The Helpmate Part 41

"Nothing's wrong. You don't understand."

"No, I don't." His eye fell upon the corner where the piano once stood that was now in Edith's room.

"There are three things," said he, "that you certainly ought to have. A piano, and a reading-stand, and a comfortable sofa. You shall have them."

She threw back her head and closed her eyes to shut out the stupidity, and the mockery, and the misery of that idea.

"I--don't--want"--she spoke slowly. Her voice dropped from its high petulant pitch, and rounded to its funeral-bell note--"I don't want a piano, nor a reading-stand, nor a sofa. I simply want a place that I can call my own."

"But, bless you, the whole house is your own, if it comes to that, and every mortal thing in it. Everything I've got's yours except my razors and my braces, and a few little things of that sort that I'm keeping for myself."

She pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead, as if to brush away the irritating impression of his folly.

"Come," he said, "let's begin. What do you want moved first? And where?"

She indicated a cabinet which she desired to have removed from its place between the windows to a slanting position in the corner. He was delighted to hear her express a preference, still more delighted to be able to gratify it by his own exertions. He took off his coat and waistcoat, turned up his s.h.i.+rt cuffs, and set to work. For an hour he laboured under her directions, struggling with pieces of furniture as perverse and obstinate as his wife, but more ultimately amenable.

When it was all over, Anne seated herself on the settee between the windows, and surveyed the scene. Majendie, in a rumpled s.h.i.+rt and with his hair in disorder, stood beside her, and smiled as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"Yes," he said, "it's all altered. There isn't a blessed thing, not a chair, or a footstool, or a candlestick, that isn't in some place where it wasn't. And the room doesn't look a bit better, and you won't be a bit better pleased with it to-morrow."

He put on his coat and sat down beside her. "See here," said he, "you don't want me really to believe that that's where the trouble is?"

"The trouble?"

"Yes, Nancy, the trouble. Do you think I'm such a fool that I don't see it? It's been coming on a long time. I know you're not happy. You're not satisfied with things as they are. As they are, you know, there's a sort of incompleteness, something wanting, isn't there?"

She sighed. "It's you who are putting it that way, not I."

"Of course I'm putting it that way. How am I to put it any other way? Let me think now--well--of course I know perfectly well that it's not a piano, or a reading-stand, or a sofa that you want, any more than I do.

We want the same thing, sweetheart."

She smiled sadly. "Do we? I should have said the trouble is that we don't want the same thing, and never did."

"I don't understand you."

"Nor I you. You think I'm always wanting something. What is it that you think I want?"

"Well--do you remember Westleydale?"

She drew back. "Westleydale? What has put that into your head?"

He grew desperate under her evasions, and plunged into his theme. "Well, that jolly baby we saw there--in the wood--you looked so happy when you grabbed it, and I thought, perhaps--"

"There's no use talking about that," said she. "I don't like it."

"All right--only--it's still a little soon, you know, isn't it, to give it up?"

"You're quite mistaken," she said coldly. "It isn't that. It never has been. If I want anything, Walter, that you haven't given me, it's something that you cannot give me. I've long ago made up my mind to that."

"But why make up your mind to anything? How do you know I can't give it you--whatever it is--if you won't tell me anything about it? What _do_ you want, dear?"

"Ah, my dear, I want nothing, except not to have to feel like this."

"What do you feel like?"

"Like what I am. A stranger in my husband's house."

"And is that my fault?" he asked gently.

"It is not mine. But there it is. I feel sometimes as if I'd never been married to you. That's why you must never talk to me as you did just now."

"Good G.o.d, what a thing to say!"

He hid his face in his hands. The pain she had inflicted would have been unbearable but for the light that was in him.

He rose to leave her. But before he left, he took one long, scrutinising look at her. It struck him that she was not, at the moment, entirely responsible for her utterances. And again his light helped him.

"Look here," said he, "I don't think you're feeling very well. This isn't exactly a joyous life for you."

"I want no other," said she.

"You don't know what you want. You're overstrained--frightfully--and you ought to have a long rest and a change. You're too good, you know, to my little sister. I've told you before that I won't allow you to sacrifice yourself to her. I shall get some one to come and stay, and I shall take you down this week to the south coast, or wherever you like to go. It'll do you all the good in the world to get away from this beastly place for a month or two."

"It'll do me no good to get away from poor Edie."

"It will, dearest, it will, really."

"It will not. If you go and take me away from Edie I shall get ill myself."

"You only think so because you're ill already."

"I am not ill." She turned to him her sombre, tragic face.

"Walter--whatever you do, don't ask me to leave Edie, for I can't."

"Why not?" he asked gently.

"Because I love her. And it's--it's the only thing."

"I see," he said; and left her.

He went back to Edith. She smiled at his disarray and enquired the cause of it. He entertained her with an account of his labours.

"How funny you must both have looked," said Edith, "and, oh, how funny the poor drawing-room must feel."

"The fact is," said Majendie gravely, "I don't think she's very well. I shall get her to see Gardner."

"I would, if I were you."