The Helpmate Part 87

Where she had wronged him most had been in the pitiless refusals of her soul. And even there she had wronged him less by the things she had refused to give than by the things that she had refused to take. There were sanct.i.ties and charities, unspeakable tendernesses, holy and half-spiritual things in him, that she had shut her eyes to. She had shut her eyes that she might justify herself.

Her fault was there, in that perpetual justification and salvation of herself; in her indestructible, implacable spiritual pride.

And she had shut her ears as she had shut her eyes. She had not listened to her sister's voice, nor to her husband's voice, nor to her little child's voice, nor to the voice of G.o.d in her own heart. Then, that she might be humbled, she had had to take G.o.d's message from the persons whom she had most detested and despised.

She had not loved well. And she saw now that men and women only counted by their power of loving. She had despised and detested poor little Mrs.

Hannay; yet it might be that Mrs. Hannay was nearer to G.o.d than she had been, by her share of that one G.o.dlike thing.

She, through her horror of one sin, had come to look upon flesh and blood, on the dear human heart, and the sacred, mysterious human body, as things repellent to her spirituality, fine only in their sacrifice to the hungry, solitary flame. She had known nothing of their larger and diviner uses, their secret and profound subservience to the flame. She had come near to knowing through her motherhood, and yet she had not known.

And as she looked with anguish on the helpless body, shamed, and humiliated, and destroyed by her, she realised that now she knew.

Edith's words came back to her, "Love is a provision for the soul's redemption of the body. Or, may be, for the body's redemption of the soul." She understood them now. She saw that Edith had spoken to her of the miracle of miracles. She saw that the path of all spirits going upward is by acceptance of that miracle. She, who had sinned the spiritual sin, could find salvation only by that way.

It was there that she had been led, all the while, if she had but known it. But she had turned aside, and had been sent back, over and over again, to find the way. Now she had found it; and there could be no more turning back.

She saw it all. She saw a purity greater than her own, a strong and tender virtue, walking in the ways of earth and cleansing them. She saw love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality.

She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not been proven in the house of flesh.

She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here.

And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a sense of these things, of the sanct.i.ty of their life. She saw what they might have made of it together; what she had actually made of it, and of herself and him. She thought of his patience, his chivalry and forbearance, and of his deep and tender love for her and for their child.

G.o.d had given him to her to love; and she had not loved him. G.o.d had given her to him for his help and his protection; and she had not helped, she had not protected him.

G.o.d had dealt justly with her. She had loved G.o.d; but G.o.d had rejected a love that was owing to her husband. Looking back, she saw that she had been nearest to G.o.d in the days when she had been nearest to her husband.

The days of her separation had been the days of her separation from G.o.d.

And she had not seen it.

All the love that was in her she had given to her child. Her child had been born that she might see that the love which was given to her was holy; and she had not seen it. So G.o.d had taken her child from her that she might see.

And seeing that, she saw herself aright. That pa.s.sion of motherhood was not all the love that was in her. The love that was in her had sprung up, full-grown, in a single night. And it had grown to the stature of the diviner love she saw. And as she felt that great springing up of love, with all its strong endurances and charities, she saw herself redeemed by her husband's sin.

There she paused, trembling. It was a great and terrible mystery, that the sin of his body should be the saving of her soul. And as she thought of the price paid for her, she humbled herself once more in her shame.

She was no longer afraid that he would die. Something told her that he would live, that he would be given back to her. She dared not think how.

He might be given back paralysed, helpless, and with a ruined mind. Her punishment might be the continual reproach of his presence, her only consolation the tending of the body she had tortured, humiliated, and destroyed. She prayed G.o.d to be merciful and spare her that.

And on the morning of the fifth day Majendie woke from his terrible sleep. He could see light. Towards evening his breathing softened and grew soundless. And on the dawn of the sixth day he called her name, "Nancy."

