The second wife by merry, heat and force, more poignant than the facts
of life, with as much power as the elemental needs of the body,
The unseen still shapes the lives of vast peoples. In some black corners of
the earth, strange demons still call out for human sacrifice. Mysterious and powerful
are these voiceless companions of men. We alone, of all ages and peoples,
have denied them. We have cut away our shadows from our spirits.
And perhaps that is why the spirits of modern men seem unsubstantial, as a
body would, which could cast no dark silhouette behind it around the paths of
men. The unseen exists always, and it may come to anyone and at
any moment, as it did to Beta and to Graham. The mellow afternoon
light shone through the quiet spaces of the room, which, simple as it
was, bare, almost some would have said, had the supreme beauty of
proportion. It had an air about it, a gracious gravity, which proclaimed
it of the honorable lineage of lovingly built houses. It gave the effect of
space, even of elegance, if for no other reason than that its three
dimensions were in harmony for the first time, its charms failed with beta,
its beneficent dignity mocked at her, affecting her with the same anger that the
unthinking beauty of a glorious day does to one in deep trouble. This room,
her room, her creature, How dare it breathes peace while she suffered
with unrest? If there had been any reason for it, she could have
borne it. She had stood up with gallantry to all the blows that fate
had handed out to her. No matter what had happened, her inner self
had been serene and unshaken. And now, for no reason, with all
the surfaces of life fair and smiling before her, a horror, unspeakable,
reasonless, invaded the secret places of her being. She sat there saying to
herself, I will not, I will not. I will not. They
can't make me. They can't make me. They can't make me. And
with the words once spoken, it was as though her spirit cried out against
something unknown, as though she fought for her own self and for something very
dear to her, and yet she didn't know what she was fighting. The
outward symbol of this struggle was so trivial, so meaningless, that she shivered
at herself, as though her reason was failing her. There was a bowl
of yellow jonquills gleaming out of a dark corner of the room, reflecting themselves
on the dark floor in a splash of color. Beda had been moved with
an impulse to take these flowers and place them between the windows, where the
light would shine through them, on a small round table on which was inlaid
a landscape in mother of pearl, a table that might have been hideous,
but had turned out to be only a charming indiscretion of some cabinet maker.
This whim so harmless in its outer meaning, had come over her like an
overpowering wave. Yet it had come not as her own wish. It was
as though it arose from the passionate desire of some will outside her own to
steady herself. Bada sat down in the rosewood chair and said to herself,
I will not, I will not, as though fighting for her own individuality.
This impulse, with its meaningless madness, had come as suddenly, as
shatteringly as some explosion. Dread shook her through and through, a dread that
left her tense and expectant. Why she hadn't felt that way for three years,
not since she had waited for one of Elaine's terrible, meaningless, heartrending
scenes, scenes that Graham and she knew were caused by Elaine's illness, and
yet scenes that gave the effect of wantonness, as if Elaine wanted to make
them suffer too. Since her nerves were diseased, since her soul was poisoned,
and god knows what mysterious fashion, she couldn't let them off, the
two creatures dearest to her, but must encompass them also in the hell where
she lived. In spite of bade us care and Graham's devotion, Elaine had
got worse and worse, until it seemed to them that madness stared from her
eyes. She had died from an overdose of her sleeping potion, an accidental
death, the doctor had insisted. This had been three years ago. After
Elaine's death, Graham had gone abroad, and for a year Beta hadn't seen
him. Just when after his return she had begun to care for him,
She couldn't now tell. They had drifted into it, gone in step by
step. She couldn't even remember when he had asked her to marry him,
so well had they understood. She had been married six months now, and
until this moment, she had been happier than she had ever been in her
life, happier than she had known it was possible to be. The eighteen
months that she had spent nursing a Lane and the final catastrophe had left her
stunned, asking of life only quiet. She had had peace and rest,
and then happiness, and now was broken for no reason. Broken for so
absurd a thing. It was especially hard for Beta to bear. She didn't
know how to meet moods she had never had any. It was almost her
first experience with any unhappiness from within, her first experience of that overwhelming misery
that comes unreasoning from the inner recesses of the spirit, something more full of
anguish than pain, something that makes grief seem God's compassion and sorrow as sweet
as a gray day in midsummer. She sought for some cause of such disturbance,
her trained mind running rapidly through the events of the last few days as
an expert might riffle a deck of cards. There was no explanatory spot or
fleck on the fair surface of the kindly and familiar events. I must be
sick, she thought, and again sought for some symptom that might satisfy her.
