ISABEL told Mrs. Comber on that same afternoon at tea-time; but that
good lady, owing to the interruption of the other good ladies and her
own Mr. Comber, was unable to say anything really about it until just
before going to bed. Mrs. Comber would not have been able to say very
much about it in any case quite at first, because her breath was so
entirely taken away by surprise, and then afterwards by delight and
excitement. For herself this term had, so far, been rather a difficult
affair: money had been hard, and Freddie had been even harder—and hard,
as she complained, in such strange, tricky comers—never when you
would expect him to be and always when you wouldn't. This Mrs. Comber
considered terribly unfair, because if one knew what he was going to
mind, one would look out for it and be especially careful; but when he
let irritating things pass without a word and then “flew out” when there
was nothing for anyone to be distressed about, life became a hideous
series of nightmares with the enemy behind every hedge.
Mrs. Comber knew that this term had been worse than usual, because she
had arrived already, although it was only just past halfterm, at the
condition of saying nothing to Freddie when he spoke to her—she called
it submission, but she never arrived at it until she was nearly at the
limits of her endurance. And now this news of Isabel suddenly made the
world bright again; she loved Isabel better than anyone in the world
except Freddie and the children; and her love was of the purely
unselfish kind, so that joy at Isabel's happiness far outweighed her own
discomforts. She was really most tremendously glad, glad with all her
size and volubility and color.
Isabel talked to her in her bedroom—it was of course also Freddie's, but
he had left no impression on it whatever, whereas she, by a series of
touches—the light green wall-paper and the hard black of the shining
looking-glass, the silver things, and the china things (not very many,
but all made the most of),—had made it her own unmistakably, so that
everything shouted Mrs. Comber with a war of welcome. It was indeed, in
spite of the light green paper, a noisy impression, and one had always
the feeling that things—the china, the silver, and the chairs—jumped
when one wasn't in, charged, as it were, with the electricity of Mrs.
Comber's temperament and the color of her dresses.
But of course Isabel knew it all well enough, and she didn't in the
least mind the stridency of it—in fact it all rather suited the sense of
battle that there was in the air, so that the things seemed to say that
they knew that there was a row on, and that they jolly well liked it.
Freddie had been cross at dinner, and so, in so far as it was at all
his room, the impression would not have been pleasant; but he just, one
felt, slipped into bed and out of it, and there was an end of his being
there.
Mrs. Comber, taking a few things off, putting a bright new dressing-gown
on, and smiling from ear to ear, watched Isabel with burning eyes.
“Oh! my dear!... No, just come and sit on the bed beside me and have
these things off, and I've been much too busy to write about that skirt
of mine that I told you I would, and there it is hanging up to shame
me! Well! I'm just too glad, you dear!” Here she hugged and kissed and
patted her hand. “And he is such a nice young man, although Freddie
doesn't like him, you know, over the football or something, although I'm
sure I never know what men's reasons are for disliking one another,
and Freddie's especially; but I liked him ever since he dined here that
night, although I didn't really see much of him because, you know, he
played Bridge at the other table and I was much too worried!” She drew
a breath, and then added quite simply, like a child, and in that way of
hers that was so perfectly fascinating: “My dear, I love you, and I want
you to be happy, and I think you will—and I want you to love me.”
Isabel could only, for answer, fling her arms about her and hold her
very tight indeed, and she felt in that little confession that there
was more pathos than any one human being could realize and that life was
terribly hard for some people.
“Of course, it is wonderful,” she said at last, looking with her clear,
beautiful eyes straight in front of her. “One never knew how wonderful
until it actually came. Love is more than the finest writer has ever
said and not, I suspect, quite so much as the humblest lover has ever
thought it—and that's pessimistic of me, I suppose,” she added laughing;
“but it only means that I'm up to all the surprises and ready for them.”
“You 'll find it exactly whatever you make it,” Mrs. Comber said slowly.
“I don't think the other party has really very much to do with it. You
never lose what you give, my dear; but, as a matter of fact he's the
very nicest and trustiest young man, and no one could ever be a brute
to you, whatever kind of brutes they were to anyone else—and I wish I'd
remembered about that skirt.”
The silence of the room and house, the peace of the night outside,
came about Isabel like a comfortable cloak, so that she believed that
everything was most splendidly right.
“And now, my dear,” said Mrs. Comber, “tell me what this is that I hear
about your young man and Mr. Perrin, because I only heard the veriest
words from Freddie, and I was just talking to Jane at the time about
not breathing when she's handing round the things, because she's always
doing it, and she 'll have to go if she doesn't learn.”
