Bertha agreed, for although she was slightly on her guard against the possibility of his wishing to flirt, she had not the faintest idea, as I have said, of Nigel’s determined resolve.
Nigel had been fairly unhappy of late. Caring very little for any of his other friends, and having this idée fixe about Bertha—which became much stronger at the opposition and the idea of Percy’s jealousy—he moped a good deal and had spent more time than usual with Mary. Nigel was one of those very rare men, who are becoming rarer and rarer, who, having passed the age of thirty-five, still regard love as the principal object of life. That Nigel did so was what made him so immensely popular with women as a rule. Women feel instinctively when this is so, and the man who makes sport, ambition or art his first interest, and women, and romance in general, a mere secondary pleasure, is never regarded with nearly the same favour as the man who values women chiefly, even though that very man is naturally far less reliable in his affection and almost invariably deceives them. To be placed in the background of life is what the average woman dislikes the most; she would rather be of the first importance as a woman even if she knows she has many rivals.
Bertha was exceptional, in that she did not care for the Don Juan type of man, but was rather inclined to despise him. She would far rather have ambition, business, art, duty, any other object in life as her rival, than another woman.
Percy received no more of the singular typewritten letters. He kept those that he had locked up in a box. Mary had grown a little frightened at the apparent success of those she sent. She never heard anything about them, but she knew that Nigel had not been seeing Bertha since the note about the picture gallery. She began to be happier again. Nigel was a great deal more at home, though not more affectionate. And Mary was one of those women, by no means infrequent, who are fairly satisfied if they can, by hook or by crook, by any trick or any tyranny, keep the man they care for somehow under the same roof with them—if only his body is in the house, even if they know it is against his will, and that his soul is far away. She would far rather that his desire was elsewhere, if only he were positively present—the one dread, really, being that he should be enjoying himself with anyone else. Mary preferred a thousand times a silent, sulky evening with Nigel going up to his room about the same time that she went to hers, than, as he used to be when they were first married, gay, affectionate and caressing to her, and then going out. She would gladly make him a kind of prisoner, even at the cost of making him almost dislike her, rather than give him his freedom—even to please him—a freedom which included the possibility of his seeing Bertha again.
Although she was unjust and mistaken in her facts, it was, of course, a correct instinct that made her aware that Bertha was the great attraction—the one real object of passion in Nigel’s life. But she was incapable of believing that Bertha did not care for him, that if she had she would never have flirted with the husband of another woman. Merely because Bertha was pretty and admired, Mary, with her strange narrow-minded bitterness, took it for granted that it was impossible that she could be also a delicately scrupulous, generous, and high-minded creature. But just as passion will make one singularly quick-sighted, it can also make one dense and stupid. Considering that Mary was madly in love with her own husband, it was absurd she should suppose it impossible that Bertha should take the slightest interest in hers. Of course Mary had heard that they were very devoted—if she had not, what would have been the use of writing the letters?—but she chose to believe that it was only on the husband’s side, and that Bertha must of necessity be, of course, sly and deceitful. She hated Bertha violently, and yet she was by nature the kindest of women; only this one mania of hers completely altered her, and made her bitter, wild, hard and unscrupulous, stupid and clever, cowardly and reckless. A woman’s jealousy of another woman is always sufficiently dreadful, but when the object of jealousy is hers by legal right, when the sense of personal property is added to it, then it is one of the most terrible and unreasonable things in nature.
CHAPTER XV
CLIFFORD’S HISTORICAL PLAY
BERTHA was sitting with her little brother-in-law. She was to give him half-an-hour, after which she expected a visit from Nigel.
“What on earth is it, old boy?”