It was not an easy problem that Mrs. Norman faced. She wished to
save Wilkinson; she also wished to save the character of her
Fridays, which Wilkinson's wife had already done her best to
destroy. Mrs. Norman could not think why the woman came, since she
didn't enjoy herself, since she was impenetrable to the intimate,
peculiar charm. You could only suppose that her object was to
prevent its penetrating Wilkinson, to keep the other women off. Her
eyes never left him.
It was all very well for Evey to talk. She _might_, of course, have
been wiser in the beginning. She might have confined the creature to
their big monthly crushes, where, as Evey had suggested, she would
easily have been mislaid and lost. But so, unfortunately, would
Wilkinson; and the whole point was how not to lose him.
Evey said she was tired of being told off to entertain Mrs.
Wilkinson. She was beginning to be rather disagreeable about it. She
said Cornelia was getting to care too much about that Wilkinson man.
She wouldn't have minded playing up to her if she had approved of
the game; but Mrs. Wilkinson was, after all, you know, Mr.
Wilkinson's wife.
Mrs. Norman cried a little. She told Evey she ought to have known it
was his spirit that she cared about. But she owned that it wasn't
right to sacrifice poor Evey. Neither, since he _had_ a wife, was it
altogether right for her to care about Wilkinson's spirit to the
exclusion of her other friends.
Then, one Friday, Mrs. Norman, relieving her sister for once, made a
discovery while Evey, who was a fine musician, played. Mrs.
Wilkinson did, after all, take an interest in something; she was
accessible to the throbbing of Evey's bow across the strings.
She had started; her eyes had turned from Wilkinson and fastened on
the player. There was a light in them, beautiful and piercing, as if
her soul had suddenly been released from some hiding-place in its
unlovely house. Her face softened, her mouth relaxed, her eyes
closed. She lay back in her chair, at peace, withdrawn from them,
positively lost.
Mrs. Norman slipped across the room to the corner where Wilkinson
sat alone. His face lightened as she came.
"It's extraordinary," he said, "her love of music."
Mrs. Norman assented. It _was_ extraordinary, if you came to think
of it. Mrs. Wilkinson had no understanding of the art. What did it
mean to her? Where did it take her? You could see she was
transported, presumably to some place of chartered stupidity, of
condoned oblivion, where nobody could challenge her right to enter
and remain.
"So soothing," said Wilkinson, "to the nerves."
Mrs. Norman smiled at him. She felt that, under cover of the music,
his spirit was seeking communion with hers.
He thanked her at parting; the slight hush and mystery of his manner
intimated that she had found a way.
"I hope," she said, "you'll come often--often."
"May we? May we?" He seemed to leap at it--as if they hadn't come
often enough before!
Certainly she had found the way--the way to deliver him, the way to
pacify his wife, to remove her gently to her place and keep her
there.
The dreadful lady thus creditably disposed of, Wilkinson was no
longer backward in the courting of his opportunity. He proved
punctual to the first minute of the golden hour.
Hampstead was immensely interested in his blossoming forth. It found
a touching simplicity in the way he lent himself to the sympathetic
eye. All the world was at liberty to observe his intimacy with Mrs.
Norman.
It endured for nine weeks. Then suddenly, to Mrs. Norman's
bewilderment, it ceased. The Wilkinsons left off coming to her
Friday evenings. They refused her invitations. Their behavior was so
abrupt and so mysterious that Mrs. Norman felt that something must
have happened to account for it. Somebody, she had no doubt, had
been talking. She was much annoyed with Wilkinson in consequence,
and, when she met him accidentally in the High Street, her manner
conveyed to him her just resentment.
He called in Fitzjohn's Avenue the next Sunday. For the first time
he was without his wife.
He was so downcast, and so penitent, and so ashamed of himself that
Mrs. Norman met him halfway with a little rush of affection.
"Why have you not been to see us all this time?" she said.
He looked at her unsteadily; his whole manner betrayed an extreme
embarrassment.
"I've come," he said, "on purpose to explain. You mustn't think I
don't appreciate your kindness, but the fact is my poor wife"--(She
knew that woman was at the bottom of it!)--"is no longer--up to it."
"What is the wretch up to, I should like to know?" thought Mrs.
Norman.
He held her with his melancholy, unsteady eyes. He seemed to be
endeavoring to approach a subject intimately and yet abstrusely
painful.
"She finds the music--just at present--a little too much for her;
the vibrations, you know. It's extraordinary how they affect her.
She feels them--most unpleasantly--just here." Wilkinson laid two
delicate fingers on the middle buttons of his waistcoat.
Mrs. Norman was very kind to him. He was not very expert, poor
fellow, in the fabrication of excuses. His look seemed to implore
her pardon for the shifts he had been driven to; it appealed to her
to help him out, to stand by him in his unspeakable situation.
"I see," she said.
He smiled, in charming gratitude to her for seeing it.
That smile raised the devil in her. Why, after all, should she help
him out?
"And are you susceptible to music--in the same unpleasant way?"
"Me? Oh, no--no. I like it; it gives me the very greatest pleasure."
He stared at her in bewilderment and distress.
"Then why," said Mrs. Norman sweetly, "if it gives you pleasure,
should you cut yourself off from it?"
"My dear Mrs. Norman, we have to cut ourselves off from a great many
things--that give us pleasure. It can't be helped."
She meditated. "Would it be any good," she said, "if I were to call
on Mrs. Wilkinson?"
Wilkinson looked grave. "It is most kind of you, but--just at
present--I think it might be wiser not. She really, you know, isn't
very fit."
Mrs. Norman's silence neither accepted nor rejected the preposterous
pretext. Wilkinson went on, helping himself out as best he could:
"I can't talk about it; but I thought I ought to let you know. We've
just got to give everything up."
She held herself in. A terrible impulse was upon her to tell him
straight out that she did not see it; that it was too bad; that
there was no reason why she should be called upon to give everything
up.
"So, if we don't come," he said, "you'll understand? It's better--it
really is better not."