"I don't agree with you," I said shortly, once more venting my righteous indignation on the smouldering logs in the great fire-place.
"Don't do that, Reggie," said Annabel in her most elder-sisterly tone: "you'll burn holes in the bottom of your boot, besides sending sparks all over the carpet. And I know I'm right, whether you agree with me or whether you don't. The first thing you have got to do is not to have Frank here so much. Let him go back to live with Mr. Blathwayte at the Rectory."
"I shall do nothing of the kind," I retorted angrily: "I couldn't very well send away Frank as long as you are living here! What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: and my wife's brother has as much right here as my sister."
"What utter nonsense!" exclaimed Annabel; "there is no parallel between the two cases. This is my home: I have a right to be here; but Frank is only a guest partaking of your hospitality, and therefore has no claim to stay on longer than you choose."
This was more than I could stand. So as I did not want a final rupture with my sister, I strode out of the hall, and flung myself into the library. The fact that in my inmost heart I wanted Frank out of the house made me all the more determined not to send him.
For the first time in my life I was furious with Annabel. How dared she try to come between my wife and me?—I asked myself in my rage. Yet all the time my better self whispered to me that it was not fair to accuse Annabel of trying to separate us: according to her lights she was doing her best to keep us together.
But on another score I felt that I did well to be angry. Her last remark had put my back up with a vengeance. I should have been within my rights had I allowed Annabel to leave the Manor on the occasion of my marriage—as indeed she herself had suggested: I should not have been in any way behaving shabbily to her had I adopted this suggestion: but I felt I could not do it after all the years that she and I had lived there together. But the fact that Fay and I had not the heart to turn her out in no way altered the truth that it was a favour on our part to keep her in. And she ought not to have forgotten this, I kept repeating to myself, or to have regarded our kindness as something to which she was entitled, and which—in my present fury—I considered she had abused.
It is strange how quickly a favour develops into a right. We show a kindness to some one, and the first time it is received with gratitude: the second time it is accepted as a matter of course: and the third time we are given to understand that any deviation from its accustomed rendering would be regarded as a cause of justifiable offence.
There is another problem which has always puzzled me, and which I have never been able to explain: and that is that we all behave so much better to other people than other people behave to us. It would seem as if there must be a converse to this, to set the balance right; but there isn't; or, at any rate, nobody that I ever knew has been able to find it. I have never yet met the man or the woman who, in common parlance, got as good as they gave. So I have no doubt that while I was aghast at Annabel's ingratitude to me, she was equally aghast at my ingratitude to her. Such is that queer compound which we call human nature.
And as I mused upon these mysteries my anger gradually evaporated; and when its departing mists cleared away, I tried to look at the whole matter calmly and dispassionately.
An old friend of mine used to say: "If any one says anything disagreeable to you, see what good you can get out of it. You have had the pain of it: so don't dismiss it from your mind until you have got the profit as well."
Therefore I set about seeing what profit I could derive from my sister's most unpleasant remarks.
Although she had irritated me almost beyond endurance, I knew that Annabel possessed too much sound sense for her opinion to be lightly set aside. Her words were worthy of consideration, even if consideration did not induce me to agree with them. So I considered them with as much impartiality as I could muster at the moment.
I was perfectly aware that certain kinds of men have sufficiently strong personalities to make marriage with them a profession in itself—a profession absorbing enough to occupy a wife's entire time and thoughts. But I was not that kind of man; and it was no use pretending that I was.
I hesitate before setting up my humble opinion in opposing that of Shakspere: but I cannot believe that to "assume a virtue if you have it not" is at all a wise course to pursue: for the reason that every quality has its corresponding defect, and one is so apt to assume the defect and to leave out the quality. When old women pose as young ones, they assume the follies of youth without its compensating charms: when dull men set up as wits, they indulge in the gaseousness of repartee without its accompanying sparkle. Therefore it was of no use for me to act as if I were an interesting or absorbing husband, while all the time I was only a rather dull and very devoted one. I felt it was not in me to be a profession for any lively and intelligent woman. I was only fit for a pastime—or at best a hobby.
Now if Annabel had been a man, she would have been quite different. She would have married a quiet, pliable sort of girl, and then would have moulded the girl's character, and filled the girl's thoughts, and ordered the girl's actions, until the girl's whole world would have been summed up in Annabel. And the girl would have been quite content and happy, and would have asked for nothing else. But it was out of my power to do any of these things. Again I was brought face to face with my old mistake of being the boy and letting Annabel be the girl: it seemed as if I should never outlive the consequences of that early error.
Things being as they were—that is to say, I being the quiet and uninteresting person that I was—I did not see that I was justified in taking away from Fay any legitimate source of pleasure and interest in her life which might in some way make up for my limitations and deficiencies.
So having carefully weighed Annabel's most unpalatable suggestions, I decided to take no notice of them—at any rate, for the present: but to leave my darling to go her own sweet way, unfettered by the rules and restrictions of a middle-aged husband.
Although I had made up my mind to ignore Annabel's warning as far as action went, I could not altogether ignore it in thought, and I was convinced in my own mind that she was right as to Frank. I could not close my eyes to the fact that he was using his influence over Fay—which undoubtedly was very great—to draw her away from me.
He had, not unnaturally, been jealous of me ever since his sister began to care more for me than she did for him. I think most brothers—and especially most twin-brothers—would have felt the same in the circumstances; and I, for one, did not blame him as I—in my turn—was jealous of him. But with most brothers it would have stopped there: few would have taken the awful responsibility of endeavouring to come between their married sisters and those sisters' husbands. But that was where Frank Wildacre differed from the ordinary run of mortals; that was where the elfin strain in him came in. His utter lack of any sense of responsibility, and his absolute disregard of consequences, sometimes seemed to me hardly human: just as his husky, girlish voice and his delicate complexion made it impossible to realise that he was now less of a boy than of a man, and therefore ought to think as a man, and to put away childish things. He must have known—for he was no longer a child, although he behaved as such—that a permanent estrangement between Fay and myself could only end in misery for her, and therefore, indirectly, for him. For my feelings in the matter I did not expect him to show any regard; although I had been sincerely attached to and attracted by him, I had sufficient acuteness to perceive that he had no real affection for me, or indeed for anybody except himself—unless, perhaps, for his sister; and his love for her was entirely a selfish love. I do not believe he cared an atom about her happiness, except in so far as it ministered to his own: but I should have credited him with sufficient sense to realise that Fay's marriage was, on the whole, a good thing for him as well as for her from a worldly point of view: and Frank was certainly not accustomed to look at anything from an altruistic standpoint.
Had his jealousy goaded him to oppose Fay's marriage in the first instance, I could have understood it. But it did not. It was only when the thing was afait accompliand my darling's fate was sealed that—with Puck-like perversity—he set about making her dissatisfied with it.
Herein he was—as might have been expected—the exact opposite of Annabel. Before I had asked Fay to marry me, my sister tried her utmost to dissuade me from so doing: but when once we were married, she did all in her power—even to the point of nearly quarrelling with me—to prevent us from drifting apart. But then there was nothing impish or Puck-like about Annabel.
