And so upon Davidina’s side, as far as words went, it was. But with the mere shutting of her eyes she gave Mr. Trimblerigg a sleepless night; and for many nights and days after, she held him in a grip from which there was no escape. And then some of her answers to the maternal inquiries would flash into his memory with a horribly disturbing effect. ‘But Davidina, however did you come to bring the parcels along?’ ‘I went back for them: I thought Jonathan might have forgotten them; and so he had.’ And when Mr. Trimblerigg defended such forgetfulness as being only natural under the circumstances, Davidina replied, ‘He didn’t forget the other parcel, he saved that.’
‘Which parcel?’
‘The one that fell in. He saw that, and thought it was me, and swam after it; and it must have been a sort of satisfaction saving that, as he couldn’t get me.’
Such clairvoyance was horrible; it was as if her eye had flown with him like a firefly in the night watching every movement not of his body only but of his mind as well? And what made it so much more terrible was that he could not understand her motive, or how it was to end.
But day followed day, and no revelation was made; his story stood uncorrected; neighbours came to call and congratulate and at each occasion the story was told again. Sometimes Mr. Trimblerigg himself was made to tell it, in spite of a modest reluctance which grew and grew; and there always sat Davidina listening with kind eyes and a friendly smile. Then the eyes would shut suddenly, and the smile would remain.
When she had done this to him two or three times, Mr. Trimblerigg was ready to scream; and when she also did it to him the first time they were alone together, he wanted either to die or to murder her. Then, finding he could do neither, he gathered up his courage and was about to speak. But it was no good. Davidina opened her eyes again.
‘I’ve god a horrid gold,’ she said, flattening her consonants in comic imitation of a stage Jew. ‘Dat cubs of falling indo de warder.’
She blew her nose meticulously (as certain modern writers would say), creating an atmosphere which made confession impossible. Mr. Trimblerigg had not a word left that he could utter.
Now, that Mr. Trimblerigg should have been puzzled by Davidina’s acquiescence in the story he had told—that he should have been puzzled, that is to say, after perceiving what use she put it to—reveals the irreflective streak which was always dividing him from self-knowledge, and was presently to do him so much more mischief.
Holding her tongue had given Davidina a power over him which no exposure of his face-saving art of tale-telling could have equalled. The ignominy of that would have blown over; or he could stoutly have denied the push altogether, declaring it a figment of her imagination; and had she forced him to denial often enough he would have come to believe it true. But by saying nothing Davidina stewed him in his own juice without a bubble to show for it; and the tender mercy of her eyes made him sensitive where the accusation of her tongue would only have hardened him.