He realised, too, at the same sharp moment the conflict in which he was engaged.On the one side was all his life, his sloth and ease and comfort, his religion, his good name, his easy intercourse with his fellow-men, Grace, intellectual laziness, acceptance of things as they most easily are, Skeaton, regular meals, good drainage, moral, physical and spiritual, a good funeral and a favourable obituary in The Skeaton Times.On the other hand unrest, ill-health, separation from Grace, an elusive and never-to-be-satisfied pursuit, scandal and possible loss of religion, unhappiness...At least it was to his credit that he realised the conflict; it is even further to his credit that he grasped and admitted the hopelessness of it.
He knew which way he would go; even now he was tired with the thought of the struggle; he sank into his shabby chair with a sigh of weariness; his hand stretched out instinctively for an easy volume.But oh, Maggie! how strange and fascinating at that moment she appeared to him, with her odd silences, her flashes of startled surprise, her sense of being half the day in another world, her kindness to him and then her sudden terror of him, her ignorance and then the conviction that she gave suddenly to him that she knew more than he would ever know, above all, the way that some dark spirit deep down in him supported her wild rebellions, her irreverences, her irreligion, her scorn of tradition.Oh! she was a witch! Grace's word for her was right, but not Grace's sense of it.The more Grace was shocked the more tempting to him the witch became.It had seemed to him, that day in Katherine's drawing-room, so slight a thing when she had said that she did not love him, he had no doubt but that he could change that.How could a child, so raw and ignorant, resist such a man? And yet she had resisted.That resistance had been at the root of the trouble.Whichever way things went now, he was a defeated man.
The door opened and Grace came in.Looking at her he realised that she would never understand the struggle through which he had been timorously wading, and saw that she was further away from him than she had ever been before.He blamed her too.She had had no right to refuse that man to Maggie.Had she allowed Maggie to see him none of this might have occurred.The man was a forger and would, had he lived, have gone to prison, but there would not then have been the same open scandal.No, he blamed Grace.It might be that their old absolutely confident intimacy would never be renewed.He felt cold and lonely.He bent forward, putting some coal on the fire, breaking it up into a cheerful blaze.Then he looked up at her, and his heart was touched.She looked to-day an old woman.Her hair was untidy and her face was dull grey in colour.Her eyes moved restlessly round the room, wandering from picture to picture, from the mantelpiece to the chairs, from the chairs to the book-shelves, as though she sought in the sight of these well-remembered things some defence and security.
"Is your head better?" he asked her, not meeting her eyes, because the dull pain in them disturbed him.
"Not much," she said."It's very bad, my head.I've taken aspirin.Ididn't eat anything yesterday.Nothing at all except some bread and milk, and very little of that...I couldn't finish it.I felt I'd be sick.I said to Emily, 'Emily, if I eat any more of that I'll be sick,' and Emily advised me not to touch it.What I mean is that if I'd eaten any more I'd have been really sick--at least that's what Ifelt like."
Her restless eyes came suddenly to a jerking pause as though some one had caught and gripped them.She was suddenly dramatic."Oh.
Paul, what are we going to do?" she cried.
Paul was irritated by that.He hated to be asked direct questions as to policy.
"What do you mean what are we going to do?" he asked.
"Why, about this--about everything.We shall have to leave Skeaton, you know.Fancy what people are saying!"Suddenly, as though the thought of the scandal was too much for her, her knees gave way and she flopped into a chair.
"Well.let them say!" he answered vigorously."Grace, you're making too much of all this.You'll be ill if you aren't careful.Pull yourself together." "Of course we've got to go," she answered."If you think that we can go on living here after all that's happened--""Well, why not?" he interrupted."We haven't done anything.It's only--""I know what you're going to say." (It was one of Grace's most irritating habits that she finished other people's sentences for them in a way that they had not intended) "that if they look at it properly they'll see that it wasn't our fault.But will they look at it properly? Of course they won't.You know what cats they are.
They're only waiting for a chance.What I mean is that this is just the chance they've been waiting for.""How can you go on and every time you preach they'll be looking up at you and saying 'There's a brother of a murderer'? Why, fancy what you'd feel!"Paul jumped in his chair."What do you mean, Grace? The brother of a murderer?""What else am I?" Grace began to warm her podgy hands."It came out at the inquest that I wouldn't see the man, didn't it? Maggie thinks me a murderer.I see it in her eyes every time.What I mean to say, Paul, is, What are you going to do about Maggie?"Grace's voice changed at that question.It was as though that other trouble of the scandal were nothing to her compared with this matter of Maggie's presence.Paul turned and looked at her.She dropped her voice to a whisper and went on:
"I won't stay with Maggie any more.No, no, no! You must choose, Paul, between Maggie and me.What I mean is that it simply isn't safe in the same house with her.You may not have noticed it yourself, but I've seen it coming on a long time.I have indeed.She isn't right in her head, and she hates me.She's always hated me.