I admit that I watched Frank's veiled antagonism to myself with increasing uneasiness. I realised the strength of the call of kinship too fully to be able to defy its influence: and as I gradually came to understand that this influence was hostile to my life's happiness, I trembled at what suffering might be in store for myself, and for Fay who was dearer to me than myself.
Although I would not have admitted it to Annabel for worlds, I could no longer shut my eyes to the fact that this passion for everything connected with the stage was gradually coming between my wife and myself: and—now that Annabel had told me of Fay's former ambition to take up acting as a profession—I was haunted by a horrible suspicion that my wife had returned to her first love, and now wished that she had chosen the stage instead of me.
Of course, when Annabel talked of Fay's passion for the stage becoming a menace to our conjugal happiness, she confined that menace to the admiration and excitement which are an inevitable accompaniment of a theatrical career. She never saw the subtler and, to my mind, the more real danger of the love of art for art's sake, which exists in the breast of the true artist. It would never have occurred to my sister to imagine the possibility of any woman's caring more for her art than she cared for her husband: such things did not occur in the Victorian days wherein Annabel was brought up. In those dark ages it not infrequently happened that a man thought more about his profession or his business than he did about his wife: but that was humbly accepted as a matter of course by the meek helpmeet of those simpler times. "She could not understand, she loved," was the typical attitude of the wives of those days: and the possibility of the masculine mind failing to understand anything was a thing undreamed of in mid-Victorian philosophy.
But the things that satisfied our grandmothers will not satisfy our wives; and the sooner we remnants of a bygone century learn that fact, the better for all concerned: I am not saying that this awakening of the Sleeping Beauty is either a good thing or a bad thing: I do not feel competent to lay down the law on such a big question: I only say that now she is awake, it is absurd to treat her as if she were still asleep. My own personal opinion is that the awakening of the sex as a whole makes for the improvement of Woman's character, but militates against her happiness, though I cherish a larger hope that it will finally conduce to her higher and truer happiness in the future. Still, even if it doesn't ever conduce to her happiness, the thing is there and has to be reckoned with. Childhood is the happiest part of life; but that is no excuse for arrested development. Woman at last has grown up, and has to be treated as a grown-up person and no longer as a child. At least that is how I look at the matter: but I really know so little about it that my opinion is neither here nor there. What I do know is that women nowadays have their interests and their professions the same as men have, and therefore it is just as likely for a woman to set art before her husband as it is for a man to set science before his wife—and, in my opinion, much more dangerous, as a man has by nature a far stronger sense of proportion than a woman has. The Victorian wife, who came second to her husband's profession, did not really suffer much; but the twentieth-century husband, who comes second to his wife's art, will probably suffer very much indeed, since a man's heart is composed of water-tight compartments, and a woman's is not.
Therefore I did not fear (as I knew Annabel did) that all this acting would end in Fay's caring for some younger man more than she cared for me—not because I had a high opinion of myself, but because I had such a high opinion of Fay: what I did fear was that all this acting would end in Fay's caring more for the thing itself than she cared for me; and I knew that in the case of a really good woman a thing is a far more dangerous rival to her husband than a person, simply because such rivalry is without sin.
The more I thought about Annabel's hint, and the more firmly I decided to take no notice of it, the deeper grew my conviction that my sister was right, though not quite in the way that she thought she was: and I gradually came to the conclusion that it was the love of acting in itself—and not any excitement incidentally connected with it—that was coming between myself and Fay. Moreover, behind this depressing conviction there lurked a horrible and as yet unformulated fear that even yet Fay might fulfil her original intention, and take to the stage as a profession.
But on the other hand it went to my heart to contemplate the mere possibility of casting the slightest cloud on my darling's present happiness. How could I injure the thing that I so passionately loved? Surrounded by the youthful, not to say rowdy, atmosphere of Frank and the Loxleys, Fay bubbled over with jest and jollity, and was once more the high-spirited, laughter-loving fairy that she had been when I saw her first. It might be better for her in the long run, and it certainly would be much better for me, if this new and absorbing interest were nipped in the bud. Nevertheless I felt it was not in me to nip it as long as it made my darling so light of heart.
Annabel's other suggestion I put away from me at once without even playing with it. I knew it was out of the question for me to suggest that Fay's brother should cease to make his home at the Manor as long as my sister lived there. Such a course was more than repugnant to me—it was impossible. But that did not prevent me from fearing the effect of Frank's influence over Fay, nor from feeling the pain of his sudden disaffection towards myself. We had got on so well together at first—he and Fay and I; so well that I had almost persuaded myself that at heart I was as young as they were. But now he had weighed me in the balance of youth and had found me wanting: and my soul shivered with dread lest Fay should do the same. I was used to having Tekel written over my name: custom had gradually dulled the pain of this superscription. But the hurt, which had been lulled by habit, awoke into full vigour when Frank's boyish hand traced the usual word: and I felt that when Fay wrote it too, my heart would break.
When Frank returned to Oxford and the Loxleys to town, there followed a very quiet time at Restham Manor. I had looked forward to this quiet time as a schoolboy looks forward to the holidays, thinking at last I should have Fay to myself and could woo and win her back to me. But my hopes were doomed to disappointment. My darling seemed just as far from me as ever, only instead of being gay and laughter-loving she was quiet and depressed.
Annabel and I did all in our power to cheer her, but in vain. It was obvious that she was pining for society of her own age, and feeling the reaction after the gaiety of the Christmas vacation.
Then my sister came to the rescue with one of her sensible suggestions.
Easter fell early that year; so early that Annabel decided it was impossible to elude the East wind altogether, and yet to be at home in time to prevent Blathwayte from succumbing to the temptations of Paschal ritual: therefore—since in her sisterly eyes my chest was of more importance than Arthur's soul—she suggested that she and Fay and I should go to the South of France as soon as the East wind was due, and remain there until after Easter. By this means (though this idea was understood rather than expressed) not only should I be screened from the wind that stirred the Vikings' blood, and Fay be spared the dulness of a Restham Lent, but we should also be away during Frank's next vacation, and so be beyond the sphere of his influence for a longish period.
"Annabel has got such a splendid idea, darling," I said to my wife as she was sitting listlessly in the library one morning, glancing indifferently over the newspapers whilst I smoked.
"Has she?" Fay's irresponsive mood had become almost chronic by this time.
"Wouldn't you like to know what it is?" I continued, valiantly trying to cure her depression by not noticing it.
"Not particularly. I'm not an inquisitive person, you know."
This was decidedly crushing, but I persevered: "But it concerns you, sweetheart."
"Does it?"
As Fay still did not ask what the idea was, I thought I had better volunteer the information. "She thinks you look a little pale and tired and out-of-sorts, and that a change would do you good," I began.
"I am quite all right, thank you. I don't require any doing good at all—in fact, I'm not taking any at present. And as for being pale, the same Providence that painted Annabel's cheeks pink painted mine white, and so we must both stick to the colour ordained for us."
