"We'll hear after Easter."
They discussed the probable figure. Maynard seemed not deeply interested; but Palk declared that his own future movements largely depended upon Mr. Stockman's decision.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN A SICK-ROOM
Dinah could not think of her foster-father all the way home. Though deeply concerned, her thoughts left him fitfully to concentrate on Lawrence Maynard. She felt a little puzzled at a streak of mental helplessness that seemed to have appeared in him. Just where it appeared most vital that he should know his own mind, she could not help feeling he did not. He groped, instead of seeing the way as clearly as she did. For him, what he had to tell her seemed serious; for her, as she now considered it, the fact that Mr. Stockman knew Maynard was married sank in significance. She found that it was only because Lawrence regarded it as grave, that she had done so. That it made a simple situation more complex she granted; but it did not alter the situation; and if it was impossible to be married at Buckland, there would be no difficulty, so far as she could see, in being married elsewhere.
She had examined the situation more deeply, however, before she reached home and perceived that Lawrence, after all, was not groping, but rather standing still before a very definite obstacle. They could not be married at Buckland; but could they be married anywhere else without first vanishing far beyond reach and hearing of Buckland? For him that was easy; for her impossible, unless she deliberately cut herself off from her foster-father and, not only that, but prevented him from knowing where she might be. For it was idle to tell him, or anybody, that she had married Maynard, while Mr. Stockman could report from Maynard's own lips that he was already married.
Now indeed Dinah's soul fainted for a few moments. She hated things hid; she loved events to be direct and open; but already some need for hiding her thought, if not her actions, had become imperative and now she saw a complication arising that she had never taken into account: the collision between Lawrence and Ben Bamsey. What might be right and honest enough to her and her lover—what was already clean and clear in her mind, and would, she did not doubt, be presently equally clean and clear to Lawrence—must emphatically be neither righteous nor thinkable to the generation of Mr. Bamsey. None else indeed mattered; but he did. Great vistas of time began to stretch between her and her lover. He retreated; but the gathering difficulties did not daunt her since the end was assured.
For a season life was now suspended at the bedside of an old man, and Dinah returned home to plunge at once into the battle for her foster-father's existence. It was a battle fought unfairly for her, and not until the end of it did Dinah discover the tremendous effect of her exertions on her own vitality; for she was in a position false and painful from the first, being called at the will of one very sick to minister to him before his own, and to suffer from the effects of his unconscious selfishness, under the jealousy of the other women who were nearer to him.
Ben rapidly became very ill indeed, with congestion of the lungs, and for a time, while in the extremity of suffering, his usual patient understanding deserted him and facts he strove to keep concealed in health under conditions of disease appeared. They were no secret to Faith Bamsey and she was schooled to suffer them, being able the easier so to do, because she was just and knew the situation was not Dinah's fault. Indeed they created suffering for the girl also. But to Jane, her father's now unconcealed preference for Dinah, his impatience when she was absent and his reiterated desire to have her beside him, inflamed open wounds and made her harsh. Her mother argued with her half-heartedly, but did not blame her any more than she blamed Dinah. She knew her husband's armour was off, and that he could not help extending a revelation of the truth beyond her heart, where she had hoped it was hidden; but she was human and the fact that everybody, thanks to Jane, now knew that she and her own child were less to Benjamin than his foster-daughter, distressed her and sometimes clouded her temper.
One only stood for Dinah and strove to better the pain of her position. Tossed backward and forward still, now, when at last he was minded to accept the situation and admit to his own mind the certainty he could never win her, a ray of hope flushed wanly out of the present trouble; a straw offered for him to clutch at. John Bamsey came to Green Hayes daily, to learn how his father did, and he heard from Jane how Dinah was preferred before his mother or herself. Then inspired by some sanguine shadow, he took Dinah's part, strove to lessen the complication for her and let her know that he understood her difficulties and was opposing his sister on her account.