There was nothing. It was as ghostly to have her spirit so disturbed
as for doors to slam and windows rattle, when the trees remain quiet without
and while her heart beat, and while the tortured nerves of her cry out
the more torturingly that she did not know the source of her pain, her
tranquil head thought, I must treat this mood as I used to Elanes.
At this thought, her heart stood still, then leaped, like a frightened
animal in fear for its very life, and as though in actual physical terror
of some unseen menace. She fled toward the sunshine of the garden, glancing
apprehensively behind her, not for fear of what she might see, but from
a feeling as inexplicable as all the rest, that she wished no one to
see her go, not the servants, not Graham, especially not Graham.
She heard his voice call to her Beta, dear Beda. So happy it
was so reassuring that suddenly her fear vanished, as though it had wakened her
from torturing nightmare. She felt her actual body coming back to life as one
breathes easily for the first time again after one has been overwhelmed by a crashing
wave. Her heart beat freely again, the intolerable racking of her spirit passed
by color returned to her cheeks. Only as she saw Graham coming toward her
through the open door. She repressed an impulse to throw herself about his neck,
as though he had really delivered her from herself. That evening, the
idea of telling Graham flitted through her mind, coming and going like a shadow
cast by a flickering flame. In the end, she decided not to,
and as she did, a sadness fell over her spirit, while her mind
argued, poor Graham, why should I tell him anything so vague and at
the same time so fantastic. Hasn't he had enough of the inexplicable in his
life? Then, at this thought of Elaine, it seemed as if Elaine
was there. Veda had all the sensation of seeing her without the actual visualization
Elaine. Sitting her dark rimmed eyes on Graham. She watched them fill slowly
with tears, watched Elaine's face quiver like that of a hurt child that asks,
oh, why do you so wound me? Beta had sat there often
enough through what seemed a long lifetime of vicarious pain, pretending not to notice
Graham's irrepressible discomfort, pretending not to notice Elaine's gathering nerve storm which sometimes threatened
and threatened, poisoning their lives, poisoning the very air, sometimes passing over,
leaving sunlight behind. Recalling these things, Beta let her eyes rest on
vacancy. What prevented one, she wondered, from seeing with one's actual eyes,
anyone whom one could see with what is called the mind's eye. There
have always been people, sick and well, who could project their inner vision
into space and thus behold their own imaginings and realities. Beta dwelt in this
way on the image of Elane, absorbed as a devotee is absorbed in the
contemplation of the attributes of deity. After a time, it was as though
her visualization of Elaine had been projected into space, and that this thought of
her was there, clothed in form and invisible, but existing somehow in another
medium. She wondered if it were true that the things seen by dreamers have
their real existence in some fluid which we may not perceive. Here Graham's voice
broke in upon her, asking what are you thinking of beta? So intensely
She had been plunged so profoundly in her train of thought, The crystal mirror
of her reflection had been shattered so unexpectedly that she jumped nervously. It seemed
as if her spirit had come swimming up from some far depth in which it
had plunged itself. She realized, too, that she had been looking directly
at Graham that threw him and beyond him, as if she had penetrated far
enough into this land which she had so fantastically imagined, so that the things
of this world had become for the moment nonexistent, as are usually the things
we cannot see. For a moment, her mind and eyes and all of
her had dwelt in some almost luminous vacancy which had been cleared of so called
actuality for a new creation of her own. Her return to the physical world,
to Graham and to familiar things in the room was a shock, as
of physical pain. She had been awakened too abruptly. She looked at him,
dazed, frowning, at the same time, registering the troubled and anxious
look on his face, a look of doubt, a look of wonder a
look of some deeper trouble. Also, in answer to his question, came
unbidden the words why do you look at me like that? Graham? He
arose and put his arms around her, But before he spoke, he swallowed,
as though speech came to him. With an effort. With his arms
around her, his face close to hers, something snapped in Beta's mind,
like a joint coming back into place. She had yet the impression of having
been away a very great distance. What were you thinking of just now?
