He knew, and if he were to keep on thinking about it—but he was afraid
to think. You could go mad, thinking. The moment of his certainty
remained in his memory; he knew where to find it if he chose to look
that way. But he refused to look. Such things were better forgotten.
He told himself there was nothing in it. Nothing but Nurse Eden’s
hysteria and vanity. She wanted you to believe she was wonderful, that
she could do things. She didn’t really believe it herself. In her own
last moment of honesty she had confessed as much. He was a fool to have
been taken in by her.
Meanwhile, three months after his mother’s death, he had married Effie
Carroll. Her father, who had held out against the engagement,
surrendered suddenly on the day of the wedding, and made his daughter an
allowance of fifty pounds a year. He said he didn’t want to profit by
her folly, and the fifty pounds were no more than the cost of her keep.
It was horrible to think they should owe their happiness to his mother’s
death; but as things had turned out they didn’t owe it; they could have
married even if she had lived. And as he had now no motive for wishing
her dead, he almost forgot that he had ever wished it.
Not that Hollyer reproached himself; his tendency, when he thought it
all over, was to reproach his mother. He had found out something about
himself. Before he married he had gone to Dr. Ransome to be overhauled,
and Ransome had told him there was nothing much the matter with him;
never was. And if the old pessimist said there wasn’t much the matter,
you might depend upon it there wasn’t anything at all. Except, Ransome
said, molly-coddling; and that wasn’t Hollyer’s fault.
“Whose was it, then?” Hollyer had asked. “My mother’s?”
“No. Your dear mother, Hollyer, had no faults. But she made mistakes, as
we all do.”
“You mean, if I’d been allowed to live like other people I’d have been
all right?”
“Well—you weren’t a very robust infant; and later on there _was_ a
slight risk. Personally, I’d have taken it. You must take some risks.
But your mother was afraid. You were all she had. And I daresay she
wasn’t sorry to keep you with her.”
“I see.”
He saw it clearly. He had been sacrificed to his mother’s selfishness.
Nothing but that had doomed him to his humiliating dependence, his
poverty, his intolerable celibacy. He found himself brooding over it,
going back and back to it, with a certain gratification, as if it
justified him. His mind was appeased by this righteous resentment. When
the remembrance of his mother’s beauty and sweetness rushed at him and
accused him he turned from it to his brooding.
He had begun to talk, to say things about his mother. Put into spoken
words his grievance seemed more real; it acquired validity.
He had felt so safe. His mother couldn’t hear him. She would never know
what he thought about her; he would have died rather than let her know.
And he had only talked to Effie. Talking to his wife was no worse than
thinking to himself. After all he had gone through, he felt he was
entitled to that relief.
It was June, a hot, close evening before lamplight; they were sitting
together in the drawing-room, Effie in his mother’s chair and he at his
piano in the recess on the other side of the fireplace. And there was
something that Effie said when he had stopped playing and had turned to
her, smiling.
“Wilfrid—are you happy?”
“Of course I’m happy.”
“No, but—really?”
“Really. Absolutely. You make me happy.”
“Do I? I’m so glad. You see, when I married you I was afraid I couldn’t.
It was so hard to come after your mother.”
He winced.
“How do you mean? You don’t come ‘after’ her.”
“I mean, after all she was to you. After all she did. Your life with her
was so perfect.”
“If it’s any consolation to you, Effie, it wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t?”
“No. Anything but.”
“Oh, Wilfrid!”
He seemed to her to be uttering blasphemy.
“It’s better you should know it. My dear mother didn’t understand me in
the least. My whole up-bringing was a ghastly blunder. If I’d been let
live a decent life, like any other boy, like any other man, I might have
been good for something. But she wouldn’t let me. She pretended there
was something the matter with me when there wasn’t, so that she could
keep me dependent on her.”
“Wilfrid _dear_, it may have been a blunder and it may have been
ghastly—”
“It was.”
“But it was only her love for you.”
“A very selfish sort of love, Effie.”
“Oh _don’t_,” she cried. “Don’t. She’s _dead_, Wilfrid.”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
“You talk as if you’d forgotten— If the dead knew—”