For Mary did not capitulate without a struggle. And it is in the details of that struggle that my reconstruction work comes in, for although each of the protagonists has quoted to me whole sentences, and even speeches, of brilliant oratory from herself and inadequate rejoinder from the other, I do not believe either of them. Accuracy, with that type, can never co-exist with emotion—and emotion, real or imaginary, is never absent.
But this, I imagine, is more or less what took place in the sitting-room of the tiny albergo at Assisi:
“I’ve come to fetch you home, my child. You shall never hear one word of reproach—Robert only wants to begin again—a new life.”
“Never, mother. It’s impossible. I’ve borne too much. I can’t ever go back to it. I must live my own life.”
(Probably Mary had been reading The Doll’s House. People were discovering Ibsen in those days.)
“Mary, it’s not five years since you and Robert were married, in the little country church at home, by our dear old vicar, who held you at the font when I took you, a tiny baby, to be christened.”
It may have been at this stage that Mary began to cry. Anyway, I’m certain that my grandmother did. Any allusions, however irrelevant, to little country churches at home, and Mary as a tiny baby, were always apt to bring the tears to her eyes—and I’m sure that neither of them had thought for an instant of steadying their nerves by sitting down to a solid meal. So that tears must have been easier, even, than usual.
“Robert doesn’t understand me—he never will.”
“Darling, don’t you remember your early days together? The little things—little jokes, and allusions, and happinesses shared together? Does one ever forget?”
“No.”