It was uphill work, but I struggled on. I wouldn't for the world have let Fay see how much she was hurting me: it would have pained her tender heart to know she was giving pain; and as long as she could be spared suffering, I was ready to take her share as well as my own. "But the spring is a trying time of the year for everybody," I feebly urged.
"I thought the spring in England was considered such a top-hole sort of affair: one of the seven wonders of the world. The poets simply spread themselves over it."
"Well, darling, so it is in a way: but I think when the poets spread themselves they refer to the later spring, and not to February and March. Annabel always trembles before the East wind then, as you know."
"But nobody could accuse Annabel of being a poet."
This was undeniable, but it didn't help on the conversation. So I made a fresh start. "She may not be a poet, but she is a very sensible woman, and very devoted to you, sweetheart; and she thinks that you are looking listless and tired and in need of a change. So she suggests that she and I should take you to the South of France for Lent and Easter." I was determined to give my sister her full share of credit in this matter; all the more so that I suffered some compunction for my summary treatment of her at Christmas.
Fay's pretty mouth began to pout. "Not for Easter, Reggie; I couldn't possibly go away for Easter. Frank and I and the Loxleys are getting up a play here for Easter week, to be performed in the village hall."
"I knew nothing of that. You never told me anything about it," I said in some surprise.
"Why should I? You don't care a bit about theatricals, Reggie, or show the slightest interest in them."
"Yes, I do. I am interested in anything that interests my wife, as every good husband should be."
"Oh, Reggie, don't talk flapdoodle to me! It is ridiculous to think you feel a thing simply because you think you ought to feel it. You assume that because you ought to be interested in what interests me, you are interested in it: but you really aren't in the least. I don't say that it wouldn't be nice if we were both interested in the same things. But if we aren't, it doesn't make it any nicer to pretend that we are."
I felt as if the solid earth were slipping away from beneath my feet. With the freedom of utterance vouchsafed to the rising generation, Fay was shouting upon the house-tops the things which Annabel only whispered to me in my private sanctum, and which I never breathed to a living soul.
"You and Annabel are always pretending that things are quite different from what they are," Fay went on; "and shutting your eyes to everything you don't want to see. Frank and I are fed up with it."
At this I uttered a protest. "No, no, Fay, you and Frank are mistaken there. Annabel is a most straightforward person, and I am sure I try to be. It isn't fair to say that we pretend."
"Oh, I don't mean that you swank exactly: you take in yourselves more than you take in anybody else. But, as Frank says, you cook up everything and flavour it to taste, till there's nothing of the original left. It's much better to face facts as they are, and try to make the best of them, than to invent a heap of imaginary circumstances to fit in with your own prejudices. You and Annabel live in painted scenery—not in a real landscape: but I'll do you the justice to admit that you believe the painted slips are real trees, and that the lake in the distance is real water. Frank says you do. But when the time comes for you to climb them and wash in it, you'll find your mistake."
I was beginning to find it already, and I felt sick with misery. I had tried so hard to be a good husband to my darling, and to make her as happy as she had made me: but it seemed that I was foredoomed to fail in that as in everything else.
By this time Fay had risen from her chair and was standing with her back to the fire. She looked more like a daring and defiant boy than a dutiful and devoted wife. Her resemblance to Frank just then was very marked; more so than I altogether liked, for although even now I could not help being fond of my brother-in-law, I by no means either admired or approved of him. I held out my arms to my wife, but she eluded me with a boyish gesture.
"Now, Reggie, don't begin to be spoony, for I'm not in the mood for it. You've got hold of a ridiculous masculine notion that kisses make up to a woman for anything: but they don't. But because you think they ought to, you imagine that they do; which is you all over! As Frank says, you take all your thoughts and feelings, while they are in a liquid stage, and pour them into moulds, like jellies and blancmanges: and then your persuade yourself that they grew of themselves into those stiff and artificial shapes. And now you are trying to do the same with mine, and I simply won't have it. No mental and spiritual jellies and blancmanges for me!"
I felt that I could not cope with Fay in this new mood: she was beyond me: so I just let her have her say.
"You and Annabel have concocted a scheme," she went on, "that it is correct for a girl of nineteen to enjoy foreign travel, and improving to her mind to see strange countries: and that, therefore, the South of France must be the one thing that I yearn for. But as a matter of fact, I don't yearn for it at all: it would bore me to death, and I'm not going there. Why should I do things that I hate, because you and Annabel have decided that I ought to enjoy them, and therefore that I do? In the same way Annabel has decided that the East wind ought to give you a cold on your chest, though as a matter of fact it never does: but you don't dare to face it, for fear of offending Annabel by not catching cold when she expected you to."
I had believed that it was Annabel alone who was fussy about the East wind, and that I was laughing at her from my superior height: but now I learned my mistake.
"What I do enjoy," continued my angry darling, "is acting with Frank and the Loxleys: and I mean to do it, too. And if you and Annabel want to go to your fusty old South of France for Easter, go: but leave me at home with Frank, who will be back by then." And she tossed her curly head and dashed out of the room.
For a few seconds I sat absolutely stunned by this unexpected outburst: and then I stretched out my arms on the table in front of me, and buried my head in them, so as to shut out the sight and the sound of everything: for I felt that my world was tumbling down about my ears.
Bitterly hurt as I was, I could yet look at the matter from Fay's point of view. Annabel and I were dull old fogies, and the life that I had offered to my darling was not half full enough to satisfy her. In spite of all my struggles to adopt modern ideas, I was evidently still wrapped in the toils of the Victorian tradition that the warming of her husband's slippers is an occupation noble enough to satisfy the aspirations of any woman's soul. In my heart I had smiled at Annabel's antiquated ideas: but in Fay's young eyes my ideas were as antiquated as Annabel's.
Yet I would have given everything—even life itself—to make my darling happy: and therein lay the core of the tragedy. The good that I would do, I could not: I was too old.
I had done my best, and I had failed. What, then, was there left to live for?
I was so swallowed up in this engulfing wave of sick misery that I did not hear the door open or any one enter the room. But I was roused from the stupor of despair into which I had fallen by feeling a pair of soft arms clinging round my neck, and a soft cheek pressed against my own; whilst the voice that made the music of my life said in a trembling whisper: "I'm so awfully sorry, Reggie, for being such a beast. Do forgive me, and I'll never be such a brute again."
So I was raised by a touch from the Slough of Despair to the Summit of the Delectable Mountains.
It goes without saying that I forgave my darling, for the good reason that I had nothing to forgive. That part of the business was easy enough. It also goes without saying that Fay got her own way about the proposed trip to the South of France: but that part of the business was by no means easy.
Annabel was greatly surprised when I broke it to her that Fay did not wish to go abroad. But she was more than surprised, she was indignant, when she discovered that I intended to let my wife do as she pleased in the matter. If Fay did not want to go to France, to France she should not go: that I said and that I stuck to.
But the sticking was hard work.
