"Il ne suffit pas d'être logique en ce monde; il faut savoir vivre avec ceux qui ne le sont pas."—Valtour.
In later years Annette remembered little of the days that passed while Roger was in France. They ought to have been terrible days, days of suspense and foreboding, but they were not. Her mind was at rest. It had long oppressed her that her two best friends, Roger and Janey, were in ignorance of certain facts about her which their friendship for her and their trust in her gave them a right to know. With a sinking of the heart, she said to herself, "They know now." But that was easier to bear than "They ought to know."
If she had hoped for a letter from Roger none came, but I hardly think she was so foolish as to hope it.
Janey had been to see her, had climbed up to her little attic, and had stretched out her arms to her. And Annette and she had held each other closely, and looked into each other's eyes, and kissed each other in silence. No word passed between them, and then Janey had gone away again. The remembrance of that wordless embrace lay heavy on Janey's sore heart. Annette, pallid and worn, had blamed no one, had made no excuse for herself. How she had misjudged Annette!—she, her friend.
But if Annette felt relief about Roger and Janey, the thought of the aunts brought a pang with it, especially since Mrs. Stoddart's visit. They had reached the state of nerves when the sweeps are an event, a broken window-cord an occasion for fortitude, a patch of damp on the ceiling a disaster. They would be wounded to the quick in their pride and in their affection if any scandal attached to her name; for they had become fond of her since she had devoted herself to them. While she had been as a young girl a claim on their time and attention they had not cared much about her, but now she was indispensable to them, and she who formerly could do nothing right could now hardly do anything wrong. Oh! why had she concealed anything from them in the first instance? Why had she allowed kind, clever Mrs. Stoddart to judge for her what was right when she ought to have followed her own instinct of telling them, before they had come to lean upon her? "Mrs. Stoddart only thought of me," Annette said to herself. "She never considered the aunts at all," which was about the truth.
Their whole happiness would be destroyed, the even tenor of their lives broken up. Aunt Maria often talked as if she had plumbed the greatest depths to which human nature can sink. Aunt Harriet had more than hinted that many dark and even improper problems had been unravelled in tears beside her couch. But Annette knew very well that these utterances were purely academic and had no connection with anything real, indicating only the anxious desire of middle age, half conscious that it is in a backwater, to impress on itself and others that—to use its own pathetic phrase—it is "keeping in touch with life."
The aunts must leave Riff, and quickly. Mrs. Stoddart was right. Annette realized that their lives could be reconstructed like other mechanisms: taken down like an iron building and put up elsewhere. They had struck no root in Riff as she herself had done. Aunt Harriet had always had a leaning towards Bournemouth. No doubt they could easily form there another little circle where they would be admired and appreciated. There must be the equivalent of Canon Wetherby wherever one went. Yes, they must leave Riff. Fortunately, both aunts had only consented, much against the grain, to live in the country on account of their sister's health; both lamented that they were cut off from congenial literary society; both frequently regretted the move. She would have no difficulty in persuading them to leave Riff, for already she had had to exercise a certain amount of persuasion to induce them to remain. She must prepare their minds without delay.
For once, Fortune favoured her.
Aunt Harriet did not come down to breakfast, and the meal was, in consequence, one of the pleasantest of the day, in spite of the fact that Aunt Maria was generally oppressed with the thought of the morning's work which was hanging over her. She was unhappy and irritable if she did not work, and pessimistic as to the quality of what she had written if she did work. But Aunt Harriet had a knack of occasionally trailing in untoileted in her dressing-gown, without her toupée, during breakfast, ostensibly in order to impart interesting items of news culled from her morning letters, but in reality to glean up any small scraps of information in the voluminous correspondence of her sister. She did so the morning after Mrs. Stoddart's visit, carrying in one hand her air-cushion, and with the other holding out a card to Aunt Maria, sitting bolt upright, neatly groomed, self-respecting, behind her silver teapot.