She lay back in her arm-chair, closing her eyes.
If she did not break her engagement?
She tried to sense what that would mean to Upworthy, her mother and Arthur—a feat almost equivalent to looking on at a four-ring circle. It is only fair to a bewildered, unhappy girl to state emphatically that she considered Arthur first and last. If she married him would she be perpetrating what Tiddy called an outrage on him? This involved, more or less, a consideration of matrimonial obligations. What did such a man really want from his wife? Did Arthur want more than she could give. Could she not give all that her mother had given to her father? And at this moment she saw Arthur with extraordinary distinctness, thanks, possibly, to the trouble that he had taken to reveal himself to her. She guessed that he had never been swept off his feet by passion. He wanted affection, fidelity, an atmosphere of domestic peace that would enable him to concentrate energy upon his work. All that she could bestow.
She felt strangely tired.
So tired that she fell asleep.
And she dreamed vividly of Grimshaw, although purposely she had banished him from her waking thoughts. Perhaps on that account he took possession of her subconscious mind. When she awoke every detail of the dream presented itself with sharpest definition. She had been working with him as his wife in an enchanting intimacy of spirit and flesh. Interpreters of dreams, those who endeavor to explain the why and wherefore of the amazing vicissitudes which may befall us in our sleep, might affirm with reason that Cicely’s mind had dwelt persistently upon work with Grimshaw. She had wished from the first to work with him; he had wished that she should do so. Also, she had thought more than she dared to admit even to herself of what it might be like to be Grimshaw’s wife. One other point: she had never thought of Grimshaw apart from his work. Accordingly the dream in itself may be logically accepted as natural, almost inevitable. Her first impression on waking was the curious sense of reality that some dreams impose. Everything had been just right. She came out of the dream as a man may walk out of a playhouse after seeing a sincere and convincing presentment of life as it is. It is difficult, on such rare occasions, to realise that what we have seen and felt has not taken place. We believe that somewhere, somehow, the dream has been enacted. That, perhaps, is the great test of a good play.
She had dreamed that Grimshaw and she were fighting death and disease in Upworthy. Together they wandered in and out of cottages familiar to Cicely from childhood. The drudgery of the Red Cross Hospital fell to her. But in the dream this drudgery became glorified, equal to the highly-skilled labours of her husband: a partnership of mind and muscle. Her work, in its way, made what he did possible and successful. And the joy of the dream, the ineffable benediction of it, was this sense of working together for a common end. In the dream the hands of her husband, not his lips, touched hers again and again, each time with an increasing thrill. He hardly spoke to her, nor she to him; because each understood the unspoken thought of the other. It was as if spirit and flesh had been thrown into a melting-pot, to be fused eternally. He became her and she became him.
And she had slept just twenty minutes!
The dream forced upon her what she had avoided—a more rigorous examination of her own feelings. So far, although bewildered and miserable, she had glanced at three rings in the circus. She had realised what marriage with Arthur would mean to Upworthy, to her mother, and to her husband. What it would mean to herself had been left in abeyance.
Presently she saw herself as Arthur’s wife. She remembered what Tiddy had once said about loving two men at the same time. To her that was impossible, preposterous. If she resolutely banished Grimshaw from her mind for ever and ever she believed that the affection she felt for Arthur might bloom into just the same steady, work-a-day love that had sufficed her own parents. She would be reasonably happy and make him happy. She would adore her babies if they came to her. She would play gracefully the part of Lady Bountiful. It would all be so easy, so free from friction and discomfort. In her dream she had seen herself as the wife of Grimshaw. Now, wide-awake, she beheld herself as Lady Wilverley. But any image of Cicely Chandos, unmarried, regarded by her own kinswomen as a foolish jilt, always conscious of her mother’s silent disapproval, was hopelessly blurred.