I
Nobody ever understood why he married her.
You expected calamity to pursue Wilkinson--it always had pursued
him--; but that Wilkinson should have gone out of his way to pursue
calamity (as if he could never have enough of it) really seemed a
most unnecessary thing.
For there had been no pursuit on the part of the lady. Wilkinson's
wife had the quality of her defects, and revealed herself chiefly in
a formidable reluctance. It was understood that Wilkinson had
prevailed only after an austere struggle. Her appearance
sufficiently refuted any theory of unholy fascination or disastrous
charm.
Wilkinson's wife was not at all nice to look at. She had an
insignificant figure, a small, square face, colorless hair scraped
with difficulty to the top of her head, eyes with no lashes to
protect you from their stare, a mouth that pulled at an invisible
curb, a sallow skin stretched so tight over her cheek-bones that the
red veins stood stagnant there; and with it all, poor lady, a dull,
strained expression hostile to further intimacy.
Even in her youth she never could have looked young, and she was
years older than Wilkinson. Not that the difference showed, for his
marriage had made Wilkinson look years older than he was; at least,
so it was said by people who had known him before that unfortunate
event.
It was not even as if she had been intelligent. Wilkinson had a
gentle passion for the things of intellect; his wife seemed to exist
on purpose to frustrate it. In no department of his life was her
influence so penetrating and malign. At forty he no longer counted;
he had lost all his brilliance, and had replaced it by a shy,
unworldly charm. There was something in Wilkinson that dreamed or
slept, with one eye open, fixed upon his wife. Of course, he had his
blessed hours of deliverance from the woman. Sometimes he would fly
in her face and ask people to dine at his house in Hampstead, to
discuss Roman remains, or the Troubadours, or Nietzsche. He never
could understand why his wife couldn't "enter," as he expressed it,
into these subjects. He smiled at you in the dimmest, saddest way
when he referred to it. "It's extraordinary," he would say, "the
little interest she takes in Nietzsche."
Mrs. Norman found him once wandering in the High Street, with his
passion full on him. He was a little absent, a little flushed; his
eyes shone behind his spectacles; and there were pleasant creases in
his queer, clean-shaven face.
She inquired the cause of his delight.
"I've got a man coming to dine this evening, to have a little talk
with me. He knows all about the Troubadours."
And Wilkinson would try and make you believe that they had threshed
out the Troubadours between them. But when Mrs. Norman, who was a
little curious about Wilkinson, asked the Troubadour man what they
_had_ talked about, he smiled and said it was something--some
extraordinary adventure--that had happened to Wilkinson's wife.
People always smiled when they spoke of her. Then, one by one, they
left off dining with Wilkinson. The man who read Nietzsche was quite
rude about it. He said he wasn't going there to be gagged by that
woman. He would have been glad enough to ask Wilkinson to dine with
him if he would go without his wife.
If it had not been for Mrs. Norman the Wilkinsons would have
vanished from the social scene. Mrs. Norman had taken Wilkinson up,
and it was evident that she did not mean to let him go. That, she
would have told you with engaging emphasis, was not her way. She had
seen how things were going, socially, with Wilkinson, and she was
bent on his deliverance.
If anybody could have carried it through, it would have been Mrs.
Norman. She was clever; she was charming; she had a house in
Fitzjohn's Avenue, where she entertained intimately. At forty she
had preserved the best part of her youth and prettiness, and an
income insufficient for Mr. Norman, but enough for her. As she said
in her rather dubious pathos, she had nobody but herself to please
now.
You gathered that if Mr. Norman had been living he would not have
been pleased with her cultivation of the Wilkinsons. She was always
asking them to dinner. They turned up punctually at her delightful
Friday evenings (her little evenings) from nine to eleven. They
dropped in to tea on Sunday afternoons. Mrs. Norman had a wonderful
way of drawing Wilkinson out; while Evey, her unmarried sister, made
prodigious efforts to draw Wilkinson's wife in. "If you could only
make her," said Mrs. Norman, "take an interest in something."
But Evey couldn't make her take an interest in anything. Evey had no
sympathy with her sister's missionary adventure. She saw what Mrs.
Norman wouldn't see--that, if they forced Mrs. Wilkinson on people
who were trying to keep away from her, people would simply keep away
from them. Their Fridays were not so well attended, so delightful,
as they had been. A heavy cloud of dulness seemed to come into the
room, with Mrs. Wilkinson, at nine o'clock. It hung about her chair,
and spread slowly, till everybody was wrapped in it.
Then Evey protested. She wanted to know why Cornelia allowed their
evenings to be blighted thus. "Why ask Mrs. Wilkinson?"
"I wouldn't," said Cornelia, "if there was any other way of getting
him."
"Well," said Evey, "he's nice enough, but it's rather a large price
to have to pay."
"And is he," cried Cornelia passionately, "to be cut off from
everything because of that one terrible mistake?"
Evey said nothing. If Cornelia were going to take him that way,
there was nothing to be said!
So Mrs. Norman went on drawing Wilkinson out more and more, till one
Sunday afternoon, sitting beside her on the sofa, he emerged
positively splendid. There were moments when he forgot about his
wife.
They had been talking together about his blessed Troubadours. (It
was wonderful the interest Mrs. Norman took in them!) Suddenly his
gentleness and sadness fell from him, a flame sprang up behind his
spectacles, and the something that slept or dreamed in Wilkinson
awoke. He was away with Mrs. Norman in a lovely land, in Provence of
the thirteenth century. A strange chant broke from him; it startled
Evey, where she sat at the other end of the room. He was reciting
his own translation of a love-song of Provence.
At the first words of the refrain his wife, who had never ceased
staring at him, got up and came across the room. She touched his
shoulder just as he was going to say "Ma mie."
"Come, Peter," she said, "it's time to be going home."
Wilkinson rose on his long legs. "Ma mie," he said, looking down at
her; and the flaming dream was still in his eyes behind his
spectacles.
He took the little cloak she held out to him, a pitiful and rather
vulgar thing. He raised it with the air of a courtier handling a
royal robe; then he put it on her, smoothing it tenderly about her
shoulders.
Mrs. Norman followed them to the porch. As he turned to her on the
step, she saw that his eyes were sad, and that his face, as she put
it, had gone to sleep again.
When she came back to her sister, her own eyes shone and her face
was rosy.
"Oh, Evey," she said, "isn't it beautiful?"
"Isn't what beautiful?"
"Mr. Wilkinson's behavior to his wife."