'Oh, certain!' I cried; and hastily became meek.
September 27th.
Oaths, now. I shrink from so much as suggesting it, but there is something to be said for them. They're so brief. They get the mood over. They clear the air. Women explain and protest and tiptoe tactfully about among what they think are your feelings, and there's no end to it. And then, if they're good women, good, affectionate, unselfish women, they have a way of forgiving you. They keep on forgiving you. Freely. With a horrible magnanimousness. Mrs. Barnes insisted on forgiving me yesterday for the cigarettes, for the untidiness. It isn't a happy thing, I think, to be shut up in a small lonely house being forgiven.
September 28th.
In the night the wind shook the windows and the rain pelted against them, and I knew that when I went down to breakfast the struggle with Mrs. Barnes would begin.
It did. It began directly after breakfast in the hall, where Antoine, remarking firmly 'C'est l'hiver,' had lit a roaring fire, determined this time to stand no parsimonious nonsense, and it has gone on all day, with the necessary intervals for recuperation.
Nothing has been settled. I still don't in the least know what to do. Mrs. Barnes's attitude is obstinately unselfish. She and Dolly, she reiterates, won't dream of staying on here unless they feel that by doing so they could be of service to me by keeping me company. If I'm not here I can't be kept company with; that, she says, I must admit.
I do. Every time she says it—it has been a day of reiterations—I admit it. Therefore, if I go they go, she finishes with a kind of sombre triumph at her determination not to give trouble or be an expense; but words fail her, she adds, (this is a delusion,) to express her gratitude for my offer, etc., and never, for the rest of their lives, will she and Dolly forget the delightful etc., etc.
What am I to do? I don't know. How lightly one embarks on marriage and on guests, and in what unexpected directions do both develope! Also, what a terrible thing is unselfishness. Once it has become a habit, how tough, how difficult to uproot. A single obstinately unselfish person can wreck the happiness of a whole household. Is it possible that I shall have to stay here? And I have so many things waiting for me in England that have to be done.
There's a fire in my bedroom, and I've been sitting on the floor staring into it for the past hour, seeking a solution. Because all the while Mrs. Barnes is firmly refusing to listen for a moment to my entreaties to use the house while I'm away, her thin face is hungry with longing to accept, and the mere talking, however bravely, of taking up the old homeless wandering again fills her tired eyes with tears.