“Yes. There are some fatalities that cannot be reversed, Mr. Cranston, eh?”
Catherine returned to the great house in Lombard Street that night with a vague feeling of melancholy and unrest. She was beginning to know the terror of a secret in a house, a hidden shame to be held sacred from the eyes of the world. Nor was it that she did not trust her husband, nor respect his strength, for few men would have fought as he had fought, and even in defeat she beheld a pathos that was wholly tragic, never sordid.
She was haunted by the thought that night that Betty Steel had guessed her secret, and only women know the feline cruelty of their sex. The greater part of the social snobberies and tyrannies of life are inspired by the spiteful egotism of women. Catherine knew enough of Betty’s nature to forecast the mercy she might expect from her rival’s tongue. Moreover, the very home-coming from the dance recalled to her that March night when she had first uncovered her husband’s shame. There are some memories that are like aggressive weeds, no tearing up by the roots can banish them from the human heart. Their tendrils creep and thrust into every crevice of the mind. Their fruit is full of a poisoned juice, their flowers red as hyssop—for all the world to see.
As for the sake of irony, the letters that Betty Steel and Mr. Cranston had discussed, were opened by Murchison at the breakfast-table before the faces of his children and his wife. Master Jack had been clamoring to be taken to the cottage on Marley Down, and Gwen had crept round to her father’s elbow to overpersuade him with the winsomeness of childhood. The first letter that Murchison opened was from Cranston; the second from Parker Steel. Miss Gwen, doll in hand, stood unheeded at her father’s elbow. It was Catherine who rose, called the two children, and took them out into the garden to play.
They clung, one to either hand, the boy prancing and chattering, the girl solemn-eyed because of her father’s silence.
“Mother, when may we go to Marley?”
“Soon, dear, soon.”
“Oh, I say, do they keep rabbits there?”
“And will daddy come too?”
Catherine disentangled herself, and left them on the lawn under the great plane-tree, her heart heavy with some half-expected dread.