Isabel looked grave.
“It seems the silliest affair,” she said; “and yet it's a great pity,
because it may make a lot of trouble, I'm afraid. But that's why we
announced our engagement to-day, because it 'll be, it appears, a case
of taking sides.”
“It always is here,” said Mrs. Comber, “when there's the slightest
opportunity of it.”
“Well, it looks as though there was going to be plenty of opportunity
this time,” Isabel said sighing. “It really is too silly. Apparently
Archie took Mr. Perrin's umbrella to preparation in Upper School this
morning without asking. They hadn't been getting on very well before,
and when Mr. Perrin asked for his umbrella and Archie said that he'd
taken it, there was a regular fight. The worst of it is that there were
lots of people there; and now, of course, it is all over the school, and
it will never be left alone as it ought to be.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Comber, solemnly, “it will be the opportunity for
all sorts of things. We 're all just ripe for it. How perfectly absurd
of Mr. Perrin! But then he's an ass, and I always said so, and now it
only proves it, and I wish he'd never come here. Of course you know that
I'm with you, my dear; but I'm afraid that Freddie won't be, because he
doesn't like your Archie, and there's no getting over it—and on whose
side all the others will be there's no knowing whatever—and indeed I
don't like to think of it all.”
She was so serious about it that Isabel at once became serious too. Her
worst suspicions about it all were suddenly confirmed, so that the room,
instead of its quiet and peace, was filled with a thousand sharp terrors
and crawling fears. She was afraid of Mr. Perrin, she was afraid of the
crowd of people, she was afraid of all the ill-feeling that promised
soon to overwhelm her. She clutched Mrs. Comber's arm.
“Oh!” she cried, “will they hate us?”
“They 'll do their best, my dear,” said that lady solemnly, “to hate
somebody.” II.
And they came, comparatively in their multitudes, to tea on the next
afternoon.
Tuesday was, as it happened, Mrs. Comber's day, and the hour's relief
that followed its ending scarcely outweighed the six days' terror at its
horrible approach. Its disagreeable qualities were, of course, in the
first place those of any “at home” whatever—the stilted and sterile fact
of being there sacrificially for anyone to trample on in the presence
of a delighted audience and a glittering tea-table. But in Mrs. Comber's
case there was the additional trouble of “town” and “school” never in
the least suiting, although “town” was only a question of local houses
like the squire and the clergyman, and they ought to have combined, one
would have thought, easily enough.
The society of small provincial towns has been made again and again the
jest and mockery of satiric fiction, having, it is considered, in the
quality of its conversation a certain tinkling and malicious chatter
that is unequaled elsewhere. Far be it from me to describe the
conversation of the ladies of Moffatt's in this way—it was a thing of
far deeper and graver import.
The impossibility of escape until the term's triumphant conclusion made
what might, in a wider and finer hemisphere, have been simply malicious
conversation that sprang up and disappeared without result, a perpetual
battle of death and disaster. No slightest word but had its weightiest
result, because everyone was so close upon everyone else that things
said rebounded like peas flung against a board.
Mrs. Comber, at her tea-parties, had long ago ceased to consider the
safety or danger of anything that she might say. It seemed to her that
whatever she said always went wrong, and did the greatest damage that it
was possible for any one thing to do; and now she counted her Tuesdays
as days of certain disaster, allowing a dozen blunders to a Tuesday and
hoping that she would “get off,” so to speak, on that. But on occasions
like the present, when there was really something to talk about, she
shuddered at the possible horrors; her line, of course, was strong
enough, because it was Isabel first and Isabel last; and if that brought
her into conflict with all the other ladies of the establishment, then
she couldn't help it. Had it been merely a question of the Umbrella
Riot, as some wit had already phrased it, she knew clearly enough where
they were all likely to be; but now that there was Isabel's engagement
as well, she felt that their anger would be stirred by that bright,
young lady having made a step forward and having been, in some odd,
obscure, feminine way, impertinently pushing.
She wished passionately, as she sat in glorious purple before her
silver, tea-things, her little pink cakes, and her vanishingly thin
pieces of bread-and-butter, that the “town” would, on this occasion at
any rate, put in an appearance, because that would prevent anyone really
“getting at” things; but, of course, as it happened, the “town” for once
wasn't there at all, and the battle raged quite splendidly.
The combatants were the two Misses Madder, Mrs. Dormer, and Mrs.
