Nothing had happened but what had happened before; it was happening now; it would go on and on till it frightened you, till you could not bear it. When she woke up she was glad that the dream had been nothing but a dream.
But that meant that you were glad Mamma was not there. The dream showed you what you were hiding from yourself. Supposing the dead knew? Supposing Mamma knew, and Mark knew that you were glad—
VI
It came to her at queer times, in queer ways. After that horrible evening at the Dining Club when the secretary woman put her as far as possible from Richard, next to the little Jew financier who smelt of wine.
She couldn’t even hear what Richard was saying; the little wine-lapping Jew went on talking about Women’s Suffrage and his collection of Fragonards and his wife’s portrait by Sargent. His tongue slid between one overhanging and one dropping jaw, in and out like a shuttle.
She tried not to hate him, not to shrink back from his puffing, wine-sour breath, to be kind to him and listen and smile and remember that his real secret self was God, and was holy; not to attend to Richard’s voice breaking the beat of her heart.
She had gone away before Richard could get up and come to her. She wanted to be back in her house by herself. She had pushed open the French windows of the study to breathe the air of the garden and see the tall sycamore growing deep into the thick blue night. Half the room, reflected on the long pane, was thrown out into the garden. She saw it thinning away, going off from the garden into another space, existing there with an unearthly reality of its own. She had sat down at last, too tired to go upstairs, and had found herself crying, incredibly crying; all the misery, all the fear, all the boredom of her life gathered together and discharging now.
“If I could get out of it all”—Her crying stopped with a start as if somebody had come in and put a hand on her shoulder. Everything went still. She had a sense of happiness and peace suddenly there with her in the room. Not so much her own as the happiness and peace of an immense, invisible, intangible being of whose life she was thus aware. She knew, somehow through It, that there was no need to get away; she was out of it all now, this minute. There was always a point where she could get out of it and into this enduring happiness and peace.
VII
They were talking tonight about Richard and his wife. They said he wasn’t happy; he wasn’t in love with her.
He never had been; she knew it; yet she took him, and tied him to her, an old woman, older than Richard, with grey hair.
Oh well—she had had to wait for him longer than he waited for me, and she’s in love with him still. She’s making it impossible for him to see me.
Then I shan’t see him. I don’t want him to see me if it hurts her. I don’t want her to be hurt.
I wonder if she knows? They know. I can hear them talking about me when I’ve gone.
… “Mary Olivier, the woman who translated Euripides.”
… “Mary Olivier, the woman Nicholson discovered.”
… “Mary Olivier, the woman who was Nicholson’s mistress.”
Richard’s mistress—I know that’s what they say, but I can’t feel that they’re saying it about me. It must be somebody else, some woman I never heard of.
VIII
Mr. Sutcliffe is dead. He died two weeks ago at Agaye.
I can see now how beautiful they were; how beautiful he was, going away like that, letting her take him away so that the sight of me shouldn’t hurt her.
I can see that what I thought so ugly was really beautiful, their sticking to each other through it all, his faithfulness and her forgiveness, their long life of faithfulness and forgiveness.
But my short life with Richard was beautiful too; my coming to him and leaving him free. I shall never go back on that; I shall never be sorry for it.
The things I’m sorry for are not caring more for Papa, being unkind to Mamma, not doing enough for her, not knowing what she was really like. I’d give anything to have been able to think about her as Mark thought, to feel about her as he felt. If only I had known what she was really like. Even now I don’t know. I never shall.
But going to Richard—No. If it was to be done again tomorrow I’d do it.
And I don’t humbug myself about it. If I made Richard happy I made myself happy too; he made me happy. Still, if I had had no happiness in it, if I’d hated it, I’d have done it for Richard all the same.
IX
All this religious resignation. And the paradox of prayer: people praying one minute, “Thy will be done,” then praying for things to happen or not happen, just as they please.
God’s will be done—as if it wouldn’t be done whatever they did or didn’t do. God’s will was your fate. The thing was to know it and not waste your strength in the illusion of resistance.
If you were part of God your will was God’s will at the moment when you really willed. There was always a point when you knew it: the flash point of freedom. You couldn’t mistake your flash when it came. You couldn’t doubt away that certainty of freedom any more than you could doubt away the
