“Oh! I don’t mind,” she said, “I don’t mind in [169] ]the least. You will all be glad, I know. Oh, of course you will be decently sorry first—black bands on your arms and all that, even if the money won’t run to black suits. But even baby will laugh and crow more when there is no one worrying, worrying all day long.”
“Ellie,” he said, “Ellie—for God’s sake.”
“I like to see you crying,” she said, “one wouldn’t like to think no one spared any tears. But I can see you so well in a month from now, smoking peacefully on this sofa with no nagging voice going on and on.”
“Ellie,” he said, “isn’t it hard enough for me? Are you trying to torture me past endurance?”
Her lips trembled; she tried to be hard again, but failed. Then she gave a piteous sob.
“I can’t help it, Rob,” she said, and clung to him. “Ever since I’ve known, I’ve been trying to be different, to act as one should with death to face. But oh! if you knew what it is to feel you have bungled your life, so that no one will care when you’re gone! Every time I have been irritable lately I have wondered at myself, but”—her voice choked—“if I hadn’t had that relief I couldn’t have borne it.”
“My wife, my poor little wife,” he said; he stroked her hair, he held her nervous hand. “God knows you have done your best; the odds have been heavy against us both, that is all. Oh! if I had been more tender to you, poor little girl!”
Her lips quivered again.
[170]
]“You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Robert,” she said, “everything was my fault. Do you think I don’t remember now how often you wanted to be loving—wanted to pet me? And I was always too busy, always making a Martha of myself, always toiling after the little boys.”
He sighed a little—an irrepressible sigh; a vision of their spoilt lives stood mutely before him.