For the last few days, however, as she ran from the dining-room to the study, and from the study to the flagged courtyard, where Robert was feverishly busy at the last moment, adjusting bicycle screws, and blowing up tires, Cecily’s mind was active. She thought of early days, and of the joy of discovering that Robert was such a child, needing so much care, and, in little things, so dependent upon her. She remembered his kisses, his words of extravagant praise when she found one of the many things he had lost, the brightening of his eyes when he saw her running downstairs.
To-day, just as he was started, she had found a note-book he had evidently intended to take, lying on the hall table, and she had dashed out with it. He had travelled a few paces down the lane when she called to him, and with an irritable exclamation he had dismounted and returned, wheeling his bicycle with one hand, and reaching for the book with the other.
“It didn’t matter,” he muttered, and absent-mindedly took the book without thanks, and rode off.
Cecily stood leaning upon the gate, watching his retreating figure. Presently her lips parted in a bitter smile. “No. It didn’t matter. He won’t use notes to-day,” she thought, and quietly retraced her steps up the flagged path, through the hall, and out into the garden.
She went at once to her favorite seat under the beech tree and sat down. For the last few days she had done this almost mechanically. It seemed impossible to do anything else. She idly sat there with a book on her lap, and let thoughts sweep through her mind. Thoughts and memories—memories of past caresses, of intimate talks, when she and Robert had been really one; when to disassociate her mind from Robert’s would have seemed an absurdity at which to smile. She and Robert had been like that—she could not even to herself phrase it otherwise. And it was possible that he could forget, ignore, wipe it all out, and begin again with some one else; begin the same dear words, the same intimacies, convey to this other woman the same belief that it was she, she, out of all the world, who mattered, who meant the heart of life to him?
Though the process of disillusion, of the overshadowing of her happiness, had been a gradual one, this fresh knowledge had the effect of reviving with intolerable poignancy the memory of the early sunshine, the early sense of being blessed above all women. It placed that memory in bitter contrast to her outlook of to-day.
“Fool that I was!” she whispered, drawing in her breath with a spasm of physical pain. “What a fool!” Her partly realized thoughts ran on, ran high, like tumultuous waves. “It’s a common experience. Why should I escape? Men are like that. I knew it theoretically. Why should I have thought that Robert——” And then would come the impotent rush of protest and despair. It was just that! He was Robert, and mad, childish, futile as it was, it was just that which made the truth impossible.
She looked round her. The sunshine on the grass was hateful, the warm blue sky an insult. All beauty was a lie, a meaningless, soulless lie, like the love of men and women, which held no faith, no steadfastness, no pity even.
She thought of her five years of married life. Five years of self-immolation in which she had known no desires, no ambitions, no joys except through the desires, the ambitions, the joys of her husband. “All wasted, all no good,—no good,” she wailed unconsciously in her misery, saying the words half aloud. She sprang to her feet, and began to pace restlessly to and fro between the borders of flowers she had planted and tended. The sight of them reminded her of how they had come into their existence. She remembered how she had fought to still some of her first heartaches with the planting of these lilies, the pruning of that rose-bush. It had been a relief to work hard, manually, while she hoped that the old glamour would return and once more descend upon their lives. Now the roses mocked her with their glowing, passionate faces.
“What shall I do? What shall I do?” Over and over again the despairing question welled up into her mind.