, and you can have that at any time. But Arthur and I
are perfectly satisfied as it is, and we can wait as long as you wish us to
wait."
Her mother said: "I'm not allowed to forget that for a single hour," and
Miss Bentley said, "I never remind you of it unless you make me,
mother. You may be thinking of it all the time, but it isn't because of
anything I say."
"Or that you do?" asked Mrs. Bentley; and her daughter answered, "I
can't help existing, of course."
My wife broke off from the account she was giving me of her visit:
"You can imagine how pleasant all this was for me, Basil, and how
anxious I was to prolong my call!"
"Well," I returned, "there were compensations. It was extremely
interesting; it was life. You can't deny that, my dear."
"It was more like death. Several times I was on the point of going, but
you know when there's been a painful scene you