The Helpmate Part 35

"I," said Anne coldly, "am not in love with him."

He frowned, and a dull flush of anger coloured the frown. "I must say, your standard is a remarkable one if it permits you to say things like that."

"I would not have said it but for what you told me yourself."

"What did I tell you?"

"That Edith cared for him."

He remembered.

"If I did tell you that, it was because I thought you cared for Edie."

"I do care for her."

"You've rather a strange way of showing it. I wonder if you realise how much she did care? What it must have meant to her when she got ill? What it meant to him? Have you the remotest conception of the infernal hards.h.i.+p of it?"

"I know it was hard."

"Forgive me; you don't know, or you wouldn't be so hard on both of them."

"It isn't I who am hard."

"Isn't it? When you're just proposing to stop Gorst's coming here?"

"It's not I that's stopping him. It's his own conduct. He is hard on himself, and he is hard on her. There's n.o.body else to blame."

"Do you mean to say you think I'm actually going to tell him not to come any more?"

"My dear, it's the least you can do for me after--"

"After what?"

"After everything."

"After letting you in for marrying me, you mean. And as I suppose poor Edie was to blame for that, it's the least _she_ can do for you to give him up. Is that it? Seeing him is about the only pleasure that's left to her, but that doesn't come into it, does it?"

She was silent.

"Well, and what am I to think of you for all this?"

"I cannot _help_ what you think of me," said she with the stress of despair.

"Well, I don't think anything, as it happens. But, if you were capable of understanding in the least what you're trying to do, I should think you a hard, obstinate, cruel woman. What I'm chiefly struck with is your extreme simplicity. I suppose I mustn't be surprised at your wanting to turn Gorst out; but how you could imagine for one moment that I would do it--No, that's beyond me."

"I can only say I shall not receive him. If he comes into the house, I shall go out of it."

"Well--" said Majendie judicially, as if she had certainly hit upon a wise solution.

"If he dines here I must dine at the Eliotts'."

"Well--and you'll like that, won't you? And I shall like having Gorst, and so will Edie, and Gorst will like seeing her, and everybody will be pleased."

Overhead Mr. Gorst burst into a dance measure, so hilarious that it seemed the very cry of his delight.

"As long as Edie goes on seeing him, he'll think it's all right."

Overhead Mr. Gorst's gay tune proclaimed that indeed he thought so. He broke off suddenly, and began another and a better one, till the spirit of levity ran riot in immortal sounds.

"So it's all right. She's a good woman. It's the only hold we've got on him."

"If all good women were to reason that way--"

"If all good women were to reason your way, what do you think would happen?"

"There would be more good men in the world."

"Would there? There would be more good men ruined by bad women. Because, don't you see, there'd be no others left for them to speak to."

"If you're thinking of his good--"

"Have you thought of hers?"

"Yes. Supposing he ends by marrying somebody else, what will she do then?--poor Edie!"

"If the somebody else is a good woman, poor Edie will fold her dear little hands, and offer up a dear little prayer of thankfulness to heaven."

Upstairs the music ceased. The prodigal's footsteps were heard crossing the room and coming to a halt by Edith's couch.

Majendie rose, placid and benignant.

"I think," said he, "it's time for you to go to bed."

CHAPTER XVI

Majendie could never be angry with any woman for more than five minutes.

And this time he understood his wife better than she knew. He had seen, as Edith had said, "everything."

But Anne was convinced that he never would see. She said to herself, "He thinks me hard, and obstinate, and cruel."

She crept into bed in misery that suggested a defeated thing. The outward eye would never have perceived that the pale woman quivering under the eider-down was inspired with an indomitable purpose, the salvation of a weak man from his weakness. To be sure, she had been worsted in her encounter by something that conveyed the illusion of superior moral force. But that there was any strength in her husband that could be described as moral Anne would not have admitted for a moment. She believed herself to be crushed, grossly, by the superior weight of moral deadness that he carried.

It was, it always had been, his placidity that caused her most despair.

But whereas, at the time of their first rupture, it had made him utterly impenetrable, she now took it simply as one more sign of his inability to understand her. She argued that he would never have remained so calm if he had realised the sincerity of her determination to repudiate Mr.