Notwithstanding Part 38

Janey had the doubtful advantage over other women that men (by men I mean Roger) always knew where to find her. She was as immovable as the church or the Rieben. It was absolutely certain that unless Lady Louisa was worse, Janey would come down to the library at nine o'clock, and work there beside the lamp for an hour before going to bed. The element of surprise or uncertainty did not exist as far as Janey was concerned.

And perhaps those who are always accessible, tranquil, disengaged, ready to lend a patient and sympathetic ear, know instinctively that they will be sought out in sorrow and anxiety rather than in joy. We do not engage a trained nurse for picnic parties, or ask her to grace the box seat when we are driving our four-in-hands. Annette is singled out at once as appropriate to these festive occasions. If anyone thought of Janey in connection with them, it was only to remark that she would not care about them. How many innocent pleasures she had silently wished for in her time which she had been informed by her mother, by d.i.c.k, even by Roger, were not in her line.

To-night, Janey deviated by a hairbreadth from her usual routine. She came down, seated herself, and instead of her work took up a book with the marker half-way through it, and was at once absorbed in it. She was reading _The Magnet_ for the second time.

Since her conversation with Mr. Stirling in the Hulver garden, Janey had read _The Magnet_, and her indifference had been replaced by a riveted attention. She saw now what other people saw in his work, and it seemed to her, as indeed it seemed to all Mr. Stirling's readers, that his books were addressed to her and her alone. It did not occur to her that he had lived for several years in her neighbourhood without her detecting or even attempting to discern what he was. It did not occur to her that he might have been a great a.s.set in her narrow life. She was quite content with being slightly acquainted with every one except Roger, and her new friend Annette. She tacitly distrusted intimacy, as did Roger, and though circ.u.mstances had brought about a certain intimacy with Annette, the only girl within five miles, she had always mental reservations even with her, boundaries which were not to be pa.s.sed.

Janey had been inclined to take shelter behind these mental reservations, to raise still higher the boundary walls between them, since she had known what she called "the truth about Annette." She had shrunk from further intercourse with her, but Annette had sought her out, deliberately, persistently, with an unshaken confidence in Janey's affection which the latter had not the heart to repel. And in the end Janey had reached a kind of forlorn grat.i.tude towards Annette. Her life had become absolutely empty: the future stretched in front of her like some flat dusty high road, along which she must toil with aching feet till she dropped. She instinctively turned to Annette, and then shrank from her. She would have shrunk from her altogether if she had known that it was by Roger's suggestion that Annette made so many little opportunities of meeting. Annette had been to see her the day before she went to Noyes, and had found her reading _The Magnet_, and they had had a long conversation about it.

And now in Janey's second reading, not skipping one word, and going over the more difficult pa.s.sages twice, she came again upon the sentence which they had discussed. She read it slowly.

"_The publican and the harlot will go into the Kingdom before us, because it is easier for them to flee with loathing from the sins of the flesh, and to press through the strait gate of humility, than it is for us to loathe and flee the sins of the spirit, egotism, pride, resentment, cruelty, insincerity._"

Janey laid down the book. When Annette had read that sentence aloud to her, Janey had said, "I don't understand that. I think he's wrong. Pride and the other things and insincerity aren't nearly as bad as--as immorality."

"He doesn't say one is worse than the others," Annette had replied, and her quiet eyes had met Janey's bent searchingly upon her. "He only says egotism and the other things make it harder to squeeze through the little gate. You see, they make it impossible for us even to _see_ it--the strait gate."

"He writes as if egotism were worse than immorality, as if immorality doesn't matter," said Janey stubbornly. How could Annette speak so coolly, so impersonally, as if she had never deviated from the rigid code of morals in which Janey had been brought up! She felt impelled to show her that she at any rate held sterner views.

Annette cogitated.

"Perhaps, Janey; he has learnt that nothing makes getting near the gate so difficult as egotism. He says somewhere else that egotism makes false, mean, dreadful things ready to pounce on us. He's right in the order he puts them in, isn't he? Selfishness first, and then pride. Our pride gets wounded, and then resentment follows. And resentment always wants to inflict pain. That is why he puts cruelty next."

"How do you know all this?" said Janey incredulously.

"I know about pride and resentment," said Annette, "because I gave way to them once. I think I never shall again."

"I don't see why he puts insincerity last."

"Perhaps he thinks that is the worst thing that can happen to us."

"To be insincere?" said Janey, amazed.

"Yes. I certainly never _have_ met a selfish person who was sincere, have you? They have to be giving n.o.ble reasons for their selfish actions, so as to keep their self-respect and make us think well of them. I knew a man once--he was a great musician--who was like that. He wanted admiration dreadfully, he craved for it, and yet he didn't want to take any trouble to be the things that make one admire people. It ended in----"

"What did it end in?"

"Where insincere people always do end, I think, in a kind of treachery.

