The Helpmate Part 36

Gorst. Of course she didn't expect him to appreciate the force and the fine quality of her feeling. Still, he might at least have known that, if she had found it hard to pardon her own husband his lapses in the past, she would not be likely to accept a recent and notorious evildoer.

She tried to forget that in this she herself had been wounded as a woman and a wife. It was the offence to heaven that she minded, rather than her own mere human hurt. Still, he had asked her to share his house and the sad burden of it (her thought touched gently on the sadness and the burden); and it was the least he could do to keep it undefiled by such presences. He ought to have known what was due to the woman he had married. If he did not, she said to herself sorrowfully, he must learn.

She never doubted that he would learn completely when he was once persuaded that she had meant what she had said; when he saw that he was driving her out of the house by inviting Mr. Gorst into it. To her the question was of supreme importance. Whatever happiness was now left to them must stand or fall by the expulsion of the prodigal.

If she had examined herself, Anne would have found that she hardly knew which she really wished for more: that Majendie would at once surrender to her view and leave off inviting Gorst, or that he would invite him at once, and thus give her an occasion for her protest. That Majendie was peaceable and disinclined to fight she gathered from the fact that he had not invited him at once.

At last, one morning, he looked up quietly from his breakfast, and remarked that he had invited Gorst (he laid a slightly irritating stress upon the name) to dinner on Friday.

The day was Tuesday.

"And is he coming?" said Anne.

"He is," said Majendie.

When Friday came, Anne remarked at breakfast that she was going to dine with Mrs. Eliott.

"I thought you would," said Majendie.

She had hoped that he would think she wouldn't.

They dined at seven o'clock in Thurston Square, and at half-past seven in Prior Street, so that she would be well out of the house before Gorst came into it. It was raining heavily. But Anne looked upon the rain as her ally. Walter would be ashamed to think he had driven her out in such weather.

He insisted on accompanying her to the Eliotts' door.

"Not a nice evening for turning out," said he as he opened his umbrella and held it over her.

"Not at all," said she significantly.

At ten o'clock he came to fetch her in a cab.

Now, the cab, the escort, and the sheltering umbrella somewhat diminished the grievance of her enforced withdrawal from her home. And Majendie's manner did still more to take the wind out of the proud sails of her tragic adventure. But Anne herself was a sufficiently pathetic figure as she appeared under his umbrella, descending from the Eliotts' doorstep, with delicate slippered feet, gathering her skirts high from the bounding rain, and carrying in her hands the boots she had not waited to put on.

Majendie uttered the little tender moan with which he was used to greet a pathetic spectacle.

"He sounds," said Anne to herself, "as if he were sorry."

He looked it, too; he seemed the very spirit of contrition, as he sat in the cab, with Anne's boots on his knees, guarding them with a caressing hand. But she detected an impenitent brilliance in his eye as he stood in the lamplight and helped her off with the mackintosh which dripped with its pa.s.sage from the cab to their doorstep.

"I think my feet are wet," said she.

"There's a splendid fire in the study," said he.

He drew up a chair, and made her sit in it, and took off her shoes and stockings, and dried them at the fire. He held her cold feet in his hands to warm them. Then he stooped down and laid his face against them and kissed them. And she heard again his low, tender moan, and took it for a cry of contrition. He rose from his knees and laid his hand on her shoulder. She looked up, prepared to receive his chivalrous submission, to gather into her bosom the full harvest of her protest, and then magnanimously forgive.

It was not surrender, certainly not surrender, that she saw in the downward gaze that had drawn her to him. His eyes were dancing, dancing gaily, to some irresistible measure in his head.

"It was worth while, wasn't it?" said he.

"What was worth while?"

"Getting your feet wet, for the pleasure of not dining with Gorst?"

There were moments, Anne might have owned, when he did not fail in sympathy and comprehension. Had she been capable of self-criticism, she would have found that her att.i.tude of protest was a moral luxury, and that moral luxuries were a necessity to natures such as hers. But Anne had a secret, cherishing eye on martyrdom, and it was intolerable to her to be reminded in this way that, after all, she was only a spiritual voluptuary.

