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Riceyman Steps

<hr />[Pg 221] <h2>IX</h2> <h3>VIOLET'S VICTORY</h3> "How do you feel, my girl?" Henry asked. They lay again in bed together. Before leaving the doctor had given, with casualness, certain instructions, not apparently important, which Violet had carried out, having understood that there was no immediate danger to her husband and also that there was nothing immediately to be done. Dr. Raste's final remarks, as he departed, had had a sardonic tone, almost cynical, which had at first abraded Violet's sensitiveness; but later she had said to herself: "After all, with a patient like Henry, what can you expect a doctor to do?" And she had accepted, and begun to share, the doctor's attitude. A patient might be very seriously ill, he might be dying of cancer, and yet by his callous and stupid obstinacy alienate your sympathies from him. Human sympathies were as precarious as that! She admitted it. A few minutes earlier she had lifted Henry to a pedestal of perfection. Now she dashed him down from it. "I know I oughtn't to feel as I do, but I do feel as I do." And she even confirmed herself in harshness. She had sent Elsie to bed for the few remaining hours of the night. She had undressed once more and got into bed herself. The light of the fire played faintly at intervals on the astonished ceiling, and sometimes shafts of moonlight could be discerned through an aperture in the thick, drawn curtains. Behind the curtains the blind could be heard now and then answering restlessly to the north breeze. The room was so warm that the necessity to keep the bedclothes over the shoulders and up to the chin[Pg 222] had disappeared. Violet had a strange sense of luxury. "And why shouldn't we have a fire every night?" she thought, and added, somewhat afraid of the extravagance of the proposition: "Well, anyhow, some nights—when it's very cold." She gave no reply to Henry's question about her health. Henry felt much better. He had scarcely any pain at the spot which the doctor had indicated; he was as sure as ever that he had done right in refusing to enter a hospital, and as determined as ever that he never would enter a hospital. None the less, he was disturbed; he was a bit frightened of trouble in the bed. He had noted his wife's face before she turned the light out, and seen rare and unmistakable signs in it. His illness was not now the important matter, nor her illness either. The important matter was their sentimental relations. He knew that he had estranged her. Convinced of the justice of his own cause and of the folly of doctors and wives, he was yet apprehensive and had somehow a quite illogical conviction of guilt. Violet had wanted to act against his best interests, and yet he must try to appease her! It was more important to appease her than to get well! Dr. Raste, or anybody else, looking at the couple lying beneath Violet's splendid eiderdown (which still by contrast intensified the dowdiness and shabbiness of the rest of the room) would have seen merely a middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman with haggard faces worn by illness, fatigue, privations and fear. But Henry did not picture himself and Violet thus; nor Violet herself and Henry. Henry did not feel middle-aged. He did not feel himself to be any particular age. His interest in life and in his own existence had not diminished during the enormous length of time which had elapsed since he first came into Riceyman Steps as a young man. In his heart he felt no older than on that first night. He did not feel that he now in the least corresponded to his youthful conception of a middle-aged man. He did not feel that he was as old as other men whom he knew to be of about his own age. He thought that he alone had[Pg 223] mysteriously remained young among his generation. For him his grey hairs had no significance; they were an accident. Then in regard to his notion of Violet. He knew that all women were alike, but with one exception—Violet. Women were women, and Violet was thrice a woman. He was aware of her age arithmetically, for he had seen her birth-certificate. But in practice she was a girl—well, perhaps a little more than a girl, but not much more. And she had for him a romantic quality perceptible in no other woman. He admired certain efficiencies in her, but he could not have said why she was so important to him, nor why he was vaguely afraid of her frown—why it was so urgent for him to stand well with her. He could defeat her in battle. He had more common sense than she had, more authority, a surer grasp of things; he could see farther; he was more straightforward. In fact, a superior being! Further, she had crossed him, sided with the doctor against him, made him resentful. Therefore, if justice reigned, she ought to be placating him. Instead, he was anxious to placate her. And, on her part, Violet saw in Henry a man not of any age, simply a man: egotistic, ruthless, childish, naughty, illogical, incalculable, the supreme worry of her life; a destroyer of happiness; a man indefensible for his misdeeds, but very powerful and inexplicably romantic, different from all other men whatsoever. She hated him; her resentment against him was very keen, and yet she wanted to fondle him, physically and spiritually; and this desire maintained itself not without success in opposition to all her grievances, and, compared to it, her sufferings and his had but a minor consequence. "Well, how do you feel?" he repeated. The repetition aroused Violet's courage. She paused before speaking, and in the pause she matured a magnificent, a sublime enterprise of attack. She had a feeling akin to inspiration. She flouted his illness, his tremendous power, her own weakness and pain. She did not care what happened. No risk could check her.