"My dear lady, very often she thinks about it a great deal more than is good for her, and she thinks wrong. She"s bound to, being what she is.
Now, when an ordinary man marries that sort of woman there"s certain to be trouble."
He paused, pondering. "My wife"s a dear, good, little woman," he said presently; "she"s the best little woman in the world for me; but I dare say to outsiders, she"s a very ordinary little woman. Well, you know, I don"t call myself a remarkably good man, even now, and I wasn"t a good man at all before she married me. D"you mind my talking about myself like this?"
"No." She tried to keep herself sincere. "No. I don"t think I do."
"You do, I"m afraid. I don"t much like it myself. But, you see, I"m trying to help you. You said you wanted to understand, didn"t you?"
"Yes. I want to understand."
"Well, then, I"m not a good man, and your husband is. And yet, I"d no more think of leaving my dear little wife for another woman than I would of committing a murder. But, if she"d been "too good" for me, there"s no knowing what I mightn"t have done. D"you see?"
"I see. You"re trying to tell me that it was my fault that my husband left me."
"Your fault? No. It was hardly your _fault_, Mrs. Majendie."
He meditated. "There"s another thing. You good women are apt to run away with the idea that--that this sort of thing is so tremendously important to us. It isn"t. It isn"t."
"Then why behave as if it were?"
"We don"t. That"s your mistake. Ten to one, when a man"s once married and happy, he doesn"t think about it at all. Of course, if he isn"t happy--but, even then, he doesn"t go thinking about it all day long. The ordinary man doesn"t. He"s got other things to attend to--his business, his profession, his religion, anything you like. Those are _the_ important things, the things he thinks about, the things that take up his time."
"I see. I see. The woman doesn"t count."
"Of course she counts. But she counts in another way. Bless you, the woman may _be_ his religion, his superst.i.tion. In your husband"s case it certainly was so."
Her face quivered.
"Of course," he said, "what beats you is--how a man can love his wife with his whole heart and soul, and yet be unfaithful to her."
"Yes. If I could understand that, I should understand everything. Once, long ago, Walter said the same thing to me, and I couldn"t understand."
"Well--well, it depends on what one calls unfaithfulness. Some men are brutes, but we"re not talking about them. We"re talking about Walter."
"Yes. We"re talking about Walter."
"And Walter is my dearest friend, so dear that I hardly know how to talk to you about him."
"Try," she said.
"Well, I suppose I know more about him than anybody else. And I never knew a man freer from any weakness for women. He was always so awfully sorry for them, don"t you know. Sarah Cayley could never have fastened herself on him if he hadn"t been sorry for her. No more could that girl--Maggie Forrest."
"How did he come to know her?"
"Oh, some fellow he knew had behaved pretty badly to her, and Walter had been paying for her keep, years before there was anything between them.
She got dependent on him, and he on her. We are pathetically dependent creatures, Mrs. Majendie."
"What was she like?"
"She? Oh, a soft, simple, clinging little thing. And instead of shaking her off, he let her cling. That"s how it all began. Then, of course, the rest followed. I"m not excusing him, mind you. Only--" Poor Hannay became shy and unhappy. He hid his face in his hands and lifted it from them, red, as if with shame. "The fact is," he said, "I"m a clumsy fellow, Mrs.
Majendie. I want to help you, but I"m afraid of hurting you."
"Nothing can hurt me now."
"Well--" He pondered again. "If you want to get down to the root of it, it"s as simple as hunger and thirst."
"Hunger and thirst," she murmured.
"It"s what I"ve been trying to tell you. When you"re not thirsty you don"t think about drinking. When you are thirsty, you do. When you"re driven mad with thirst, you think of nothing else. And sometimes--not always--when you can"t get clean water, you drink water that"s--not so clean. Though you may be very particular. Walter was--morally--the most particular man I ever knew."
"I know. I know."
"Mind you, the more particular a man is, the thirstier he"ll be. And supposing he can never get a drop of water at home, and every time he goes out, some kind person offers him a drink--can you blame him very much if, some day, he takes it?"
"No," she said. She said it very low, and turned her face from him.
"Look here, Mrs. Majendie," he said, "you know _why_ I"m saying all this."
"To help me," she said humbly.
"And to help him. Neither you nor I know whether he"s going to live or die. And I"ve told you all this so that, if he does die, you mayn"t have to judge him harshly, and if he doesn"t die, you may feel that he"s--he"s given back to you. D"you see?"
"Yes, I see," she said softly.
She saw that there were depths in this man that she had not suspected.
She had despised Lawson Hannay. She had detested him. She had thought him coa.r.s.e in grain, gross, unsufferably unspiritual. She had denied him any existence in the world of desirable persons. She had refused to see any good in him. She had wondered how Edith could tolerate him for an instant. Now she knew.
She remembered that Edith was a proud woman, and that she had said that her pride had had to go down in the dust before Lawson Hannay. And now she, too, was humbled before him. He had beaten down all her pride. He had been kind; but he had not spared her. He had not spared her; but the gentlest woman could not have been more kind.
She rose and looked at him with a strange reverence and admiration.
"Whether he lives or dies," she said, "you will have given him back to me."
She took up her third night"s watch.
The nurse rose as she entered, gave her some directions, and went to her own punctual sleep.
There was no change in the motionless body, in the drawn face, and in the sightless eyes.
Anne sat by her husband"s side and kept her hand upon his arm to feel the life in it. She was consoled by contact, even while she told herself that she had no right to touch him.
She knew what she had done to him. She had ruined him as surely as if she had been a bad woman. He had loved her, and she had cast him from her, and sent him to his sin. There was no humiliation and no pain that she had spared him. Even the bad women sometimes spare. They have their pity for the men they ruin; they have their poor, disastrous love. She had been merciless where she owed most mercy.
Three people had tried to make her see it. Edith, who was a saint, and that woman, who was a sinner; and Lawson Hannay. They had all taken the same view of her. They had all told her the same thing.
She was a good woman, and her goodness had been her husband"s ruin.
Of the three, Edith alone understood the true nature of the wrong she had done him. The others had only seen one side of it, the material, tangible side that weighed with them. Through her very goodness, she saw that that was the least part of it; she knew that it had been the least part of it with him.