She had gone abroad to fight, and had come back having lost her battle. And already she was being scourged for her failure.
When she had been striving alone these two had evidently forgotten her existence. Directly she had passed for a short time out of their lives they had come together. Youth had instinctively sought out youth, and she, the old woman, had been as one dead to them. If she had stayed away for years, if she had never come back, it would not have mattered to them.
Beryl’s lack of all affection for her did not seriously trouble her. She knew the dryness of vanity; she knew that it was practically impossible for a girl so vain as Beryl to care deeply, or at all unselfishly, for another woman. But Craven’s conduct was not what she had looked for. It seemed to stamp him as typical, and she had supposed him to be exceptional. When Beryl had told her about Camber—so little and yet so much—she had been struck to the heart; and yet she had seen a vision of servants, the footman out in the dark with the under housemaid.
Seymour Portman’s observant old eyes, the terrible eyes of affection, took in the change in her, not quite as a woman’s eyes would have done, but in their own adequate way. His Adela looked different. Something had happened to her. The envelope had been touched up in some, to him, quite mysterious manner. And he did not like it. It even gave him a mild sort of shock. The touch of artificiality was cold on this amazingly straightforward old man. He loved his Adela with all the wrinkles, with the sagging skin, and the lined throat, and the curiously experienced weariness about the temples. She lived for him in the brilliant eyes, and was loved by him in them. And why should she suddenly try to change her appearance? It had certainly not been done for him—this Something. She was looking handsomer than usual, and yet he seemed to be aware that beneath the improved surface there was a tragic haggardness which had come into existence while she had been away.
He did not reproach her for the mystery of her absence, or for her silence; he did not ask her questions about where she had been, what she had done; he just sat with her and loved her. And his love made her horribly uneasy that day. She could not be still under it. She felt as if the soul of her kept shifting about, as a child shifts about under the watchful eyes of an elder. She felt the physical tingle of guilt. And she was thankful when at last Seymour went away and left her alone with her hatred.
All those weeks! She had deliberately left the ground free to Beryl for all those weeks, and she had returned with no expectation of the thing that of course had happened. And yet she had believed that she had an excellent knowledge of life and of human beings. No doubt she had been so concentrated upon herself, and the struggle within herself that she had been unable to make any use of that knowledge. And so now she was full of hatred and of profound humiliation.
When she had abruptly left England she had made up her mind to “have done with it,” that is to have done with love, to have done even with sentimental friendship. She had resolved to plunge into complete loneliness. Since she could not take Seymour into her intimate life, since she now knew that was absolutely impossible, she must somehow manage to get along permanently with nothing. And so, yielding to a desperate impulse, she had resolved to seek an unaccustomed solitude. She had fled from London. But she had stopped in Paris; although she had intended to pass through it and to go straight on to Marseilles and the Riviera. When the train had run in to the Gare du Nord she had told her surprised maid that she was tired and would not go on that night. Suddenly she had decided to seek out Caroline Briggs, to make a confession, to ask for help and sympathy. And she had sent her maid to a hotel, and had driven to Caroline’s house.
But Caroline was not in Paris. A blue-cheeked, close-shaven French footman had informed her that his mistress had been obliged to sail for America three days before.
It had been a great blow to her. Confession, the cry for help, had been almost on her lips as she had stood at the door before the keen-eyed young man. And she had gone away feeling strangely lost and abandoned.
On the following morning she had left Paris and had travelled to the Riviera. And, there, she had fought against herself and had lost the battle.