At first, as usual, his lies gave him the illusion of greater freedom, and he heightened the illusion by treating Jessie with less and less consideration. He gulped down the forced admiration she gave him and was always trying to squeeze more of it out of her. When he was in a mood of self-abasement she admired the loftiness which could stoop to acknowledge its defects, and quickly he was riding off again with his head full of himself as the kindest of husbands, the best of sons, the most irresistibly successful of men. Such glaring divergence presented itself to his mind as consistency.
Such a state of things imposed a heavy strain upon Jessie. She was not always quick enough to follow him in his snipe-like flights. Sometimes when he was accusing himself of neglect and thoughtlessness and lack of consideration for her, it seemed to her that it would be easiest and might afford both of them relief if she agreed with him. Then his vanity writhed and furiously he would cry:
“You are always finding fault with me. . . My mother thinks me perfect.”
It is impossible to be wise where love is not, and Jessie could not learn discretion. He was so extraordinarily convincing in his self-reproach that she always forgot the lessons of caution she had set herself in his absence.
Still he would force endearing phrases upon her and caresses and demand to be told that she loved him. Her parrot-cries appeased him, and, feeling confident that she loved him, in stealthy small ways he began to betray her, indeed, where before he had only dared to be false to her in thought. He absented himself from his house to seek the company of flattering fools. He returned at longer and longer intervals to stoke up the furnace of his wife’s love. . . . He was like a child who, having built a house of cards, removes first one card and then another from the base and leaves only enough to keep the edifice ominously swaying.
Do what he would, Frederic was slowly forced into retreat. It is impossible for life to stand still. If it cannot move forward it will plunge backward. Life is for ever seeking its channel, love. . . . Frederic was borne backward, and it was not long before he came to the thought of Annie Lipsett. Easily he persuaded himself that he had been treated with injustice, and thwarted by interference from doing what was right. Pitying himself, he began to pity her, and, in a tremendous orgy of self-righteousness, told himself that he ought to make amends, and at least, even if he could do nothing, let her know that he had not forgotten her. It did not occur to him that she might have forgotten him: impossible to conceive that she could wish to.
Though he was on a considerably more amiable footing with his father, he could not broach the subject with him. As far as Francis was concerned it was buried, and was not to be exhumed. Frederic turned to Serge, and by hints and semi-questions drew his own conclusion that Serge was still in touch with Annie. He left it at that and waited, and took to frequenting Serge’s company enough to form a fairly accurate idea of his habitual movements. These still included frequent excursions into the country, for Serge found a good market for water-colour drawings of the semi-urbanised fells and dales of Lancashire, and the little towns so tucked away into a narrow valley that from one side of them you could see across the smoke to the hills and the green country beyond.
One day, when he knew that Serge was out on an expedition, Frederic visited his studio and ransacked it. He found two letters from Annie Lipsett and from them became possessed of her history. Serge’s friend, the farmer, had married six months before and Annie had had to come to town again to earn her living as best she could. Serge had procured her a situation in a dressmaker’s, and she was in lodgings in a suburb not very far away from Annette’s little house.
Frederic wrote a very cautious little letter on his office paper, and, in a spasm of jealousy of Serge, enclosed a five-pound note. The money was returned two days later without any reply. He sent it back again, imploring her to take it if she had a single friendly thought of him or any wish for his happiness. (He heaved an enormous sigh as he wrote the word—happiness). The five-pound note was returned again. He guessed, rightly, that Serge was responsible, and he swore that he would not be ousted from his rightful position as benefactor to the woman he had wronged. Was not his own happiness wrecked? Could he not, by this means, restore it? . . . He was persuaded that he could.
He left his office early, and with a hectic sort of elation in the adventure—it was so much more exciting than the idea of returning home—set out to discover the house in which Annie Lipsett lived. He waited at the corner of the street until he saw her coming. She was with Serge. Furiously he turned and strode away.