Then she knew that for a little time he would be given back to her. And, as she nursed him, love in her moved with a new ardour and a new surrender. For more than seven years her pulses had been proof against his pa.s.sion and his strength. Now, at the touch of his helpless body, they stirred with a strange, adoring tenderness. But as yet she went humbly, in her fear of the punishment that might be measured to her. She told herself it was enough that he was aware of her, of her touch, of her voice, of her face as it bent over him. She hushed the new-born hope in her heart, lest its cry should wake the angel of the divine retribution.

Then, week by week, slowly, a little joy came to her, as she saw the gradual return of power to the paralysed body and clearness to the flooded brain. She wondered, when he would begin to remember, whether her face would recall to him their last interview, her cruelty, her repudiation.

At last she knew that he remembered. She dared not ask herself "How much?" It was borne in on her that it was this way that her punishment would come.

For, as he gradually recovered, his manner to her became more constrained; notwithstanding his helpless dependence on her. He was shy and humble; grateful for the things she did for him; grateful with a heart-rending, pitiful surprise. It was as if he had looked to come back to the heartless woman he had known, and was puzzled at finding another woman in her place.

As the weeks wore on, and her hands had less to do for him, she felt that his awakened spirit guarded itself from her, fenced itself more and more with that inviolable constraint. And she bowed her head to the punishment.

When he was well enough to be moved she took him to the south coast.

There he recovered power rapidly. By the end of February he showed no trace of his terrible illness.

They were to return to Scale in the beginning of March.

Then, at their home-coming, she would know whether he remembered. There would be things that they would have to say to each other.

Sometimes she thought that she could never say them; that her life was secure only within some pure, charmed circle of inviolate silence; that her wisdom lay in simply trusting him to understand her. She _could_ trust him. After all, she had been most marvellously "let off"; she had not had to pay the extreme penalty; she had been allowed, oh, divinely allowed, to prove her love for him. He could not doubt it now; it possessed her, body and soul; it was manifest to him in her eyes, and in her voice, and in the service of her hands.

And if he said nothing, surely it would mean that he, too, trusted her to understand.

CHAPTER XL

They had come back. They had spent their first evening together in the house in Prior Street. Anne had dreaded the return; for the house remembered its sad secrets. She had dreaded it more on her husband's account than on her own.

She had pa.s.sed before him through the doorway of the study; and her heart had ached as she thought that it was in that room that she had struck at him and put him from her. As he entered, she had turned, and closed the door behind them, and lifted her face to his and kissed him. He had looked at her with his kind, sad smile, but he had said nothing. All that evening they had sat by their hearth, silent as watchers by the dead.

From time to time she had been aware of his eyes resting on her in their profound and tragic scrutiny. She had been reminded then of the things that yet remained unsaid.

At night he had risen at her signal; and she had waited while he put the light out; and he had followed her upstairs. At her door she had stopped, and kissed him, and said good-night, and she had turned her head to look after him as he went. Surely, she had thought, he will come back and speak to me.

And now she was still waiting after her undressing. She said to herself, "We have come home. But he will not come to me. He has nothing to say to me. There is nothing that can be said. If I could only speak to him."

She longed to go to him, to kneel at his feet and beg him to forgive her and take her back again, as if it had been she who had sinned. But she could not.

She stood for a moment before the couch at the foot of the bed, ready to slip off her long white dressing-gown. She paused. Her eyes rested on the silver crucifix, the beloved symbol of redemption. She remembered how he had given it to her. She had not understood him even then; but she understood him now. She longed to tell him that she understood. But she could not.

She turned suddenly as she heard his low knock at her door. She had been afraid to hear it once; now it made her heart beat hard with longing and another fear. He came in. He stood by the closed door, gazing at her with the dumb look that she knew.

She went to meet him, with her hands out-stretched to him, her face glowing.

"Oh, my dear," she said, "you've come back to me. You've come back."

He looked down on her with miserable eyes. She put her arms about him.

His face darkened and was stern to her. He held her by her arms and put her from him, and she trembled in all her body, humiliated and rebuked.

"No. Not that," he said. "Not now. I can't ask you to take me back now."

"Need you ask me--now?"

"You don't understand," he said. "You don't know. Darling, you don't know."

At the word of love she turned to him, beseeching him with her tender eyes.

"Sit down," he said. "I want to talk to you."