A long ten months of a struggle to forget, spent in the daily society of a lady, kind-hearted, but to whom an inscrutable Providence had given as much spiritual insight as to a sack of potatoes, had told upon her strength and her nerves. She had had no support except in her own indomitable pride. Of acquaintances she had many; of friends, from the wandering manner of her life, few, and those not at hand. Religion was an empty word with her, she had never come into contact with it. She had, indeed, a love for art, but neither energy nor strength of will to study consistently.
From time to time she gave herself up to music, working from morning till night at Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, or Bach to the great discomfort of her aunt, who fidgeted in her seat at Brahms or Chopin, well-nigh howled at Bach, and would plaintively murmur requests for “The Bee’s Wedding,” upon which she had been brought up. She went to as many concerts as she could, and even once persuaded Mrs. Travis to accompany her. That lady sat through a magnificent performance with resigned placidity, saying from time to time “Very nice” in a drooping voice; and as they came out, gathered her black silk skirts vigorously in both hands, and stepping, large and brisk, through the crowd, remarked with relief, “There’ll be just time to call at Louise’s about my new bonnet!”
Jocelyn had never the heart to ask her to go again. All the same, a few days afterwards Mrs. Travis had suddenly passed a criticism upon an intricate passage of the music—a criticism which just missed being masterly. An astounding lady!
At first, it seemed long ago now, when memory was roused in her, Jocelyn had shrunk from the violent despair of her own moods; they were followed by days of headache and exhaustion, when nothing seemed to matter at all, except to feel well. Then would come days, and even weeks, when she would fling herself into the life of the passing moment, and almost forget; but always there seemed a blight over life—nothing, not even music, had any meaning; everything passed her by and left her untouched, with a sense of incompleteness. She recalled the old days, when each event and each pleasure had been, as it were, stamped with its meaning in large surface letters, and wondered.
She had kept her promise to Giles. She wrote once a month, giving him a bare chronicle of her movements and doings, at a great cost to herself; and yet, perhaps for that very reason, she would not willingly have given up writing. She would think of him sometimes with pity, often with longing, again with a wayward and inconsistent anger.
Why did he not write?
She had begged him in her first letter not to answer; and he had obeyed. The pessimism of her native distrust always besieged her.
He could not care—no man would care for so long! She wanted him, and she did not want him. For the last month she had not written; she had no longer those violent moods of despair, but she had felt too profoundly discouraged.
She had grown thinner and paler, and her face was hardly ever without its look of defeat. Her aunt’s personality seemed altogether too much for her in these days; she had a feeling of suffocation and of great loneliness.
She would sit at the window sometimes for hours, watching the river, longing to get away upon it to the sea, far away to the East, to countries where no one knew her, where the sun was bright, and she might begin her life again. At other times she knew that even that could not give her what she wanted, or fill the vague longing within her. The winter months in London had been dreary and terrible, but her heart had never ached as now, when the spring wind stirred, and the sap coursed in the budding trees....