So it happened that Mary Brettan did not leave Westport the next week. And after a few months she was more than ever doubtful if she would leave it at all. The suggested vacancy on the permanent staff had occurred before then, and, once having accepted the post, there seemed to be no inducement to woo anxiety by resigning it.
At first the resumption of routine after years of indolence was irksome and exhausting. The six o\'clock rising, the active duties commencing while she still felt tired, the absence of anything like privacy, excepting in the two hours allotted to each nurse for leisure—all these things fretted her. Even the relief that she derived from her escape into the open air was alloyed by the knowledge that outdoor exercise during one of the hours was compulsory. Then, too, it was inevitable that a costume worn once more should recall the emotions with which she had laid aside her last; inevitable that she should ask herself what the years had done for her since last she stood within a hospital and bade it farewell with the belief she was never to enter one again. The failure of the interval was accentuated. Her heart had contracted when, directed to the strange apartment above the wards, she beheld the print dress provided for her use lying limp on a chair. An unutterable forlornness filled her soul as, proceeding to put it on, she surveyed her reflection in the narrow glass. Yet she grew accustomed to the change, and the more easily for its being a revival.
The speed with which the sense of novelty wore off indeed astonished her. Primarily dismaying, and a continuous burden upon which she condoled with herself every day, it was, next, as if she had lost it one night in her sleep. She had forgotten it until the lightness with which she was fulfilling the work struck her with swift surprise. Little by little a certain enjoyment was even felt. She contemplated some impending task with interest. She took her walk with zest in lieu of relief. She returned to the doors exhilarated instead of depressed. The bohemian, the lady-companion, had become a sick-nurse anew, and because the primary groove of life is the one which cuts the deepest lines, her existence rolled along the recovered rut with smoothness. The scenes between which it lay were not beautiful, but they were familiar; the view it commanded was monotonous, but she no longer sought to travel.
Socially the conditions had been favoured by her introduction. The position that she had occupied in Laburnum Lodge gave her a factitious value, and gained her the friendliness of the Matron, a functionary who has the power to make the hospital-nurse distinctly uncomfortable, and who has on occasion been known to use it. It commended her also to the other nurses, two of whom were gentlewomen, insomuch as it promised an agreeable variety to conversation in the sitting-room. She was by no means unconscious of the extent of her debt to Kincaid, and her gratitude as time went on increased rather than diminished. Certainly the environment was conducive to a perception of his merits—more conducive even than had been the period of his medical attendance at the villa. The king is nowhere so attractive as at his court; the preacher nowhere so impressive as in the pulpit. Ashore the captain may bore us, but we all like to smoke our cigars with him on his ship. The poorest pretender assumes importance in the circle of his adherents, and poses with authority on some small platform, if it be only his mother\'s hearthrug. Here where the doctor was the guiding spirit, and Mary found his praises on every tongue, the glow of gratitude was fanned by the breath of popularity. Had he deliberately planned a means of raising himself in her esteem, he could have devised none better than this of placing her in the miniature kingdom where he ruled. In remembering that he had wanted to marry her, she was sensible one day of a thrill of pride: nothing like regret, nothing like arrogance, but a momentary pride. She felt more dignity in the moment.
If he remembered it too, however, no word that he spoke evinced such recollection. The promise that he had made to her had been kept to the letter, and the past was never alluded to between them. As doctor and nurse their colloquies were brief and practical. It was the demeanour that he adopted towards her from the day of her instatement that added the first fuel to her thankfulness; and if, withal, she was inclined to review his generosity rather than to regard it, it was because he had established the desired relations on so firm a footing that she had ceased to believe that the pursuance of it cost him any pains. That she had held his love after the story of her shame she was aware; but that on reflection he could still want her for his wife she did not for an instant suppose; and she often thought that by degrees his attitude had become the one most natural to him.
By what a denial of nature, by what rigid self-restraint, the idea had been conveyed, nobody but the man himself could have told. No one else knew the bitterness of the suffering that had been endured to give her that feeling of right to remain; what impulses had been curbed and crushed back, that no scruples or misgivings should cross her peace. The circumstances in which they met now helped him much, or he; would have failed, despite his efforts; and to fail, he understood, would be to prove unworthy of, her trust—it would be to see her go out from his life for ever. Still want her? So intensely, so devoutly did he want her, that, shadowed by sin as she was, she was holier to him than any other woman upon earth—fairer than any other gift at God\'s bestowal. He would have taken her to his heart with as profound a reverence as if no shame had ever touched her. If all the world had been cognizant of her disgrace, he would have triumphed to cry "My wife!" in the ears; of all the world. A baser love might well have; thirsted for her too, but it would have had its hours of hesitation. Kincaid\'s had none. No flood of passion blinded his higher judgment and urged him on; no qualms of convention intervened and gave him pause. It was with his higher judgment that he prayed for her. His love burned steadily, clearly. The situation lacked only one essential for the ideal: the love of the penitent whom he longed to raise. The complement was missing. The fallen woman who had confessed her guilt, the man\'s devotion that had withstood the test—these were there. But the devotion was unreturned, the constancy was not desired. He could only wait, and try to hope; wondering if her tenderness would waken in the end, wondering how he would learn it if it did.
To break his word by pleading again was a thing that he could do only in the belief that she would listen to him with happiness. If he misread her mind and spoke too soon, he not merely committed a wrong—he destroyed the slender link that there was between them, for he made it impossible for her to stay on. And yet, how to divine? how, without speaking, to ascertain? What could be gathered from the deep grey eyes, the serious face, the slim-robed figure, as he sometimes stood beside her, guarding his every look and schooling his voice? How could he tell if she cared for him unless he asked her? how could he ask her unless he had reason to suppose that she did? The nature of their association seemed to him to impose an insurmountable barrier between them; in freer parlance a ray of the truth might be discernible. When she had been here a year he determined to gain an opportunity to talk with her alone. He would talk, if not on matters nearest to him, at least on topics less formal than those to which their conversation was limited in the ward!
