This made things no better. He had wanted to justify himself, or, at any rate, to brazen the matter out. He wanted to pierce her armour of reserve, to see her as she was. Whether she were jealous or merely actively scornful didn’t matter as long as she showed herself to be alive and tangible. He wanted to feel the shock of their two wills, their two persons clashing without this irritating veil in which she hid herself intervening. Whether it were love or hate he wanted to feel some definite contact with her: something comparable with the moment when she had spoken to him of George’s woman at Lesswardine. This she denied him. It was unreasonable that she should behave in this way to the man on whose charity, if he put it at the bluntest, she was now living. It seemed as if she had made the maintenance of this spiritual remoteness the condition of her dependence on him. He felt, vaguely, that she wasn’t playing the game, and explained her attitude to himself as the result of her unnatural fear of old Mrs Malpas’s tongue. He was tempted, at times, to throw in his hand, to launch out again, to leave Chapel Green and let her go her own way. He pretended to himself that his promise to George, an obligation that went a good deal deeper than friendship, restrained him; but he knew in his heart that even if he had not undertaken the care of George’s wife he would never have left Wolfpits. He only wished that her pride, or whatever it was, would let her be reasonable.
Susie wasn’t like that. With Susie he knew exactly where he was. She had even, once or twice, shown herself jealous of his devotion to Mary, and tried to read into it an intimacy which was very far removed from their real state. She had seen Mary in the police-court and in the gallery at the assizes, had recognised her beauty and the dignity which contrasted so deeply with her own abandon. She would ask Abner questions about her, implying that Mary must be jealous of his visits to Mainstone, in this way half convincing Abner that it was unnatural for her not to be jealous, and aggravating his grievance.
‘I suppose she takes your money and then treats you like dirt,’ she said scornfully. And Abner could not be sure that she hadn’t described the situation exactly.
Christmas came and passed: a meagre Christmas such as their means imposed upon them. The morning was bright, and Mary took the children to church. In the evening Mrs Mamble and old Drew joined them, and in their company the bearing of Mary curiously lightened. She became young and gay, almost childish. There was laughter in her eyes and her cheeks were flushed with firelight. The old labourer had brought with him a bottle of cowslip wine that he had made in the spring, and they sat together late into the night telling stories of forgotten people and distant counties. About midnight the others left them, and though her attitude sensibly changed, a little of the glow was left in Mary’s face.
‘Last Christmas,’ she said musingly, ‘we all went down to the Buffalo in the evening—George and me and the children.’
Abner also remembered. He told her of his own Christmas at Hackett’s Cottages, how John Fellows had been in hospital with his broken thigh and he had been left alone with Alice and little John. Mary leaned forward and listened to him in the firelight with her soft eyes fixed upon his face.
‘Was it her you wrote that letter to?’ she asked.
‘The one you wanted to post?’
‘I thought I could save you the trouble.’
He laughed. ‘Yes . . . that was her.’