Jessica approached her lips to his ear, and whispered:
‘She is married.’
‘What? Impossible!’
’She was married at Teignmouth, just before
she came back from her holiday, last year.’
‘Well! Upon my word! And that’s
why she has been away in Cornwall?’
Again Jessica whispered, her body quivering the while:
‘She has a child. It was born last May.’
‘Well! Upon my word! Now I understand.
Who could have imagined!’
‘You see what she is. She hides it for
the sake of the money.’
‘But who is her husband?’ asked Samuel,
staring at the bloodless face.
’A man called Tarrant, a relative of Mr. Vawdrey,
of Champion Hill. She thought he was rich.
I don’t know whether he is or not, but I believe
he doesn’t mean to come back to her. He’s
in America now.’
Barmby questioned, and Jessica answered, until there
was nothing left to ask or to tell,—save
the one thing which rose suddenly to Jessica’s
lips.
‘You won’t let her know that I have told
you?’
Samuel gravely, but coldly, assured her that she need
not fear betrayal.
It was to be in three volumes. She saw her way
pretty clearly to the end of the first; she had ideas
for the second; the third must take care of itself—until
she reached it. Hero and heroine ready to her
hand; subordinate characters vaguely floating in the
background. After an hour or two of meditation,
she sat down and dashed at Chapter One.
Long before the end of the year it ought to be finished.
But in August came her baby’s first illness;
for nearly a fortnight she was away from home, and
on her return, though no anxiety remained, she found
it difficult to resume work. The few chapters
completed had a sorry look; they did not read well,
not at all like writing destined to be read in print.
After a week’s disheartenment she made a new
beginning.
At the end of September baby again alarmed her.
A trivial ailment as before, but she could not leave
the child until all was well. Again she reviewed
her work, and with more repugnance than after the
previous interruption. But go on with it she must
and would. The distasteful labour, slow, wearisome,
often performed without pretence of hope, went on
until October. Then she broke down. Mary
Woodruff found her crying by the fireside, feverish
and unnerved.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she said.
’I hear the clock strike every hour, night after
night.’
But she would not confess the cause. In writing
her poor novel she had lived again through the story
enacted at Teignmouth, and her heart failed beneath
its burden of hopeless longing. Her husband had
forsaken her. Even if she saw him again, what
solace could be found in the mere proximity of a man
who did not love her, who had never loved her?
The child was not enough; its fatherless estate enhanced
the misery of her own solitude. When the leaves
fell, and the sky darkened, and the long London winter
gloomed before her, she sank with a moan of despair.
