Chapter III

The most difficult part of a tragedy is the deference that has to be paid to the onlookers. If murder only consisted of the person you murdered and the process (however painful) of having it out afterwards with the judge, fewer people would be debarred from it; and there is an even greater degree of frightfulness in the subsidiary personages of a divorce.

Anne felt that she could easily manage her relations with Norman and Nina. There was nothing in her worst moments with either of them that she had not allowed for. Her courage rose to meet their primary claims without faltering. But she felt that it was asking too much of her to have to bear the startled watchfulness of the cook, who had been with them since their marriage. Then there was Norman’s mother. She was a gentle, implacable old lady from a country vicarage. The word divorce had never crossed her lips during the sixty years of her strict and uneventful life. Anne’s own relations were simply very angry—at first they tried to hush everything up and were full of good ideas, but when they found Anne’s quiet will barred all evasions, they stormed and abused, threatened and repudiated and could not be kept out of the house. But they knew what divorce meant, and Mrs. Elliot didn’t. She could not distinguish between husband and wife. She looked upon them both as upon those who have been smitten with leprosy. It was obvious that she prayed before she spoke to either of them, and when her prayers became a little confused with her arguments, she trembled and shed tears. To Norman she only spoke indirectly. She said, “My boy—my poor boy, do not do this wicked thing!” And the odd part of it was that her just saying this and crying shook Norman as if it had been an argument. For days afterwards he would not see Nina, nor speak to Anne. His mother urged that he should give up everything (except his marriage) and go to Madeira for the winter. She spoke as if some form of transportation and a colonial life afterwards would be most fitted to meet their case. Finally Norman saw Nina by accident and when he came back he told Anne that his mother must go home. Anne had to tell her this, and Mrs. Elliot spoke a great deal more directly to Anne. She said that she knew her boy and his devoted, tender heart, and that the state of sin into which he had fallen could only have been brought about by terrible neglect on Anne’s part. She was ruthless with Anne. She struck again and again at Anne’s childlessness. She accused her of being too worldly, and in the same breath of not being entertaining enough. She pointed out to Anne that she looked old and ought to be more lively, and then she asked her why she didn’t go to church oftener and give Norman the example of a deeply religious life? That, she said, was what Norman had missed. Anne couldn’t be a really good woman because good women never dreamed of divorcing their husbands.

“I am not divorcing my husband,” Anne explained in exasperation, “Norman is divorcing me.” Then the whole thing had to come out. It was frightful; and the explanations involved made Anne understand why people walk out of their houses and are never heard of again. If she had known what happened afterwards to these incredibly inspired persons, she would have instantly followed their example. As it was, she found herself floundering in a sea of prevarications, ineptitudes and downright lies, and none of them saved her. They didn’t even save Norman very much. She kept the girl out of it somehow, though her mother-in-law always suspected the girl. She probed searchingly for Nina, whom she envisaged in the form of a housemaid. Men could do awful things suddenly, she explained to Anne, if they were pushed to it, and it was no use Anne’s saying that Norman wasn’t that kind of man, because (if wrongly handled) men were all the same, except of course Norman’s father who was a clergyman; the person to blame was the person who had handled him wrongly. Anne said she was perfectly aware of that, and perfectly willing to be blamed, but she wasn’t going to stop the divorce. Her mother-in-law very gently and with a further resort to silent prayer, cast her permanently off. “Very well, then, Anne,” she said, “if you persist in carrying out this very wicked act neither his father nor I, nor any of his sisters, can see or speak to you again. Whatever happens to my poor boy, remember that you are responsible for it in the eyes of God and of his mother. You could have saved him, and you are deliberately forcing him instead into a deadly sin.”

“Why do you think I could have saved him?” Anne asked despairingly, “you have said yourself that I have no attractions; and women without attractions don’t save men.”

“You could have had the attraction of a godly life,” said Mrs. Elliot coldly, “and not given Sunday luncheons. Nevertheless even as it is, Norman’s fate is in your hands. He told me himself that he would never have dreamed of pursuing this reckless course but for your support. At a word from you now, he would give it up.”

Anne lowered her eyes. He had given her away then, so that she had no defence. She reminded herself (to stop the sudden bitterness that rose up in her heart) that you cannot be a defender and expect defence. “Very well then,” she said quietly, “I suppose I must accept your casting me off. I had hoped you wouldn’t quite—that you would realise I meant well by Norman, and was relieving him of an unhappiness; and I had hoped that perhaps you would write to me while I was away and have told me how he was. You see, after all, I love Norman; it is Norman who does not love me.”

