"If you'll all excuse me, dear, I think I should."
"I think we're all of us ready, aren't we?" murmured Mrs. Findon.
And as they got up and filed from the room, Amy said in sacerdotal
tones, "There's one thing we want to do, isn't there, before we go
upstairs to-night?" And, like one who performs a rite, she opened the
study door; and on the threshold they drooped devoutly.
"O God, forgive me, and help me to be truthful!" prayed the hypocrite
when she was alone.
The morrow was Sunday, and in the morning they went to church; and
after service they walked dismally to the cemetery. At dinner she
could scarcely swallow. She felt faint, and her hands trembled when
the return to the drawing-room was made. It had to be now! Her
sister-in-law was settling herself for a nap. Amy turned listlessly
the pages of a book. Mildred, her shallow eyes upturned, and her head
slightly sideways, wore an air of pious resignation to some unexpressed
calamity. Turning from the window, with a gulp, the coward stammered:
"Oh ... after you had gone from Harrogate, Mr. Murray asked me to marry
him."
The silence seemed to her to last for minutes.
"To do _what_?" gasped Amy.
"_Well_!" exclaimed Mildred. "It didn't take long to put _him_ in his
place, I hope. What impudence!"
"He had an impudent look," said Amy.
"Some man who was staying at the hydro where you were?" inquired
Aunt Harriet. "Fancy! That's the worst of those large places. But I
shouldn't let it worry you, my dear. It isn't worth worrying about.
Very likely he didn't mean any harm by it. He didn't understand,
that's all--didn't know your heart was buried with him who's gone."
"Disgusting, _I_ call it," said Mildred. "But Aunt's quite right--we
needn't talk about it.... I thought this morning--I don't know if you
noticed it--that the saxifrage on the grave had gone rather thin; there
was a gap here and there. I think we'd better see the superintendent.
It isn't what it ought to be, by any means."
She stood struggling to say the rest--she struggled with all the puny
will that was within her. And so unfit was she to struggle, that on
surrendering, her paramount emotion was relief. She said, "Yes, we'll
see him about it, and have some more."
She had intended to write to Murray in time for the evening collection.
But she could not write that she had kept her word, and she shrank from
writing that she had paltered with it. She lay sleepless, crying with
mortification. Once a desperate impulse to be done with her compliance
then and there, pulled her up, and she thrust on her dressing-gown;
but her mind quailed even as she reached the door, and she sank on to
the edge of the bed, procrastinating--and then crept back between the
sheets.
She could not write that she had kept her word on the next day either,
nor during the two days that followed. The just thing to them both
would have been to write him exactly what had happened, but as she was
a woman, the thing natural to her when she was to blame was to behave
worse still by not writing at all. A feeble attempt she made, but ...
what was there to say, excepting that she had failed? In every moment
she was conscious of his waiting; she realised the glances that he cast
at that letter-rack over the console table, and saw his mouth tighten
at every disappointment that it dealt. And she was fond of him. Yet it
was beyond her to sustain the effort to confess herself demeaned.
* * * * *
He telegraphed: "Coming to you by the seven o'clock train to-morrow
Friday morning."
From her bedroom window, before breakfast, she saw the boy crossing
the road with the message, and she darted downstairs and took it from
him before the double knock could crash. No one was aware, when the
family group made their matins to the study, that in her pocket she
had a telegram from a lover. No one surmised, when she served the eggs
and bacon, that she was questioning, terrified, how to keep his coming
secret. If any of them were in, when the maid said that he was asking
for her? She would be tongue-tied. And they--how insulting they'd be
to him! It would be awful ... awful, unless she were to prepare them,
unless she were to say now that she had heard from him and that they
must receive him properly. She knew she wasn't going to say it, but
she imagined the sensation if she said it: "Mr. Murray's calling this
morning. You've made a mistake--I accepted him." She shivered at the
mere notion, at fancying how horror would distort their faces. Just
after she had been shamming in that room!... She would make an excuse
to go out--she'd meet him at the station.
It was going to be very painful--she wished he weren't coming. In love
with him though she was, she knew that she wished he weren't coming.
And in that moment it was borne upon her that her expectation of
marrying him had died days ago. She could never go through with it! She
would have to tell him so--and he wouldn't understand, wouldn't make
allowances for her. He had not understood at Harrogate. He'd reproach
her, tell her she had treated him badly. And she'd have to sit there,
in the waiting-room, trying not to cry, with people looking on....
If she could have been picked up in his arms and carried off this
morning, without coming back to the house at all! That would be nice.
The girls and Harriet might say what they chose, if she hadn't got to
listen to it. But he wouldn't ask her to go like that; she would have
to propose it herself. How could she? Besides, when she went out to
meet him she couldn't even take a suit-case.... Oh, what good would it
do to meet him? Pain for nothing. He thought he would be able to argue
her into it, make her promise over again. Wretched. And very likely
she _would_ promise--and then what was she going to do? She would feel
worse then than she felt now. It would have been far better for them
not to see each other. If she told the servant----She couldn't say "Not
at home," that would sound dreadful.
He might be here soon, she supposed, unless he had to wait long for the
change of trains. If she did mean to go to the station, she ought to go
directly she had given orders to the cook. Walking into misery with her
eyes open! And walking back with her heart in her shoes. It wouldn't
be any easier to say it to them later than it was at this minute--and
she would know it even while he was wringing the promise from her. Oh,
what was he coming for, to make things worse still? He might have known
by her not having written to him----She pushed back her chair with
vexation.
After breakfast, when the beds were being made, Mrs. Findon said:
"Doreen, if anybody calls this morning--a gentleman--say we're away
from home for a few days. You understand? For a few days--all of us.
Oh, and, Doreen, if he asks where we are, you don't know."
* * * * *
More than six years have gone by since Mrs. Findon peeped, breathless,
as Mr. Murray got into a cab again and was driven out of her life. And
now when she reads in her newspaper, every day, on one page or another,
how sublimely mankind has progressed by relapsing into barbarism, and
that the new human nature is purged of frailties that were inherent
in men and women until the 4th August 1914, she vaguely wonders how
it is that her household, and her social circle, and Beckenhampton at
large, and she herself have not had their characters regenerated,
like the rest of the world. For each morning she goes with the Misses
Findon to gaze upon the study, and each Sunday she goes with them to
gaze upon the grave; and on their return, while the Misses Findon
sit by the fireplace, speaking at long intervals, in subdued tones,
their stepmother stares from the window, knowing that her pretence
of mourning a husband she did not love will continue as long as she
lives. And when she looks back on her romance, she marvels--not at the
recreancy of her submission, but that once she briefly dared to dream
she would rebel.