The Helpmate Part 6

It was better to lie on a couch than stand on a pedestal; you knew, at any rate, where you were).

Now, as Edith also said, there can be nothing more prostrating to a woman's pride than a bad bilious attack. Especially when it exposes you to the devoted ministrations of a husband you have made up your mind to disapprove of, and compels you to a baffling view of him.

Anne owned herself baffled.

Her attack had chastened her. She had been touched by Walter's kindness, by the evidence (if she had needed it) that she was as dear to him in her ignominious agony as she had been in the beauty of her triumphal health.

As he moved about her, he became to her insistent outward sense the man she had loved because of his goodness. It was so that she had first seen his strong masculine figure moving about Edith on her couch, handling her with the supreme gentleness of strength. She had not been two days in the house in Prior Street before her memories a.s.sailed her. Her new and detestable view of Walter contended with her old beloved vision of him.

The two were equally real, equally vivid, and she could not reconcile them. Walter himself, seen again in his old surroundings, was protected by an army of a.s.sociations. The manifestations of his actual presence were also such as to appeal to her memory against her judgment. Her memory was in league with her. But when the melting mood came over her, her conscience resisted and rose against them both.

Edith, watching for the propitious moment, could not tell by what signs she would recognise it when it came. Her own hour was the early evening.

She had always brightened towards six o'clock, the time of her brother's home-coming.

To-day he had removed himself, to give her her chance with Anne. She could see him pottering about the garden below her window. He had kept that garden with care. He had mown and sown, and planted, and weeded, and watered it, that Edith might always have something pretty to look at from her window. With its green gra.s.s plot and gay beds, the tiny oblong s.p.a.ce defied the extending grime and gloom of Scale. This year he had planted it for Anne. He had set a thousand bulbs for her, and many thousand flowers were to have sprung up in time to welcome her. But something had gone wrong with them. They had suffered by his absence. As Edith looked out of the window he was stooping low, on acutely bended knees, sorrowfully preoccupied with a broken hyacinth. He had his back to them.

To Edith's mind there was something heart-rending in the expression of that intent, innocent back, so surrendered to their gaze, so unconscious of its own pathetic curve. She wondered if it appealed to Anne in that way. She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it did not appeal to her in any way at all.

"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of mine--of yours, I mean."

"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not jealous."

"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache."

"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.

Her calmness irritated Edith.

"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!"

Anne's silence gave her the opening she was looking for.

"You know, you used to think so, too."

"Of course I did," said Anne evasively.

"And equally of course, you don't, now you've married him?"

"I _have_ married him. What more could I do to prove my appreciation?"

"Oh, heaps more. Mere marrying's nothing. Any woman can do that."

"Do you think so? It seems to me that marrying--mere marrying--may be a great deal--about as much as many men have a right to ask."

"Hasn't every man a right to ask for--what shall I say--a little understanding--from the woman he cares for?"

"Edith, what has he told you?"

"Nothing, my dear, that I hadn't seen for myself."

"Did he tell you that I 'misunderstood' him?"

"Did he pose as _l'homme incompris_? No, he didn't."

"Still--he told you," Anne insisted.

"Of course he did." She brushed the self-evident aside and returned to her point. "He does care for you. That, at least, you can understand."

"No, that's just what I don't understand. I can't understand his caring.

I can't understand him. I can't understand anything." Her voice shook.

"Poor darling, I know it's hard, sometimes. Still, you do know what he is."

"I know what he was--what I thought him. It's hard to reconcile it with what he is."

"With what you think him? You can't, of course. I suppose you think him something too bad for words?"

Anne broke down weakly.

"Oh, Edith, why didn't you tell me?"

"What? That Wallie was bad?"

"Yes, yes. It would have been better if you'd told me everything."

"Well, dear, whatever I told you, I couldn't have told you that. It wouldn't have been true."

"He says himself that everything was true."

"Everything probably is true. But then, the point is that you don't know the whole truth, or even half of it. That's just what he couldn't tell you. I should have told you. That's where I bungled it. You know he left it to me; he said I was to tell you."

"Yes, he told me that. He didn't mean to deceive me."

"No more did I. If my brother had been a bad man, dear, do you suppose for a moment I'd have let him marry my dearest friend?"

"You didn't know. We don't know these things, Edith. That's the terrible part of it."

"Yes, it's the terrible part of it. But _I_ knew all right. He never kept anything from me, not for long."

"But, Edith--how _could_ he? How _could_ he? When the woman--Lady Cayley--She was _bad_, wasn't she?"

"Of course she was bad. Bad as they make them--worse. You know she was divorced?"

"Yes," said Anne, "that's what I do know."

"Well, she wasn't divorced on Walter's account, my dear. There were several others--four, five, goodness knows how many. Poor Walter was a mere drop in her ocean."

Anne stared a moment at the expanse presented to her.

"But," said she, "he was in it."