The icy darkness of her bedroom enclosed Theresa with the chill and colour of life itself. The future was cold and rayless; she groped towards it and was afraid, but she had the courage of anger and as she stumbled against the bedpost, she lifted her head. How could he? how could he? She saw her mother sitting down there by the fire, rocking gently, with that faint smile curving her lips; she remembered the shadow that had sometimes seemed to fall between her parents, and loyalty ran out towards her mother like a wave. And, on the other side of the landing, bending over his desk, that meek, uncertain father of hers wrote his love letters in secret. He wrote love letters because he could not afford to go to the mountains and the woman, because he would not leave his wife!
The terrible, sickly blackness of things covered her. She struggled under it, and with the effect of something magical, mockingly plain, yet distant, she saw, all the time, the lights of the docks, and heard the clanging of the tramcar bells in New Dock Road. Lights while she floundered in gloom, human sounds while she wandered in fear-inhabited caverns! She had rejoiced in the reading of such situations, she had fancied herself fitted to cope with them, but she found reality too real. Anger at something greater than a small personal injury was a bigger passion than she had imagined, and pity, doomed to voicelessness and impotence, tore her with strong hands.
She moved rapidly to and fro between the dressing-table and the bed's foot. She had loved her father, and now she saw him a deceiver. The thought hung on her as she walked. Surely truth had looked out of his kind eyes, love had shone there, and could deceit give a hand to each? She found it hard to distrust him utterly, for did he not believe in her? But she crushed this relenting in her clenched hands, and continued her restless pacing. That little grey man a lover! Had he been tall, and strong, and masterful, he had been easier to forgive, but that a small, meek man should be unfaithful made the insult to her mother doubly bitter. And that woman Alexander's mother! She came to a stand, holding her throat. Did Alexander know? He was her father's friend, but she hated him, and immediately she imagined him the abettor. Oh, how they sullied her glorious mountains, and, oh! was it possible that she was dull and prudish? Was she missing the grandeur of a hopeless love because she was too near to see it well? The question stilled her. In books—to these her judgments always turned—she was able to sympathize as much with the guilty as the innocent, but here——. Ah, well, she was not in a book, and she had loved her father, and downstairs her mother sat ill and miserable. She might die at any moment, and Theresa felt the pang of her father's remorse. Had he thought of that? Once more her heart seemed to stop its beating.
A knock came at her door. "Yes?" she said.
"It's me, Theresa. I want to show you something. May I come in?"
She opened the door to Edward Webb, and stood rigid, glaring fiercely at him out of her white face. Yet he was unchanged. The odour of sin was not upon him, and he blinked and smiled as he held a paper towards her.
"All in darkness? Look, my dear, this—this is something Alexander sent to-day. I should like you to look at it."
"Alexander!" Her low voice had turned shrill. "I don't want to see anything he has sent! I don't want to know anything about those people!" She pushed past him and ran down the stairs.
An hour afterwards, having tenderly seen her mother into bed, Theresa went to her own room, too heart-weary to be anxious about Grace. Everything seemed ruinous and wrecked, what matter if Grace fell, too? This was her mood as she slipped off her clothes and bravely stretched herself between the cold sheets, yet she kept her ears alert, and when she heard an unmistakable step she made a hurried movement of relief.
Grace flung herself into the wicker chair, which creaked dolefully.