The Helpmate Part 15

"There's something in that. If she's not in love with you--"

"Look here, Edie, you're a woman, and you know all about them. Do you really, honestly think Anne ever was in love with me?"

"Oh, don't ask me. How should I know?"

"No, but," he persisted, "what do you think?"

"I think she _was_ in love."

"But not with me, though?"

"No, no, not with you."

"With whom, then?"

"Darling idiot, there wasn't any who. If there was, do you think I'd give her away like that? If you'd asked me _what_ she was in love with--"

"Well, what then?"

"Your goodness. She was head over ears in love with that."

"I see. With something that I wasn't."

"No, with something that you were, that you are, only she doesn't know it."

"Then," said Majendie, "you can't get out of it, she's in love with _me_."

"Oh no, no, you dear goose, not with you. To be in love with you she'd have to be in love with everything you're _not_, as well as everything you are; with everything you have been, with everything you never were, with everything you will be, with everything you might be, could be, should be."

"That's a large order, Edie."

"There's a larger one than that. She might sweep all that overboard, see it go by whole pieces (the best pieces) at a time, and still be in love with the dear, incomprehensible, indescribable _you_. That," said Edie, triumphant in her wisdom, "is what being in love is."

"And do you think she isn't in it?"

"No. Not anywhere near it. But--it's a big but--"

"I don't care how big it is. Don't bother me with it."

"Bother you? Why, it's a beautiful but. As I said, she isn't in love with you; but she may be any minute. It's just touch and go with her. It depends on _you_."

"Heavens, what am I to do? I've done everything."

"Yes, you have, but she hasn't. She's done nothing. She doesn't know how to. You've got to show her."

He shook his head hopelessly. "You're beyond me. I don't understand.

There isn't anything for me to do. How am I to show her?"

"I mean show her what there is in it. What it means. What it's going to be for her as well as you. Just go at it hard, harder than you did before you married her."

"_I_ see, I've got to make love to her all over again."

"Exactly. All over again from the very beginning."

"I say!" He took it in, her idea, in all the width and splendour of its simplicity. "And do it differently?"

"Oh, very differently."

"I don't quite see where the difference is to come in. What did I do before that was so wrong?"

"Nothing. That's just the worst of it. It was all too right. Ever so much too right. Don't you see? It's what we've been talking about. You made her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because it was _your_ goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason, because she's an egoist."

"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't."

"Oh, you _are_ in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?"

"I don't love you less for anything."

"Well--unless you can make Anne jealous of me--and you can't--you've got to love me less, now, dear boy. That's where I come in--to be kept out of it."

She had led him breathless on her giddy round; she plunged him back into bewilderment. He hadn't a notion where she was taking him to, where they would come out; but there was a desperate delight in the impetuous journey, the wind of her sudden flight lifted him and carried him on. He had always trusted the marvellous inspirations of her heart. She had failed him once; but now he could not deny that she had given him lights, and he looked for a stupendous illumination at the end of the way.

"Out of it!" he exclaimed. "Why, where should I have been without you?

You were the beginning of it."

"I was indeed. You've got to take care I'm not the end of it, that's all."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean what I say. You don't want Anne to be in love with you for _my_ sake, do you?"

"N--no. I don't know that I do exactly. At least I should prefer that she was in love with me for my own."

"Well, you must make her, then. That's why you've got to leave me out of it. I've been too much in it all along. It was through me she conceived that unfortunate idea of your goodness. I'm its father and its mother and its nurse, I ministered to it every hour. I fed it, I brought it up, I brought it _out_, I provided all the opportunity for its display. Nothing else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on itself. She wors.h.i.+pped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it, and when it went everything went. _You_ went first of all. Well, you must just see that that doesn't happen again."

"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?"

"You mustn't lead a life of anything."

"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?"

Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this preposterous notion of his goodness.

"Oh yes, be good," said Edith, "but not too good. Above all, not too good to me. Concentrate on her, stupid."

"I have concentrated," he moaned, mystified beyond endurance. "Besides, you said I couldn't make her jealous."

"No, I wish you could. I mean, don't let her fall in love with your devotion to me again. Don't hold her by that one rope. Hold her by all your ropes; then, if one goes, it doesn't so much matter."