“I cannot understand your point of view,” her mother-in-law said gravely, “you seem to have an interest in his temporal welfare and yet you have destroyed his eternal welfare. You cannot expect me to consider your feelings in so slight a matter when you are disregarding all of ours in so vital a one.” Anne bowed her head. At that moment she did not believe in anybody’s eternal welfare.

Then her mother-in-law asked her if she had told Toby, and Anne had to admit that she hadn’t.

Toby was her own oldest and dearest friend, but he was also Norman’s. Indeed it was Timothy Wainwright who had introduced Norman to Anne. He had brought him down one Sunday to Anne’s home, and when the two young men left a week later Timothy already knew that he had lost the first place in both their hearts; but it was only Timothy who knew that this transference was a painful one. The others went on loving him and relying upon him with the unconscious selfishness of happy lovers; and they had done so ever since. If he had wanted more of Anne than to run her errands, and be consulted about Dutch bulbs, he never let her see it. He acted as Norman’s best man, and if any difficulties had arisen in their married life he would certainly have shared them; as they had had no difficulties, they merely gave him the odds and ends of their free time.

It was their idea that he liked Norman better than Anne; he was sometimes a little critical of Anne, though they knew that he would have died for her. Still, they thought he would have died for Norman first. This was their mistake. There were times when Timothy had been within a measurable distance of wanting to kill Norman.

“Toby,” said Mrs. Elliot, “must be spoken to. He is of your generation and understands the world, and yet we know that he is a good man and can be perfectly trusted. Either you or Norman must go to him with this shocking story at once. Perhaps he will be able to see some way out of it.”

Anne submitted. It was part of her strength that she always gave way to the wishes of others unless they interfered with her rare decisions. Since Toby must know sooner or later there was no use in making a difficulty about telling him, although Anne did not want to tell him. She had a momentary hope that she might persuade Norman to do it, but Norman refused. He spoke with a kind of horror of it. “I don’t a bit mind his talking to me about it afterwards,” Norman explained to Anne. “We shall have to talk sooner or later, but somehow I can’t tell him. You see he’s always believed I worshipped you.” Norman occasionally said unfortunate things when he was very overwrought. As a rule he was intensely careful of other people’s feelings, but he sometimes forgot Anne’s, because she was so much less sensitive than he was.

So Anne had to tell Toby herself.

She noticed as she put on her things to go out that she was looking plain and old. She was not conscious of feeling unhappiness, but she saw that her face was different. There used to be something shining and blooming about her. She had never looked like a wild flower, but she had looked like a fine strong hothouse blossom with firm leaves. Her happiness had given her an exquisite inner assurance, she had felt Norman’s love like a magic armour shielding her against the world. Now she felt defenceless and raw; she thought that everyone who looked at her must know that she was no longer loved. She was too old and tired and plain ever to be loved again. She must learn to observe life, because she hadn’t really anything else to do with it.

Anne wondered for the first time what Timothy felt like, living alone. Timothy was forty and Anne had always thought that it must be very nice for him to be a bachelor with such charming rooms and good servants; now she was not quite so sure. She had telephoned Toby that she was coming to tea with him, so that he had everything she liked ready for her. A great bowl full of love-in-the-mist and a special Buszard’s cake on his gate-legged table.

Toby was a very busy man whose work in the City was not without importance; but Anne always found that he had plenty of time and could do little things for her more easily than most hurried people.

Toby had grey eyes not very much larger than Anne’s but very much quicker. They shot into you when you first saw him, and afterwards he seemed to sheathe them and look as if he hadn’t noticed anything. He had a very kind smile and when he wasn’t smiling he looked extraordinarily grave. Everybody wanted Toby to be their trustee and to go to their relations’ funerals. He was never emotional, but there was a solid unexpressed sympathy in him, which mourners found consoling.

“Well, Anne,” Toby said, “it’s a long time since I’ve seen you. When do you and the Boy go off on your summer holidays?”

Anne took off her gloves slowly and made the tea. She talked for a while about their summer holiday, though she knew that she wasn’t going to have it. They discussed the rival merits of Scotland and the Channel Islands, or a caravan in Cornwall. Toby usually spent a week with them in September, and he was very much against a caravan.