Moy-Thompson, and it might seem that these ladies were not numerically
enough to do any lastingly serious damage; but it was the bodies that
they represented rather than the individuals that they actually were;
and poor Mrs. Comber, as she smiled at them and talked at them and
wished that the little pink cakes might poison them all, knew exactly
the reason of their separate appearances and the danger that they were,
severally and individually.
The Misses Madder represented the matrons, and they represented them as
securely and confidently as though they had sat in conclave already and
drawn up a list of questions to be asked and answers to be given. Mrs.
Dormer represented the wives and also, separately, Mrs. Dormer, in so
far as her own especial dislike of Mrs. Comber went for everything; Mrs.
Moy-Thompson, above all, faded, black, thin, and miserable, represented
her lord and master, and was regarded by the other ladies as a spy
whose accurate report of the afternoon's proceedings would send threads
spinning from that dark little study for the rest of the term.
The eldest Miss Madder, stout, good-natured, comfortable, had not of
herself any malice at all; but her thin, bony sister, exact in her
chair, and with eyes looking straight down her nose, influenced her
stouter sister to a wonderful extent.
The thin Miss Madder's remark on receiving her tea, “Well, so Miss
Desart's engaged to Mr. Traill!” showed immediately which of the two
pieces of news was considered the most important.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Comber, “and I'm sure it's delightful. Do have one of
those little pink cakes, Mrs. Thompson; they 're quite fresh; and I
want you especially to notice that little water-color over there by the
screen, because I bought it in Truro last week for simply nothing
at Pinner's, and I believe it's quite a good one—I'm sure we 're all
delighted.”
Mrs. Dormer wasn't so certain. “They 're a little young,” she said in
so chilly a voice that she might have been suddenly transferred, against
her will, in the dead of night in the thinnest attire, into the heart
of Siberia. “And what's this I hear from my husband about Mr. Perrin and
Mr. Traill tumbling about on the floor together this morning—something
about an umbrella?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Thompson, moving her chair a little closer, “I heard
something this morning about it.”
Mrs. Comber had never before disliked this thin, faded lady so intensely
as she did on this afternoon—she seemed to chill the room with her
presence; and the consciousness of the trouble that she would bring to
various innocent persons in that place by the report of the things that
they had said, made of her something inhuman and detached. Mrs. Comber's
only way of easing the situation, “Do have another little pink cake,
Mrs. Thompson,” failed altogether on this occasion, and she could only
stare at her in a fascinated kind of horror until she realized with
a start that she was intended as hostess to give an account of the
morning's proceedings. But she turned to Miss Madder. “You were down
there, Miss Madder; tell us all about it.”
Miss Madder was only too ready, having been in the hall at the time and
having heard what she called “the first struggle,” and having yielded
eventually, rather against her better instincts, to her feminine
curiosity—having in fact looked past the shoulders of Mr. Comber and Mr.
Birkland and seen the gentlemen struggling on the floor.
“Actually on the floor!” said Mrs. Dormer, still in Siberia.
“Yes, actually on the floor—also all the breakfast things and coffee all
over the tablecloth.”
Miss Madder was checked in her enthusiasm by her consciousness of the
cold eye of Mrs. Thompson, and the possibility of being dismissed from
her position at the end of the term if she said anything she oughtn't
to—also the possibility of an unpleasant conversation with her clever
sister afterwards. However, she considered it safe enough to offer it as
her opinion that both gentlemen had forgotten themselves, and that Mr.
Traill was very much younger than Mr. Perrin, although Mr. Perrin was
the harder one to live with—and that it had been a clean tablecloth that
morning.
“I call it disgraceful,” was the only light that the younger Miss Madder
would throw upon the question.
For a moment there was silence, and then Mrs. Dormer said, “And really
about an umbrella?”
“I understand,” said Miss Madder, who was warming to her work and
beginning to forget Mrs. Thompson's eye, “that Mr. Traill borrowed
Mr. Perrin's umbrella without asking permission, and that there was a
dispute.”
But it was at once obvious that what interested the ladies was the
question of Miss Desart's engagement to Mr. Traill, and the effect that
that had upon the disturbance in question.
“I never quite liked Mr. Traill,” said Mrs. Dormer decisively; “and I
cannot say that I altogether congratulate Miss Desart—and I must say
that the quarrel of this morning looks a little as though Mr. Traill's
temper was uncertain.”
“Very uncertain indeed, I should think,” said the younger Miss Madder
with a sniff.
Mrs. Comber felt their eyes upon her; she knew that they wished to know
what she had to say about it all, but she was wise enough to hold her
peace.