[Pg 224] "You don't care how I am!" she began quietly and bitterly. "Did you show the slightest in me all yesterday? Not one bit. You thought only of yourself. You pretended you were ill. Well, if you weren't, why couldn't you think about me? But you were ill. Not that that excuses you! However ill I was, I should be thinking about you all the time. But I say you were ill, and I say it again. You only told me a lot of lies about yourself, one lie after another. Why do you keep yourself to yourself? It's an insult to me, all this hiding, and you know it. I suppose you think I'm not good enough to be told! I can tell you one thing, and I've said it before, and this is the last time I ever shall say it—you've taught me to sew my mouth up, too; that's what you've done with your everlasting secrecy. I always said you're the most selfish and cruel man that ever was. You're ill, and the doctor says you ought to go to a hospital—and you won't. Why? Doesn't everybody go into a hospital some time or another? A hospital's not good for you—that's it. It suits you better to stop here and be nursed night and day by your wife. Don't matter how ill I am! I've got to nurse you and look after the shop as well. It'll kill me; but a fat lot you care about that. And if you hadn't deceived me and told me a lot of lies you might have been all right by this time, because I should have had the doctor in earlier, and we should have known where we were then. But how was I to know how ill you are? How was I to know I'd married a liar besides a miser?" Henry interjected quietly: "I told you long ago that the reason I didn't eat was because I'd got indigestion. But you wouldn't believe me." Violet's voice rose: "Oh, you did, did you? Yes, you did tell me once. You needn't think I don't remember. It was that night I cooked a beautiful bit of steak for you, and you wouldn't touch it. Yes, you did tell me, and it was the truth, and I didn't believe it. And you were glad I didn't believe[Pg 225] it. You didn't want me to believe it. You're very knowing, Henry, aren't you? You say a thing once, and then it's been said, it's finished with. And then afterwards you can always say: 'But I told you.' And you're always so polite! As if that made any difference! I wish to God often you weren't so polite. My first husband wasn't very polite, and I've known the time when he's laid his hand on me, knocked me about—yes, and more than once. I was young then. Disgusting, you'd call it. And I've never told a soul before; not likely. But what I say is I'd sooner be knocked about a bit and know what my man's really thinking about than live with a locked-up, cast-iron safe like you! Yes, a hundred times sooner. There's worse things than a blow, and every woman knows it. Well, you won't go to the hospital! That's all right. You won't go and you won't go. But I shall go to the hospital! The doctor'll tell me to go, and the words won't be out of his mouth before I shall be gone. I can feel here what's coming to me. I shall go, and I shall leave you with your Elsie, that eats you out of house and home. She was here before I came. I'm only a stranger. You pretend to be very stiff and all that with her, but you and her understand each other, and I'm only a stranger coming between you. Are you asleep?" "No." Violet rose up and slipped out of bed. Henry heard the sound of her crying. She seemed to rush at the fire. She poked it furiously, not because it needed poking, but because she needed relief. "Come back to bed, Vi," said Henry kindly. She dropped the poker with a clatter on the fender, and Henry saw her, a white creature, moving towards him round by his side of the bed. She bent over him. "Why should I come back to bed?" she asked angrily, her voice thickened and obscured by sobs. "Why should I come back to bed? You're ill. You've got no strength, and haven't had for weeks. What do you want me to come back to bed for?"[Pg 226] He felt her fingers digging into the softness of his armpits. He felt her face nearer his. She mastered herself. "Listen to me, Henry Earlforward," she said in a low, restrained, trembling voice: "You'll go into that hospital to-morrow morning. You'll go into that hospital. You'll go into it when the doctor comes to fetch you. Or, if you don't, I'll—I'll—I'll——" He felt her lips on his in a savage, embittered and passionate kiss. She was heroical; he a pigmy—crushed by her might. He was afraid and enchanted. "No," he thought, "there never was another like her." "Will you, will you, will you, will you?" she insisted ruthlessly, and her voice was smothered in his lips. "Very well. I'll go." Her body fell limp upon his. She was not sobbing now, but feebly and softly weeping. With a sudden movement she stood upright, then ran to the door, just as she was, fumbled for the knob in the darkness, and rushed out of the room, banging the door after her with a noise that formidably resounded through the whole house. Her victory was more than she could bear. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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