第75章 At Shaston(10)

My whole thought is to make you comfortable and happy.But I cannot agree to such a preposterous notion as your going to live with your lover.You would lose everybody's respect and regard;and so should I!After an interval a similar part was enacted in the class-room,and an answer came:

I know you mean my good.But I don't want to be respectable!

To produce 'Human development in its richest diversity'(to quote your Humboldt)is to my mind far above respectability.No doubt my tastes are low -in your view -hopelessly low!If you won t let me go to him,will you grant me this one request -allow me to live in your house in a separate way?To this he returned no answer.

She wrote again:

I know what you think.But cannot you have pity on me?I beg you to;I implore you to be merciful!I would not ask if I were not almost compelled by what I can't bear!No poor woman has ever wished more than I that Eve had not fallen,so that (as the primitive Christians believed)some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled Paradise.But I won't trifle!Be kind to me -even though I have not been kind to you!I will go away,go abroad,anywhere,and never trouble you.Nearly an hour passed,and then he returned an answer:

I do not wish to pain you.How well you know I don't!

Give me a little time.I am disposed to agree to your last request.One line from her:

Thank you from my heart,Richard.I do not deserve your kindness.All day Phillotson bent a dazed regard upon her through the glazed partition;and he felt as lonely as when he had not known her.

But he was as good as his word,and consented to her living apart in the house.At first,when they met at meals,she had seemed more composed under the new arrangement;but the irksomeness of their position worked on her temperament,and the fibres of her nature seemed strained like harp-strings.

She talked vaguely and indiscriminately to prevent his talking pertinently.

Phillotson was sitting up late,as was often his custom,trying to get together the materials for his long-neglected hobby of Roman antiquities.

For the first time since reviving the subject he felt a return of his old interest in it.He forgot time and place,and when he remembered himself and ascended to rest it was nearly two o'clock.

His preoccupation was such that,though he now slept on the other side of the house,he mechanically went to the room that he and his wife had occupied when he first became a tenant of Old-Grove Place,which since his differences with Sue had been hers exclusively.He entered,and unconsciously began to undress.

There was a cry from the bed,and a quick movement.Before the schoolmaster had realized where he was he perceived Sue starting up half-awake,staring wildly,and springing out upon the floor on the side away from him,which was towards the window.This was somewhat hidden by the canopy of the bedstead,and in a moment he heard her flinging up the sash.Before he had thought that she meant to do more than get air she had mounted upon the sill and leapt out.She disappeared in the darkness,and he heard her fall below.

Phillotson,horrified,ran downstairs,striking himself sharply against the newel in his haste.Opening the heavy door he ascended the two or three steps to the level of the ground,and there on the gravel before him lay a white heap.Phillotson seized it in his arms,and bringing Sue into the hall seated her on a chair,where he gazed at her by the flapping light of the candle which he had set down in the draught on the bottom stair.

She had certainly not broken her neck.She looked at him with eyes that seemed not to take him in;and though not particularly large in general they appeared so now.

She pressed her side and rubbed her arm,as if conscious of pain;then stood up,averting her face,in evident distress at his gaze.

'Thank God -you are not killed!Though it's not for want of trying -not much hurt I hope?'

Her fall,in fact,had not been a serious one,probably owing to the lowness of the old rooms and to the high level of the ground without.

Beyond a scraped elbow and a blow in the side she had apparently incurred little harm.

'I was asleep,I think!'she began,her pale face still turned away from him.'And something frightened me -a terrible dream -I thought I saw you -'The actual circumstances seemed to come back to her,and she was silent.

Her cloak was hanging at the back of the door,and the wretched Phillotson flung it round her.'Shall I help you upstairs?'he asked drearily;for the significance of all this sickened him of himself and of everything.

'No thank you,Richard.I am very little hurt.I can walk.'

'You ought to lock your door,'he mechanically said,as if lecturing in school.'Then no one could intrude even by accident.'

'I have tried -it won't lock.All the doors are out of order.'

The aspect of things was not improved by her admission.She ascended the staircase slowly,the waving light of the candle shining on her.Phillotson did not approach her,or attempt to ascend himself till he heard her enter her room.Then he fastened up the front door,and returning,sat down on the lower stairs,holding the newel with one hand,and bowing his face into the other.Thus he remained for a long long time -a pitiable object enough to one who had seen him;till,raising his head and sighing a sigh which seemed to say that the business of his life must be carried on,whether he had a wife or no,he took the candle and went upstairs to his lonely room on the other side of the landing.