He repeated? She answered, with absolute truthfulness, I don't know. I
almost seemed to be hypnotized. The shock of his voice had, for the
second obliterated the object of her deep absorption. Graham shook her roughly. Well,
don't do it again, please, he said, I don't like your
looks? What do I look like? She was perfectly natural. Now The
whole phantasmagoria had vanished out of her spirit, as though it had not been.
I don't like your looks, he repeated, That's all. He had,
the evasive and uneasy air of a man who doesn't like to tell what
is in his mind. The following day, Bada succeeded in overcoming the feeling
of distrust with the whole universe, which the inexplicable breeds in a direct and
common sense temperament, she overcame herself. Yet she didn't go into the drawing
room, and the drawing room was as much lived in by her as was
Graham's library by him. For the effect of that terrible and spectral battle remained
with her, as though some shadow had been cast across her spirit. Pushed
into the farthest recesses of her mind, was the question why, why why?
Nor could she rid herself of the idea that there was more to come,
nor of a nameless and reasonless spear, that in some strange way she
had given up some of her personality. With the passing of the days,
the shadow dwindled, until one day Beta went again into her room. Yellow
flowers, picked freshly, stood in a bowl upon her secretary. At the
sight of them, there hot anger surged up within her, making her tingle
from head to toe swiftly, and yet with a certain furtiveness, as though
she were being watched. She picked them up and carried them back to their
place in the window, and placed them on the little inlaid table between the
windows, where the light would shine through them. As she did so,
there came over her a very agony of desire to see Graham. She wanted
him to come home. She wondered where he was and with whom, and
impatience to go out and find him wherever he was plucked at her feet.
She looked at her watch. It was almost time for his return to luncheon,
and she posted herself at the window before which the flowers stood, and
which commanded a view of the elm shaded street, to wait for for him.
As she stood there in a fever of impatience and longing and affection,
she felt as though her whole personality had been invaded by an emotion foreign to
her own temperament. Her love had been from the first deep and profound,
the surface of it radiant, but without anguish of spirit. They knew each
other too well for uncertainties or surprises. They had been friends so long before
they had become lovers. The knowledge that he would soon come, that he
would come when he said he would, had been enough for her. Why
this impatience, she wondered, where did it come from? This passionate agony
of longing for the sight of his face. She stood there peering out from
the window. She was so sure he must come down that road, her
gaze so lost in the distance for the first glimpse of him, that she
did not hear his step behind her. His words, in a tone through
which a sharp anxiety pierced Beda, what are you doing there? Made her
turn upon him, her nervous hand clutching the heavy, old gold drapery of
the curtain. For a moment, they stood gazing at each other, startled.
Then she laughed with attempted lightness. What's the matter, Graham? You
look frightened. What were you doing in the window? He insisted, why
just waiting for you? Come? Let's get out of here. If you
wait staring like that, waiting for me, good God, one would have
thought that you expected me to be brought home on a stretcher. You'll be
getting yourself hypnotized again, Beda. Before you know it, he put his
arm around her and drew her out on the piazza. I've just got a
letter from mother, he told her. She's coming back. Oh I am
glad, Beda cried for some time. During her son's first marriage, missus
Yates had made her home with the young people, and then on. Under
the pressure of Elaine's nervous disorder and her final illness, she had left their
home to live with her sister. The pressure was too much for her gentle
spirit. She couldn't weather the storms which swept and devastated the household. She
suffered too, with a keen inner shame that she hadn't strength enough to help
this tormented daughter of hers, whose peculiar loveliness and charm she had so cared
for before illness blighted it. After Graham's second marriage, she had again made
his house her headquarters, finding in Beda's tranquility something more akin to her own
nature, something nearer to what her own daughter might have been than Elaine's more
fascinating personality had ever been able to give her to Beda's heart felt Oh,
I'm glad, Graham echoed, you can believe I am. There was an
unmistakable passion of relief in his tone, as if Bada's cry had voiced the
hope of deliverance, as if the presence of this beloved older woman would dispelled
a shadow that was drifting in upon them, shutting out the sun from their
lives. It was their first recognition of the nameless fear that had come over
them. Now Beta was sure that never for a moment had Graham failed to
recognize this awful something which was crawling upon them like some dark spiritual tide.
