“And you suggested it to her?” she asked.
“No. I had no opportunity of speaking to her.”
A hysterical desire to laugh seized her. She controlled it, grasping with her left hand the corner of the cushion on which she sat, and was silent.
“I should only want her—and indeed she could only come—for an hour or two in the morning,” Robert went on, quite fluently now. “She has her own work—enamelling, isn’t it? And of course she wouldn’t want to give that up entirely. But she can’t make a living at it; and I thought, as she’s a friend of yours, if I could do her a good turn——”
Cecily rose. “By all means do her a good turn,” she said. “But what has that to do with it? The question is, will she make a good secretary? If you think she will, I should engage her. I must go and get ready. I promised to meet Mrs. Carrington at three o’clock.”
As she closed the door after her, Robert shrugged his shoulders. He was honestly reflecting that it was the unreasoning prejudice of women that made marriage slavery. Dispassionately he reviewed his own case. Granted that if she knew of his relations with Philippa, it would be impossible to make his wife view them from any but the vulgar standpoint; granted this, the point at issue was that she did not know. From her point of view, therefore, he was the conventionally faithful husband, and, this notwithstanding, it was she who had annulled their married life. So far as her knowledge went, Philippa was a mere acquaintance of his, a woman with whom, during her stay at Sheepcote, he had been moderately friendly; a woman to whom, because she was poor and comparatively friendless, he wished to extend a helping hand. Immediately, her attitude, if not hostile, had been at least uncordial. He began to rage at its obvious injustice. Regarded from Cecily’s standpoint it was monstrous. On no stronger ground than that of a frivolous accusation of lack of affection on his part, to insist on a practical separation, and then to be jealous of his women friends!
He rose from the table with an exclamation of impatience. It was amazing that no later than yesterday he should have dreaded making this proposition to Cecily, that he should have shrunk from it as something in bad taste, something forced upon him only by the pressing necessity of helping a proud woman, who would be helped in no other way. His scruples had been needless, and even ridiculous. By her own action Cecily had set him free to do what he would with his life. He took his hat, and later a hansom, and drove to Fulham.
Cecily sat in her bedroom on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap. Mechanically she had taken her hat and veil from the wardrobe, and as mechanically laid them aside, forgetting she was going out. Presently she wandered into the drawing-room, and began to walk up and down. Misery, jealousy, loneliness, had shrunk away before a sort of cold anger and contempt; a longing to be free, to shake off forever a yoke that had become hateful; to have the power to become herself once more. Should she tell Robert she knew? Should she demand her freedom, and go? Part of her nature leaped at the thought. It would so simplify the struggle. She could go away, immerse herself in work, force herself to forget. Thus she would so easily spare herself humiliation, the sight of the woman she hated in her own house, at her husband’s side. “And why should I stay? Why should I?” she clamored to one of the other women within her. “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t want me.... Not now.” “But some day he will want you,” another voice unexpectedly returned. “What then? Am I to wait meekly till he’s tired of her? Am I to be at hand to console him in the intervals of his love affairs?”
She heard herself break into a short, scornful laugh, and almost before it ceased the other self had spoken. “Think of him wanting you—and suppose you were not there? You know how he would look. Picture it. Could you bear it? Can you go?” All at once the room swam before her in a mist of tears, and she knew she could not.