Part 124 (2/2)

Henry, although used to these combats, was singularly affected as he looked upon the scene, stripped as it was for the last struggle. What moved him most was the sight of Laura's little bed, set under the north window, and separated from her husband's by the long empty s.p.a.ce between, through which the winds of heaven rushed freely. It showed him what the little thing was capable of, day and night, night and day, the undying, indomitable devotion. That was the stuff a man wanted in his wife. He thought of his brother Hugh. Why on earth, if he had to marry one of them, hadn't he married _her_? He was moved too and troubled by the presence there of Tanqueray's poor little wife. Whatever view truth compelled you to take of Jane's and Tanqueray's relations, Tanqueray's wife had, from first to last, been cruelly wronged by both of them.

Tanqueray's wife was so absorbed in the fight they were making as to be apparently indifferent to her wrongs, and they judged that the legend of Jane Holland and George Tanqueray had not reached her.

It had not. And yet she knew it, she had known it all the time--that they had been together. She had known it ever since, in the innocent days before the rumour, she had heard Dr. Brodrick telling Mrs. Prothero that his sister-in-law had gone down to Chagford for three months.

Chagford was where he was always staying. And in the days of innocence Addy Ranger had let out that it was Chagford where he was now. She had given Rose his address, Post Office, Chagford. He had been there all the time when Rose had supposed him to be in Wilts.h.i.+re and was sending all his letters there.

She did not hear of Mrs. Brodrick's return until a week or two after that event; for, in the days no longer of innocence, his sister-in-law was a sore subject with the Doctor. And when Rose did hear it finally from Laura, by that time she had heard that Tanqueray was coming back too. He had written to her to say so.

That was on a Sat.u.r.day. He was not coming until Tuesday. Rose had two days in which to consider what line she meant to take.

That she meant to take a line was already clear to Rose. Perfectly clear, although her decision was arrived at through nights of misery so profound that it made most things obscure. It was clear that they could not go on as they had been doing. _He_ might (nothing seemed to matter to him), but she couldn't; and she wouldn't, not (so she put it) if it was ever so. They had been miserable.

Not that it mattered so very much whether she was miserable or no. But that was it; she had ended by making him miserable too. It took some making; for he wasn't one to feel things much; he had always gone his own way as if nothing mattered. By his beginning to feel things (as she called it) now, she measured the effect she must have had on him.

It was all because she wasn't educated proper, because she wasn't a lady. He ought to have married a lady. He ought (she could see it now) to have married some one like Mrs. Brodrick, who could understand his talk, and enter into what he did.

There was Mr. and Mrs. Prothero now. They were happy. There wasn't a thing he could say or do or think but what she understood it. Why, she'd understand, time and again, without his saying anything. That came of being educated. It came (poor Rose was driven back to it at every turn) of being a lady.

She might have known how it would be. And in a way she had known it from the first. That was why she'd been against it, and why Uncle and Aunt and her master and mistress down at Fleet had been against it too. But there--she loved him. Lady or no lady, she loved him.

As for his going away with Mrs. Brodrick, she ”looked at it sensible.”

She understood. She saw the excuses that could be made for him. She couldn't understand _her_; she couldn't find one excuse for _her_ behaviour, a married woman, leaving her husband--such a good man, and her children--her little helpless children, and going off for weeks together with a married man, let him be who he might be. Still, if it hadn't been her, it might have been somebody else, somebody much worse.

It might have been that Miss Lempriere. If _she_'d had a hold on him, _she_'d not have let him go.

For deep-bedded in Rose's obscure misery was the conviction that Jane Brodrick had let him go. Her theory of Jane's guilt had not gone much farther than the charge of deserting her little helpless children. It was as if Rose's imagination could not conceive of guilt beyond that monstrous crime. And Jane had gone back to her husband and children, after all.

If it had been Miss Lempriere she would have been bound to have stuck, she having nothing, so to speak, to go back to.

The question was, what was George coming back to? If it was to her, Rose, he must know pretty well what. He must know, she kept repeating to herself; he must know. Her line, the sensible line that she had been so long considering, was somehow to surprise and defeat his miserable foreknowledge.

By Sunday morning she had decided on her line. Nothing would turn her.

She did not intend to ask anybody's advice, nor to take it were it offered. The line itself required the co-operation and, in a measure, the consent of Aunt and Uncle; and on the practical head they were consulted. She managed that on Sunday afternoon. Then she remembered that she would have to tell Mr. and Mrs. Prothero.

It was on Sunday evening that she told them.

She told them, very shortly and simply, that she had made up her mind to separate from Tanqueray and live with her uncle.

”Uncle'll be glad to 'ave me,” she said.

She explained. ”_He_'ll think more of me if he's not with me.”

Prothero admitted that it might be likely.

”It's not,” she said, ”as if I was afraid of 'is taking up with another woman--serious.”

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