CHAPTER XXII
THERE was no doubt that at the start the break meant peace to Cecily. That was what surprised her so much. She had tortured herself in advance with the thought of those nervous stresses which she imagined would follow Dick’s leaving. But they did not materialize. There were a few very bad nights at first. Then came a sleep of exhaustion and after that a night when to her surprise she slept naturally and although, when she woke, the sick feeling of impending trouble and past trouble was still upon her, she was rested. There were hours of choking hysteria when it took more courage than she had ever guessed she had to keep from seeking Dick out, begging him to come back—on any terms—only to relieve the terrible loneliness without him. Days when she felt strangely light and queer and at the end of things as if the emptiness of her soul were swallowing her up; days when the sight of her own strange, strainedly sad eyes and thin face horrified her. The physical pain and exhaustion which went with the mental struggle seemed sometimes unbearable. The children looked strange and seemed remote at times. And yet, little by little, usage, duties, routine began to pull her back to normal. Her emotions wore themselves out battering against her resistance and she commenced to live again.
Half life, she told herself, without sparkle, with no joy, but none the less ordered. She commenced to read a little and the ability to focus her mind on an impersonal situation came back. Reading was almost her only diversion. The few people whom she saw at her own home were her only companions and the only two of those who gave her real companionship were her stepfather and Agatha Ward, whose literary modernism had a kind of solace in it because it grouped her case with so many others. Not that she talked about her trouble to Agatha, but Agatha talked of life and of strange, new, shifting points of view to her. If Agatha had a point of approach to all the currents of life other than that of analysis she never showed it. Under her touch Cecily was able now and then to depersonalize herself, see herself as a “case”—as a situation created by the turmoil of modern things—and it invariably gave her some comfort. The moments of intellectual broadening did not last, but they helped.
Matthew she had not seen. He had written her a note which was brief and careful, asking her if there was anything that he could do for her and she had replied briefly:
“Nothing, thank you, Matthew. There is nothing for any one to do except be sorry for the fact that we are not always brave and wise. Come to see me when you can. Talking to you always helps me. Faithfully yours, Cecily Harrison.”
Matthew read that note again and again and then, not putting it into his pocket, perhaps for fear of the mocking eye of Fliss, he tore it across and dropped it thoughtfully into the wastebasket. He did not go to see her at once.
So with the routine, the care of the house and the increasingly interesting children, a month wore on. At the end of the month a letter from Dick came, enclosing a check for her usual allowance. She sent it back with a note which she tried to make not too curt, reiterating that she must live on her own money and that she had plenty. Then she went into her own room and there, with her check book and a pencil, made various budgets to figure out just how she could manage to cut her expenses to a fourth of their usual amount. That, it appeared, must be done—or if not she would have to take money from Dick or her stepfather. She wouldn’t do that, she was resolved. The decision not to take Dick’s money helped her self-respect enormously. If he was not to live with her she was not going to be supported by him. Dick’s incensed, insulted arguments on that point—that he had a right to support his children and that she had no right to prevent him—made no impression on the fixity of her decision.
“I couldn’t do it, Dick,” she told him, as they were trying to have a “calm” discussion a few days before he went. “Don’t you see that it would be shameful? You’re getting nothing from me—nothing from the children and there’s something in taking money from a man with whom you aren’t living that puts you in a sordid class.”
“But I did get so much—I did get everything——”
“You don’t owe anything for that; please don’t drag money into it, Dick. I couldn’t—I couldn’t ever take it. Love is a gift; children are a gift; you can’t settle for them in——”