The Helpmate Part 30

He laughed. "What have I got to be firm about?"

"Not meeting her."

"What if I do meet her? I sincerely hope I shan't; but what if I do?"

Her mouth trembled; her eyes filled with tears. He sprang up and leaned over her, resting his arms on the back of her chair, bringing his face close to hers and smiling into her eyes.

"No--no--no!" She drew back her head and shrank away from him. He put out his hand and turned her face to him, gazing into her eyes, as if for the first time he saw and could fathom the sorrow and the fear in them.

"What if I do?" he repeated.

She tried to push his hand from her, but she could not.

"You stupid child," he said, "do you mean to say that you're still afraid of that?"

"It's you who have made me--"

"My sweetheart--"

"No, no. Don't touch me."

"What do you mean?" he asked gravely, still leaning over and looking down at her.

"I mean--I mean--I can't bear it!" she cried, gasping for breath under the oppression of his nearness.

He realised her repugnance, and removed himself.

"Do you mean," he said, "because of her?"

"Yes," she said, "because of her."

He laughed softly. "Dear child--she doesn't exist. She doesn't exist." He swept her out of existence with a gesture of his hand. "Not for me at any rate."

The emphasis was lost upon her. "It's all nonsense to talk in that way.

If she doesn't exist for you, you shouldn't have gone near her, you shouldn't have sat talking--to her."

"What do you suppose we were talking about?"

"I don't know. I don't want to know. I saw and heard enough."

"Look here, Anne. You wanted me to be rude to her, didn't you? I _was_ rude. I was brutal. She had to remind me that she was a woman. By heaven, I'd forgotten it. If you're always to be going back on that--"

"I'm not going back. She has come back."

"It doesn't matter. She doesn't exist. What difference does she make?"

She rose for better delivery of what she had to say.

"She makes the whole difference. It's not that I'm afraid of her. I don't think I am. I believe that you love me."

"Ah--if you believe that--" He came nearer.

"I do believe it. It's to me that it makes the difference. I must be honest with you. It's not that I'm afraid. It is--I think--that I'm disgusted."

He lowered his eyes and moved from her uneasily.

"I was horrified enough when I first knew of it, as you know. You know, too, that I forgave you, and that I forgot. That was because I didn't realise it. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't before I had seen her.

Now I have seen her, and I know."

"What do you know?" he said coldly.

"The awfulness of it."

"Do you! Do you!"

"Yes--and if you had realised it yourself--But you don't, and your not realising it is what shocks me most."

"I don't realise it?" His smile, this time, was grim. "I should think I was in a better position for realising it than you."

"You don't realise the shame, the sin of it"

"Oh, don't I?" He turned to her, "Look here, whatever I've done, it's all over. I've taken my punishment, and repented in sackcloth and ashes. But you can't go on for ever repenting. It wears you out. It seems to me that, after all this time, I might be allowed to leave off the sackcloth and brush the ashes out of my hair. I want to forget it if I can. But you are never--never--going to forget it. And you are going to make me remember it every day of my life. Is that it?"

"It is not." She could not see herself thus hard and implacable. She had vowed that there was no duty that she would omit; and it was her duty to forgive; if possible, to forget. "I am going to try to forget it, as I have forgotten it before. But it will be very hard, and you must be patient with me. You must not remind me of it more than you can help."

"When have I--?"

She was silent.

"When?" he insisted.

She shook her head and turned away. A sudden impulse roused him, and he sprang after her. He grasped her wrist as she laid her hand on the door to open it. He drew her to him. "When?" he repeated. "How? Tell me."

She paused, gazing at him. He would have kissed her, hoping thus to make his peace with her; but she broke from him.

"Ah," she cried, "you are reminding me of it now."

He opened the door, dumb with amazement, and turned from her as she went through.

CHAPTER XIV

It was a fine day, early in November, and Anne was walking alone along one of the broad flat avenues that lead from Scale into the country beyond. Made restless by her trouble, she had acquired this pedestrian habit lately, and Majendie encouraged her in it, regarding it less as a symptom than as a cure. She had flagged a little in the autumn, and he was afraid that the strain of her devotion to Edith was beginning to tell upon her health. On Sat.u.r.days and Sundays they generally walked together, and he did his best to make his companions.h.i.+p desirable. Anne, given now to much self-questioning as to their relations, owned, in an access of justice, that she enjoyed these expeditions. Whatever else she had found her husband, she had never yet found him dull. But it did not occur to her, any more than it occurred to Majendie, to consider whether she herself were brilliant.

She made a point of never refusing him her society. She had persuaded herself that she went with him for his own good. If he wanted to take long walks in the country, it was her duty as his wife to accompany him.