The Helpmate Part 78

"I know--I know. But still--we mightn't be so unhappy--perhaps, in time--And if we had children--"

"Never," she cried sharply, "never!"

He had not stirred in his chair where he sat bowed and dejected. But she drew back, flinching.

"I see," he said. "Then you do not forgive me."

"If you had come to me, and told me of your temptation--of your sin--three years ago, I would have forgiven you then. I would have taken you back. I cannot now. Not willingly, not with the feeling that I ought to have."

She spoke humbly, gently, as if aware that she was giving him pain. Her face was averted. He said nothing; and she turned and faced him.

"Of course you can compel me," she said. "You can compel me to anything."

"I have never compelled you, as you know."

"I know. I know you have been good in that way."

"Good? Is that your only notion of goodness?"

"Good to me, Walter. Yes. You were very good. I do not say that I will not go back to you; but if I do, you must understand plainly, that it will be for one reason only. Because I desire to save you from yourself.

To save some other woman, perhaps--"

"You can let the other woman take care of herself. As for me, I appreciate your generosity, but I decline to be saved on those terms.

I'm fastidious about a few things, and that's one of them. What you are trying to tell me is that you do not care for me."

She lifted her face. "Walter, I have never in all my life deceived you. I do not care for you. Not in that way."

He smiled. "Well, I'll be content so long as you care for me in any way--your way. I think your way's a mistake; but I won't insist on that.

I'll do my best to adapt my way to yours, that's all."

Her face was very still. Under their deep lids her eyes brooded, as if trying to see the truth inside herself.

"No--no," she moaned. "I haven't told you the truth. I believe there is _no_ way in which I can care for you again. Or--well--I can care perhaps--I'm caring now--but--"

"I see. You do not love me."

She shook her head. "No. I know what love is, and--I do not love you."

"If you don't love me, of course there's nothing more to be said."

"Yes, there is. There's one thing that I have kept from you."

"Well," he said, "you may as well let me have it. There's no good keeping things from me."

"I had meant to spare you."

At that he laughed. "Oh, don't spare me."

She still hesitated.

"What is it?"

She spoke low.

"If you had been here--that night--Peggy would not have died."

He drew a quick breath. "What makes you think that?" he said quietly.

"She overstrained her heart with crying. As you know. She was crying for you. And you were not there. Nothing would make her believe that you were not dead."

She saw the muscles of his face contract with sudden pain.

He looked at her gravely. The look expressed his large male contempt for her woman's cruelty; also a certain luminous compa.s.sion.

"Why have you told me this?" he said.

"I've told you, because I think the thought of it may restrain you when nothing else will."

"I see. You mean to say, you believe I killed her?"

Anne closed her eyes.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

He did not know whether he believed what she had said, nor whether she believed it herself, neither could he understand her motive in saying it.

At intervals he was profoundly sorry for her. Pity for her loosened, from time to time, the grip of his own pain. He told himself that she must have gone through intolerable days and nights of misery before she could bring herself to say a thing like that. Her grief excused her. But he knew that, if he had been in her place, she in his, he the saint and she the sinner, and that, if he had known her through her sin to be responsible for the child's death, there was no misery on earth that could have made him charge her with it.

Further than that he could not understand her. The suddenness and cruelty of the blow had brutalised his imagination.

He got up and stretched himself, to shake off the oppression that weighed on him like an unwholesome sleep. As he rose he felt a queer feeling in his head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quant.i.ty of whiskey, measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of Peggy's death. This time he drank it almost undiluted.

He felt better. The stimulant had jogged something in his brain and cleared it.

He went back into the study and began to think. He remained thinking for some time, consecutively, and with great lucidity. He asked himself what he was to do now, and he saw clearly that he could do nothing. If Anne had been a pa.s.sionate woman, hurling her words in a fury of fierce grief, he would have thought no more of it. If she had been the tender, tearful sort, dropping words in a weak, helpless misery, he would have thought no more of it. He could imagine poor little Maggie saying a thing like that, not knowing what she said. If it had been poor little Maggie he could have drawn her to him and comforted her, and reasoned with her till he had made her see the senselessness of her idea. Maggie would have listened to reason--his reason. Anne never would.

She had been cold and slow, and implacably deliberate. It was not blind instinct, but illuminated reason that had told her what to say and when to say it. Nothing he could ever do or say would make her take back her words. And if she took back her words, her thought would remain indestructible. She would never give it up; she would never approach him without it; she would never forget that it was there. It would always rise up between them, unburied, unappeased.

His brain swam and clouded again. He went again to the dining-room and drank more whiskey. Kate was in the dining-room and she saw him drinking.

He saw Kate looking at him; but he didn't care. He was past caring for what anybody might think of him.

His brain was clearer than ever now. He realised Anne's omnipotence to harm him. He saw the hard, imperishable divinity in her. His wife was a spiritual woman. He had not always known what that meant. But he knew now; and now for the first time in his life he judged her. For the first time in his life his heart rose in a savage revolt against her power.

His head grew hot. The air of the study was stifling. He opened the window and went out into the cool, dark garden. He paced up and down, heedless of where he trod, trampling the flowerless plants down into their black beds. At the end of the path a little circle of white stones glimmered in the dark. That was Peggy's garden.