And Jane watched her with a curious emotion, very strange and utterly incomprehensible to herself.
The hard, selfish side of life had chiefly presented itself to the landlady, both as regarded her own nature and the nature of those with whom she had come into contact. This divine self-forgetfulness, this pure love of the erring even because of its miserable errors, was something so new as to be a kind of revelation to her soul. A good she had conceived impossible seemed to be opening itself out as not only possible, but real. And the revelation had a renovating power. There came over her a remembrance of the time when she had been "joyful and free from blame."
It brought a sudden softness to her heart. But she would not give way to it. She seized her broom and half turned, so as to hide her face from Margaret's gaze. "What's the use of talking?" she said in a stifled voice; "talking won't make me no better. I hated you; why can't you hate me and be done with it?"
"Because I do not hate you, Jane; because, on the contrary, my soul is filled with earnest longing for your good. It came to me here in last night's darkness as I thought of your words that perhaps I had given some cause for these feelings of yours. I have wrapped myself up in my own sorrows and have neglected to enter with a woman's sympathy into your troubles and joys. For—I know it—we must not and cannot live to ourselves. Selfishness brings its own punishment."
Jane looked down: "I have no troubles in particular, not to interest anybody but—"
It had come over her in an irresistible flood, the remembrance of her one happy time. Ah! it is a great fact, mysterious but true—misery and hopeless wretchedness make half the criminals that fill our jails, that prowl undetected about our streets. To the happy goodness is easy.
Jane broke down suddenly, and throwing herself on her knees buried her face in the bed-clothes: "If he had been true to me I'd have been another woman. Oh! God was cruel. I was getting soft when he was coming and going with his pleasant ways: it was too short—" Her voice was choked with sobs. "I've been bad—bad from that day. I'm getting worse, and God has left me. What'll I do? what'll I do?"
Margaret's eyes filled with tears. She stooped down and drawing one of the woman's reluctant hands from the hidden face, held it in her own.
"I thought so," she said gently, as if speaking to herself: "there is always a background." Then to the weeping woman: "Think of it—you and I, my poor Jane, living here together, and shutting up our troubles in our own hearts. No wonder we grew hard and selfish. But it is over, is it not? You will help me to bear, and I will teach you to love. This is what you want to take you out of yourself. Look up, Jane; be of good courage."
But she only wept the more bitterly. "I can't," she said; "my heart is like stone."