For a time, they feared that the rector would slip out of the world. He lay quite still, but his lips moved incessantly, murmuring his wife’s name; and from this condition he passed into a state of mental coma, from which he did not recover till next day, after a long and heavy sleep. Then, he asked again for his wife; and they told him that she had gone away—for the present. 335
“Poor Mary, poor Mary!” he murmured, and fell asleep again.
Dick’s recovery was more swift. He was soon at his father’s bedside, and the pleasure that the stricken man took in the presence of his son did more to help him back to full consciousness of his surroundings than anything else.
No word came from the wife, however. She was deeply wounded, as well as humiliated. She recognized that her god and the rector’s were not the same. Hers was self. He had made peace with his Master; but her heart was still hard; and her god was only a graven image.
In an empty, barnlike hotel in an obscure town, with never a familiar face about her, she experienced her first sensation of utter desolation. She missed Dick. She missed Netty; yes, even Netty would have been a comfort. But, beyond all, she missed her husband.
Away from home, alone, in a strange place, she was able to survey herself and her affairs with a detachment impossible in the familiar surroundings of the rectory. Economy was no longer a consideration; expense mattered nothing now; but how surprisingly little she desired to spend when both hands were full! How trivial the difference that money really made in the things that mattered! It could 336 not buy back the respect of husband and son. Yet, along with these thoughts came others full of hot rebellion, for her penitence was not yet complete. She alternated between regret for her folly and a passionate anger against the whole world. Was not all she had done for the good of others? Nothing had been placed in the balance to her credit. She was condemned as a selfish criminal, with no account taken of motives. Was it for herself she forged? Was it for herself she lied, when her sin came home to roost? Was it through any lack of love for Dick that she allowed the foul slander to besmirch his memory, when everybody had believed him dead? No, a thousand times no!
The position was a strange one, a hideous tangle of nice, sentimental distinctions. Small wonder that the woman should be blind, and set the balance in her own favor!
The vigor of her lamentations and the intensity of her resentment against everything and everybody brought the inevitable reaction. Truth began to arise from the mirage. Much contemplation of self brought humility, and, try as she would, she could not stifle an aching desire to know what was happening to John since that awful night in the church. She had left him when he was ill, because he had laid the lash upon her shoulders. Yet, her place was at his side. Netty was there, of course. But 337 of what use could Netty be when John was ill? Dick, too, still needed her care. A wave of deep remorse swept over her when she remembered how weak and helpless he was.
Her natural curiosity to know the exact conditions of her father’s will was satisfied by the gossip of the newspapers. And nothing amazed her more than the announcement that Dora Dundas, of all people in the world, was to inherit his millions. Thoughts of Dora sent cold shivers down her back. She knew the downright and straightforward nature so well that she could easily imagine the hot indignation flaming in the girl’s breast for any wrong or injustice inflicted on Dick.