The other ladies then devoted all their energies upon getting an
opinion from Mrs. Comber. During the next quarter of an hour, every lady
understanding every other lady, a combined attack was made.
Semi-Chorus a—The question of the umbrella was, of course, a question
of order, and, as Mrs. Dormer put it, when a younger master attacks an
older one and flings him to the ground, and rubs his hair in the dust
and that before a large audience, the whole system of education is in
danger; there 's no knowing when things will begin or end, and other
masters will be doing dreadful things, and then the prefects, and then
other boys, and finally a dreadful picture of the First and Second boys
showing what they can do with knives and pistols.
Miss Madder entirely agreed with this, and then enlarged further on the
question of property.
Semi-Chorus b—One had one's things—here she was sure Mrs. Comber would
agree—and if one didn't keep a tight hold of them in these days, one
simply did n 't know where one would be. Of course one umbrella was a
small thing; but, after all, it was aggravating on a wet morning not to
find it and then to have no excuse whatever offered to one—anyone would
be cross about it. And, after all, with some people if you gave them
an inch they took an ell, as the saying was, and if one didn't show
firmness over a small thing like this, it would only lead to people
taking other things without asking until one really did n't know where
one was. Of course, it was a pity that Mr. Perrin should have lost his
self-control as completely as he appeared to have done, but nevertheless
one could quite understand how aggravating it was.
Semi-Chorus a—Mrs. Dormer, continued, keeping order was no light matter,
and if those masters who had been in a school for twenty years were
to be openly derided before boys and masters, if umbrellas were to
be indiscriminately stolen, and if in fact anything was to be done by
anybody at any time whatever without by your leave or for your leave,
then one might just as well pack up one's boxes and go home; and then
what would happen, one would like to know, to our schools, our boys, and
finally, with an emphatic rattle of cup and saucer, to our country?
Semi-Chorus b—Enlarged the original issue. It was really rather
difficult when a young man had been behaving in this way to congratulate
the young lady to whom he had just engaged himself. She was of course
perfectly charming, but it was a pity that she should, whilst still so
young, be forced to countenance disorder and tumult, because with
that kind of beginning there was no telling what married life mightn't
develop into.
Semi-Chorus a—Enlarged yet again on this subject and, without mentioning
names or being in any way specific, drew a dreadful picture of married
lives that had been ruined simply through this question of discipline,
and that if the husband were the kind of man who believed in blows and
riot and general disturbance, then the wife was in for an exceedingly
poor time.
Mrs. Comber had listened to this discussion in perfect silence. It
was not her habit to listen to anything in perfect silence, but on the
present occasion she continued to enforce in her mind that dark, ominous
figure of Mrs. Thompson. Anything that she said would be used against
her, and there in the corner, with her thin, white hands folded in her
lap, with the black silk of her dress shining in little white lines
where the light caught it, was the person who might undo her Freddie
entirely. Whatever happened, she must keep silence—she told herself this
again and again; but as Mrs. Dormer and Miss Madder continued, she found
her anger rising. She fixed her eyes on the sharp, black feathers in
Miss Madder's hat and tried to discuss with herself the general expense
of the hat and why Miss Madder always wore things that didn't suit her,
and whether Miss Madder wouldn't he ever so much better in a nice green
grave with daisies and church bells in the distance, but these abstract
questions refused to allow themselves to be discussed. She knew as she
listened that Isabel, her dear, beloved Isabel, to whom she owed more
than anyone in the whole world, was being attacked—cruelly, wickedly
attacked.
Every word that came from their lips increased her rage: they hated
Isabel—Isabel who had never done them any harm or hurt. As their voices,
even and cold, went on, she forgot that dark, silent figure in the
corner, and her hands began to twitch the silk of her purple gown.
Suddenly in an instant Freddie was forgotten, everything was forgotten
save Isabel, and she burst out, her eyes burning, her cheeks flaming:
“Really, Mrs. Dormer, you are a little inaccurate. I'm sure we must all
agree that it's a pity if anyone is so silly as to knock someone else
down because someone else has stolen one's umbrella, and I'm sure I
should never want to; and indeed I remember quite well Miss Tweedy, who
was matron here two years ago, taking a gray parasol of mine to chapel
with her and putting it up before everybody, and nobody thought anything
of it, and I remember Miss Tweedy being quite angry because I asked for
it back again. I think it's very stupid of Mr. Perrin to make such a
fuss about nothing, and I never did like him, and I don't care who knows
it; but at any rate I don't see what this has all got to do with dear
Isabel's engagement, and I think young Traill's a delightful fellow, and
I hope they 'll both be enormously happy, and I think it's very unkind
of you to wish them not to be!” Mrs. Comber took a deep breath.
