“If it had been my child?” she thought. “If my husband had done it?”
CHAPTER X
[Page missing in original book.]
Since the death of Robin and Rosamund’s arrival in Liverpool, Father Robertson had made acquaintance with her sister and with the mother of Dion. And both these women had condemned Rosamund for what she had done, and had begged him to try to bring about a change in her heart. Both of them, too, had dwelt upon the exceptional quality of Dion’s love for his wife. Mrs. Leith had been unable to conceal the bitterness of her feeling against Rosamund. The mother in her way, was outraged. Beatrice Daventry had shown no bitterness. She loved and understood her sister too well to rage against her for anything that she did or left undone. But this very love of her sister, so clearly shown, had made her condemnation of Rosamund’s action the more impressive. And her pity for Dion was supreme. Through Beatrice Father Robertson had gained an insight into Dion’s love, and into another love, too; but of that he scarcely allowed himself even to think. There are purities so intense that, like fire, they burn those who would handle them, however tenderly. About Beatrice Father Robertson felt that he knew something he dared not know. Indeed, he was hardly sincere about that matter with himself. Perhaps this was his only insincerity.
With his friend, Canon Wilton, too, he had spoken of Rosamund, and had found himself in the presence of a sort of noble anger. Now, in his little room, as he knelt in meditation, he remembered a saying of the Canon’s, spoken in the paneled library at Welsley: “Leith has a great heart. When will his wife understand its greatness?”
Father Robertson pressed his thin hands upon his closed eyes. He longed for guidance and he felt almost distressed. Rosamund had submitted herself to him, had given herself into his hands, but tacitly she had kept something back. She had never permitted him to direct her in regard to her relation with her husband. It was in regard to her relation with God that she had submitted herself to him.
How grotesque that was!
Father Robertson’s face burned.
Before Rosamund had come to him she had closed the book of her married life with a frantic hand. And Father Robertson had left the book closed. He saw his delicacy now as cowardice. In his religious relation with Rosamund he had been too much of a gentleman! When Mrs. Leith, Beatrice, Canon Wilton had appealed to him, he had said that he would do what he could some day, but that he felt time must be given to Rosamund, a long time, to recover from the tremendous shock she had undergone. He had waited. Something imperative had kept him back from ever going fully with Rosamund into the question of her separation from her husband. He had certainly spoken of it, but he had never discussed it, had never got to the bottom of it, although he had felt that some day he must be quite frank with her about it.