“I know,” Carey assented.
“Ah, yes! she said how good you were!” Helen paused to say, gratefully. “Well, we came home at last, just as her first story was published. People talked about it—some of them met Bridget at our house, and of course they were charmed with her. She began to be asked to different houses: presently she met Mr. Travers and his set. They all raved about her—thought her lovely; and so she was, and is. But you should have seen her those few months! Her social success came all at once, following close upon the lonely lodging-house life she had led for a year. She was radiantly happy. Everything was fresh, of course—everything was charming. She gave even those decadent people a new sensation—I believe she galvanized some of them back to life! Mr. Travers made love to her from the first, and Bridget thought she cared for him. It was so natural under the circumstances. You see—” She stopped a moment. “Bridget’s home life,” she began hesitatingly.
“Yes; I know the circumstances of her home life,” Carey said.
“Well, then, you can understand, perhaps. Mr. Travers was brilliant, talked well, his manner was charming. He was to all appearances a gentleman. Bridget”—she paused a moment—“Bridget naturally had met very few gentlemen in her life. Nothing seems to me more natural, in looking back upon it, than that she should believe she loved him. They were married after only a few months’ engagement.”
Helen left off speaking a moment, and sat down again in her low chair, bending thoughtfully a little forward, towards the fire.
Carey waited in silence.
“I really know scarcely anything definitely about their married life,” she said at last, slowly. “She has said very little, even to me; but I have been miserable at the change in her. I could read between the lines. I knew. She grew hard and cynical and brilliant, like the people she mixed with. Never to me,” she added, turning her head swiftly to hide the tears in her eyes. “It was in self-defence. She suffered terribly—terribly. I could read it in her face.”
Carey’s hand tightened its hold on the arm of the chair.
“The man never loved her,” she went on. “He was incapable of love, or of any other human emotion, I believe. It was her beauty—nothing else—that attracted him. It even made him tolerate her social position. Bridget told him at once, before they were engaged; but he taunted her with it after their marriage,” she added bitterly. “I learnt more than I ever knew before, that dreadful night she came here, when she left his house,” she continued, in a low tone. “She was more like her old self than she had been all the three years of her married life. I cried for thankfulness. If you knew how it hurt me to see her so changed, so cold, so indifferent, so self-controlled. It was so unnatural! The Bridget I remembered was fearless and outspoken, with a fiery Irish temper. You ought to have seen her at school, in a royal rage; her eyes used to blaze—just like stars on a frosty night!” Helen laughed unsteadily.
There was silence. “Thank you for telling me all this,” Carey said presently, very gently.