“Really, my dear Mrs. Comber,” said Mrs. Dormer very slowly, “I'm sure
we none of us wish them anything but happiness. Please don't have the
impression that we are not eager for their good.”
“I can't help feeling, Mrs. Comber,” said Miss Madder, “that you have
rather misunderstood our position in the matter.”
“Well, I'm sure I'm very sorry if I have,” broke in Mrs. Comber
hurriedly, beginning already to be sorry that she had spoken so quickly.
“You see,” went on Miss Madder, “that I don't think we can any of us
have two feelings about the question of discipline. I'm sure you agree
with us there, Mrs. Comber.”
“Oh, of course,” said Mrs. Comber.
But she saw at once that war had been declared. They hated Isabel, and
they hated her; they would make it so unpleasant that Isabel would not
be able to come and stay again—they were of one mind.
Above all, after they had gone, there remained the impression of
that silent, black lady who had said not a word. What would she tell
Moy-Thompson? What harm would come to Freddie?
Last, and worst of all, as Mrs. Comber most wretchedly reflected,
Freddie had still to be faced.
His feelings, she knew, would be strongly expressed, and were certainly
not in a line with her own.
Oh! the umbrella had a great deal to answer for! III.
And Freddie was, as a matter of fact, faced that very evening, and a
crisis arrived in the affairs of the Combers which must be chronicled,
because it had ultimately a good deal to do with Isabel and Archie
Traill, and indeed with everyone in the present story.
But whilst waiting for him downstairs, “dressed and shining,” as she
used to like to say—with the dinner getting cold (for which disaster she
was certain to be scolded)—she wondered in her muddled kind of way why
it was that they should all have wanted to be so disagreeable, why, as a
development of that, everyone always preferred to be disagreeable rather
than pleasant. And she suddenly, facing the ormolu clock and the peacock
screen with her eyes upon them as though they might, with their color
and decoration help her, had a revelation—dim, misty, vague, and lost
almost as soon as it was seen—that it wasn't really anyone's fault at
all—that it was the system, the place, the tightness and closeness and
helplessness that did for everybody; that nobody could escape from it,
and that the finest saint, the most noble character, would be crushed
and broken in that remorseless mill—“the mills of the gods”?—no, the
mills of a rotten, impoverished, antiquated system.... She saw, staring
at the clock and the screen and clinging to them, these men and these
women, crushed, beaten, defeated: Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Dormer, Miss
Madder, her own Freddie, Mr. Perrin, Mr. Birkland, Mr. White—even
already young Traill—all of them decent, hopeful, brave... once. The
coals clicked in the glowing fire, and the soft autumn wind passed down
the darkening paths. She felt suddenly as though she must give it all
up—she must leave Freddie and the children and go away... anywhere...
she could not endure it any longer. And then Freddie came in, irritable,
peevish, scarcely noticing her. Moy-Thompson had changed one of his
hours, and that annoyed him; the soup of course was stone cold, the fish
very little better. He scowled across the table at her, and she tried to
be pleasant and amusing. Then suddenly he had launched into the umbrella
affair.
“Young Traill wants kicking,” he said. “What are we all coming to, I
should like to know? Why, the man's only been here a month or two, and
he goes and takes a senior master's things without asking leave, and
then knocks him down because he objects. I never heard anything like it.
The fellow wants kicking out altogether.”
Mrs. Comber said nothing.
“Well, why don't you say something? You've got some opinion about it,
I suppose; and there's more in it than that—he's gone and got himself
engaged to Isabel, I hear. What's the girl thinking of? They 're both
much too young anyhow. It's absurd. I 'll tell her what I think of it.”
“Oh, no, Freddie—don't say anything to her. She's so happy about it, and
I'm sure the dear girl has been so good to both of us that she deserves
some happiness, and I do want them to be successful. After all, if Mr.
Traill was a little hasty, he's very young, and Mr. Perrin 's a very
difficult man to get on with. You know, dear, you've always said—”
“Well, whatever I 've said,” he broke in furiously, “I 've never
advocated stealing nor hitting your elders and betters in the face, and
if you think I have, you 're mightily mistaken.”
After that there was silence during the rest of the meal. Miss Desart
was dining at the Squire's in the village, and, for once, Mrs. Comber
was glad that the girl was not with them.
