He stood there thus till his back was quite warm. Adela was rather slow in coming. But he did not mind that. It was happiness for him to be in her house, among her things, the sofas and chairs she used, the carpet her feet pressed every day, the books she read, the flowers she had chosen. This house was his idea of a home who had never had a home because of her.
Meanwhile upstairs, in a big bedroom just overhead, Lady Sellingworth was having a battle with herself of which her friend was totally unconscious. She did not come down at once because she wanted definitely and finally to finish that battle before she saw again the man by the fire. But something said to her: “Don’t decide till you have seen him again. Look at him once more and then decide.” She walked softly up and down the room after Murgatroyd had told her who was waiting for her, and she felt gnawed by apprehension. She knew her fate was in the balance. All day she had been trying to decide what she was going to do. All day she had been saying to herself: “Now, this moment, I will decide, and once the decision is made there shall be no going back from it.” It was within her power to come to a decision and to stick to it; or, if it were not within her power, then she was not a sane but an insane woman. She knew herself sane. Yet the decision was not arrived at when Sir Seymour rang the bell. Now he was waiting in the room underneath and the matter must be settled. An effort of will, the descent of a flight of stairs, a sentence spoken, and her life would be made fast to an anchor which would hold. And for her there would be no more drifting upon dangerous seas at the mercy of tempests.
“Look at him once more and then decide.”
The voice persisted within her monotonously. But what an absurd injunction that was. She knew Seymour by heart, knew every feature of him, every expression of his keen, observant, but affectionate eyes, the way he held himself, the shapes of his strong, rather broad hands—the hands of a fine horseman and first-rate whip—every trick of him, every attitude. Why look at him, her old familiar friend, again before deciding what she was now going to do?
“Look at him as the man who is going to be your husband!”
But that was surely a deceiving insidious voice, suggesting to her weakness, uncertainty, hesitation, further mental torment and further debate. And she was afraid of it.
She stood still near the window. She must go down. Seymour had already been waiting some time, ten minutes or more. He must be wondering why she did not come. He was not the sort of man one cares to keep waiting—although he had waited many years scarcely daring to hope for something he longed for. She thought of his marvellous happiness, his wonderful surprise, if she did what she meant—or did she mean it—to do. Surely it would be a splendid thing to bring such a flash of radiance into a life of twilight. Does happiness come from making others happy? If so, then—She must go down.
“I will do it!” she said to herself. “Merely his happiness will be enough reward.”
And she went towards the door. But as she did so her apprehension grew till her body tingled with it. A strange sensation of being physically unwell came upon her. She shrank, as if physically, from the clutching hands of the irrevocable. If in a hurry, driven by her demon, she were to say the words she had in her mind there would be no going back. She would never dare to unsay them. She knew that. But that was just the great advantage she surely was seeking—an irrevocable safety from herself, a safety she would never be able to get away from, break out of.
In a prison there is safety from all the dangers and horrors of the world outside the prison. But what a desperate love of the state she now called freedom burned within her! Freedom for what, though? She knew and felt as if her soul were slowly reddening. It was monstrous that thought of hers. Yet she could not help having it. It was surely not her fault if she had it. Was she a sort of monster unlike all other women of her age? Or did many of them, too, have such thoughts?