Such an opportunity, however, did not lie to his hand. It was difficult to compass without betraying himself, and, in view of the present difficulties, he appeared to have had so many advantages earlier that he marvelled at his having turned them to so little account. Their acquaintance at the villa during his mother\'s lifetime appeared to him, by comparison, to have afforded every facility that he was to-day denied, and he frequently recalled the period with passionate regret; he thought that he had never appreciated it at its worth, though, indeed, he had only failed to benefit by it. The villa now was tenanted by a lady with two children; and Mary often passed it, recalling the period also, albeit with a melancholy vaguer than his. One morning, as she went by, the door was open—the children were coming out—and she had a glimpse of the hall.
They came down the steps, carrying spades and pails, bound for the beach, like herself. The elder of them might have been nine years old, and, belonging to the familiar house, they held a little sad interest for her. She wondered, as they preceded her along the pavement, in which of the rooms they slept, and if the different furniture had altered the aspect of it much. She thought she would like to speak to them when the sands were reached, and——Then she saw Seaton Carew! Her heart jerked to her throat. Her gaze was riveted on him; she couldn\'t withdraw it. They were advancing towards each other; he was looking at her. She saw recognition flash across his features, and turned her head. The people to right and left swayed a little—and she had passed him. It had taken just fifteen seconds, but she could not remember what she had been thinking of when she saw him. The fifteen seconds had held for her more emotion than the last twelve months.
Her knees trembled. She supposed he must be at the theatre this week. But, when she saw a playbill outside the music-seller\'s, she was afraid to examine it lest he might be staring after her. She walked on excitedly. She was filled with a tremulous elation, which she cared neither to define nor to acknowledge. She reflected that she had left the hospital a few minutes earlier than usual, and that otherwise she might have missed him. "Missed" was the word of her reflection. She wondered where he was staying—in which streets the professional lodgings were. She felt suddenly strange in the town not to know. She had been here three years, and she did not know—how odd! In turning a corner she saw another advertisement of the theatre, this time on a hoarding. The day was Monday, and the paper was still shiny with the bill-sticker\'s paste. She was screened from observation, and for a moment she paused, devouring the cast with a rapid glance. His wife\'s name didn\'t appear, so it wasn\'t their own company. She hurried on again. The sight of him had acted on her like a strong stimulant. Without knowing why, she was exhilarated. The air was sweeter, life was keener; she was athirst to reach the shore and, in her favourite spot, to yield herself up wholly to sensation.
And how little he had changed! He seemed scarcely to have changed at all. He looked just as he used to look, though he must have gone through much since the night they parted. Ah, how could she forget that parting—how allow the fires of it to wane? It was pitiful that, feeling things so intensely when they happened, one was unable to keep the intensity alive. The waste! The puerility of loving or hating, of mourning or rejoicing so violently in life, when the passage of time, the interposition of irrelevant incident, would smear the passion that was all-absorbing into an experience that one called to mind!
She sank on to a bench upon the slope of ragged grass that merged into the shingles and the sand. The sea, vague and unruffled, lay like a sheet of oil, veiled in mist except for one bright patch on the horizon where it quivered luminously. She bent her eyes upon the sea, and saw the past. His voice struck her soul before she heard his footstep. "Mary!" he said, and she knew that he had followed her.
She did not speak, she did not move. The blood surged to her temples, and left her body cold. She struggled for self-command; for the ability to conceal her agitation; for the power she yearned to gather of blighting him with the scorn she craved to feel.
"Won\'t you speak to me?" he said. He came round to her side, and stood there, looking down at her. "Won\'t you speak?" he repeated—"a word?"
"I have nothing to say to you," she murmured. "I hoped I should never see you any more."
He waited awkwardly, kicking the soil with the point of his boot, his gaze wandering from her over the ocean—from the ocean back to her.
"I have often thought about you," he said at last in a jerk. "Do you believe that?"
She kept silent, and then made as if to rise.
"Do you believe that I have thought about you?" he demanded quickly. "Answer me!"
"It is nothing to me whether you have thought or not. I dare say you have been ashamed when you remembered your disgrace—what of it?"
"Yes," he said, "I have been ashamed. You were always too good for me; I ought never to have had anything to do with a woman like you."
She had not risen; she was still in the position in which he had surprised her; and she was sensible now of a dull pain at the unexpectedness of his conclusion.
"Why have you followed me?" she said coldly. "What for?"
"What for? I didn\'t know you were in the town, I hadn\'t an idea—and I saw you suddenly. I wanted to speak to you."
"What is it you want to say?"
"Mary!"
"Yes; what do you want to say? I\'m not your friend; I\'m not your acquaintance: what have you got to speak to me about?"
"I meant," he stammered—"I wanted to ask you if it was possible that—that you could ever forgive the way I behaved to you."
"Is that all?" she asked in a hard voice.
"How you have altered!... Yes, I don\'t know that there\'s anything else."
She did not reply, and he regarded her irresolutely.
"Can you?"
"No," she said. "Why should I forgive you—because time has gone by? Is that any merit of yours? You treated me brutally, infamously. The most that a woman can do for a man I did for you; the worst that a man can do to a woman you did to me. You meet me accidentally and expect me to forgive? You must be a g............