If only he would help her, if he would ask her what was the
matter. She felt his anxious look resting on her. Then he made some
excuse and left her. It was as though he had deserted her in a
moment of great peril. Scorn for his cowardice and for his stupidity flashed over
her. Then a darkness settled over her spirit. Perhaps she was going mad,
Perhaps her nerves were only shaken. This was what her intelligence kept telling
her with irritating, ineffectual persistency, while her heart cried out that the very
springs of life in her had been poisoned, the very depths of her personality
shaken. At any rate, she was adrift in a strange and unfamiliar world,
and there was no one anywhere to help her. A great pity for
the stricken soul of Elaine poured over her. Elaine had put out her hands
and had pleaded to be saved from herself, and no one had helped her.
Now, at the first touch of her own distress, Graham turned from
her. Graham wasn't going to help her. This thought walked through her mind.
Both of us together, we could have fought it alone. I cannot.
She heard the gate click and saw Graham walking down the street. No
doubt he was going to meet his mother, going without her. He is
running away from me. She thought. They had always gone to meet missus
Yates together. How many times they had walked down this street side by side,
long before Elaine died. Whenever Graham's mother came, they would go down
and tell her the news and how a Lane was at that moment. Now
she was left behind while Graham walked down alone to the station to see his
mother first, to warn her, no doubt that Beda was not quite well.
She went into the house and began shoving around the ornaments, re arranging
them with a sort of bitter satisfaction, an inward glow quite out of keeping
with her trivial occupation. The noise of carriage wheels checked her. Suddenly she
stopped a little dazed, like a person who has forgotten what he came into
a room for. As an actor searches for a cue. Now she remembered
Graham's mother was coming, and she must run out to meet her. For
the next few days, the house was as though bathed in sunshine. Calm
returned to it. Beda was continued with the older woman, sheltering herself in
her loving presence. It was as though all around with some fog which concealed
menacing and terrible shapes, some terror that walked in the darkness. But for
the moment Beda could escape from it. Though she felt as insecure as if
she were living in a soap bubble. In a moment, the force of
the invading shadows or whatever they were, might come upon her, and the
agony of her rent personality would begin again. They were all touchingly happy,
Beda as from a relief from pain, Graham in his recovered peace, until
one day, when the two women sat sewing in the drawing room, Graham
was lounging near them, breathing. Then Missus Yeates raised her head toward the
window and said, there's something different about this room since I've been away.
You haven't moved things, have you. Beda didn't answer her. Her spirit
it seemed ceased to breathe the same shock that she had felt communicated itself to
Graham, and he arose and walked around restlessly. I don't quite make out
what's changed, she pursued with serenity. I see you keep yellow flowers in
the window the way poor Olaine did. Why Beda? What ails you?
Child? For Beda had let her sewing fall and was gazing at Graham's mother
in fascinated horror. Never once to herself had she clothed her thoughts in any
words. At her fixed look and hopeless gesture, Missus Yates stared, and
for a moment the two women looked one at the other, horror in the
eyes of each Missus Yates broke the silence with are you ill, Beda?
