“Thank you, sir, thank you indeed,” cried Robert warmly. “It’s most good and kind of you. You have always been most generous. You are quite right about this furniture, it would be unsuitable under the new conditions. It’s all one to me—I don’t notice these things, and Jean has been heroic about it all—she doesn’t mind either. She’s quite prepared for the change. Aren’t you, dear?”
Jean assented with a small, strained smile, and Robert continued to discuss the subject with philosophic calm. Jean had declared with her own lips that worldly goods were of no importance in her eyes when compared to the treasure of their love, and in simple faith he had taken her at her word. It was beyond his powers of comprehension to realise that the last few minutes, with their calm condemnation of her Lares and Penates, had been one of acute agony to his wife’s soul—the worst moment she had known, since the springing of the bad news. When she was silent and distrait for the rest of the day, he asked her tenderly if her head ached, and enlarged enthusiastically on the goodness of Mr and Mrs Goring in proposing to despoil their own home.
“You’ll find life easier, I hope, darling, in a smaller house. They’ve been a worry to you sometimes, all these collections, keeping them cleaned and dusted, and that kind of thing. We’ll go in for the simple life, and be done with useless ornamentation,” he declared cheerily.
Now that the first shock of the misfortune had spent itself, his invincible optimism was slowly but surely beginning to make itself felt. The worst had happened; every penny that could be scraped together had already been confiscated; he faced the situation, and calmly and courageously set his face towards a fresh start.
“Jean doesn’t mind. Jean says she is prepared. That takes away the sting. So long as she is happy, it doesn’t matter a rap to me where we live. After all, we ought to consider ourselves jolly lucky. It’s only the extras which we shall have to shed, while many poor wretches will be in actual need. We ought to be thankful!”
As the weeks passed by, Robert’s complacence increased, just as, in inverse ratio, Jean’s courage collapsed. It was one thing to declare the world well lost, when her husband lay in her arms, broken-hearted, dependent on her support; but it required a vastly more difficult effort to maintain that attitude during the painful process of hunting for a house at about a third of the old rent, and arranging her treasured possessions for an auction sale. To Vanna, her invariable safety-valve, Jean poured forth her feelings, in characteristic, highly coloured language.
“I feel sometimes as if I could not bear it another moment—as if I must shriek, as if I must scream, as if I must take Rob by the arms and shake him till I drop! It’s so maddening to be taken so literally at one’s word, and to be expected to sit smiling on the top of a pedestal while the world rocks. Yesterday, going over that hateful, stuffy little house, when he would persistently make the best of everything, even the view of the whitewashed yard and I had to go on smiling and smiling as if I agreed, I felt as if something in my head would snap... I believe it will some day, and I shall lose control, and rage, and say terrible things, and he will be broken hearted with sorrow—and surprise! He hasn’t an idea, not a glimmering ghost of an idea, what I’m suffering! I said I didn’t care, and he believed it, just as simply as if I’d told him the time. Oh, dear! the blindness of men.”
“And the strangeness of women!” Vanna looked at her with her tender, whimsical smile. “You believed it yourself at the time, dear girl. I can imagine how eloquent you would be. No wonder poor Robert was convinced. I was overcome with admiration for you that first week, but being a woman, I knew that the reaction must come. That’s inevitable; but you must live up to yourself, Jean; you’ve created a precedent by being magnificently brave, and you must keep it up.”
“I—can’t!” said Jean, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. “That night I could think of nothing but Rob—his poor face! I would have cut off my hand to make him smile, but my home—my home! To have to break it up! My home where we came after we were married, where the babies were born... It breaks my heart to leave it, and to give up all my treasures that I collected with such joy... And Robert doesn’t see, he doesn’t know—that seems hardest of all. If he just realised—”
“He would suffer again! Is that what you want?”