Part 2 (1/2)
”Who knows what'll happen three years hence?” she asked in gay tones, sharply cut off by a gasp in the throat.
”You've a cold?” he asked solicitously. He was not lacking in kindly protective instincts. Yet even his solicitude was peremptory. ”I can't have you taking any risks.”
”It's nothing,” she gasped, now almost sure that she could never go through with her task. Even in kindness he a.s.sumed a property so absolute.
The brougham drew up at their house. ”Nine-fifteen sharp to-morrow,”
Cyril told the coachman. That was no less, and no more, certain than Palestine and Damascus. He went through the hall (enlivened with prints of Lord Chancellors surviving and defunct) into his study. She followed, breathing quickly.
”I asked the Chippinstalls to dine next Wednesday. Will you send her a reminder to-morrow morning?” He began to fill his pipe. She shut the door and sat down in a chair in front of the fireplace.
There had always seemed to her something crus.h.i.+ng in this workshop of learning, logic, and ambition. To-night the atmosphere was overwhelming; she felt flattened, ground down; she caught for her breath. He had lit his pipe and now glanced at her, puzzled by her silence. ”There's nothing else on on Wednesday, is there?”
”Cyril, we're not happy, are we?”
He appeared neither aggrieved nor surprised at her sudden plunge; to her he seemed aggressively patient of the irrational.
”We have our difficulties, like other married couples, I suppose. I hope they will grow less as time goes on.”
”That means that I shan't oppose you any more?”
”Our tastes and views will grow into harmony, I hope.”
”That mine will grow into harmony with yours?”
He smiled, though grimly. Few men really mind being accused of despotism, since it savours of power. ”Is that such a terrible thing to happen to my wife?”
”We're not happy, Cyril.”
”Marriage wasn't inst.i.tuted for the sole purpose of enabling people to enjoy themselves.”
”Oh, I don't know what it was inst.i.tuted for!”
”You can look in your Prayer Book.”
Her chin rested on her hands, her white sharp elbows on her knee. The tall, strong, self-reliant man looked at her frail beauty. He was not without love, not without pity, but entirely without comprehension--nor would comprehension have meant pardon. Her implied claim clashed both with his instinct and with his convictions. The love and pity were not of a quality to sustain the shock.
”I wish you'd go and see Attlebury,” he went on. Attlebury was, as it were, the keeper of his conscience, an eminent clergyman of extreme High Church views.
”Mr. Attlebury can't prevent me from being miserable. Whenever I complain of anything, you want to send me to Mr. Attlebury!”
”I'm not ashamed of suggesting that you could find help in what he represents on earth.”
She gave a faint plaintive moan. Was heaven as well as this great world to be marshalled against her, a poor little creature asking only to be free? So it seemed.
”Or am I to gather that you have become a sceptic?” The sarcasm was heavily marked. ”Has a mind like yours the impudence to think for itself?” So she translated his words--and thereby did him no substantial injustice. If his intellect could bend the knee, was hers to be defiant?
”I had hoped,” he went on, ”that our great sorrow would have made a change in you.”
The suggestion seemed to her to be hitting below the belt. She had seen no signs of overwhelming sorrow in him.
”Why?” she asked sharply. ”It made none in you, did it?”