“If I were ten years younger now,” he said, “perhaps; but middle-aged men don’t look nice when they are breakfastless and unshaved; and I no longer take pleasure in rain down the back of my neck, or insects in my coffee. I do not care to wash up tea-things, or to persuade cart-horses to change their minds. I prefer night ‘with its train of stars and its great gift of sleep’ in a bedroom; and I am more than wedded to a morning bath.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Anne, riveting her attention upon the shining teapot, “I don’t think we can do a caravan this summer in any case. I had thought of going by myself abroad somewhere, with a girl I know.”

“Indeed,” said Toby, “and what am I to do with Norman in your absence? Has the Foreign Office refused him a passport?”

“I want you,” said Anne, “to take quite particularly good care of him.”

“The best care I could take,” said Timothy gravely, “would be nothing compared to yours at your worst. If he’s in need of care, why the devil are you going away from him?”

“Because,” said Anne steadily, “he doesn’t want my care any more. He has been perfectly beautiful about it, Toby dear, and if I understand and believe in this new plan, and think it all right for all of us, I don’t see why anybody else shouldn’t! Dear, dear Toby, please believe in it with me! Lots of people won’t, and can’t, and I suppose I shall have to bear it—but I don’t want to have to bear disagreeing with you!”

“I have seldom heard a more unscrupulously unfair or obscure statement,” said Toby pretending to eat his cake. “My dear girl, what is this new plan which is to dislocate all our lives, and which I am to welcome with enthusiasm?”

Then Anne told him about Nina. She had hoped at first that it would be enough to tell him about the divorce, but it wasn’t enough. He didn’t believe in it. He only believed in Nina. He didn’t look at Anne while she was telling him, but he stopped pretending to eat his cake. He sat quite still. Anne managed beautifully, but she got a little short of breath towards the end.

“You really think,” he said when she had finished, “that Norman loves this—this young woman seriously? It’s not just a flash in the pan, is it? You know such things do happen even in awfully happy marriages. A man takes a wild header into a momentary fancy, generally some haunting pretty face, some delicious little dream he’d be sick to death of, if he were shut up with her for a fortnight in a fog. You’re sure it’s nothing of that kind with Norman?”

“I don’t think so,” said Anne thoughtfully, “I know the girl very well now. Of course she’s different from anyone I’ve known before, but she’s very clever and full of character. I think she will learn the little things he might like her to know, quite easily from me, things about her clothes and the house and the servants. She wants to learn them. She’s been most extraordinarily sweet to me.”

Timothy’s boots creaked as if he had leaned too hard on something but he made no comment. He waited for Anne to go on.

“My idea was,” Anne continued, “to take her abroad with me. She’s been very much upset with all she’s been through lately. You see nobody knows about her and Norman at all. My people think there’s some woman, because they would naturally think so. They want somebody to blame. But Norman has been extraordinarily careful. He never goes to see her now without me. Poor dears! I manage the best I can for them. Sometimes we go into the country, where they can be alone comfortably; but it is wiser to wait till everything is settled up. If I take her to Italy, we can stay away till everything is arranged and then Norman can come out and marry her.”

“What do you propose to do then?” Toby asked a little dryly.

“I thought,” said Anne, “they’d like to go to Venice for their honeymoon. Norman loves it so and Nina has never seen it, and I might go to Rome. It will take quite six months, Norman says, before they’re free. You know I love Rome. I rather thought of studying the excavations in the Forum.”

“Very suitable indeed,” Toby said. “I can’t imagine anything so thoroughly _à propos_, and when the honeymooners return may I ask if you’ve planned anything beyond the Forum? Oh Anne! Anne!”

“No, Toby don’t!” Anne said very quickly, “you mustn’t mind! You know you’re _not_ going to! Why then, you see, when they come home, it’ll be all right, won’t it? It’ll be all right for all of us. I want you to like Nina nearly as much as you like me.”

“Good God!” said Toby, “slow up somewhere! I decline to be treated as if I were a cockatrice roused from his den to play with an innocent child!”

“She is a very innocent child,” said Anne softly. Toby said nothing more for a long time. He stirred his lukewarm tea and looked searchingly at the carpet. Anne got up and wandered about his immense quiet room. He had several very beautiful things and Anne had always appreciated and understood them better than anybody else. She fingered them carefully now and wondered whether the lacquer on his great Chinese cabinet oughtn’t to be cleaned again soon. She hadn’t expected Toby to like her plan, but he was very nice about it. He hadn’t expressed surprise or horror, or any of that dreadful sympathy which seemed to slam a door in Anne’s heart, shutting her away forever from the incompleteness of human understanding. At last he said without turning round, “Anne, are you going to let them live in your house?”

