CHAPTER XII
Minne-Adélaïde was gone, but her work remained. A week had passed, but Gundred could never forget that dialogue. Still as far from her mind as ever was any crude distrust of her husband. It was not in her nature to have vulgar suspicions—to attribute to others that ugly baseness of which she herself could never have been capable. But, none the less, she grew vaguely fretted by Isabel’s presence, vaguely unhappy over the interest that Kingston took in her cousin. The two were always saying things that Gundred could not understand. Bit by bit she grew to feel that even to be an efficient housekeeper and a nice, well-dressed person is not always quite sufficient for a wife’s endowment. She made spasmodic attempts to follow Isabel’s flights into the abstract, and sometimes gave a book the preference over needlework. Her conversation became ambitious, aiming at brilliancy, but only achieving flatulence. She talked in capital letters, of high big words without definitions. Her contributions to ethical debate were windy, wearisome, perpetually circular and pointless. She saw that she could not attain to Isabel’s fantastic lightness of touch; she tramped a heavy ring of argument, and, being for ever unable to analyze her own meaning, was quite incapable of conveying it to others. Never before had she found herself inadequate. Now the conviction grew upon her that inadequate—at least, in some directions—she certainly was. She took refuge in the consciousness of her wedding-ring, and in the thought that impiety would be involved in the sharing of much that her husband and Isabel talked of. And for no possible consideration of earthly happiness would Gundred have wished to share impiety.
Kingston and Isabel noticed Gundred’s efforts to keep pace with their conversations. On Isabel they had no effect. Isabel admitted no consideration of Gundred to any place in her life. She lived alone with Kingston, in a world of their own creation, and Gundred had for her little, if any, real existence. On Kingston Gundred’s manœuvres impressed the full ill-luck of the situation. He saw how she was trying to come near him, and her struggles to do so only emphasized the fact that she was far away. Her attempt had come too late. Understanding now, as he did, the relation in which his whole soul stood to Isabel’s, it became piteous to watch Gundred’s efforts, and understand their futility. He redoubled the warmth of his demonstrations, and, after the habit of men, tried to make up for denying her what she wanted by lavishing upon her everything she did not. Outward signs no longer satisfied her; she had awaked to the fact that true marriage involves the exchange of something more, and that something more it was not now in Kingston’s power to give her. He was delightfully attentive, delightfully demonstrative; he picked up cushions, placed footstools and pillows, fetched and carried with eager docility; he complimented, praised, gave lip-worship and kisses and embraces; but these vigorous manifestations were all so many simulacra of the love that was lacking. Gundred insensibly came to realize the lack, and Kingston’s well-meant attempts to dissemble it only had the effect of forcing it on her attention. He gave her no cause to feel lonely, was always at her side, always included her in the talk, never allowed himself to be alone with Isabel. Yet lonely Gundred still felt herself—shut out from something. By whose fault? The fault was undiscoverable.
Her husband’s attitude was negative and balanced. He threw all his efforts into making good to Gundred the fraud that he had innocently perpetrated. He had no need to look at Isabel, to talk to her, to aggravate the trouble of Gundred’s position. To Kingston and Isabel their secret glory was glory enough. He even shrank from the idea of open friendship with the woman whom his heart loved. It was enough—completely, triumphantly enough—that she should be there in the same house with him, and that he should be for ever conscious of her presence and her relationship to himself. That relationship might have been profaned, spoiled, made common, had they allowed themselves to indulge in talk, in rapture, in the perilous delights of intimacy. As things were, it remained a lovely secret possession, a thing between them both, silent and holy, not to be brought down to earth. The earthly agonies had passed, or only recurred for fleeting moments. The privilege of keeping sacred a feeling so absorbing was enough for the glorification of the present. Morbid and perilous, the situation stood. A month would probably have destroyed its frail balance. In the nature of things it could not last. No sane lover could have contemplated its lasting. But Kingston and Isabel had no plan. They lived from hour to hour; they did not dare to look forward. Destiny would somehow loose the knot of their relations. Silent love was enough for the moment. Their emotions hung breathless on a delicate poise that would not let them contemplate any to-morrow. Besides, such a transcendental attitude, so dangerous, so unpractical, so deadly, left Kingston’s nature free to pay consolatory court to Gundred. With all his external nature he did homage to his wife, and concentrated his skill on paying in full to Gundred the debt he owed. Exalted and fantastic, rather than sensual and practical, his temperament made the task easier than it might have been found by many better, more full-blooded men. To him it became rather a fine martyrdom, in the successful achievement of which lay not only purification, but even pleasure. In the mutilation of the lower self for the sake of the higher he found a comfort so keen as to be almost joy.
