She went round the house bolting and locking the doors, seeing that
everything was made fast for the night. At the foot of the stairs painful
thoughts came upon her, and she drew her hand across her eyes; for she was
whelmed with a sense of sorrow, of purely mental misery, which she could
not understand, and which she had not strength to grapple with. She was,
however, conscious of the fact that life was proving too strong for her,
that she could make nothing of it, and she thought that she did not care
much what happened. She had fought with adverse fate, and had conquered in
a way; she had won countless victories over herself, and now found herself
without the necessary strength for the last battle; she had not even
strength for blame, and merely wondered why she had let William kiss her.
She remembered how she had hated him, and now she hated him no longer. She
ought not to have spoken to him; above all, she ought not to have taken
him to see the child. But how could she help it?
She slept on the same landing as Miss Rice, and was moved by a sudden
impulse to go in and tell her the story of her trouble. But what good? No
one could help her. She liked Fred; they seemed to suit each other, and
she could have made him a good wife if she had not met William. She
thought of the cottage at Mortlake, and their lives in it; and she sought
to stimulate her liking for him with thoughts of the meeting-house; she
thought even of the simple black dress she would wear, and that life
seemed so natural to her that she did not understand why she hesitated....
If she were to marry William she would go to the "King's Head."
She would stand behind the bar; she would serve the customers. She had
never seen much life, and felt somehow that she would like to see a little
life; there would not be much life in the cottage at Mortlake; nothing but
the prayer-meeting. She stopped thinking, surprised at her thoughts. She
had never thought like that before; it seemed as if some other woman whom
she hardly knew was thinking for her. She seemed like one standing at
cross-roads, unable to decide which road she would take. If she took the
road leading to the cottage and the prayer-meeting her life would
henceforth be secure. She could see her life from end to end, even to the
time when Fred would come and sit by her, and hold her hand as she had
seen his father and mother sitting side by side. If she took the road to
the public-house and the race-course she did not know what might not
happen. But William had promised to settle £500 on her and Jackie. Her
life would be secure either way.
She must marry Fred; she had promised to marry him; she wished to be a
good woman; he would give her the life she was most fitted for, the life
she had always desired; the life of her father and mother, the life of her
childhood. She would marry Fred, only--something at that moment seemed to
take her by the throat. William had come between her and that life. If she
had not met him at Woodview long ago; if she had not met him in the
Pembroke Road that night she went to fetch the beer for her mistress's
dinner, how different everything would have been! ...If she had met him
only a few months later, when she was Fred's wife!
Wishing she might go to sleep, and awake the wife of one or the other, she
fell asleep to dream of a husband possessed of the qualities of both, and
a life that was neither all chapel nor all public-house. But soon the one
became two, and Esther awoke in terror, believing she had married them
both.