I had always known that Annabel was obstinate: but until that unhappy spring I had no idea how colossally obstinate she could be. Nothing that I said had the slightest effect upon her. She merely waited until I had finished speaking, and then said her own say over again, as if I had never spoken. Fay was quite right. If Annabel thought that a person ought to want a thing, she firmly believed that, therefore, they did want it: and nothing that the person or that any other person could urge to the contrary in any way shook her in this belief. I suppose I was like my sister in this respect. Fay said I was, and so I must have been. But I am sure that I made every effort to struggle against this narrow-mindedness, and I am equally sure that Annabel made no such effort at all. On the contrary, she gloried in it.
"It is nonsense to say that young people don't enjoy being taken abroad, Reggie," she declared over and over again: "absolute nonsense. It is only natural that the young should enjoy variety of place and scene."
"It may be natural, but it isn't true in this particular instance," I vainly argued: "I have told you till I'm sick of telling you that Fay doesn't want to go abroad just now: and if she doesn't want to go, she shan't go."
"I am sure you are making a mistake, Reggie, and that you will live to regret it."
"I have no doubt that I am. As a matter of fact I am always making mistakes and living to regret them. But that won't hinder me from making this one mistake more."
"She would enjoy it when once she got there: I know she would. I used to love travelling on the Continent when I was a girl."
"I dare say you did, but that has nothing to do with it. You and Fay are absolutely different people."
"Of course we are now, because I am so much older than she is: but when we were the same age, I expect Fay was very similar to me." And then I had it all over again about the normal desire of the young for variety of place and scene. I recognised the futility of argument. If Annabel believed that at any time or at any age she and Fay bore the slightest resemblance to one another, she could believe anything that she wished to believe: and she did.
Although my sister never shook me for a moment in my determination that Fay should have her own way, she never for a moment ceased trying to shake me; and I found it a most fatiguing process. Of late years we have heard much talk about "wars of attrition": that is the kind of war in which Annabel would have excelled.
There is a somewhat obscure passage in the Epistle of St. Jude about the Archangel Michael contending with the devil for the body of Moses. I don't in the least know what it means, but I know exactly what it felt like: and it felt like something very unpleasant indeed.
I suggested—and not altogether from unselfish motives—that Annabel should repair to sunnier climes alone: but she stoutly refused to leave me while the East wind was in the air. She seemed to think that with her at my side I could defy my (so-called) enemy more successfully than if I tackled him alone. I endeavoured to point out to her that, according to her ideas, at any rate, my vulnerable part was not my side—my heel of Achilles, so to speak, was situated in my chest, and that, therefore, a silk muffler would be a surer defence than a score of sisters. But she still held to her own opinion (as it was her nature to do) that by some indefinable means her bodily presence prevented the inclement breeze from visiting my chest too roughly: and with the best intentions and the worst results, she absolutely declined to go abroad unless Fay and I accompanied her.
But the tiresomeness of Annabel at this time was more than compensated for by the adorableness of Fay. Our little set-to in the smoking-room turned out to be one of those blessed fallings-out that all the more endear: and we had a heavenly time together, unclouded by either the presence of Frank or the persistence of Annabel. At any rate, for the time being we were all-in-all to each other. Tennyson remarked that "Sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things": but I must venture to disagree with him, as I once ventured to disagree with Shakspere. The memory of past happiness is a possession of which Time and Circumstance are powerless to rob one: at least I found it so in the dark days to come, when I lived over and over again in memory those happy weeks at Restham, after Fay and I quarrelled and made it up again, and before Frank came back.
Then a fresh storm broke. Annabel found out about the play which was being prepared for Easter week, and made herself extremely unpleasant over it. I did all in my power to smooth things over between her and Fay, but with little success. With all my affection for my sister and all my adoration of my wife, I cannot pretend that Fay was altogether easy and adaptable when once her back was up; whilst Annabel in such circumstances was absolutely impossible.
Therefore at this particular time life passed but roughly with me, as it did with the poet Cowper. But still rougher times were in store.
Frank's return complicated matters still further. He came back to Restham having left the dons and tutors of his college in a state of extreme dissatisfaction with him, on account of the things he did and the things he left undone. Naturally he took Fay's part—as indeed I did: but he made no effort to assist me in my endeavour to placate Annabel as far as possible without interfering with the theatrical scheme.
I do not wish to pretend to miseries to which I have no title: but I cannot help feeling that in this conflict between the twins and Annabel, it was I who suffered most. Subsequent history has taught us that in a war between two Powers the chief brunt falls upon the neutral states. Certainly it was so in my case. As poor Belgium has long been the cock-pit of Europe, so I became the cock-pit of Restham. A most unenviable position for either nations or individuals!
I was never alone for a minute with Annabel without her beginning all over again about the pernicious influence of amateur theatricals—as opposed to the beneficent effect of foreign travel—upon the rising generation: I was never alone for a minute with Frank without his rubbing into me the various difficulties which my sister raised with regard to the impending performance in the village hall: and—which was worst of all—I was never alone with Fay without knocking my head and bruising my heart against an impalpable barrier which had suddenly been raised up between us; for the building of which barrier I blamed Frank.
"You are behaving very foolishly, Reggie, and you will live to regret it," Annabel said, for about the two hundredth time: "I can't understand why you don't see the danger, as I see it."
I did see it: that was what made me so profoundly wretched: but I did not see how it was to be averted by any act of mine.
"I should simply put my foot down upon the whole thing, if I were you," she nagged on.
"The putting down of one's foot is not such a simple process as it used to be," I retorted: "or else my feet are not of the putting down sort."
"Papa could always put his foot down fast enough when he wanted to," argued Annabel.
"I know he could: but, as I have just told you, I haven't inherited his particular make of feet."
Annabel went on as if I had not spoken. "He always put his foot down when I was Fay's age, if I suggested doing anything that he didn't approve of."
"But you were his daughter and Fay is my wife. That makes all the difference."
"It didn't make any difference to him. He put his foot down just as much in dealing with poor Mamma as in dealing with me."
"I know he did. And she died of it."
Annabel looked surprised at the bitterness of my retort: but she would have looked more surprised still if she had seen the greater bitterness of heart which prompted it. I was surprised myself at the sudden rush of anger which flooded my soul at the memory of how my gentle mother had gradually faded away under the pressure of my father's kind, but dominating, heel. I had scarcely formulated it even in thought—I had certainly never put it into words before—but my subconscious mind must always have rebelled against the knowledge that my mother had really died of my father's strong will. That was what actually killed her, whatever the doctor's certificate might say: and I had always known it, though I did not know that I knew it until that moment.
It is strange how the dark subterranean rivers of knowledge and memory, which flow fathoms below the realm of conscious existence, now and again rise to the surface, as if upheaved by some mighty volcanic force of the spiritual world; and we suddenly know that we have always known something of which until that moment we had not the slightest idea. And we know more than this. We see how that undreamed of knowledge has moulded our minds and formed our characters independently of our conscious selves, and how in those dark, subterranean depths are laid the foundations of the temples, which it is our life-work to build and to make meet for the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
Thus suddenly I understood that it was owing to a great extent to my unconscious knowledge of my father's well-meant tyranny towards my mother, that I was what I was: a cowardly rebel, chafing under Annabel's sway even while I submitted to it—a weakly, indulgent husband, who would sooner relinquish his lawful authority altogether than enforce it.
