The Helpmate Part 89

"No. I believe in you."

"You believe in me? After everything?"

"After everything."

"And you would have forgiven me that?"

"I did forgive you. I forgave you all the time I thought it. There's nothing that I wouldn't forgive you now. You know it."

"I thought you might forgive me. But I never thought you'd let me come back--after that."

"You haven't. You haven't. You never left me. It's I who have come back to you."

"Nancy--" he whispered.

"It's I who need forgiveness. Forgive me. Forgive me."

"Forgive you? You?"

"Yes, me."

Her voice died and rose again, throbbing to her confession.

"I was unfaithful to you."

"You don't know what you're saying, dear. You couldn't have been unfaithful to me."

"If I had been, would you have forgiven me?"

He looked at her a long time.

"Yes," he said simply.

"You could have forgiven me that?"

"I could have forgiven you anything."

She knew it. There was no limit to his chivalry, his charity. "Well," she said, "you have worse things to forgive me."

"What have I to forgive?"

"Everything. If I had forgiven you in the beginning, you would not have had to ask for forgiveness now."

"Perhaps not, Nancy. But that wasn't your fault."

"It was my fault. It was all my fault, from the beginning to the end."

"No, no."

"Yes, yes. Mr. Hannay knew that. He told me so."

"When?"

"At Scarby."

Majendie scowled as he cursed Hannay in his heart.

"He was a brute," he said, "to tell you that."

"He wasn't. He was kind. He knew."

"What did he know?"

"That I would rather think that I was bad than that you were."

"And would you?"

"Yes I would--now. Mr. Hannay spared me all he could. He didn't tell me that if you had died at Scarby it would have been my fault. But it would have been."

He groaned.

"Darling--you couldn't say that if you knew anything about it."

"I know all about it."

He shook his head.

"Listen, Walter. You've been unfaithful to me--once, years after I gave you cause. I've been unfaithful to you ever since I married you. And your unfaithfulness was nothing to mine. A woman once told me that. She said you'd only broken one of your marriage vows, and I had broken all of them, except one. It was true."

"Who said that to you?"

"Never mind who. It needed saying. It was true. I sinned against the light. I knew what you were. You were good and you loved me. You were unhappy through loving me, and I shut my eyes to it. I've done more harm to you than that poor girl--Maggie. You would never have gone to her if I hadn't driven you. You loved me."

"Yes, I loved you."

She turned to him again; and her eyes searched his for absolution. "I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand."

"No. A woman doesn't, dear. Not when she's as good as you."

At that a sob shook her. In the pa.s.sion of her abas.e.m.e.nt she had cast off all her beautiful spiritual apparel. Now she would have laid down her crown, her purity, at his feet.

"I thought I was so good. And I sinned against my husband more that he ever sinned against me."

He took her hands and tried to draw her to him, but she broke away, and slid to the floor and knelt there, bowing her head upon his knee. Her hair fell, loosened, upon her shoulders, veiling her.

He stooped and raised her. His hand smoothed back the hair that hid her face. Her eyes were closed.

Her drenched eyelids felt his lips upon them. They opened; and in her eyes he saw love risen to immortality through mortal tears. She looked at him, and she knew him as she knew her own soul.