"Oh, my husband"s been a very active man," she said. "Everybody knows that. But in this modern world of ours one must not walk, or even run along, one must keep on rushing along if one intends to reach the goal."
"And by that you mean--?"
"Mean! The topmost height of your profession, or business, of whatever career you are in."
"You are ambitious," he said.
"Not for myself," she answered quickly. "I have no ambition for myself."
"But perhaps the ambition to spur on another successfully? That seems to me the truest, the most legitimate ambition of the woman all men worship in their hearts."
Suddenly tears started into her eyes. She was sitting opposite Malling, the tea-table between them. Now she leaned forward across it. By nature she was very sensitive, but she was not a self-conscious, woman. She was not self-conscious now.
"It is much better to be selfish," she said earnestly. "That is where we women make such a fatal mistake. Instead of trusting to ourselves, of relying on ourselves, and of having a personal ambition, we seek always another in whom we may trust; we are unhappy till we rely on another; it is for another we cherish, we hug, ambition. And then, when all founders, we realize too late what I dare say every man knows."
"What is that?"
"That we women are fools--fools!"
"For being unselfish?"
"For thinking we have power when we are impotent."
She made a gesture that was surely one of despair.
"No one--at any rate, no woman--has power for another," she added, with almost terrible conviction. "That is all a legend, made up to please us, I suppose. We draw a sword against darkness and think we are fighting.
Isn"t it too absurd?"
With the last words she changed her tone, trying to make it light, and she smiled.
"We take everything too seriously. That"s the trouble!" she said. "And men pretend we take nothing seriously."
"Very often they don"t understand."
"Oh, please say never!" she exclaimed. "They never understand."
Suddenly Malling resolved on a very bold stroke.
"But I"m a man," he said, as if that obvious fact shattered her contention.
"What has that got to do with it?" she said, in obvious surprise.
"Because I do not understand."
For a moment she was silent. He thought he read what was pa.s.sing through her mind, as he knew he had read her character. She was one of those women who must be proud of their men, who love to be ruled, but only by a conqueror, who delight to sink themselves, but in power, not in impotence. And now she was confronted by the shipwreck not merely of her hopes, but also of her belief. She saw a hulk drifting at the mercy of the waves that, perhaps, would soon engulf it. But she was not only despairing, she was raging too. For she was a woman with nervous force in her, and it is force that rages in the moments of despair, seeking, perhaps unconsciously, some means of action and finding none.
"Why should there not be some hope?" asked Malling, quietly.
"To-morrow is Sunday. If you go to morning church at St. Joseph"s, and then to evening church, you will see if there is any hope."
"To evening church?"
"Yes, yes."
She got up.
"You are going?"
"I must. Forgive me!"
She held out her hand.
"But--"
"No, don"t come with me, please."
"If I go to St. Joseph"s to-morrow, afterward may I see you again?"
"If you think it"s worth while."
Her face twisted. Hastily she pulled down her veil, turned away and left him.
VI
Malling went the next day to morning and evening service at St. Joseph"s.
He was not invited to lunch in Onslow Gardens, and he did not see Lady Sophia. On the whole, he was glad of this. He had enough to keep in his mind that day. The matter in which he was interested seemed growing before his eyes, like a thing coming out of the earth, but now beginning to thrust itself up into regions where perhaps it would eventually be hidden in darkness, with the great company of mysteries whose unraveling is beyond the capacity of man.
He had now, he felt sure, a clear comprehension of Lady Sophia. Their short interview at Burlington House had been illuminating. She was a typical example of the Adam"s-rib woman; that is, of the woman who, intensely, almost exaggeratedly feminine, can live in any fullness only through another, and that other a man. Through Mr. Harding Lady Sophia had hitherto lived, and had doubtless, in her view, triumphed. Obviously a woman not free from a nervous vanity, and a woman of hungry ambition, her vanity and ambition had been fed by his growing notoriety, his increasing success and influence. The rib had thrilled with the body to which it belonged.
But that time of happy emotion, of admiration, of keen looking forward, was the property of the past. Lawn sleeves, purple, perhaps,--for who is more hopeful than this type of woman in the golden moments of life?--perhaps even an archiepiscopal throne faded from before the eyes they had gladdened--the eyes of faith in a man.
And a different woman was beginning to appear--a woman who might be as critical as she had formerly been admiring, a woman capable of becoming embittered.
On the Sunday of Malling"s visit to Onslow Gardens, Mr. Harding"s failure in the pulpit had waked up in his wife eager sympathy and eager spite, the one directed toward the man who had failed, the other toward the man who, as Malling felt sure, had caused the failure.
In Burlington House that woman, whom men with every reason adore, had given place to another less favorable toward him who had been her hero.
It seemed to Malling as if in the future a strange thing might happen, almost as if it must happen: it seemed to him as if Chichester might convey his view of his rector to his rector"s wife.
"Study the link," Stepton had said. "There will be development in the link."
Already the words had proved true. There had been a development in Lady Sophia such as Malling had certainly not antic.i.p.ated. Where would it end?
Again and again, as he listened to the morning and evening sermons, Malling had asked himself that question; again and again he had recalled his conversation at Burlington House with Lady Sophia.