I recalled my wandering thoughts to find my sister gazing at me in perplexity mingled with reproach.
"Really, Reggie, I don't know what you are coming to! I consider it shocking to speak of dear Papa in that way. I am sure he never controlled poor Mamma's actions except for her own good."
"Exactly: and that was what killed her. To be constantly controlled for her own good, is enough to crush the life out of any sensitive and high-spirited woman."
"But Mamma wasn't at all high-spirited," Annabel objected.
"Not when we knew her. But I dare say she was before Father began that foot exercise that you consider so desirable. Understand once for all, Annabel, that no power on earth will ever induce me to treat my wife as my father treated his."
Annabel looked still more shocked. "Then I think it is very undutiful of you; very undutiful indeed! And especially after Papa earned a baronetcy for you, and left you such an ample provision for keeping it up. And that reminds me what a pity it is that Fay doesn't seem likely to have any children at present. It would save all this dreadful theatrical fuss and trouble if she had. I always think a baby is such a suitable diversion for a young married woman, besides being so nice to have some one to carry on the title."
I felt that Annabel was becoming intolerable, so I bolted out of the drawing-room, banging the door behind me. She had rather affected the drawing-room of late in preference to the great hall, as Fay and Frank usually occupied the latter.
Even now I can hardly bear to recall the happenings of that most miserable springtime, so I will retail them as briefly as possible.
The more Annabel opposed Fay's having her own way, the more determined was I that Fay should have it; although—to confess the truth—I disliked that way, and feared its consequences, considerably more than my sister did. The memory of my dear mother's submission upheld me. I felt I had far sooner Fay despised my weakness than died of my wilfulness—even though that wilfulness were exercised solely for what Annabel and my father would have called "her own good."
The Loxleys came down like a wolf on the fold, and the Manor was once again the scene of revelry by night, and a noisy bear-garden by day. I hated it all inexpressibly; but I fought for it as I would have fought for my life. Ever since that horrible time I have cherished the deepest pity for people who feel bound by a real (or mistaken) sense of duty to do battle for that which at the bottom of their hearts they hate. To them there is only one thing worse than defeat—and that is victory.
Only once did I venture on a word of remonstrance with my darling.
"Sweetheart," I said one day, when she had rushed into my library for some writing paper wherewith to supply the epistolary needs of the Loxley family: "I know how you are enjoying all this affair, and I wouldn't for worlds interfere with your pleasure: but don't you think that after this Play is over, you might rest from theatricals for a time?"
The pretty scarlet mouth at once grew mutinous. "Oh, Reggie, don't be a tiresome kill-joy!"
"I'm trying my best not to be," I answered meekly: "I'm not killing this joy: I'm letting it live out all its allotted days. I'm only suggesting that it shouldn't have a successor—at any rate, for the present."
Fay tossed her curly head and stamped her foot. I could read Frank's influence in every insubordinate line of her. "I think it is very horrid of you to be so dreadfully bossy, and not to let Frank and me do as we like!"
"But I do let you do as you like, my own. I didn't urge you to go abroad when you said you didn't want to go; and I have never interfered with your theatrical performances so far. You can't say I have."
But she did say it. "Yes, you have. You have looked as if you disapproved and have been terribly wet-blankety at times, and Annabel has been simply vile. Frank has noticed it too."
"I am not Annabel, nor responsible for Annabel. Heaven forbid! I can't help my looks—nobody can, or most people would—and if I look dull and what you call wet-blankety, it isn't my fault but my misfortune. And I really do try to see things from your point of view, darling: I do indeed: but I can't help my age—again, nobody can, or most people would."
Fay softened a little. She even went the length of sitting down on my knee as I sat by the fire, and twisting her fingers in my front hair. "You really aren't so bad after all—considering everything," she graciously admitted.
It seemed to me, in my masculine folly, an auspicious moment for presenting a petition to my sovereign. "If I promise to be as nice as I know how for this particular Play, and never so much as show a corner of a wet blanket, won't you give up theatricals for a bit, and turn your attention to other things? It is a pity to let anything absorb you to the exclusion of everything else." The memory of my late father's foot still constrained me to supplicate where I knew I had the right to command.
"But you like me to enjoy myself, Reggie?"
"More than I like anything in the world."
"Then why interfere at all in what gives me such a ripping time?"
Then the devil entered into me under cover of my own cowardice. I couldn't bear Fay to think that it was I who was inimical to her pleasure. "Well, sweetheart, it isn't I altogether: I adore you so that if I had my own way I should give you everything that you asked for, and let you do whatever you liked. But Annabel is a woman of the world, and old enough to be your mother, and she sees that this continual theatrical excitement is not altogether good for a young girl. It hurts me to refuse you anything far worse than it hurts you: but while you are so young I cannot indulge you and myself to the extent of letting you do things that may work you lasting harm."
I had spoken to my own undoing. Fay sprang to her feet at once like an angry boy. "So Annabel disapproves of my acting, does she? Then you can tell her that I jolly well mean to go on with it! As Frank says, she and you together are choking the life and spirit out of me, and making an old woman of me before my time. And I won't stand it—I won't!"
I struggled vainly to retrieve my position; but it was too late. "It isn't so much that Annabel disapproves, darling," I lied valiantly, "but that she thinks so much excitement is bad for you."
"What rot!" retorted Fay, looking more Frank-like than ever: "I never heard such a lot of footling flapdoodle as you and Annabel concoct when you set fuzzling together—never in all my life! I've simply no use for you, Reggie, when you play the giddy old maid like this! I shall go and talk to Frank, who has got more sense than you and Annabel put together!" Wherewith she bounced out of the room, and left me lamenting over my egregious folly in having introduced Annabel into the conversation at all, especially as I did it with the unworthy motive of diverting Fay's anger from myself.
All that Eastertide stands out in my memory as a garish and lurid nightmare. I cannot recall the details of the Play, but I remember that it was considered a great success, and that Fay and Frank fairly surpassed themselves in the dance that they had prepared for the occasion. When it was over, Fay announced her intention of returning with Frank and the Loxleys to town, and staying a few days with the latter in order to attend a few pieces which were running at the London theatres.
I did not oppose her: I knew it would do no good. She refused to listen to argument, and nothing would induce me to put my foot down as my father had done with such grim success before me. But I looked forward to her return from the Loxleys, when Frank would have gone back to Oxford, and when the summer and I would have my darling to ourselves, and everything would come right again. Annabel had announced her intention of leaving Restham for a time to visit the Macdonalds in Scotland: and I was sure that when there was nobody to come between us, Fay and I would once more be all in all to each other as we had been before.
I did not trouble her with any explanations then: I felt it was not the occasion for them: I saved them all up for the happy time coming when I should have my darling to myself. And during the few days that she was at the Loxleys' I was busy devising and arranging little treats which I knew she would enjoy when once Annabel's back was turned, and we two were like a couple of children out of school.
