"No. I thought it was nerves last night. I thought it was this room.
Those two poor ghosts, looking at us. I even thought it might be Mark and Roddy--all of them--tugging at me to get me away from you.... But it isn"t that. It"s something in me."
"You"re trying to tell me you don"t want me."
"I"m trying to tell you what happened. I did want you, all last year. It was so awful that I had to stop it. You couldn"t go on living like that.... I willed and willed not to want you."
"So did I. All the willing in the world couldn"t stop me."
"It isn"t that sort of willing. You might go on all your life like that and nothing would happen. You have to find it out for yourself; and even that might take you all your life.... It isn"t the thing people call willing at all. It"s much queerer. Awfully queer."
"How--_queer_?"
"Oh--the sort of queerness you don"t like talking about."
"I"m sorry, Mary. You seem to be talking about something, but I haven"t the faintest notion what it is. But you can make yourself believe anything you like if you keep on long enough."
"No. Half the time I"m doing it I don"t believe it"ll come off.... But it always does. Every time it"s the same. Every time; exactly as if something had happened."
"Poor Mary."
"But, Richard, it makes you absolutely happy. That"s the queer part of it. It"s how you know."
"Know _what_?"
He was angry.
"That there"s something there. That it"s absolutely real."
"Real?"
"Why not? If it makes you happy without the thing you care most for in the whole world.... There must be something there. It must be real. Real in a way that nothing else is."
"You aren"t happy now," he said.
"No. And you"re with me. And I care for you more than anything in the whole world."
"I thought you said that was all over."
"No. It"s only just begun."
"I can"t say I see it."
"You"ll see it all right soon.... When you"ve gone."
V.
It was no use not marrying him, no use sending him away, as long as he was tied to you by his want.
You had no business to be happy. It wasn"t fair. There was he, tied to you tighter than if you _had_ married him. And there you were in your inconceivable freedom. Supposing you could give him the same freedom, the same happiness? Supposing you could "work" it for him, make It (whatever it was) reach out and draw him into your immunity, your peace?
VI.
Whatever It was It was there. You could doubt away yourself and Richard, but you couldn"t doubt away It.
It might leave you for a time, but it came back. It came back. Its going only intensified the wonder of its return. You might lose all sense of it between its moments; but the thing was certain while it lasted. Doubt it away, and still what had been done for you lasted. Done for you once for all, two years ago. And that wasn"t the first time.
Even supposing you could doubt away the other times.--You might have made the other things happen by yourself. But not that. Not giving Richard up and still being happy. That was something you couldn"t possibly have done yourself. Or you might have done it in time--time might have done it for you--but not like that, all at once, making that incredible, supernatural happiness and peace out of nothing at all, in one night, and going on in it, without Richard. Richard himself didn"t believe it was possible. He simply thought it hadn"t happened.
Still, even then, you might have said it didn"t count so long as it was nothing but your private adventure; but not now, never again now when it had happened to Richard.
His letter didn"t tell you whether he thought there was anything in it.
He saw the "queerness" of it and left it there:
"Something happened that night after you"d gone. You know how I felt. I couldn"t stop wanting you. My mind was tied to you and couldn"t get away.
Well--that night something let go--quite suddenly. Something went.
"It"s a year ago and it hasn"t come back.
"I didn"t know what on earth you meant by "not wanting and still caring"; but I think I see now. I don"t "want" you any more and I "care" more than ever....
"Don"t "work like blazes." Still I"m glad you like it. I can get you any amount of the same thing--more than you"ll care to do."
VII.
He didn"t know how hard it was to "work like blazes." You had to keep your eyes ready all the time to see what Mamma was doing. You had to take her up and down stairs, holding her lest she should turn dizzy and fall.
If you left her a minute she would get out of the room, out of the house and on to the Green by herself and be frightened.
Mamma couldn"t remember the garden. She looked at her flowers with dislike.
You had brought her on a visit to a strange, disagreeable place and left her there. She was angry with you because she couldn"t get away.
Then, suddenly, for whole hours she would be good: a child playing its delicious game of goodness. When Dr. Charles came in and you took him out of the room to talk about her you would tell her to sit still until you came back. And she would smile, the sweet, serious smile of a child that is being trusted, and sit down on the parrot chair; and when you came back you would find her sitting there, still smiling to herself because she was so good.
Why do I love her now, when she is like this--when "_this_" is what I was afraid of, what I thought I could not bear--why do I love her more, if anything, now than I"ve ever done before? Why am I happier now than I"ve ever been before, except in the times when I was writing and the times when I was with Richard?
VIII.
Forty-five. Yesterday she was forty-five, and to-day. To-morrow she would be forty-six. She had come through the dreadful, dangerous year without thinking of it, and nothing had happened. Nothing at all. She couldn"t imagine why she had ever been afraid of it; she could hardly remember what being afraid of it had felt like.
Aunt Charlotte--Uncle Victor--
If I were going to be mad I should have gone mad long ago: when Roddy came back; when Mark died; when I sent Richard away. I should be mad now.
It was getting worse.