What is it? I'm faint, a sudden pain. The words came without
her volition. Her hand sought her heart. There was a second of taut
silence, when the very air of the room seemed to share the suspense while
mother and son looked at each other. Then Beda arose, I'm better now,
I'm going to lie down. For several days, she remained on a
couch in Graham's library on a pretext of illness, hiding from life by her
inactivity, trying by her very quietness to put off the next move in the
drama, which came like an unexpected verdict of a physician. When Missus Yates
announced, after the mail had come one day, Ella wants me to visit
her. I think I shall go. When does she want you? Beda
inquired with that command of herself, which guileless older woman knows so well how
to use. Missus Yates answered, in an irreproachably natural tone, why right
away? I shall go tomorrow, my dear, If you are feeling better,
Beda, oh, yes, she replied, I'm perfectly well now.
I think I've just been a little run down for some reason. It's very
natural with this heat, Missus Yates replied tranquility. There was not a break
in her surface anywhere. After her departure, they both took her to the
train. Beda and Graham turned into the garden. Suddenly she stopped. Why
did mother go? She asked him? Why to see Ella? Of course,
Graham replied, you know what I mean. What was her real reason?
Oh? How she waited for his answer, how she prayed for it
In his one little second of indecision, You've had a lot of odd little
streaks lately, Beda, he said. Beda wanted to cry aloud to him.
You know she won't come back. You know I've driven her away.
But she couldn't speak. She waited for him to help her. She was
sure that if she could drag the obscure events out into the light of day
and clothed them with commonplace speech, it would kill their horror. But what
to say? Where to begin, her heart cried out. Now, now
her whole being urged her into her vague confession, while her obstinate common sense
leagued itself with a shadowy impulse from without, which placed itself in the way
of her desire. Again, Beda fought the unknown force as of an awful,
voiceless conflict of wills, common sense by paradox, fighting on the side
of the unseen. Only now Beta knew she was fighting for her very existence.
She no longer struggled with something that was no more than some strange and
shattering nervous attack herself. Her own personality was her battle. Some mysterious door
had been opened that allowed to flow through it emotions and acts not her own.
She guessed that the very gestures of her hands, the look of her
eyes had been used. She had seen it mirrored in Graham's face. She
had seen it in the momentary leaping horror of his glance. But while their
troubled eyes looked into each others with comprehension, their obstinate tongues refused to voice
their fear of this lurking peril. Peril was what it was, and Beta
knew it, peril of their happiness, peril of her own sanity. She
looked at him, tears swimming in her eyes, longing to throw herself on
his beloved heart and to lie there as in a safe haven, and to
beg him to say her or at least to give her relief from pain.
But he was gazing at her speculatively. To her racked mind, it seemed
that his gaze was hostile. She turned and fled to her room, to
give herself up for the first time in her life, to the sort of
weeping that made her feel that she had wept forth all the strength of her
body. That with her weeping some virtue had gone out of her. She
said out loud, there was no use fighting anymore. A melancholy sense of
rest enveloped her. No one would help her, and she wouldn't fight anymore.
She relaxed the muscles of her spirit. Now let the flood overwhelm her.
If it would, let it drown her utterly. She didn't care.
As the last shred of her resistance died, the enveloping shadow receded. She
had expected some sort of cataclysm. Had been fighting the unseen, whatever it
was, Madness visions with all her strength, opposing her puny might to its
force. At times it seemed to her coming near victory with Graham's help,
almost sure victory. But now it stood aloof days passed and nothing happened.
