Mary Olivier: a Life Part 60

"I am keeping something back from you.... I've no right to worry you with my unpleasant affairs. I was fairly well off when I asked you to marry me, but, the fact is, it looks as if my business was going to bits. I may be able to pull it together again. I may not--"

"Is _that_ all? I'm glad you've told me. If you'd told me before it would have saved a lot of bother."

"What sort of bother?"

"Well, you see, I wasn't quite sure whether I really wanted to marry you--just yet. Sometimes I thought I did, sometimes I thought I didn't.

And now I know I do."

"That's it. I may not be in a position to marry you. I can't ask you to share my poverty."

"I shan't mind that. I'm used to it."

"I may not be able to keep a wife at all."

"Of course you will. You're keeping a housekeeper now. And a cook and a housemaid."

"I may have to send two of them away."

"Send them all away. I'll work for you all my life. I shall never want to do anything else. It's what I always wanted. When I was a child I used to imagine myself doing it for you. It was a sort of game I played."

"It's a sort of game you're playing now, my poor Mary.... No. No. It won't do."

"What do you think I'm made of? No woman who cared for a man could give him up for a thing like that."

"There are other things. Complications.... I think I'd better write to your mother. Or your brother."

"Write to them--write to them. They won't care a rap about your business.

We're not like that, Maurice."

XI.

"You'd better let me see what he says, Mamma."

Her mother had called to her to come into the study. She had Maurice Jourdain's letter in her hand. She looked sad and at the same time happy.

"My darling, he doesn't want you to see it."

"Is it as bad as all that?"

"Yes. If I'd had my way you should never have had anything to do with him. I'd have forbidden him the house if your Uncle Victor hadn't said that was the way to make you mad about him. He seemed to think that seeing him would cure you. And so it ought to have done....

"He says you know he wants to break off the engagement, but he doesn't think he has made you understand why."

"Oh, yes, he did. It's because of his business."

"He doesn't say a word about his business. I'm to break it to you that he doesn't care for you as he thought he cared. As if he wasn't old enough to know what he wanted. He might have made up his mind before he drove your father into his grave."

"Tell me what he says."

"He just says that. He says he's in an awful position, and whatever he does he must behave dishonourably.... I admit he's sorry enough. And he's doing the only honourable thing."

"He _would_ do that."

She fixed her mind on his honour. You could love that. You could love that always.

"He _says_ he asked you to release him. Did he?"

"Yes."

"Then why on earth didn't you?"

"I did. But I couldn't release myself."

"But that's what you ought to have done. Instead of leaving him to do it."

"Oh, no. That would have been dishonourable to myself."

"You'd rather be jilted?"

"Much rather. It's more honourable to be jilted than to jilt."

"That's not the world's idea of honour."

"It's my idea of it.... And, after all, he _was_ Maurice Jourdain."

XII.

The pain hung on to the left side of her head, clawing. When she left off reading she could feel it beat like a hammer, driving in a warm nail.

Aunt Lavvy sat on the parrot chair, with her feet on the fender. Her fingers had left off embroidering brown birds on drab linen.

In the dying light of the room things showed fuzzy, headachy outlines. It made you feel sick to look at them.

Mamma had left her alone with Aunt Lavvy.

"I suppose you think that n.o.body was ever so unhappy as you are," Aunt Lavvy said.

"I hope n.o.body is. I hope n.o.body ever will be."

"Should you say _I_ was unhappy?"

"You don't look it. I hope you're not."

"Thirty-three years ago I was miserable, because I couldn't have my own way. I couldn't marry the man I cared for."

"Oh--_that_. Why didn't you?"