Thus, in eager self-mortification, he humbled himself before Gundred, and believed that she had no suspicion of any defaultings on his side. He felt that he was giving her good measure, pressed down and running over—though only of the second-best. That she guessed it to be the second-best her husband had no notion; so subtle an instinct would always have been beyond the prosaic Gundred whom he had known and married. Now he knew her no longer; life had developed them along different roads. So he continued in the confident hope that he was giving her the perfect satisfaction to which she had the right, while she, for her part, secretly chafed at his obvious efforts, grieved that effort should be necessary, and exerted herself more and more to enter his life again. And as for the future, that might look after itself. Sufficient to the day was the marital duty of it. Marriage, however, is a dead thing by the time it becomes a duty. Kingston had no suspicion of this, but Gundred, suddenly outstripping him in the race of intuitions, understood in her heart of hearts, and felt a mortal chill.
The habits of a lifetime, though, are not easily broken by emotional gales; Gundred, for all her leaping excursions into the regions frequented by Kingston and Isabel, retained her old, well-drilled enthusiasm for domesticity. Hearts might break and sunder, but the trained courage of Gundred saw no reason why soup, for that, should grow tepid, or beds ill-aired. Whatever she might fear or suffer, however much she might strain and agonize for real intimacy with her husband, she could not have excused herself to herself for allowing her attention to wander from his comfort or neglect his health. She pursued the useful tenour of her way with a Spartan cheerfulness that might have been even more splendid than it was had not long habit so engrained in her the zeal of domestic services. She continued overhauling the house, its resources, its supplies, its deficiencies. Lady Adela having handed over to her the reins of government, she assumed them with unfaltering grip. Soon she became the housekeeper’s terror, and put to rout all the slack ease that had prevailed under the ineffectual amiability of her mother-in-law’s rule. While one side of her nature was battering for admittance into Kingston’s life, the other, the older, larger side, was occupied in examining store-cupboards, choosing wall-papers, pulling the house and its appointments into shape once more. Many improvements must be made, lighting remodelled, some of the worst horrors tactfully but decisively obliterated.
And at this point, some ten days after Kingston’s understanding with Isabel, her inquiries brought Gundred face to face with the revelation that the drains of Ivescar were of an Early Victorian Tudor design no less pronounced than the style of its architecture. The discovery filled her with consternation. Her husband had confessed the day before to a sore throat. Diphtheria at once painted itself grimly on her imagination. Their stay at Ivescar must immediately end. With a strenuous exertion of character she swept Kingston and Isabel into harmony with her own determination, and the next morning they fled from Yorkshire. There was only one place for them to go to while the sanitary inspectors got to work. The London house was impossible—a desolation of painters and builders. They must return to Brakelond. Accordingly to Brakelond Gundred carried her acquiescent flock, and they took up their residence once again in the little wooden wing that jutted out over the sea. And so three more days passed, drifting Kingston and Isabel insensibly nearer to the inevitable catastrophe. In their fantastic ecstasy they were heedless of peril. But without some intervention of fate their path led downwards towards disaster, though they might ignore or angrily deny the fact even to themselves or each other.
At Brakelond some of the old reflected strength came back to Gundred. She became, once more, rather the châtelaine than the glorified housekeeper. Her mind, less distracted by congenial cares, was able to devote itself with all its might to what she called, to herself, the recapture of her husband. She talked, claimed his attention, attempted metaphysical flights. Her efforts aroused in him sad laughter, irritation, and pity. They were tragically futile as ever—futile in the very nature of the case, no less than in the limitations of Gundred’s character. The situation drifted on and on. As for Isabel, Gundred not only tried to copy her methods, but to monopolize her company. She sat with her, took her for drives, kept her at her side as much as possible, flattering herself all the time that her manœuvres were imperceptible. Isabel, secure in her secret supremacy, allowed herself to be captured, and, in the superficial victory of Gundred, found an added joy in her own hidden amusement.
‘A little drive this afternoon—yes?’ said Gundred, after lunch. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice? You will come with me, Isabel?’
Isabel assented. ‘At what time?’ she asked.