New Grub Street Part 41

The reproach was ign.o.ble, and he could not be surprised that Amy left the house without another word to him. Yet he resented that, as he had resented her sorrowful jest. The feeling of unmanliness in his own position tortured him into a mood of perversity. Through the day he wrote only a few lines, and on Amy's return he resolved not to speak to her. There was a sense of repose in this change of att.i.tude; he encouraged himself in the view that Amy was treating him with cruel neglect. She, surprised that her friendly questions elicited no answer, looked into his face and saw a sullen anger of which hitherto Reardon had never seemed capable. Her indignation took fire, and she left him to himself.

For a day or two he persevered in his muteness, uttering a word only when it could not be avoided. Amy was at first so resentful that she contemplated leaving him to his ill-temper and dwelling at her mother's house until he chose to recall her. But his face grew so haggard in fixed misery that compa.s.sion at length prevailed over her injured pride. Late in the evening she went to the study, and found him sitting unoccupied.

'Edwin--'

'What do you want?' he asked indifferently.

'Why are you behaving to me like this?'

'Surely it makes no difference to you how I behave? You can easily forget that I exist, and live your own life.'

'What have I done to make this change in you?'

'Is it a change?'

'You know it is.'

'How did I behave before?' he asked, glancing at her.

'Like yourself--kindly and gently.'

'If I always did so, in spite of things that might have embittered another man's temper, I think it deserved some return of kindness from you.'

'What "things" do you mean?'

'Circ.u.mstances for which neither of us is to blame.'

'I am not conscious of having failed in kindness,' said Amy, distantly.

'Then that only shows that you have forgotten your old self, and utterly changed in your feeling to me. When we first came to live here could you have imagined yourself leaving me alone for long, miserable days, just because I was suffering under misfortunes? You have shown too plainly that you don't care to give me the help even of a kind word. You get away from me as often as you can, as if to remind me that we have no longer any interests in common. Other people are your confidants; you speak of me to them as if I were purposely dragging you down into a mean condition.'

'How can you know what I say about you?'

'Isn't it true?' he asked, flas.h.i.+ng an angry glance at her.

'It is not true. Of course I have talked to mother about our difficulties; how could I help it?'

'And to other people.'

'Not in a way that you could find fault with.'

'In a way that makes me seem contemptible to them. You show them that I have made you poor and unhappy, and you are glad to have their sympathy.'

'What you mean is, that I oughtn't to see anyone. There's no other way of avoiding such a reproach as this. So long as I don't laugh and sing before people, and a.s.sure them that things couldn't be more hopeful, I shall be asking for their sympathy, and against you. I can't understand your unreasonableness.'

'I'm afraid there is very little in me that you can understand. So long as my prospects seemed bright, you could sympathise readily enough; as soon as ever they darkened, something came between us. Amy, you haven't done your duty. Your love hasn't stood the test as it should have done.

You have given me no help; besides the burden of cheerless work I have had to bear that of your growing coldness. I can't remember one instance when you have spoken to me as a wife might--a wife who was something more than a man's housekeeper.'

The pa.s.sion in his voice and the harshness of the accusation made her unable to reply.

'You said rightly,' he went on, 'that I have always been kind and gentle. I never thought I could speak to you or feel to you in any other way. But I have undergone too much, and you have deserted me. Surely it was too soon to do that. So long as I endeavoured my utmost, and loved you the same as ever, you might have remembered all you once said to me.

You might have given me help, but you haven't cared to.'

The impulses which had part in this outbreak were numerous and complex.

He felt all that he expressed, but at the same time it seemed to him that he had the choice between two ways of uttering his emotion--the tenderly appealing and the sternly reproachful: he took the latter course because it was less natural to him than the former. His desire was to impress Amy with the bitter intensity of his sufferings; pathos and loving words seemed to have lost their power upon her, but perhaps if he yielded to that other form of pa.s.sion she would be shaken out of her coldness. The stress of injured love is always tempted to speech which seems its contradiction. Reardon had the strangest mixture of pain and pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that he had ever addressed to Amy; they consoled him under the humiliating sense of his weakness, and yet he watched with dread his wife's countenance as she listened to him. He hoped to cause her pain equal to his own, for then it would be in his power at once to throw off this disguise and soothe her with every softest word his heart could suggest. That she had really ceased to love him he could not, durst not, believe; but his nature demanded frequent a.s.surance of affection. Amy had abandoned too soon the caresses of their ardent time; she was absorbed in her maternity, and thought it enough to be her husband's friend. Ashamed to make appeal directly for the tenderness she no longer offered, he accused her of utter indifference, of abandoning him and all but betraying him, that in self-defence she might show what really was in her heart.

But Amy made no movement towards him.

'How can you say that I have deserted you?' she returned, with cold indignation. 'When did I refuse to share your poverty? When did I grumble at what we have had to go through?'

'Ever since the troubles really began you have let me know what your thoughts were, even if you didn't speak them. You have never shared my lot willingly. I can't recall one word of encouragement from you, but many, many which made the struggle harder for me.'

'Then it would be better for you if I went away altogether, and left you free to do the best for yourself. If that is what you mean by all this, why not say it plainly? I won't be a burden to you. Someone will give me a home.'

'And you would leave me without regret? Your only care would be that you were still bound to me?'

'You must think of me what you like. I don't care to defend myself.'

'You won't admit, then, that I have anything to complain of? I seem to you simply in a bad temper without a cause?'

'To tell you the truth, that's just what I do think. I came here to ask what I had done that you were angry with me, and you break out furiously with all sorts of vague reproaches. You have much to endure, I know that, but it's no reason why you should turn against me. I have never neglected my duty. Is the duty all on my side? I believe there are very few wives who would be as patient as I have been.'

Reardon gazed at her for a moment, then turned away. The distance between them was greater than he had thought, and now he repented of having given way to an impulse so alien to his true feelings; anger only estranged her, whereas by speech of a different kind he might have won the caress for which he hungered.

Amy, seeing that he would say nothing more, left him to himself.

It grew late in the night. The fire had gone out, but Reardon still sat in the cold room. Thoughts of self-destruction were again haunting him, as they had done during the black months of last year. If he had lost Amy's love, and all through the mental impotence which would make it hard for him even to earn bread, why should he still live? Affection for his child had no weight with him; it was Amy's child rather than his, and he had more fear than pleasure in the prospect of Willie's growing to manhood.

He had just heard the workhouse clock strike two, when, without the warning of a footstep, the door opened. Amy came in; she wore her dressing-gown, and her hair was arranged for the night.

'Why do you stay here?' she asked.

It was not the same voice as before. He saw that her eyes were red and swollen.

'Have you been crying, Amy?'

'Never mind. Do you know what time it is?'

He went towards her.

'Why have you been crying?'

'There are many things to cry for.'

'Amy, have you any love for me still, or has poverty robbed me of it all?'

'I have never said that I didn't love you. Why do you accuse me of such things?'