The outer surfaces of life were serene, and yet all of life was altered,
and beta must go through her miserable treadmill of thought. She would sit
long hours staring into vacancy, thinking over the minutest details of the events of
the day. She dwelt on, each small, meaningless act, half of
whose torment lay in its very insignificance, the fact that there was nothing to
tell. That you couldn't touch or taste or explain, not to anybody,
not even to yourself, without seeming to talk in terms of medness. Such
things she would say to herself didn't happen. And yet while nothing happened from
one day to another, there was a steady onflow of small details. Whatever
it was, this nameless and faceless thing, was crawling upon her. Beta
realized like some dark tide, unseizing, unresting, while she slept, while
she walked without let up, without rest. Oh, that something would happen
to hasten it. Oh, that some tangible event would happen, so that
she could cry out, I've seen, I know. The only thing to
be seen with the eyes was that the house her creature, was changing an
aspect under her hand. Her own hand eagerly obliterated the changes she had made
when she had become Graham's wife. Yet the changes came with terrible and relentless
slowness. One day, a shade pulled down, a window shut a picture
of her choosing suppressed. The order of some books changed, nothing more,
but each change accomplished by her hand, and with a sense of fierce inner
joy. She would walk up and down, up and down, absorbed in
her own emotions, unconscious of the flight of time, and obscurely conscious that
time dragged, that time stood still, that the hours whirled around her,
unnoticed and that she and her sick fear alone stood still in the swirling,
shifting universe. Sometimes she would fill hours with balancing up which she would prefer,
this nameless horror, this thing that couldn't be, that was poisoning her,
perhaps killing her, or madness. She would laugh, long, silent
laughter, on the irony of fate that put such a choice before her.
Of all people, she who had been praised always for her sanity, she
to whom Elaine had turned in her first illness of the spirit as a friend.
Meantime, her life with Graham went on with unbroken surface, so unbroken
that she could have screamed at him. Yet she knew with the sickening certainty
that he watched her covertly from around some doors, as it were, that
he was always pretending to be doing something else, and yet was watching her.
He too, with smiling face and frozen heart, was living in an
obscure hell, spying upon her, watching for a look of the eye,
for a gesture of the hand, while he had let the whole change in
the house pass by unnoticed. Anyway, if he watched her, then she
watched him forever. Growing in her was a curious distrust of him distrust of
what she couldn't tell She didn't trust him. That was all her logical mind
that rejected the whole situation, had to go through its torment and had to
ask questions of her tormented heart. Did she distrust his love? There was
no reason for it, and yet he never left the house, But suspicion,
nameless and groundless, filled her whole being with an ever increasing anguish.
She suffered when he was with her, suffered from the suspicion of his suspicion
that he must read into her heart and hate and despise her for her ever
growing distrust, a distrust that didn't even seek to pin itself to anything.
If she could only have accused him of something, if only for one little
moment, there was some real complaint against him, she herself would cry,
even if she watched, even if she peered from behind a closed blind at
him. Oh my dear, I know you are good and true. It
isn't I watching you, It isn't I accusing you, And yet I must
suffer, as though I knew you were waiting a knife in your hand to
stab me when my back is turned, beta waited as loving women wait,
who know that their hour is come when the beloved is gone from them,
and worse than that that he lies, they must wait with loving and beating
hearts for the death of their spirits to be dealt out to them shamefully and
coward wise. And since they cannot believe their lover's cowards as well as traitors,
they still believe in the face of unbelief. This was Beta's torment.
Believing him upright, believing him true, She must suffer for an unbelief,
knowing that he loved her alone. She must watch each mood as it passed
by for corroboration of what she knew was not. She must watch all his
comings and goings. She must read dislike and suspicion in his gaze, the
dislike that a man has for a woman whose claims sever him from the beloved.
Then, as to thousands of women before her, came the need of
knowing certainty. Certainty was what she wanted, for good or bad, to
know the torment in which she lived. Oh, she would think to herself,
if I could only know, But her mind would answer know what She
lived continually, as though on the eve of some discovery. A little further,
and she would know what the monstrous certainty was of which she wished to
be sure. If she looked into the black pool of her uncertainty long enough,
she felt the answer would come. There must be an answer to all
this that she suffered, and somehow she felt it lay in Graham somehow,
and Graham she must find it. His very dumbness was to her the corroboration
of his blameless guilt. She hated his smiling face, She hated his pretense.
