“For a long, long time,” he continued, “my constant question has been, ‘Can this last? is it a delusion?’ But I do not shut my eyes now. I knew they were all wrong at home when they made out that she was in love with me, and expected me to propose. We are both the victims of an impertinent, if well-meant, interference—what Robert calls ‘the jabbering of the damned.’ Poor Robert, we are forgetting him. I am ashamed to talk so much about myself.”
“In his case, I see no help but resignation to the will of God,” said Pensée.
“But that resignation is an awful thing,” said Reckage. “It is a shade better than the atheism of despair; yet only a shade better.”
By degrees Pensée was learning why Robert had such a strong, tenacious attachment to this man. He was always faithful to his mood. All he did and all he said represented accurately all he thought and all he felt. Some live a dual life—he lived but one; and, with his faults, peculiarities, and egoism, there was never the least dissimulation. It was true that, if occasion required, he could hold his tongue; but he abhorred tact and hated doctrines of expediency—everything, in fact, which put any restraint upon the “development of his inclinations.”
The train was now approaching Dover. He decided to put his own troubles aside, and, out of mere decency, concentrate his thoughts on the severe trial in store for Orange.
“This business about Parflete,” said he, “is a great blow. One becomes indifferent to what is said of, or done to, one's self; but that all this uncommon, saddening, sickening trouble should come upon Robert is too bad. It seems a kind of hacking and hacking, bit by bit.”
“You are certainly very fond of him,” said Pensée.
“Yes, I am. He's so dependable.”
Pensée engaged a private cabin for the crossing, and she retired there with her maid. Too tired and over-strung to sleep, she lay down, closed her eyes, and lived again through the many fatiguing, agitating moments of that day. Her affection for Orange had been so steeped in hopelessness from the hour, months before, when he told her of his love for Brigit, that the wedding of these two had been a relief rather than a final anguish. The agonising possibilities which had sometimes darted into her mind would never again surprise her: the questions which she had always striven to prohibit were no longer even in existence. He had taken the unredeemable step: he was married. Jealousy had no part in her suffering. Robert had never given her the smallest right to feel slighted, or neglected, or abandoned. Some women are jealous by temperament, but the greater number are jealous only when their trust is insulted or their dignity brought down to the humiliating struggle for a lost empire. Empire over Orange she had never possessed or claimed: she could feel no bitterness, therefore, at the thought of the small place she occupied in his destiny. The sorrow which cut and severed her heart was loneliness. She felt that, after the wedding, she could hardly do anything or take interest in anything. It seemed as if the waters were gathered in heaps on either side; things, she thought, could not be better, or worse. God was with her still, and her children—her dear children—were with her still, but she could not disguise the greatness of the loss. Her single wish, as far as she dared have a wish, had been to benefit Robert and to win his confidence. She had seen his mind working in various directions, and although she was not, in the faintest sense, his fit companion intellectually, she had a knowledge and experience of life which made her friendship valuable—a gift worth offering to any man. She had been able to advise him. Brigit now had even this privilege also. “I shall seem an intruder,” thought Pensée, again and again.