Surely, surely she had done no wrong! To have allowed Arthur to go on binding his life ever more and more closely to hers, would have been a crime. What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed? Home, wifely love, and children—it was to these dear enwrapping powers she had committed him in what she had done. She had feared for herself indeed. But is it a sin to fear sin?—the declension of one's own best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?
On her part she could proudly answer for herself. Never since Welby's marriage, either in thought or act, had she given Arthur's wife the smallest just cause of offence. Eugénie's was often an anxious and a troubled conscience; but not here, not in this respect. She knew herself true.
But from Elsie's point of view? Had she in truth sacrificed an ignorant child to her impetuous wish for Arthur's happiness, a too scrupulous care for her own peace? How 'sacrifice'? She had given the child her heart's desire. Arthur was not in love; but Elsie Bligh would have accepted him as a husband on any terms. Tenderly, in good faith, trusting to the girl's beauty, and Arthur's rich and loving nature, Eugénie had joined their hands.
Was that in reality her offence? In spite of all the delicacy with which it had been done, had the girl's passion guessed the truth? And having guessed it, had she then failed—and failed consciously—to make the gift her own?
Eugénie had watched—often with a sinking spirit—the development of a nature, masked by youth and happiness, but essentially narrow and poor, full of mean ambitions and small antipathies. Arthur had played his part bravely, with all the chivalry and the conscience that might have been expected of him. And there had been moments—intervals—of apparent happiness, when Eugénie's own conscience had been laid to sleep.
Was there anything she might have done for those two people, that she had not done? And Elsie had seemed—she sadly remembered—to love her, to trust her—till this tragic breakdown. Indeed, so long as she could dress, dance, dine, and chatter as much as she pleased, with her husband in constant attendance, Mrs. Welby had shown no open discontent with her lot; and if her caresses often hurt Eugénie more than they pleased, there had been no outward dearth of them.
Alack!—Eugénie's heart was wrung with pity for the young maimed creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the more truly tragic image of the husband. Eugénie might try to persuade herself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinct denied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though certain fatal accidents might end it in a week. The omens pointed to a long and fluctuating case—to years of hopeless nursing for Arthur, and complaining misery for his wife.
Years! Eugénie sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well what a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men—such a man as John Fenwick, for instance—of a reputation and a success they thought overdone and undeserved. But Arthur himself! She seemed to be looking into his face, graven on the dusk, the face of a man tragically silent, patient, eternally disappointed; of an artist conscious of ideals and discontents, loftier, more poignant, far than his fellows will ever know—of a poet, alone at heart, forbidden to 'speak out,' blighted, and in pain.
'Arthur—Arthur!' She leaned her head against the pedestal of a marble vase—wrestling with herself.
Then, quick as fire, there flew through her veins the alternate possibility—Elsie's death—freedom for herself and Arthur—the power to retrace her own quixotic, fatal step….