CHAPTER XXIII—THE KNIGHT’S MOVE
IT might very well have occurred to Sam to retort that he and Effle had not “their silly heads in the clouds” any more fantastically than had Anne her self when she retreated to Madge’s and watched her loved son only through the eyes of Kate Earwalker. But it did not occur to him and, if it had, Effie at least would have disproved the retort. Effle outstripped them all.
The truth was that as soon as Effle knew what was the matter with her she was not appalled, dismayed, ashamed, or any of the things appropriate to a young lady in her situation, but simply and purely exultant. Unhappiness fell from her like a cloak, and left her radiant with joy. And she had called herself a realist!
She was a realist; she was engrossed with fact, not with the circumstantial detail of her fact. She hardly wanted Sam now, she had him, she was miles and leagues from care, alone in a shining world with her transcendant fact. Courage returned in full flood to her and she brimmed with bravery and pride.
She was out of work and must find work quickly which would pay her well. She was going to suffer, she was going (to put it mildly) to be misunderstood. What did it matter, what did anything matter in comparison with her exultant fact? She was going to be the mother of his child. Marbeck was not a dream; Marbeck was coming true, and the truth and the glory of it swept her to a heaven which only women know.
Perhaps she was a trespasser within the gates, but they had opened to her and they would not close. She might be prosecuted for her trespass. Let them try! You cannot hurt invulnerability. She was a world within a world, self-satisfying, self-complete, not so much derisive of the other world as utterly forgetful of it. Her cloud of glory hid it from her eyes, and if she peeped at all through breaches in the cloud she saw people as one sees them on the road beneath a mountain-top, like crawling ants.
A knock came at her door, and she looked bemused through a gap in the clouds into the eyes of Dubby Stewart, but it was not to look at the world which did not understand. It was to look at Dubby, who loved her.
And Dubby knew. It had not been difficult to know. She had refused him, she had let him see why, and Sam and Effie had been away from Manchester at the same time. It was not precise evidence, but he had written leaderettes on evidence not more exact and did not doubt the facts. They had kept him from her till now, but he could keep away no longer. And before he went into her room he knew all there was to know.
“Effie,” he said, “I’m not sure if I’m welcome.”
“Oh, but you are,” she said. “I ought to have written to you long ago. I’ve been home weeks from my holiday.” It was no use trying to see Dubby as a crawling ant, and she gave her hand in friendship.