The Helpmate Part 77

"You may not realise it; but that is the work I've been doing for the last three years. I am doubly responsible for a girl who has suffered through my husband's fault."

"What do you want to do with her?"

"I want, if possible, to reclaim her."

He smiled again.

"Do you realise what sort of girl she is?"

"I'm afraid, Walter, she is what you have made her."

"And so you want to reclaim her?"

"I do, indeed."

"You couldn't reclaim her."

"She is very young, isn't she?"

"N--no--She's eight--and--twenty."

"I thought she was a young girl. But, if she's as old as that--and bad--"

"Bad? Bad?"

He rose and looked down on her in anger.

"She's good. You don't know what you're talking about. She isn't a lady, but she's as gentle and as modest as you are yourself. She's sweet, and kind, and loving. She's the most unworldly and unselfish creature I ever met. All the time I've known her she never did a selfish thing. She was absolutely devoted. She'd have stripped herself bare of everything she possessed if it would have done me any good. Why, the very thing you blame the poor little soul for, only proves that she hadn't a thought for herself. It would have been better for her if she'd had. And you talk of 'reclaiming' a woman like that! You want to turn your preposterous committee on to her, to decide whether she's good enough to be taken and shut up in one of your beastly inst.i.tutions! No. On the whole, I think she'll be better off if you leave her to me."

"Say at once that you think I'd better leave you to her, since you think her perfect."

"She _was_ perfect to me. She gave me all she had to give. She couldn't very well do more."

"You mean she helped you to sin. So, of course, you condone her sin."

"I should be an utter brute if I didn't stand up for her, shouldn't I?"

"Yes." She admitted it. "I suppose you feel that you must defend her. Can you defend yourself, Walter?"

He was silent.

"I'm not going to remind you of your sin against your wife. _That_ you would think nothing of. What have you to say for your sin against her?"

"My sin against her was not caring for her. _You_ needn't call me to account for it."

"I am to believe that you did not care for her?"

"I never cared for her. I took everything from her and gave her nothing, and I left her like a brute."

"Why did you go to her if you did not care for her?"

"I went to her because I cared for my wife. And I left her for the same reason. And she knew it."

"Do you really expect me to believe that you left me for another woman, because you cared for me?"

"For no earthly reason except that."

"You deceived me--you lived in deliberate sin with this woman for three years--and now you come back to me, because, I suppose, you are tired of her--and I am to believe that you cared for me!"

"I don't expect you to believe it. It's the fact, all the same. I wouldn't have left you if I hadn't been hopelessly in love with you. You mayn't know it, and I don't suppose you'd understand it if you did, but that was the trouble. It was the trouble all along, ever since I married you. I know I've been unfaithful to you, but I never loved any one but you. Consider how we've been living, you and I, for the last six years--can you say that I put another woman in your place?"

She looked at him with her sad, uncomprehending eyes; her hands made a hopeless, helpless gesture.

"You know what you have done," she said presently. "And you know that it was wrong."

"Yes, it was wrong. But the whole thing was wrong. Wrong from the beginning. How are we going to make it right?"

"I don't know, Walter. We must do our best."

"Yes, but what are we going to do? What are you going to do?"

"I have told you that I am not going to leave you."

"We are to go on, then, as we did before?"

"Yes--as far as possible."

"Then," he said, "we shall still be all wrong. Can't you see it? Can't you see _now_ that it's all wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Our life. Yours and mine. Are you going to begin again like that?"

"Does it rest with me?"

"Yes. It rests with you, I think. You say we must make the best of it.

What is your notion of the best?"

"I don't know, Walter."

"I _must_ know. You say you'll take me back--you'll never leave me. What are you taking me back to? Not to that old misery? It wasn't only bad for me, dear. It was bad for both of us."

She sighed, and her sigh shuddered to a sob in her throat. The sound went to his heart and stirred in it a pa.s.sion of pity.

"G.o.d knows," he said, "I'd live with you on any terms. And I'll keep straight. You needn't be afraid. Only--See here. There's no reason why you shouldn't take me back. I wouldn't ask you to if I'd left off caring for you. But it wasn't there I went wrong. I can't explain about Maggie.

You wouldn't understand. But, if you'd only try to, we might get along.

There's nothing that I won't do for you to make up--"

"You can do nothing. There are things that cannot be made up for."