Paralysis. She saw the paralysis coming between them, separating them,
and inside her the secret pain was soothed. She need not think of Robin
married any more.
She was going to stay with them. Robin had written the letter. He said
Prissie wanted her. When she met him on the platform she had a little
shock at seeing him changed. Changed. His face was fuller, and a dark
moustache hid the sensitive, uneven, pulsing lip. His mouth was dragged
down further at the corners. But he was the same Robin. In the cab,
going to the house, he sat silent, breathing hard; she felt the tremor
of his consciousness and knew that he still loved her; more than he
loved Priscilla. Poor little Prissie. How terrible!
Priscilla sat by the fireplace in a wheel chair. She became agitated
when she saw Harriett; her arms shook as she lifted them for the
embrace.
“Hatty--you’ve hardly changed a bit.” Her voice shook.
Poor little Prissie. She was thin, thinner than ever, and stiff as if
she had withered. Her face was sallow and dry, and the luster had gone
from her black hair. Her wide mouth twitched and wavered, wavered and
twitched. Though it was warm summer she sat by a blazing fire with the
windows behind her shut.
Through dinner Harriett and Robin were silent and constrained. She tried
not to see Prissie shaking and jerking and spilling soup down the front
of her gown. Robin’s face was smooth and blank; he pretended to be
absorbed in his food, so as not to look at Prissie. It was as if
Prissie’s old restlessness had grown into that ceaseless jerking
and twitching. And her eyes fastened on Robin; they clung to him and
wouldn’t let him go. She kept on asking him to do things for her.
“Robin, you might get me my shawl;” and Robin would go and get the shawl
and put it round her. Whenever he did anything for her Prissie’s face
would settle down into a quivering, deep content.
At nine o’clock he lifted her out of her wheel chair. Harriett saw his
stoop, and the taut, braced power of his back as he lifted. Prissie lay
in his arms with rigid limbs hanging from loose attachments, inert, like
a doll. As he carried her upstairs to bed her face had a queer, exalted
look of pleasure and of triumph.
Harriett and Robin sat alone together in his study.
“How long is it since we’ve seen each other?”
“Five years, Robin.”
“It isn’t. It can’t be.”
“It is.”
“I suppose it is. But I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m married.
I can’t believe Prissie’s ill. It doesn’t seem real with you sitting
there.”
“Nothing’s changed, Robin, except that you’re more serious.”
“Nothing’s changed, except that I’m more serious than ever.... Do you
still do the same things? Do you still sit in the curly chair, holding
your work up to your chin with your little pointed hands like a
squirrel? Do you still see the same people?”
“I don’t make new friends, Robin.”
He seemed to settle down after that, smiling at his own thoughts,
appeased....
Lying in her bed in the spare room, Harriett heard the opening and
shutting of Robin’s door. She still thought of Prissie’s paralysis
as separating them, still felt inside her a secret, unacknowledged
satisfaction. Poor little Prissie. How terrible. Her pity for Priscilla
went through and through her in wave after wave. Her pity was sad and
beautiful and at the same time it appeased her pain.
In the morning Priscilla told her about her illness. The doctors didn’t
understand it. She ought to have had a stroke and she hadn’t had one.
There was no reason why she shouldn’t walk except that she couldn’t. It
seemed to give her pleasure to go over it, from her first turning
round and round in the street (with helpless, shaking laughter at
the queerness of it), to the moment when Robin bought her the wheel
chair.... Robin ... Robin ...
“I minded most because of Robin. It’s such an _awful_ illness, Hatty.
I can’t move when I’m in bed. Robin has to get up and turn me a dozen
times in one night.... Robin’s a perfect saint. He does everything for
me.” Prissie’s voice and her face softened and thickened with voluptuous
content.
“... Do you know, Hatty, I had a little baby. It died the day it was
born.... Perhaps some day I shall have another.”
Harriett was aware of a sudden tightening of her heart, of a creeping
depression that weighed on her brain and worried it. She thought this
was her pity for Priscilla.
