Part 26 (1/2)

”Do you think Mr. Charles--or his family--would be kind enough to use influence?”

”Yes, mother dear, I'll make them--if possible.” Enid had leant forward; and she shyly took her mother's hand, and gently squeezed it. ”But now I must go. I do hope I haven't increased your headache.”

”No, my dear, you have done me good.”

Enid rose, b.u.t.toned her coat, and began to pull on her grey reindeer gloves.

”Mother! My old room--is it empty, or are you using it for anything?”

”Oh, d.i.c.k uses that, dear.”

”And the dressing-room?”

”He uses that, too.”

”Would you mind--would he mind if I went in and looked round?”

”No.... Of course not.”

”Only for a peep. Then I'll come back--and say good-bye.”

But she was a long time in the other rooms; and when she returned Mrs.

Marsden saw and affected not to see that she had been crying.

The warmth of the fire after the cold of the street, or the sight of her old home after a few months in her new one, had properly thawed elegant, long-nosed Enid. She sank on her knees by the sofa, flung her arms round the neck of her mother, and kissed her again and again; and Mrs. Marsden felt what in vain she had waited for during so many years--her child's heart beating with expansive sympathy against her breast.

”Mother, how good you were--oh, how good you were to me!” And she clung and pressed and kissed as in all her life she had never done till now.

”Enid--my darling.”

When she had gone, Mrs. Marsden lay musing by the fire. It was impossible not to divine the very simple cause of this immense alteration in Enid. Already poor Enid had learnt her lesson--she knew what it was to have a rotten bad husband.

XIV

But not so bad as her own husband. No, that would be an impossibility.

She did not want to think about it; but just now her control over her thoughts had weakened, while the thoughts themselves were growing stronger. She was subject to rapid ups and downs of health, the victim of an astounding crisis of nerves, so that one hour she experienced a queer longing for muscular fatigue, and the next hour laughed and wept in full hysteria. At other times she felt so weak that she believed she might sink fainting to the ground if she attempted to go for the shortest walk.

Generally on days when Marsden was away from Mallingbridge she crept to bed at dusk. Yates used to aid her as of old, sit by the bed-side talking to her; and then leave her in the fire-glow, to watch the dancing shadows or listen to the whispering wind.

She did not wish to think; but in spite of all efforts to forget facts and to hold firmly to delusions, her old power of logical thought was remorselessly returning to her. In defiance of her enfeebled will, the past reconst.i.tuted itself, events grouped themselves in sequence; hitherto undetected connections linked up, and made the solid chain that dragged her from vague surmise to definite conclusions. Then with the full vigour of the old penetrative faculties she thought of her mistake.

He did not care for her. He had never cared for her. It was all acting.

All that she relied on was false; all that had been real was the steadfast sordid purpose sustaining him throughout his odious dissimulation.

His marriage was a brutal male prost.i.tution, in which he had sold his favours for her gold. And shame overwhelmed her as she thought of how easily she had been trapped. While he was coldly calculating, she was endowing him with every attribute of warm-blooded generosity; when her fine protective instincts made her yearn over him, longing to give him happiness, comfort, security, he was in truth playing with her as a cat plays with a wounded mouse--no hurry, no excitement, but steel-bright eyes watching, retracted claws waiting. And she remembered his studied phrases that rang so true to the ear, till too late she discovered their miserable falsity. With what art he had prepared the way for the final disclosure of his effrontery! He could not brook the sense of dependence, his manly spirit would not allow him to pose as the pensioner of a rich wife, and so on--and then, even at the last, how he waited until she had completely betrayed her secret, and he could be certain that her pride as a woman would infallibly prevent her from drawing back. Not till then, when she had taken the world into her confidence, when escape had become impossible, did he drive his bargain.

While the honeymoon was not yet over she imagined she could understand the pain that lay before her. But in these three months she had suffered more than she had conceived to be endurable by any living creature. If pain can kill, she should be dead.