The Helpmate | Page 6

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