‘Are you serious in what you said just now? I mean about her love for Mutimer?’
‘Serious? Of course I am. Why should you ask such a question?’
‘Because I find it difficult to distinguish between the things a young man says in jealous pique and the real belief he entertains when he is not throwing savage words about. You have convinced yourself that she loved her husband in the true sense of the word?’
‘The conviction was forced upon me. Why did she marry him at all? What led her to give herself, heart and soul, to Socialism, she who under ordinary circumstances would have shrunk from that and all other isms? Why should she make it a special entreaty to me to pursue her husband’s work? The zeal for his memory is nothing unanticipated; it issues naturally from her former state of mind.’
‘Your vehemence,’ replied the vicar, smiling, ‘is sufficient proof that you don’t think it impossible for all these questions to be answered in another sense. I can’t pretend to have read the facts of her life infallibly, but suppose I venture a hint or two, just to give you matter for thought. Why she married him I cannot wholly explain to myself, but remember that she took that step very shortly after being brought to believe that you, my good friend, were utterly unworthy of any true woman’s devotion. Remember, too, her brother’s influence, and—well, her mother’s. Now, on the evening before she accepted Mutimer she called at the Vicarage alone. Unfortunately I was away—was walking with you, in fact. What she desired to say to me I can only conjecture; but it is not impossible that she was driven by the common impulse which sends young girls to their pastor when they are in grievous trouble and without other friends.’
‘Why did you never tell me of that?’ cried Hubert.
‘Because it would have been useless, and, to tell you the truth, I felt I was in an awkward position, not far from acting indiscreetly. I did go to see her the next morning, but only saw her mother, and heard of the engagement. Adela never spoke to me of her visit.’
‘But she may have come for quite other reasons. Her subsequent behaviour remains.’
‘Certainly. Here again I may be altogether wrong, but it seems to me that to a woman of her character there was only one course open. Having become his wife, it behoved her to be loyal, and especially—remember this—it behoved her to put her position beyond doubt in the eyes of others, in the eyes of one, it may be, beyond all. Does that throw no light on your meeting with her in the wood, of which you make so much?’
Hubert’s countenance shone, but only for an instant.