She was very near to tears. The day had been a most terrible one—and her
food choked her. The meal seemed to stretch into infinity, the dreary
dining-room, the monotonous tick of the clock, and always her husband's
scowling face.
At last it was over, and he went to his study, and she to her little
drawing-room. In front of her fire, her sewing slipped from her lap and
she slept, with her purple dress shining in the firelight, and the rest
of the room in shadow about her. And she dreamt wonderful dreams—of
places where there was freedom and light, of hard, white roads and
forests and cathedrals, and of a wonderful life where there was no
travail nor ill-temper; and her face became happy again, and she saw
Freddie as he had once been, before the shadow of this place had fallen
about him, and in her dreams she was in a place where everyone loved her
and she could make no mistakes.
Then she woke up and saw Freddie Comber standing near her, and she
smiled at him and then gave a little exclamation because the fire was
nearly out.
“Yes,” he said, following her glance, “it's a nice, cheerful room for a
man to come into, isn't it, after he's tired and cold with work? I have
got a nice, pleasant little wife. I'm a lucky man, I am.”
Then, as she began to busy herself with the fire, and tried to brighten
it, he said, “Oh! leave it now, can't you? What's the use of making a
noise and fuss with it now?”
Then he went on as she got up from her knees again and faced him, “Look
here, we've got to come to an understanding about this business.”
“What business?” she said faintly, all the color leaving her cheeks.
“Why, young Traill,” he went on, standing over her. “I'm not going to
have my wife encouraging him in this affair. I tell you I object to
him—he's a conceited, impertinent prig, and he wants putting in his
place, and I 'll let him know it if he comes near here. I won't have him
in the house, and it's just as well he should know it. So don't you go
asking him here.”
She was now white to the lips. “But,” she said, “I have told Isabel that
I am glad, and I am glad. I like Mr. Traill, and I don't think it was
his fault in this business; and, Freddie dear, you know you are not
quite fair to him because of his football, or something silly, and I'm
sure you don't mind him, really—you don't like Mr. Perrin, you know.”
This was quite the most unfortunate speech that poor Mrs. Comber could
possibly have made; the mention of the football at once reminded Freddie
Comber of all that he had suffered on that head, and his neck began to
swell with rage, and his cheeks were flushed.
“Look here, my lady,” he said, “you just leave things alone that don't
belong to you. Never you mind what reasons I 've got for disliking young
Traill—it's enough if I say that he's not to come here—and Miss Isabel
shall hear that from my own lips.”
In all her long experience of him she had never known him so angry as
he was now, and she had never before been so afraid of him; but at
the mention of Isabel, she called all her courage to her aid and drew
herself up.
“You must not do that,” she said. “You cannot insult Isabel here, when
she has been such a friend of ours, and been so good—so good. I love
her, and the man she is going to marry is my friend.”
“Oh!” he said, speaking very low and coming very close to her. “This is
defiance, is it? You will do this and that, will you? I tell you that he
shall not come here.”
“And I say that he shall,” she answered in a whisper.
Then, with the accumulated irritation of the day upon him, he suddenly
came to her and, muttering between his teeth, “We 'll see about the
master here,” struck her so that he cut his hand on her brooch, and she
fell back against the wall, and stayed there with her hands spread out
against it, staring at him....
There was a long silence, with no sound save the clock and the distant
wind. He had never, in their long married life, struck her before. They
both knew, as they stood there staring at one another, that a period had
suddenly been placed, like an iron wall, in their lives. Their relations
could never be the same again. They might be better, they might be
worse—they could never be the same.
But with him there was a great overwhelming horror of what he had done.
Her white face, her large, shining eyes, the way that her hands lay
against the wall, and the way that her dress fell about her feet,
because her knees were bending under her—drove this home to him. He was
appalled; suddenly that man in him that had been dead for twenty years
was brought to life by that blow.
“My dear—my dear—don't look at me like that—I did not mean anything—I am
not angry—I am terribly ashamed.... Please—”
His voice was a trembling whisper. He put out his hand towards her.
She took his hand, and came away from the wall, still looking at him
fixedly.
“You never struck me before, Freddie,” she said. “At least, you have
never done that. I am so sorry, my dear.”
Then, very quietly, she put her arms about his neck and kissed him; then
she went slowly out of the room.
He stood where she had left him motionless. Then he said, still in a
whisper and looking at the curtains that hid the night and the dark
buildings. “Curse the place! It is that—it has done for me....” And
then, as he very slowly sat down and faced the fire, he whispered to the
shadowy room, “I am no good—I am no good at all!”