“And have I endured nothing at your hands? Is it nothing to have had you standing between me and him every hour since we were married—to know he has never regarded me save as an encumbrance, a burden; to feel he loved your little finger better than my whole body?”
“I could not help that,” Phemie returned. “If, knowing what you knew, you chose to marry him, I am not to be held responsible for the unhappiness of either of you. Had it been in my power to make him give affection to you, he should have done it. I did not want to keep the heart of any woman’s husband. I would not have taken from you a grain of his love, could any act of mine have prevented his wasting it upon me. I have never asked for it. I have never sought it.”
“Not even when you stayed at Marshlands to welcome him home, I suppose,” remarked Georgina; and there was a moment’s pause ere Mrs. Stondon replied—
“It was foolish for me to stay; foolish and weak; but yet, when the grave gives up its victim, when the sea returns its dead, can we stop to argue about wisdom and propriety? I did wrong in remaining, but I did not remain with any purpose of trying to revive the past between us, I only waited to bid him welcome home before I left Marshlands for ever.”
“Of course,” remarked Georgina drily—“you told us that at the time, and made your exit with singular felicity, I admit; but still it strikes me that had it not been for my appearance——Shall I go on, or will you supply the rest of the sentence for yourself?”
“You can go on, or you can remain silent, whichever seems most agreeable,” answered Phemie. Remaining at Marshlands was the one part of her conduct since her husband’s death which she had always feared to analyse too exactly, which she could neither explain to another nor defend to herself; it was the weak point in her armour, and she could not hinder this woman stabbing her through it, again and again. She remembered all she had felt when she beheld Georgina’s bright mocking eyes looking at her distress. She was never likely to forget the dull horrid shock of that apparition, nor the first sight of their child, nor the despairing misery of her heart as she travelled away through the night, reciting to her own soul every line of the weary story which I have endeavoured throughout the course of the preceding pages to tell.
But for that one error of stopping to greet the man whom she ought to have avoided, his wife could have had no power over her now. Even as it was, however, Phemie fought out her fight bravely, and continued—
“You can put any construction on my conduct that pleases you; it is perfectly immaterial to me whether you believe I stayed for the purpose of winning Basil, as you would have done, or remained for the simple reason I have before stated, as was really and truly the case. You can think I am like you or like myself, whichever you choose. I shall enter into no further explanation or discussion, but only repeat what I said at first, that I never sought Basil’s love, and you know in your heart that I speak the truth.”
“It is a truth difficult to grasp,” was Georgina’s reply.
“Most truths are difficult to grasp,” agreed Mrs. Stondon; “it is very difficult for me now to believe that, feeling as you say you have always done towards me, it was of your own free will you asked us to join our party to yours at Ambleside; of your own free will you renewed the acquaintanceship which had been allowed so completely to drop; of your own free will, and at your own special and earnest invitation, repeated over and over again, not merely verbally but in writing, I went to visit you at Marshlands; of your own free will you almost forced me to remain with you when I really desired to return home; of your own free will you sent me a long journey into Yorkshire to bring back the husband you have since then alienated again from you by your senseless, childish folly. Truths such as these are hard to grasp, but still they are truths for all that.”