To begin with, she had failed in her interview—not only in the achievement of her object but in the manner of her attempt. She had imagined herself watching James very carefully, suiting her speech and her behaviour to the mood she discerned in him. She had not done that. She had not even been able to watch herself, she did not know now what she had said or left unsaid, except that she had felt at the time that everything she said was wrong. As for James, his mood was a blank to her, it had baffled her, repulsed her, thrown her into confusion, but she had no key to it. She had hoped for a clear, close argument, for a fair interchange of opinion, for a new understanding of James's point of view, a sharing with him of that harvest of thought and emotion which she had been gathering together in her soul. Instead their intercourse had been a muddle, a hostile muddle. Then James had kissed her—how horrible it was!
She knew now that she had not expected James to accept her actual scheme. She would have been content if he had thought kindly of its spirit. Then, his sympathy engaged, she had hoped that he would bring forward a plan of his own, as much more just and wise than hers as James was greater and wiser than she. She would have received it joyfully, they would have worked at it together.
But James had not shown kindness or sympathy, except on the outside, in his manner. He had left her to struggle with her difficulties alone. He had thrown her back again on her own poor resources, her single wit, her feeble perseverance, the strength she valued so low. With these she must make shift—in spite of James.
For a moment, here, her thoughts scattered in confusion. She could not bring herself to think coolly of defying James. She got up from her chair and went over to the window. Behind the curtains, for a moment, it was dark, then her sight cleared, and she could see the branches of the trees in the square moving slowly across the lamplight.
Tired as she was she longed suddenly to change her dress, to be rid of her satin and lace and to go out into the echoing streets. She would walk quickly along in the night, a shadow passing unnoticed under the lamps, until she came to the country, to some great open space where only a passing cloud could shut her out from the black sky and the stars. The wind would blow round her, blowing clean air from the uplands and the sea. There in the cold and the loneliness her soul would be free; it would not be the soul of a rich woman, or of an ageing woman, nor the soul of James's wife. All these weary things would have slipped from it, discarded, put aside, and she would rejoice in her nakedness, a voice crying out to God.
For a moment she stood there, hands clasped and eyes straining through the darkness, then, with a shiver of fatigue, she went back to the fire. Who was she to speak with God?—she had never loved Him! She had loved James, served James, and now she knew that the love of James's life was not for her.
She set herself, angry with her own exaltation, to realise this. There was nothing monstrous about it, she told herself, nothing more strange, nothing more unbelievable, than that she had been a fool. James cared for the thing he had created, for his achievement, his title to respect in the eyes of the world. Any man can marry a wife, any man can beget children, but James had built up this business with the strength of his manhood, and now the business made James a powerful man. She kept him happy at home—he was kind and not very critical, any gentle honest woman could have done that. And now, when she was trying, with what ability she possessed, to be more, to think, to feel, to respond to the world in an individual way, James had no welcome for this new personality. He left her either to deny it or to find its scope and its place for herself. Why shouldn't he?—what right had she to expect more?—to suffer?
The poor lady found herself unable now not to cry.
Presently a footstep on the stairs made her remember that she must go to bed. She sponged her smarting eyes and rang for her maid. With the woman, coming quietly and confidently into the room, Mary discerned the spirit of everyday life. After all, she felt, while Penn was taking the little black velvet ribbon from her hair, after all she was not left to the dulness of empty sorrow. She had work to do, an object for her desires. Somehow she must get the money back to those girls. She fell asleep at last revolving her philanthropic plans.