Still more intolerable was the large indulgence of her husband's manner.

He seemed positively to pander to her curious pa.s.sion, while preserving an att.i.tude of superior purity. He multiplied her opportunities. A week had hardly pa.s.sed before Mr. Gorst dined in Prior Street again, and Anne again took refuge in Thurston Square.

This time Majendie made no comment on her action. He seemed to take it for granted.

But Anne, standing up heroically for her principle, was sustained by a sense of moving in a divine combat. Every time she dined in Thurston Square, she felt that she had thrown down her gage; every time that Majendie invited Gorst, she felt that he stooped to pick it up. Thus unconsciously she breathed hostility, and was suspicious of hostility in him.

When she announced, at breakfast one Monday, that she had asked the Eliotts, the Gardners, Canon Wharton, and Miss Proctor, for dinner on Wednesday, she uttered each name as if it had been a challenge, and looked for some irritating maneuver in response. He would, of course, proclaim that he was going to dine with the Hannays, or he would effect a retreat to Mr. Gorst's rooms, or to his club.

But Majendie lacked her pa.s.sion and her inspiration. He simply said he was delighted to hear it, and that he would make a point of being at home. He would have to give up an engagement which he would not have made if he had known. But that did not greatly matter.

They came, the Eliotts and the rest, and Miss Proctor again p.r.o.nounced him charming. To be sure, he was not half so amusing as he had been on his first appearance in Thurston Square; but it was only becoming that he should repress himself a little at his own table and in the presence of the Canon. _He_, the Canon, was brilliant, if you like.

For that night the Canon was, as usual, all things to all men, and especially to all women. He was the man of the world for Miss Proctor; the fine epicure of books for Mrs. Eliott; for Mr. Eliott and Dr.

Gardner, the broad-minded searcher and enthusiast, the humble camp-follower of the conquering sciences. "You are the pioneers,"

said he; "you go before us on the march. But we keep up, we keep up.

We can step out--ca.s.sock and all."

But he spread out all his spiritual lures for Mrs. Majendie. His eyes seemed more than ever to pursue her, to search her, to be gazing discreetly at the secret of her soul. They drew her with the clear and candid flattery of their understanding. She could feel the clever little Canon taking her in and making notes on her. "Sensitive. Unhappy.

Intensely spiritual nature. Too fine and pure for _him_." And over the unhallowed, half-abandoned table, flushed slightly with Majendie's good wine, the Canon drew up his chair to his host, and stretched his little legs, and let his spirit expand in a rosy, broad humanity. As he had charmed the spiritual woman he saw in Anne, so he laid himself out to flatter the natural man he saw in Majendie. And Majendie leaned back in his chair, and gazed at the Canon, the remarkable, the clever, the versatile little Canon, with half-closed eyelids veiling his contemptuous eyes. (He confided to Hannay, later on, that the Canon, in his after-dinner moments, made him sick.)

Anne heard nothing more of Mr. Gorst for over a fortnight. It was on a Sat.u.r.day, and Majendie asked her suddenly, during luncheon, if she thought the Eliotts would be disengaged that evening.

"Why?"

"Because I've asked Gorst" (again that disagreeable emphasis) "to dine to-night."

"Very well. I will ask Mrs. Eliott if she can have me."

"Can you?"

"Perfectly."

"Oh--and I must prepare you for something quite horrible. Some time, you know" (he smiled provokingly), "I shall have to ask the Hannays. Do you think you can arrange that?"

"I shall have to," said she.

This time (it was the third) she was obliged to take Mrs. Eliott into her confidence. She fairly flung herself on her friend's mercy.

"I feel as if I were making use of you," said she.

"My dear, make any use of me you please. I'm always here. You can come to me any time you want to escape."

"To escape?" Anne's face flew a colour that was a flag of defiance to any reflection on her husband. She would be loyal to him as long as she lived. Not one of her friends should know of her trouble and her fear.