When her attack passed off, Mrs. Bentley sent and begged my wife to come
again and see her. She went without me, while I was in town, but she was
so circumstantial in her report of her visit, when I came home, that I
never felt quite sure I had not been present. What most interested us
both was the extreme independence which the mother and daughter showed
beyond a certain point, and the daughter's great frankness in expressing
her difference of feeling. We had already had some hint of this, the
first day we met her, and we were not surprised at it now, my wife at
first hand, or I at second hand. Mrs. Bentley opened the way for her
daughter by saying that the worst of sickness was that it made one such
an affliction to others. She lived in an atmosphere of devotion, she
said, but her suffering left her so little of life that she could not
help clinging selfishly to everything that remained.
My wife perceived that this was meant for Miss Bentley, though it was
spoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of the
fact. She said: "We needn't use any circumlocution with Mrs. March,
mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say whatever you
wish, though I don't know why you should wish to say anything. You have
made your own terms with us, and we are keeping them to the letter. What
more can you ask? Do you want me to break with Mr. Glendenning? I will
do that too, if you ask it. You have got everything _but_ that, and you
can have that at any time. But Arthur and I are perfectly satisfied as
it is, and we can wait as long as you wish us to wait."
Her mother said: "I'm not allowed to forget that for a single hour," and
Miss Bentley said, "I never remind you of it unless you make me, mother.
You may be thinking of it all the time, but it isn't because of anything
I say."
"Or that you _do_?" asked Mrs. Bentley; and her daughter answered, "I
can't help existing, of course."
My wife broke off from the account she was giving me of her visit: "You
can imagine how pleasant all this was for me, Basil, and how anxious I
was to prolong my call!"
"Well," I returned, "there were compensations. It was extremely
interesting; it was life. You can't deny that, my dear."
"It was more like death. Several times I was on the point of going, but
you know when there's been a painful scene you feel so sorry for the
people who've made it that you can't bear to leave them to themselves. I
did get up to go, once, in mere self-defence, but they both urged me to
stay, and I couldn't help staying till they could talk of other things.
But now tell me what you think of it all. Which should your feeling be
with the most? That is what I want to get at before I tell you mine."
"Which side was I on when we talked about them last?"
"Oh, when did we talk about them _last_? We are always talking about
them! I am getting no good of the summer at all. I shall go home in the
fall more jaded and worn out than when I came. To think that we should
have this beautiful place, where we could be so happy and comfortable,
if it were not for having this abnormal situation under our nose and
eyes all the time!"
"Abnormal? I don't call it abnormal," I began, and I was sensible of my
wife's thoughts leaving her own injuries for my point of view so swiftly
that I could almost hear them whir.
"Not abnormal!" she gasped.
"No; only too natural. Isn't it perfectly natural for an invalid like
that to want to keep her daughter with her; and isn't it perfectly
natural for a daughter, with a New England sense of duty, to yield to
her wish? You might say that she could get married and live at home, and
then she and Glendenning could both devote themselves--"
"No, no," my wife broke in, "that wouldn't do. Marriage is marriage; and
it puts the husband and wife with each other first; when it doesn't,
it's a miserable mockery."
"Even when there's a sick mother in the case?"
"A thousand sick mothers wouldn't alter the case. And that's what they
all three instinctively know, and they're doing the only thing they can
do."
"Then I don't see what we're complaining of."
"Complaining of? We're complaining of its being all wrong and--romantic.
Her mother has asked more than she had any right to ask, and Miss
Bentley has tried to do more than she can perform, and that has made
them hate each other."
"Should you say _hate_, quite?"
"It must come to that, if Mrs. Bentley lives."
"Then let us hope she--"
"My dear!" cried Mrs. March, warningly.
"Oh, come, now!" I retorted. "Do you mean to say that you haven't
thought how very much it would simplify the situation if--"
"Of course I have! And that is the wicked part of it. It's that that is
wearing me out. It's perfectly hideous!"
"Well, fortunately we're not actively concerned in the affair, and we
needn't take any measures in regard to it. We are mere spectators, and
as I see it the situation is not only inevitable for Mrs. Bentley, but
it has a sort of heroic propriety for Miss Bentley."
"And Glendenning?"
"Oh, Glendenning isn't provided for in my scheme."
"Then I can tell you that your scheme, Basil, is worse than worthless."
"I didn't brag of it, my dear," I said, meekly enough. "I'm sorry for
him, but I can't help him. He must provide for himself out of his
religion."