She wanted with all her strength to cry out, say what you think,
Say what you suspect. Then one night, as she sat in his
room, and while their lips talked the pleasant commonplaces of happily married people,
she realized that the answer to the riddle lay in his desk. She knew
it was there there, intangible form, was the answer of all her torment
and all her suspicion, if she could only look. She waited, frozen
in her own impatience, for the slow moments to drag past on their leaden
feet. She sat waiting until Graham go upstairs and go to sleep beside her,
so she could come down and find out what lay there. There was
no fight now, She Beta Beta with honor like a man's honor, waited
with beating heart, her breath coming short, for the evening to pass and
for Graham to sleep, that she might commit the one unforgivable crime he slept
at last Beda got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and slippers,
and went noiselessly down the stairs. She made no sound, not a
stair creaked. It was as though she went through each of the little acts
like some highly trained mechanism, as though all her life had been one rehearsal
for this moment. It was as though she had been rehearsing all her life
for this, that without noise she might get up, dress herself, go
downstairs, without noise, and light her candle in the library. Then walked
swiftly and with the directness of a homing pigeon to Graham's desk, to Graham's
desk, where the answer of everything lay. In the strange and painful universe
in which Beta had been living, the only certainty that she had was that
there was the answer, the explanation of the riddle, and that she was
about to find it, that she must find it, even at the price
of her own honor. At the breaking down of the things most essential in
her nature meant nothing. She went unfalteringly to where the desk stood, with
the candle in her hand. Unfalteringly, she pulled out a little drawer and
took from it a bundle of letters. They were tied neatly. Graham was
exact and methodical in all his ways. As she opened them, a little
picture fluttered down, a snapshot of herself, sent to Graham long ago.
And then she recognized in the letters her own head, writing nothing else.
Her letters were what she had come to find. Her letters written to Graham
long ago, written during his brief absences from Elaine, telling of Elaine's change
from day to day, written to him when she was away, Letters for
all the world to read, Letters without one word of affection beyond that of
a kindly friendship. Her own letters. That was the answer, her friendship
and Graham's That was the keynote of this mystery. For a second she stood
there, not willing to understand. Then came crowding on her memories of Elaine's
looks and her sudden appearances in the room where she and Graham sat, talking
innocently, so innocently that no thought of what Elaine meant had crossed their minds.
So Bada stood motionless, her own letters in her hand, a terrible
figure, as though she held there a proof of her own blood guilt.
And the question now arose to her mind, when did we first begin to
care for each other? And was I here for Elaine? Or was I
here for Graham's sake? She had come for Elaine, but she had stayed
for Graham, and before Elaine's tragic death, she had been the only comfort
that he had had. Then she heard a step behind her, and then
his voice, and instead of her own name, Elaine, he called,
and then with a face of horror and her hands outstretched in a gesture terrible
and tragic, a gesture they knew well, and that was not her own.
She cried, yes, Elaine, if you like, Why did you
keep these letters? You who never keep any letters? He tried to recover
himself. Are you mad, Beta, he said, but the sternness of
his voice faltered. Oh, she took up. I wish I were.
You could shut me up, then madness would be easy. We killed her,
You and I between us killed her. She trusted us, and we
killed her. She trusted us and we tortured her. Hush, said Graham,
you don't know what you're saying. Beta. You're not well. You've
not been well for a long time. No, she agreed, I've not
been well, but you've said nothing about it. Graham. It's a very
strange illness. I've had what's been its name, Graham, what doctor's curate.
You've tried not to believe what couldn't be believed. Such things can't happen.
That's what you've said to yourself when my face has frightened you, when
you came into the room and thought Elaine was standing here. But how should
I have come where I am now to find my own letters, my letters
that you kept, My letters that I've been waiting so long to find.
Listen, Beta will go away. You're ill, We'll go away. She
saw that he couldn't admit what he had seen in his man's world. Such
things couldn't be But it made no difference to her. Now she held her
proof in her hand. We'll go away and forget these weeks, he repeated.
We'll do what you like. It won't alter anything we know now,
Beta answered dully, for she knew as Graham did that there was no flight
possible for them, no refuge that they could take anywhere in the world.
Apart or together, they had heard the voice from the other side of silence.
There was no country where they could take refuge, no place to go
that would blot out from Graham's memory the picture of Ada leaning over his desk,
her letters in her hand. End of the Second Wife