Her third night. All evening Robin had been moody and morose. He would
hardly speak to either Harriett or Priscilla. When Priscilla asked him
to do anything for her he got up heavily, pulling himself together with
a sigh, with a look of weary, irritated patience.
Prissie wheeled herself out of the study into the drawing-room,
beckoning Harriett to follow. She had the air of saving Robin from
Harriett, of intimating that his grumpiness was Harriett’s fault. “He
doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said.
She sat up till eleven, so that Robin shouldn’t be thrown with Harriett
in the last hours.
Half the night Harriett’s thoughts ran on, now in a darkness, now
in thin flashes of light. “Supposing, after all, Robin wasn’t happy?
Supposing he can’t stand it? Supposing.... But why is he angry with
_me?_” Then a clear thought: “He’s angry with me because he can’t be
angry with Priscilla.” And clearer. “He’s angry with me because I made
him marry her.”
She stopped the running and meditated with a steady, hard deliberation.
She thought of her deep, spiritual love for Robin; of Robin’s deep
spiritual love for her; of his strength in shouldering his burden. It
was through her renunciation that he had grown so strong, so pure, so
good.
Something had gone wrong with Prissie. Robin, coming home early on
Saturday afternoon, had taken Harriett for a walk. All evening and all
through Sunday it was Priscilla who sulked and snapped when Harriett
spoke to her.
On Monday morning she was ill, and Robin ordered her to stay in bed.
Monday was Harriett’s last night. Priscilla stayed in bed till six
o’clock, when she heard Robin come in; then she insisted on being
dressed and carried downstairs. Harriett heard her calling to Robin, and
Robin saying, “I _told_ you you weren’t to get up till to-morrow,” and a
sound like Prissie crying.
At dinner she shook and jerked and spilt things worse than ever. Robin
gloomed at her. “You know you ought to be in bed. You’ll go at nine.”
“If I go, you’ll go. You’ve got a headache.”
“I should think I had, sitting in this furnace.”
The heat of the dining room oppressed him, but they sat on there after
dinner because Prissie loved the heat. Robin’s pale, blank face had a
sick look, a deadly smoothness. He had to lie down on the sofa in the
window.
When the clock struck nine he sighed and got up, dragging himself as
if the weight of his body was more than he could bear. He stooped over
Prissie, and lifted her.
“Robin--you can’t. You’re dropping to pieces.”
“I’m all right.” He heaved her up with one tremendous, irritated effort,
and carried her upstairs, fast, as if he wanted to be done with it.
Through the open doors Harriett could hear Prissie’s pleading whine, and
Robin’s voice, hard and controlled. Presently he came back to her and
they went into his study. They could breathe there, he said.
They sat without speaking for a little time. The silence of Prissie’s
room overhead came between them.
Robin spoke first. “I’m afraid it hasn’t been very gay for you with poor
Prissie in this state.”
“Poor Prissie? She’s very happy, Robin.”
He stared at her. His eyes, round and full and steady, taxed her with
falsehood, with hypocrisy.
“You don’t suppose _I’m_ not, do you?”
“No.” There was a movement in her throat as though she swallowed
something hard. “No. I want you to be happy.”
“You don’t. You want me to be rather miserable.”
“_Robin!_” She contrived a sound like laughter. But Robin didn’t laugh;
his eyes, morose and cynical, held her there.
“That’s what you want.... At least I hope you do. If you didn’t----”
She fenced off the danger. “Do _you_ want _me_ to be miserable, then?”
At that he laughed out. “No. I don’t. I don’t care how happy you are.”
She took the pain of it: the pain he meant to give her.
That evening he hung over Priscilla with a deliberate, exaggerated
tenderness.
“Dear.... Dearest....” He spoke the words to Priscilla, but he sent
out his voice to Harriett. She could feel its false precision, its
intention, its repulse of her.
She was glad to be gone.