Perhaps that is why Mr. Stirling puts insincerity last, because insincere people do such dreadful things without knowing they are dreadful. Now, the harlots and the publicans do know. They have the pull of us there."

Janey's clear, retentive mind recalled every word of that conversation, the last she had had with Annette, which had left an impression on her mind that Annette had belittled the frailties of the flesh. Why had she done that? _Because she had not been guiltless of them herself._

In such manner do some of us reason, and find confirmation of that which we suspect. Not that Janey suspected her of stepping aside. She was convinced that she had done so. The evidence had been conclusive. At least, she did not doubt it when Annette was absent. When she was present with her she knew not how to believe it. It was incredible. Yet it was so. She always came back to that.

But why did she and Mr. Stirling both put insincerity as the worst of the spiritual sins? Janey was an inexorable reader, now that she had begun. She ruminated with her small hands folded on the open page.

And her honest mind showed her that once--not long ago--she had nearly been insincere herself: when she had told herself with vehemence that it was her bounden duty to Roger to warn him against Annette. What an ugly act of treachery she had almost committed, would have committed if Mr.

Stirling had not come to her aid. She shuddered. Yes, he was right.

Insincerity was the place where all meannesses and disloyalties and treacheries lurked and had their dens like evil beasts, ready to pounce out and destroy the wayfaring spirit wandering on forbidden ground.

And she thought of Nurse's treachery for the sake of a livelihood with a new compa.s.sion. It was less culpable than what she had nearly been guilty of herself. And she thought yet again of Annette. She might have done wrong, but you could not look at her and think she could be mean, take refuge in subterfuge or deceit. "She would never lie about it, to herself or others," Janey said to herself. And she who _had_ lied to herself, though only for a moment, was humbled.

She was half expecting Roger, in spite of their conference of this morning, for she knew that he was to see the lawyer about probate that afternoon, and the lawyer might have given an opinion as to the legality of Harry's marriage.

Presently she heard his step in the hall, and he came in. She had known Roger all her life, but his whole aspect was unfamiliar to her. As she looked at him bewildered, she realized that she had never seen him strongly moved before, never in all these years until now. There is something almost terrifying in the emotion of unemotional people. The momentary confidence of the morning, the one tear wrung out of him by perceiving his hope of marriage suddenly wiped out, was as nothing to this.

He sat down opposite to her with chalk-white face and reddened, unseeing eyes, and without any preamble recounted to her the story that Annette had told him a few hours before. "She wished you to know it," he said.

An immense thankfulness flooded Janey's heart as she listened. It was as if some tense nerve in her brain relaxed. He did know at last, and she, Janey, had not told him. He had heard no word from her. Annette had confessed to him herself, as Mr. Stirling had said she would. She had done what was right--right but how difficult. A secret grudge against Annette, which had long lurked at the back of Janey's mind, was exorcised, and she gave a sigh of relief.

At last he was silent.

"I have known for a long time that Annette was the woman who was with d.i.c.k at Fontainebleau," she said, her hands still folded on the open book.

"You might have told me, Janey."

"I thought it ought to come from her."

"You might have told me when you saw--Janey, you must have seen for some time past--how it was with me."

"I did see, but I hoped against hope that she would tell you herself, as she has done."

"And if she hadn't, would you have let me marry her, not knowing?"

Janey reflected.

"I am not sure," she said composedly, "what I should have done. But, you see, it did not happen so. She _has_ told you. I am thankful she has, Roger, though it must have been hard for her. It is the only thing I've ever kept back from you. It is a great weight off my mind that you know. Only I'm ashamed now that I ever doubted her. I did doubt her. I had begun to think she would never say."

"She's the last person in the world, the very last, that I should have thought possible----"

He could not finish his sentence, and Janey and he looked fixedly at each other.

"Yes," she said slowly, "she is. I never get any nearer understanding how anyone like Annette could have done it."

Roger in his haste with his story had omitted the evil prologue which had led to the disaster.

"She wished you to know everything," he said, and he told her of Annette's treacherous lover, and her father's infamy, and her flight from his house in the dawn.

"She was driven to desperation," said Janey. "When she met d.i.c.k she was in despair. I see it all now. She did not know what she was doing, Roger. Annette has been sinned against."

"I should like to wring that man's neck who bought her, and her father's who sold her," said Roger, his haggard eyes smouldering.

There was a long silence.

"But I don't feel that I can marry her," he said, with a groan. "d.i.c.k and her!--it sticks in my throat,--the very thought seems to choke me. I don't feel that I could marry her, even if she would still have me. She said I must forget her, and put her out of my life. She feels everything is over between us. It's all very well," savagely, "to talk of forgetting anyone--like Annette," and he beat his foot against the floor.

Janey looked at him in a great compa.s.sion. "He will come back to me,"

she said to herself, "not for a long time, but he will come back. Broken and disillusioned and aged, and with only a bit of a heart to give me.

He will never care much about me, but I shall be all he has left in the world. And I will take him, whatever he is."