Mabella looked at Vashti, a half inclination to confide in her cousin came to her. It would be such a help to have a confidant, but her wifely allegiance rose to forbid any confidences regarding her husband’s lapses; she must bear the burden alone. A lump tightened her throat as she closed her lips resolutely. These little victories seem small but they are costly.
“Good-bye, Mabella,” said Vashti; “come over and have tea with us soon.”
“I’ll come over after dinner and stay awhile with you,” said Mabella, “but I won’t stay to supper.”
“Oh, why?” said Vashti. “Lanty can come in on his way home from Brixton; if he turns off at the cross road he can come straight up Winder’s lane to the parsonage. He’s often at Brixton, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Mabella, once more calm in her rôle of defender. “Yes, but I’ll come over some day after dinner; Lanty likes supper at home. He’s often tired after being in Brixton. I’ll bring Dorothy and come over soon for a little visit.”
“Well, you might as well come all of you for supper,” said Vashti; and somehow by a subtle intonation of the voice she conveyed to Mabella the fact that her unconsciousness was only feigned.
As Mabella went towards home the lump in her throat dissolved in tears; she allowed herself the rare luxury of self-pity for a little space, then with the instinctive feeling that she must not give footing to such weakness she pulled herself together, and went forward where Lanty waited at the gate.
When Vashti turned away from Mabella to take the little path to the parsonage, her heart also was wrung by regret and pain; she had made Mabella feel, but how gladly she would have exchanged her empty heartache for the honour of suffering for Lanty’s misdeeds. Lanty Lansing was very handsome, very winning, with that masterful tenderness and tender tyranny which women love; but it is doubtful if he (or many other men) deserved the love which these two women lavished upon him. And it must be said for Vashti that whatever her faults were, she loved her cousin well and constantly. His excesses rent her very heart; if she saw in them a hope of vengeance upon Mabella she yet deplored them sincerely. The hate which was growing in her heart against Mabella was intensified a thousand-fold by the thought that she did not, in some way, drag Lanty back from the pit. Had she been his wife she would have saved him in spite of himself. The thought that the village was sneering and whispering about her idol made her eyes venomous, and in this mood she entered the house. Sidney was waiting for her and suddenly there swept across the woman’s soul a terrible sense of the relentless Destiny which she was working out. As in a mirror she saw herself, not the free and imperious creature she had imagined, but a serf, shackled hand and foot, so that her feet trod the devious path prepared for them from time immemorial, and her hands wrought painfully at a fabric whose fashion and design were fixed by other power than her own.
And Sidney, with his pale spiritual face, his unearthly exalted eyes, his eager-winged soul, was bound to her side. His footsteps were constrained to hers, only it seemed that whereas the path was chosen for her, his way was simply outlined by her will; she remembered the strange incident which had taken her away from the sewing circle. Again she experienced the thrill, half of fear, half of mad unreasoning triumph, which had held her very heart in suspense when Sidney had said, “You wished me to come at five.” Could it be that whilst his mind was passive, whilst he slept the sleep her waving hands induced, whilst his faculties were seemingly numbed by the artificial slumber, could it be that he could yet grasp her desires and awake to fulfil them? The simplest knowledge of hypnotic suggestion would at once have given her incalculable command over Sidney. As it was, she could only grope forward in the darkness of half fearful and hesitating ignorance. In her advance to the knowledge that Sidney, whilst in this sleep, was amenable to suggestion (although she did not phrase it thus) she had skipped one step which would have given her the key to the whole; she had seen that he would carry out, whilst awake, a wish of hers expressed whilst he slept. She did not know that he would have been a mere automaton in her hands whilst he was in the hypnotic sleep, but she told herself that she must measure and ascertain exactly the control she had over her husband; thus nearly every day she cast the spell of deep slumber upon him and gradually, little by little, she discovered the potency of suggestion.