“It isn’t mine, it’s Norman’s,” said Anne defensively. “Besides, I shan’t want a house. I thought of taking a service flat in Westminster. I’ve always wanted to live in Westminster.”

“I see,” said Toby. He cleared his throat as if he hadn’t quite reached the end of what he wanted to say, but had got to the end of his courage in saying it. Then he forced himself to go on.

“If it isn’t impertinent, Anne, may I suggest that Westminster isn’t very far away from Knightsbridge? Must you live in London at all?”

“Oh Toby!” Anne cried, “all my friends are in London! You’re in London! Mayn’t I even have——” then she stopped suddenly, feeling that she was going to be silly and start pitying herself, a thing she had steadfastly made up her mind never to do.

“Mayn’t you even have London?” Toby finished for her. “Well, you see, Anne, it isn’t really a case of what you _can_ have. It is a case of what you have lost; making the best of things generally implies letting them go as if they were red hot coals. That’s the safest plan. If you feel, and Norman feels, that this is the only course to take, why take it; but step straight off the course when it’s finished! Don’t see them again after the marriage, d’you see my point?”

But Anne wouldn’t see it. “They don’t want that!” she pleaded; “they honestly need me—and Toby, think—Norman’s all my life! He isn’t just a part of it—just the husband part I mean. I can let that go, but I must know how he is, I must look after them and help them—not too much of course—but when they _want_ me—they must have me!”

“Take my advice, Anne,” said Toby, “in some ways I am particularly well placed to offer it. Don’t you do it! You won’t be wanted—not very much; not, I mean, as much as the enquiry office at the Army & Navy Stores. And it’ll break you to pieces if you go on with them. You think it won’t, I know. You think cutting the painter will do that! But you’re wrong—cutting the painter is a relief. It’s only the idea of doing it that hurts. What you’re holding on to—that’s the very devil! Of course he’s all your life—that’s why you’ve got to make it over again and make it different. You’re a brave woman, Anne. Stay in Rome and go on with the excavations. I’ll come out to you. Everybody’ll come out to you. But for God’s sake, don’t come back and hover!”

“Oh don’t!” said Anne. She put her hands over her face as if he had struck her. She felt a violent and miserable feeling in her heart. She had never been angry with Norman, nor even with Nina, but she was very angry with Toby. He was crass; he had said just what he shouldn’t—just what he mustn’t! He wasn’t helping her at all. Toby saw that he wasn’t helping Anne. If Anne had not been so miserable she would have seen that Toby was miserable too. His face was quite white with patches of red on it, and his mouth had a twisted look as if he was laughing at himself with a cruel laughter.

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” she said sternly, “nor how I feel. It was stupid of me to talk to you like this. Nobody can understand who hasn’t loved as I love—hopelessly and in a sense quite happily, with all their heart. My happiness—and I am quite happy still—is in giving anything they want to either of them.”

“You call it happiness,” said Toby, “but you won’t find it is happiness, and some day you’ll see that you’re just in the way.”

“It is very natural that you should think so,” said Anne resentfully, “I suppose I must seem intrusive and tiresome to you. Fortunately for me they don’t feel as you do. They love—and need me. Good-bye, Toby! Thank you for not being horrid about Norman. I shall count on you to look after him while I’m away, and to let me know how he is. His mother won’t write to me—but you will, won’t you?”

“Oh yes, I will,” said Toby, “you may count on me for that.”

He didn’t offer to shake hands with Anne. He simply stood by the door and held it open for her. Anne felt and looked very unforgiving. Toby had always been nicer to Norman than to her; probably he thought, like Norman’s mother, that she was altogether to blame, and that Norman was lucky to get rid of her. She had thought he was her friend too as well as Norman’s, but apparently he wasn’t.

“Anne,” said Toby in a queer choked voice, as she passed him with her head held high, “Anne, I told you that, you know, because it was the truth, not because I wanted to be nasty. You see I—I happen to know it is the truth.”

It was so like Toby to suppose that his ideas were infallible; and so different from Norman who was too intelligent not to be diffident about his knowledge! Still Anne could hear by Toby’s voice that he was upset for her, more upset than she had thought, and she turned round and shook hands with him kindly. He hurt her hand, he held it so hard, but he didn’t retract what he’d said.

“I suppose,” said Anne, with restored gentleness, “that we must each of us do what we feel is the best, mustn’t we? Even if our friends don’t agree with us?”

“I suppose we must,” said Toby, “but Anne—sometimes it’s damned hard!”