A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

[CHAPTER XIV]

MARY'S household were relieved when they learned next morning that she did not feel well enough to see anyone or to leave her bed. James hoped that she was thinking things over and growing to see them in a more reasonable light. Trent thought that all women are always the better for a rest. The servants welcomed an interval between the excitements of the wedding and the discipline of their mistress's eye. Mary herself was not so pleased. To feel ill is in itself unpleasant, and though she was glad that she need not yet resume the routine of her life she would have liked to have something to think about. She tried to read books and then, as books seemed uninteresting and were troublesome to hold, she endeavoured to fix her mind on cheerful subjects. Giles was a splendid boy—big for his age already and growing finely. Dear Laura was very happy, and everybody said that her looks were improved. Rosemary had looked lovely and was having beautiful weather—Mary's prejudice against Anthony had lessened in the night. But these dutiful attempts did not succeed. Her carefully chosen thoughts seemed to have no cohesion, no persistence; they melted away, even when she repeated them aloud to make them impressive, and left her with the nervous sense of fear that heralded—she soon learned to recognise it—a return to the problem of her relations with James. She did not want to consider them yet; it was not fair, she told herself, to give scope to the pessimism that comes of lying in bed, but even when she had made every allowance she could the more she considered them the less hopeful they seemed. There was left to her, now, no ground at all on which she and James could take a common stand. There was no aspect of his life of which she could think with pride or from which she could take comfort. James, however she looked at him, was a failure, a sham.

She did not wish to pass judgment on James, to be unkind and unforgiving. She would forgive as soon as she could, she would do her best to make herself forgive. But it wasn't easy, she told herself, as she moved uneasily under the bed-clothes, to forgive such a deception as James had practised on her. It was not so much the actual lies he must have told, the smiles, the affection, the attitude of candour he must have assumed—what she resented was the false conception of himself that he had forced on her. She realised now that she had not, in her heart, forgiven him for the surrender she had already made. Believing herself bound by the fact that she was James's wife she had put aside her judgment and her conscience, she had renounced her wonderful adventure into the world of fact, of knowledge, of ordered thought. She had shut herself again into the narrow circle of her emotional life, she had tried to live again, at second-hand, through Laura's feelings, James's feelings, Rosemary's feelings. That James as a husband might remain unblemished in goodness and wisdom she had resolved to know nothing of James the public employer.

James for his part had not so much accepted her sacrifice as not noticed it, and now it was wasted. She knew now what her husband's goodness and wisdom were. He was neither honest, nor loyal, nor pure—he was a loose man, stained, unscrupulous; a man—she told herself this because it made her suffer—a man no better than the men who preyed on Florrie Wilson. He had dishonoured the most sacred and intimate thing in her life. He had given a strange woman the right to jeer at her, to despise her as a wife who was not able to keep her husband. Even now, though she wasn't likely to be a person who lived in her memories, James's mistress might sometimes remember and laugh to herself. "He fell so easily," the red-haired woman could say, "I hardly needed to hold out my hand!" Perhaps she had felt sorry for Mary.

For a moment Mrs. Heyham lay rigid, holding this picture in her mind. Then a dread of her own thoughts came so strongly upon her that she knew she must get up, ill or well, and find a way to banish them. She would send for Miss Percival, she told herself, and talk to her. She would tell her that she did not mean to go on with the Holiday Home. Perhaps Miss Percival would have something to talk about. She might have been reading an interesting book. She would not tell Mary, at least, that she looked as if she needed a change, or ask her whether she wasn't feeling lonely.

After making her resolve Mary lay for a moment or two longer without moving. She was certainly feeling tired, though she told herself now that the matter went no deeper than feeling, and she wanted, before she left the subject, to make one more effort to think kindly of James. But the nearest that she could come to kindness was an absence of hatred, a cold instead of a passionate disgust. She was not angry with him, she shrank from the intimacy of anger, but she told herself that his personality, his presence, must not affect her again. She would think of him as an indifferent person, far from her life. There was a certain relief in the conviction which came to her that this was possible. She felt herself, in a queer, cold fashion, free of him.

She did get up after lunch, and just as she had finished dressing she became aware of pleasing wails in her sitting-room. She opened the door quickly and saw, before she was noticed, Miss Percival holding Giles while Giles's nurse condescended to stand by. The secretary's face was not as a rule expressive of passing emotions, but now for the second time Mary saw it transfigured. Any girl can feel a sudden tenderness for a kitten or a pretty baby, but it was not tenderness that had broken down Miss Percival's smooth reserve. Mary could see that, but before she could decide what emotion it was that had made this profound disturbance the nurse had turned to her.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, I didn't see you!" Mary smiled at her. "How well baby looks, nurse! He is a credit to you. And how happy he seems with Miss Percival. She must have had plenty of practice in holding babies."

Miss Percival started, and while the nurse acknowledged with the air of one who confers a favour that he did look happy, she came forward and held the baby out to his grandmother. "He is a beautiful boy," she said, in what Mary believed was not quite her normal voice.

Mary was glad to take Giles into her arms. He at least stood for the future, for promise, for hope. There was no more blemish yet on his life than on his charming little body. She bent over him and kissed the sweet-smelling shawl that sheltered his ridiculous head. Giles seemed to share her contentment, for when he had blinked at her once or twice he went quietly and confidently to sleep.