A change was coming over her. She was no longer apathetic. Now that she saw less of her husband she thought more frequently of him, if only to his disparagement. At times the process was unconscious; at times, when she caught her thoughts dealing thus uncharitably with him, she was touched by a pang of contrition and of shame. At times she was pulled up in her thinking with a sudden shock. She said to herself that he used to be so different, and her heart would turn gently to the man he used to be. Then, as in the sad days of her bridal home-coming, the dear immortal memory of him rose up before her, and pleaded mercy for the insufferably mortal man. She saw him, with the body and the soul that had been once so familiar to her, slender, alert, and strong, a creature of appealing goodness and tenderness and charm. And she was troubled with a great longing for the presence of the thing she had so loved. She yearned even for signs of the old brilliant, startling personality, in face of the growing dulness that she saw. She found herself recalling with a smile sayings of his that had once vexed and now amused her. For Anne was softer.
At times she was aware of a new source of uneasiness. She was accustomed to judge all things in relation to the spiritual life. She had no other measure of their excellence. She had found profit for her soul in its divorce from her husband. She had persuaded herself that since she could not raise him, she herself would have sunk if she had clung to him or let him cling. She had felt that their tragic rupture strengthened the tie between her soul and God. But more than once lately, she had experienced difficulty in reaching her refuge, her place of peace. Something threatened her former inviolable security. The ramparts of the spiritual life were shaken. Her prayers, that were once an ascension of flamed and winged powers carrying her to heaven, had become mere clamorous petitions, drawing down the things of heaven to earth. Night and morning the same passionate prayer for herself and her child, the same prayer for her husband, painful and perfunctory; but not always now the same sense of absolution, of supreme and intimate communion. It was as if a veil, opaque but intangible, were drawn between her spirit and the Unseen. She thought it had come of living in perpetual contact with Walter's deterioration.
Yet Anne was softer.
Her love for Peggy had become more and more an engrossing passion, as Majendie left her more and more to the dominion of her motherhood. He had seen enough of the effect of rivalry. It was Anne's pleasure to take Peggy from her nurse and wash her and dress her, to tend her fine limbs, and comb her pale soft hair. It was as if her care for the little tender body had taught her patience and gentleness towards flesh and blood; as if, through the love it invoked, some veil was torn for her, and she saw, wrought in the body of her child, the wonder of the spirit's fellowship with earth.
She dreaded the passing of the seasons, as they would take with them each some heart-rending charm of Peggy's infancy. Now it would be the ceasing of her pretty, helpless cry, as Peggy acquired mastery over things; now the repudiation of her delicious play, as Peggy's intellect perceived its puerility; and now the leaving off for ever of the speech that was Peggy's own, as Peggy adopted the superstition of the English language. A few years and Peggy would have cast off pinafores, a very few more, and Peggy would be at a boarding-school; and before she left it she would have her hair up. There was a pang for Peggy's mother in looking backward, and in looking forward pang upon intolerable pang.
But Peggy was in no hurry to grow up. Her delicacy prolonged her babyhood and its sweet impunity. The sad state of Peggy's little body accounted for all the little sins that weighed on Peggy's mother's soul. You couldn't punish Peggy. An untender look made her tremble; at a harsh word she cried till she was sick. When Peggy committed sin she ran and told her mother, as if it were some wonderful and interesting experience. Anne was afraid that she would never teach the child the difference between right and wrong.
In this, by some strange irony, Majendie, for all his self-effacement, proved more effectual than Anne.
They were all three in the drawing-room one Sunday afternoon at tea-time. It was Peggy's hour. And in that hour she had found her moment, when her parents' backs were turned to the tea-table. The moment over, she came to Majendie, shivering with delight.
"Oh, daddy, daddy," she cried, "I did 'teal some sugar. I did 'teal it my own self, and eated it all up."
Peggy had been forbidden to touch the sugar basin ever since one very miserable day.