P.S.--I express myself badly; but I think you can easily understand
what I mean. Just read my letter straightforwardly, I mean all I
have said, and I think I have said all I mean. How fully my mother
endorses it all, I need not tell you. She says (she has just read
it) that it is too business-like. Well, I'm a business man, but her
criticism encourages me to think that it is clear.
Madge read this through once without comprehension: the predominant
feeling in her mind was that it was some kind stranger who was writing
to her; she did not know the man. Yet even as she read there were things
very familiar to her: Philip somehow was in it all. Then at the second
reading the simplicity and clearness of it--that which Mrs. Home had
called business-like--made itself felt, and it was Philip, after all,
the potential Philip. But some immense change had happened, yet immense
though it was, she saw now it was no stranger who had written it, but he
himself, only--only he had learned something, as he said.
But how his begging for her forgiveness cut her to the heart! That he
should do this, while it was she whose part it was, only she had not
been woman enough. She had been sorry--God knows she had been sorry for
him, and sorry for her own part in the catastrophe of July. But she had
known it was inevitable, she could not have married him, she could not
have done otherwise than marry Evelyn, and it was perhaps this sense
that she was but a tool in the hands of the irresistible law which had
excused her to herself, so that she had said almost that it was the
Power that made them all three what they were that had done this. And
thus her human pity and sorrow had been veiled. But now that veil was
plucked aside; whatever great and inexorable laws ruled feeling and
action, nothing could alter the fact that here was she, unhappy and sick
at heart, and that another man, who loved her, unhappy, too, was man
enough to forget his own unhappiness, to forget, too, that it was she
who, willing or unwilling, had brought it on him, and let himself be
guided only by the divine and human impulse of Pity, so that he desired
nothing in the world more than to be allowed to help her.
Yet how bitter it was, somehow, that it should be he of all men in the
world who should offer to help. And his offer was so humble, yet so
assured, it was made so simply, and yet--here was Philip's hand
again--so authoritatively. "You will want someone with you to look after
you...." That was Philip, too, and though it was all bitter, what
unspeakable comfort it was to feel that somebody strong and tender was
waiting to take care of them, only asking to be allowed to take care of
them. In spite of Lady Dover and all her kindness, Madge felt so
lonely: no one could understand that so well as Philip, who had felt
lonely, too.
And Tom Merivale was dead! Ah, what was happening to the world? Was
happiness being slowly withdrawn from it, leaving misery only there? It
seemed indeed as if sorrow, like some dreadful initiation, had to be
submitted to by everyone, even those who appeared to have been born in
the royal purple of happiness. How much had come into her own immediate
circle in so short a time! To Merivale it had come in so blinding and
overwhelming a flood that it had killed him who had radiated happiness.
To Evelyn, it had come, blinding, also, and that cruel stroke, more
cruel because it was so illogical, like the blasting of the tree by
lightning down in the Forest, had stricken her, too, and had not perhaps
dealt its worst blow yet. It had come to Philip through her in a way
perhaps not less illogical. For it was not in her to control love or not
to love; her meeting with Evelyn, her loving him, was as much an
accident as the descent of the lightning-flash or the scattering of the
lead pellets. Yet Philip had not died, and though he might have said
that his life was wrecked, that all that remained for him was hatred and
despair, he had struggled to shore, he stood there now strong and
unembittered, and held out his hands to her. He had learned something it
seemed from these accidents. He had learned, perhaps, not to call them
accidents. Was he right? Were these vague lines part of a pattern, of a
design so huge that she could not yet see it was a design at all?
Madge had forgotten about her breakfast; it lay still untasted, while
she mused with wide eyes. And as this struck her, she stood up and
pushed her plate from her. Greatly as she had grown in human strength
and tenderness, since that day so few weeks ago, when she had promised
to marry Philip, she felt now suddenly like a little child, who wanted
to be led. There were dark places, she knew, before her. She must try
not to be frightened, she must realise that there was nothing to be
frightened about. And thus, feebly, hesitatingly, she put out her hand.
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