On the fifth day after Fay's departure, I came down to breakfast in better spirits than usual. It was a lovely April morning, and the spirit of the spring seemed to have got into my blood and to send it coursing through my veins more quickly than usual—that spirit of hope which always promises more than it can perform. I felt sure that there was a good time coming for Fay and me, after we had packed Annabel safely off to Scotland, and that our slight falling-out would again prove itself to be of that blessed sort which all the more endears.
My cheerfulness was further increased by the sight of a letter from Fay lying on the breakfast-table. She had only favoured me with hurried post-cards so far since she left home; but this was a letter, and her letters always gave me pleasure. Moreover, I felt this was going to be an extra pleasant one, as it would doubtless herald her return home. So I opened it with all the joy of anticipation, and this is what I read—
"My DEAR REGGIE,
"It is no good going on as we are doing: it is horrid for you and horrid for me. Annabel is quite right in saying that we aren't at all suited to one another; and I am sure that you will be much happier alone with her, without Frank and me to bother you and upset all your little fussy ways. So we have decided to leave England for good, and go back to live with Aunt Gertrude: and we shall both go on the stage and earn our living that way, though there is no necessity for us to do so, as we have got some money of our own, and Uncle Sherard and Aunt Gertrude have plenty and will be only too pleased to have Frank and me to live with them again. But we shall still go on the stage because we adore it so, and love acting and dancing so much. We always intended to do it, but falling in love with you changed everything and upset my plans.
"Please don't try to stop us, because you can't. Frank arranged everything beforehand, and before you get this letter we shall have sailed for Melbourne. I shan't write to you again, because the sooner you forget me the better. I hope you and Annabel will be very happy together, just as you were before Frank and I came to Restham. And I am sure you will be, as you have always loved her more than you have loved me.
"Good-bye."From your loving wife,"FAY."
I cannot remember what happened immediately after Fay's letter shattered my life at one blow. I only know that Annabel found me lying unconscious on the dining-room floor when she came down to breakfast, and that I then had a severe attack of brain-fever, which very nearly proved fatal. But Annabel and Arthur and Ponty were all very good to me, and—with the aid of two trained nurses—brought me back, sorely against my will, into that spoiled life which I had hoped I had done with for ever.
As usual, I was foredoomed to failure. I could not even die when I wanted to. In the words of the unhappy Napoleonic Prince, called familiarly "Prince Plon-Plon," I acknowledged my crowning defeat: "I could succeed in nothing—not even in dying."
Fay's desertion had wounded me past healing. It was a catastrophe so unlooked for, so appalling, that words were useless either to describe or to believe it. The worst had happened. I had been weighed in her balance, been found wanting, and cast aside as worthless: therefore there would be nothing worth living for ever any more.
Yet I had to live. That was the crowning wretchedness. If I could only have hidden my misery in the grave and have done with it—I, who was a mere cumberer of the ground, and worse than a cumberer! But I could not. My hateful existence still dragged on. Even the fig-tree which bore no fruit was commanded by Divine Mercy to wither away: but I was not granted even this much grace: I was cursed to live on, with Fay'sTekelbranded on my brow. It was part of my punishment. Like Cain, I learned that there is a heavier penalty than death: and that is life. And, like him, I sometimes felt that my punishment was greater than I could bear.
As my body grew stronger my spirit was gradually roused from despondency to defiance. What had I done that such an unspeakable retribution should be meted out to me? I began to feel that my punishment was not only greater than I could bear, but greater than I deserved. True, I had been weak and tactless and over-indulgent: but was that enough to merit a life-sentence? For the first time in my life I ceased to submit, but stood up like Job and challenged the Lord to answer me out of the whirlwind, even though before Him I was as dust and ashes. But I was not as dust and ashes before Fay and Frank; yet they had treated me as if I were: and my heart was hot within me as I mused upon their behaviour towards me.
At first I had been utterly crushed and prostrate: but as I regained my health I became angry and bitter. All that had formerly been sweet in my nature turned to gall, and I longed to curse God and die.
The hidden spirit of rebellion which I had unconsciously cherished for forty-three years, and which I had originally inherited from my mother, suddenly sprang into life, thereby changing my whole nature. I was no longer the weak and amiable dilettante concealing a real tenderness of heart under an assumed cloak of good-humoured cynicism: I was a fierce and bitter Ishmael, driven out into the wilderness by human treachery, and at war with God and man.
I hated Frank as vehemently as I still loved Fay. But I could forgive neither of them. My anger was hot against them both.
I sternly refused to write to my wife, or to have any direct dealings with her. I instructed Arthur to pay her an allowance of a thousand a year, in addition to her own income, and to tell her from me that I accepted her decision, and intended to abide by it.
"I will offer her the thousand per annum as you wish it, old boy," said Blathwayte, "although I know her aunt and uncle have heaps of money and nobody to give it to but Fay and Frank: but I am certain that in the circumstances Fay will refuse it."
I laughed bitterly: "Probably; but Frank and 'Aunt Gertrude' won't, if I know anything about them: and Fay will be over-persuaded by them."
And, as further events proved, I was right.
I am not justifying my conduct and feelings at this ghastly time: I am only recording them, extenuating nothing and setting down naught in malice. I had done once for all with what Fay called "flapdoodle"—that bane of the generation to which Annabel and I belonged. Thenceforth I made up my mind to be what I was, and not what an artificially trained conscience thought that I ought to be.
The characters of the nineteenth century were rather like the gardens of the eighteenth. Their lines were formal, their trees cut into unnatural shapes, and their fruit carefully trained over stiff espaliers. But Fay and Frank taught me to deal with my character, as Annabel had already learned to deal with her garden: I swept away the formal beds, flung the iron espaliers over the wall, and let the trees grow according to their own will. That the result, as far as I was concerned, was not ornamental, I admit: and if the former garden of my soul had been transformed into a waste and horrible place where only thorns and thistles and deadly nightshade grew, surely the responsibility rested with my wife and her brother rather than with me! At least so it appeared to me then.
In time I learned from Blathwayte that Fay and Frank had arrived safely in Melbourne, and were settled in the house of the Sherards, who were only too delighted to have their niece and nephew with them once more: and that my wife and her brother were beginning at once to take up the stage as their profession, Fay acting under her maiden name.
Although Annabel did not say "I told you so" in so many words, the sentiment exuded from her every pore. And, truth to tell, she had told me so. There was no getting away from that fact.
She and Arthur were kind enough to me in their respective ways, but I had no longer any use for kindness. There was nothing now that anybody could do to relieve the utter blankness of my misery.
Though I was bitterly angry with Fay—though I found it impossible to excuse or condone her cruel behaviour towards me, her husband—I nevertheless loved and longed for her with consuming and increasing force. "Let no man dream but that I loved her still": therein lay the bitterest sting of my agony. The more I loved her the more impossible I found it to forgive her: had I cared for her less, I might have been less implacable. That may not be a symptom of ideal love, but anyway it was a symptom of mine.
