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Page 6
Frederick had been the kind of husband whose wife betakes herself
early to the feet of God. From him to them had been a short though
painful step. It seemed short to her in retrospect, but I had really
taken the whole of the first year of their marriage, and every inch of
the way had been a struggle, and every inch of it was stained, she felt
at the time, with her heart's blood. All that was over now. She had
long since found peace. And Frederick, from her passionately loved
bridegroom, from her worshipped young husband, had become second only
to God on her list of duties and forbearances. There he hung, the
second in importance, a bloodless thing bled white by her prayers. For
years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She
wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would
remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again long,
desiring . . .
"I'd like so much to be friends," she said earnestly. "Won't you
come and see me, or let me come to you sometimes? Whenever you feel as
if you wanted to talk. I'll give you my address"--she searched in her
handbag--"and then you won't forget." And she found a card and held
it out.
Mrs. Wilkins ignored the card.
"It's so funny," said Mrs. Wilkins, just as if she had not heard
her, "But I see us both--you and me--this April in the mediaeval
castle."
Mrs. Arbuthnot relapsed into uneasiness. "Do you?" she said,
making an effort to stay balanced under the visionary gaze of the
shining grey eyes. "Do you?"
"Don't you ever see things in a kind of flash before they
happen?" asked Mrs. Wilkins.
"Never," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
She tried to smile; she tried to smile the sympathetic yet wise
and tolerant smile with which she was accustomed to listen to the
necessarily biased and incomplete view of the poor. She didn't
succeed. The smile trembled out.
"Of course," she said in a low voice, almost as if she were
afraid the vicar and the Savings Bank were listening, "it would be most
beautiful--most beautiful--"
"Even if it were wrong," said Mrs. Wilkins, "it would only be for
a month."
"That--" began Mrs. Arbuthnot, quite clear as to the
reprehensibleness of such a point of view; but Mrs. Wilkins stopped her
before she could finish.
"Anyhow," said Mrs. Wilkins, stopping her, "I'm sure it's wrong
to go on being good for too long, till one gets miserable. And I can
see you've been good for years and years, because you look so unhappy"--
Mrs. Arbuthnot opened her mouth to protest--"and I--I've done nothing
but duties, things for other people, ever since I was a girl, and I
don't believe anybody loves me a bit--a bit--the b-better--and I long--
oh, I long--for something else--something else--"
Was she going to cry? Mrs. Arbuthnot became acutely
uncomfortable and sympathetic. She hoped she wasn't going to cry. Not
there. Not in that unfriendly room, with strangers coming and going.
But Mrs. Wilkins, after tugging agitatedly at a handkerchief that
wouldn't come out of her pocket, did succeed at last in merely
apparently blowing her nose with it, and then, blinking her eyes very
quickly once or twice, looked at Mrs. Arbuthnot with a quivering air of
half humble, half frightened apology, and smiled.
"Will you believe," she whispered, trying to steady her mouth,
evidently dreadfully ashamed of herself, "that I've never spoken to any
one before in my life like this? I can't think, I simply don't know,
what has come over me."
"It's the advertisement," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, nodding gravely.
"Yes," said Mrs. Wilkins, dabbing furtively at her eyes, "and us
both being so--"--she blew her nose again a little--"miserable."
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