But if I found it impossible to forgive Fay, I found it still further out of my power to forgive Frank. That Annabel had had her finger in the pie I could not deny: she was by no means free from blame with regard to what had happened: but the chief instigator of the tragedy was Frank; of that I had no manner of doubt whatever. Without his baneful influence Fay would never have dreamed of running away from me: without his practical assistance, she never could have accomplished it.
I sometimes wondered whether Annabel reproached herself too severely for having, by her well-meant interference, made such havoc of my life: had I spoiled hers, as she had spoiled mine, I felt I should have eaten my heart out with unavailing remorse. But one day this doubt was set for ever at rest by her saying to me—
"Do you know, Reggie dear, I am sometimes inclined to blame myself for not having interfered with Fay more than I did, and for letting her have so much of her own way. After all, she was young, and I knew so much better about everything than she did."
After that remark, anxiety about Annabel's conscience no longer troubled me.
She and Arthur were whole-heartedly on my side in this hideous separation between my wife and me. Naturally they did not say much to me in condemnation of Fay: I could neither have permitted nor endured it: but I knew they were feeling it in my presence and expressing it in each other's; and they put no curb upon their expressions of indignation against Frank.
My old nurse, however, thought differently. To my surprise—though by this time I ought not to have been surprised at any vagary of Ponty's—the person she blamed in the whole affair was myself: and, what is more, she did not hesitate to say so. I felt that she was unjust—cruelly unjust—and all the more so that she had been so indulgent to me all through my childhood: but what I thought of her had no effect upon Ponty, any more than it had when I was a little boy.
"You've yourself to thank for the whole terrible business, Master Reggie," she said to me after my restoration to what my friends and doctors described as "health." She was far too good a nurse to utter unwelcome words into ears that she did not consider strong enough to receive them. To the needs of a sick soul neither she, nor anybody else, paid any heed. "I knew there'd be trouble as soon as you began that 'Oranges and Lemons' nonsense of having Miss Annabel and Mr. Frank to live with you; and I said so, but you would have your own way, you having a spice of obstinacy in your character as well as Miss Annabel. You weren't your poor Papa's son for nothing."
"I don't call doing what you think will make other people happy exactly obstinacy, Ponty," I pleaded.
"Call it what you like, Master Reggie, but that's what it is. Folks always find pretty pet names for their own particular faults. There was a man at Poppenhall who prided himself upon what he called his firmness, and impulsiveness, and economy: those were the pet names he used: and yet all the village knew that he was nothing but an obstinate, ill-tempered old miser."
"But I thought I was doing right," I said. It was strange that Ponty was the only person against whom I had no feeling of bitterness, and in whose presence I felt less wretched than anywhere else. This might have been because she had been associated with peace and comfort as long as I could remember: but I think the real reason was that she was the only person who blamed me and not Fay.
"And your Papa thought he was doing right when he arranged your poor Mamma's whole time for her, and never let her have a will or a way of her own. She didn't run away: she hadn't the spirit for it, poor thing!—and besides wives didn't run away in those days as they do now. But I saw what she didn't think anybody saw; and I watched the life die out of her like it does out of a fire that's got the sun on it."
I started. So Ponty had consciously seen for herself what had only been subconsciously revealed to me.
"I don't mean that Sir John was unkind to her ladyship: far from it: but he just crushed the life out of her, like Miss Annabel does out of folks, without knowing what he was up to. They've always meant well, both Miss Annabel and her Papa: but their well-meaning has done more harm than other folk's ill-meaning, in my humble judgment. And when her ladyship died, Sir John was as cut up as anybody could wish to see, and never married again nor nothing of that kind. He called her ladyship's death a dispensation of Providence, and bore it most beautiful; and nobody knew but me as it was nothing but a judgment on him for forcing poor Lady Jane into his own mould, as you might say."
"But I never forced her ladyship into my mould, heaven knows!" I exclaimed.
"No; but there was them as did. And you let 'em, and never interfered."
I felt I was a little boy again, being scolded by Ponty in the sunny old nursery for some childish misdemeanour. It was a peaceful feeling and somehow seemed to rest and soothe my weary and wounded heart.
"But I did interfere," I said: "I always interfered if I thought any one was interfering with her ladyship. Surely no husband ever let his wife have more of her own way than I did."
Ponty looked me up and down with scorn, as I lolled on the chintz-covered window-seat. "And what good would your interfering do as long as Miss Annabel was there, I should like to know? Mark my words, Master Reggie: the King of England couldn't hold his own against Miss Annabel; let alone a pretty young girl like her present ladyship. I knew what would happen as soon as you told me Miss Annabel was going to stay on here after you married. There's no throwing dust in my eyes! I knew Miss Annabel before you were born, and I knew her Papa too; and I know what they're like when they're set on moulding people. I should pity the Pope of Rome hisself if he was being moulded by Miss Annabel."
I agreed with her there.
"And if you ask me, Master Reggie" (I hadn't asked her, but that was neither here nor there), "I should say that the dreadful trouble was far more Miss Annabel's fault than Mr. Wildacre's, though I know some do say as it was all his doing: and I dare say it was partly his doing too, as more than one can play at 'Oranges and Lemons.' But to put a young girl under Miss Annabel's thumb, as you may say (for when all's said and done her ladyship is only a young girl), to my mind it was like throwing Daniel into the den of lions; and unfortunately it didn't turn out so well."
"I apparently was not successful in the role of the angel who shut the lions' mouths," I said bitterly.
"Not you, Master Reggie! You haven't yet got it in you to stand up against Miss Annabel, and never had: any more than your poor Mamma had it in her to stand up against Sir John. Some folks can stand up and some folks can't, and there's no blame either ways, it happening just as you're made. There was a man at Poppenhall who married three times, and his third wife was the only one of the three as ever stood up to him. And nine weeks to the day from his third marriage he was laid to rest in Poppenhall Churchyard. I remember it as if it was yesterday, and the wreaths were something beautiful."
"I suppose he couldn't stand being stood up to after all those years," I suggested.
"No more than Sir John could have stood it, or Miss Annabel. Folks isn't used to it, if they've had too much of the other thing: and that's where the judgment comes in of letting them get like that. It stands to reason that the Almighty didn't send folks into this world to be always having their own way at the expense of other folks's: and they shouldn't be given it. What was sauce for you was sauce for Miss Annabel, as I've told your poor Mamma over and over again when you were both children. But nobody but her Papa could stand up to Miss Annabel even then; and it isn't likely that they'll begin now."
I knew it was very weak of me to go on trying to justify myself in Ponty's eyes; but I did it nevertheless. "You see, I thought it would be too quiet for her ladyship to be shut up to an old husband like me, and that it would be more cheerful for her with Miss Annabel and Mr. Wildacre here as well."
Ponty looked at me with a fresh influx of contempt: "That's just what you would think, Master Reggie: even as a little boy you were always one for taking the wrong end of a stick. You're not at all old—quite a boy you seem to me; and old or not old, nobody could deny that you're still a very handsome gentleman. And no woman ought to feel it dull to live with her own husband, even if he were one of the plain sort, and hadn't your good looks. She's taken him for better for worse, and for rougher for smoother, according to the Marriage Service, and she ought to abide by it."
"Always verify your quotations," I murmured, but Ponty took no notice of my interruption.
"Not that I don't hold with relations," she went on, "in moderation, and at the proper time and place. I remember when you and Miss Annabel were children, her late ladyship gave me a fortnight's holiday after a bad cold I'd had, and I went to stay with a sister-in-law who was a widow, living some twenty miles from Poppenhall. It happened that my sister-in-law died two days after I got there, which turned out most fortunate for me, as such a lot of relations came to the funeral, I can tell you I saw more of my own family then than I'd seen for years, and I quite enjoyed myself. I always say there's nothing like your own relations for a pick-me-up, as you might say: but you don't want 'em hanging about all the time, and telling you how to manage your own home and husband."
At that moment there was a tap at the nursery door, and Jeavons came in to say that old Parkins had sent a message to know if I could come and ease his pain as I had done before, it being specially severe that morning.
I responded at once: and the request brought the first ray of light that had shone on my life since Fay left me. It showed that I still had my uses, and was not a mere cumberer of the ground. Even if life was over as far as I myself was concerned, I could still help others by means of my healing power. So I entered the Parkins's cottage less miserable than I had been for months.
I found the poor old man in great agony, and I knelt down by the bed as was my custom, laying my hand upon the painful part. But for the first time since I had received the gift, I found the heavens as brass above me. I was conscious of no Presence in the room—of no vital force flowing through me. My prayers were dull and lifeless, and no virtue went either in or out of me.
"It don't seem to answer this time, Sir Reginald," the old man groaned at last: "the pain do get worse instead of better. Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do? Nothing seems to do me any good, not even you!"
Sick at heart I tried again, but to no purpose. There was no blinking the fact. The power of healing had gone from me.
Making what poor excuse I could, I stumbled out of the cottage and into the open air: and then I found my way into a little wood, and fell on my face, and prayed that I might die. It seemed as if God Himself had forsaken me.
But gradually the knowledge came to me that it was not so. It was not that God had forsaken me, but that I had forsaken God.
Scientists and materialists would doubtless explain this loss of healing power by the fact that my sickness and sorrow had so lowered my vital force that there was no strength left in me, and that I could not pass on to another what I no longer possessed myself. But I did not trouble my head with such soothing and soporific sophistries. To me, they were utterly beside the mark. Once again I adopted the simpler course of accepting literally the words of Christ: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses." That was what He said, and that was what I believe He meant.
I had not forgiven—I could not forgive—Fay and Frank for the evil that they had done me: therefore I was no longer a fit channel for Divine Grace.
To my mind the thing was as clear as daylight, and needed no (so-called) scientific explanation.
But that did not make it any easier to forgive them: on the contrary. If I had found it too hard to forgive Frank for coming between me and my wife, I found it a hundred times harder to forgive him for coming between me and my God. I hated him for having spoilt this life: but I hated him still more for having spoilt the life to come. It was bad enough of him to have turned me out of my earthly Paradise: but it was infinitely worse to have shut me out of Heaven as well!
And as I lay on my face writhing in spiritual agony, from the depths of my soul I cursed Frank Wildacre.
The days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, but nothing occurred to lessen my misery. As I look back upon that hideous time, I can recall nothing but one long dreary stretch of unalloyed wretchedness. I resumed my usual round of duties, domestic and parochial; but nothing either in my own estate or in the surrounding neighbourhood afforded me the slightest interest. And for all this, I had to thank Frank Wildacre. This thought was always more or less with me.
But about a year and a half after Fay left me, a most unexpected thing happened.
Annabel came into the library one morning obviously bursting with news.
"Oh, Reggie, what do you think? I have just been to the Rectory to see Mr. Blathwayte about some parish matters, and he has told me a most exciting piece of news, and has asked me to come and tell you, because he is too busy to do so this morning, but he will come to tea this afternoon and consult you about it."
My heart began to beat furiously. Surely any exciting news that Arthur received must be in some way connected with Fay. I never wrote to her, nor she to me: I was too proud to do anything but submit to her decision on that point. I was also too proud to ask Arthur direct questions about her: but with a delicate tact, for which beforehand I should never have given him credit, he gave me apparently casual information about her from time to time. I was as bitterly angry with her as ever; I was as far from forgiving her as ever: but I could not forget that she was my wife, and I still loved her as I loved my own soul.
"Well, what is it?" I asked, stifling the trembling of my voice as best I could.
"Guess," said Annabel. "It's really the most wonderful thing!"
I was amazed—as, indeed, I often was in those days—at my sister's unabated appetite for the trivial. After such an unprecedented cataclysm as Fay's departure, the day of small things had gone by as I thought for ever: and yet, though it had completely overturned my world, it had left Annabel pretty much as it found her. It is at times such as this that the unutterable loneliness of the human soul becomes almost overwhelming, and one realises that the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger—nay, not only a stranger, but also one's nearest and dearest—cannot intermeddle with its joy. True, there was no longer any joy in my heart for anybody to intermeddle with: but in its bitterness it stood utterly alone.
To me Fay, in spite of my anger against her, was still sacrosanct. Though fallen from her original estate, she was yet, in my eyes, an angel. But to Annabel she was nothing but a naughty child that needed punishment; and my sister troubled herself about her no more than she would about a naughty child. Therefore I could not make trivial and absurd guesses about anything concerning Fay.
"I can't guess," I said rather shortly: "please tell me."
"Mr. Blathwayte has been offered the Deanery of Lowchester."
My heart sank down into my boots again. What were Deaneries or even Archbishoprics compared with Fay? Then I blamed myself for my selfishness, and tried to atone for it. "What a splendid thing for old Arthur!" I said: "I am awfully glad. Tell me all he said."
Whereupon Annabel proceeded to obey me more or less implicitly, interspersing Arthur's quoted remarks with innumerable commentaries of her own.
"It will be a splendid thing for him," she said in conclusion, "as he is really a most able and gifted man, and such a capital organiser, and there is no proper scope for him in a small village like this. I've liked to have him here, but I have always felt he was a bit buried."
"Do you remember Mrs. Figshaw?" said I, "who kept saying that her daughter wanted ascoop? I agree with you that Blathwayte is like Mrs. Figshaw's daughter: he wants a scoop badly."
"Scope, Reggie; notscoop," corrected Annabel. I should have been disappointed in her if she had not done so. At least I should have been disappointed a year ago: but even Annabel had ceased to amuse me now.
"We shall miss Blathwayte," I remarked: "at least you will."
"But why me particularly? Surely the Rector is more your friend than mine."
"I know that. But I have lost the power of missing any person save one. In my case all lesser griefs have been swallowed up in the one great one."
"Poor Reggie! But it's a pity to feel like that, and all the same I feel sure you'll miss Mr. Blathwayte more than you think you will when the time comes. And I shall miss him too, as he has always been so good in being guided by me, and has followed my advice in everything connected with the parish."