Chapter: For many hours Margaret did nothing; then she controlled herself, and
wrote some letters. She was too bruised to speak to Henry; she could
pity him, and even determine to marry him, but as yet all lay too deep
in her heart for speech. On the surface the sense of his degradation was
too strong. She could not command voice or look, and the gentle words
that she forced out through her pen seemed to proceed from some other
person.

"My dearest boy," she began, "this is not to part us. It is everything
or nothing, and I mean it to be nothing. It happened long before we ever
met, and even if it had happened since, I should be writing the same, I
hope. I do understand."

But she crossed out "I do understand"; it struck a false note. Henry
could not bear to be understood. She also crossed out, "It is everything
or nothing." Henry would resent so strong a grasp of the situation. She
must not comment; comment is unfeminine.

"I think that'll about do," she thought.

Then the sense of his degradation choked her. Was he worth all this
bother? To have yielded to a woman of that sort was everything, yes,
it was, and she could not be his wife. She tried to translate his
temptation into her own language, and her brain reeled. Men must be
different even to want to yield to such a temptation. Her belief in
comradeship was stifled, and she saw life as from that glass saloon on
the Great Western which sheltered male and female alike from the fresh
air. Are the sexes really races, each with its own code of morality, and
their mutual love a mere device of Nature to keep things going? Strip
human intercourse of the proprieties, and is it reduced to this? Her
judgment told her no. She knew that out of Nature's device we have built
a magic that will win us immortality. Far more mysterious than the call
of sex to sex is the tenderness that we throw into that call; far wider
is the gulf between us and the farmyard than between the farmyard and
the garbage that nourishes it. We are evolving, in ways that Science
cannot measure, to ends that Theology dares not contemplate. "Men
did produce one jewel," the gods will say, and, saying, will give us
immortality. Margaret knew all this, but for the moment she could not
feel it, and transformed the marriage of Evie and Mr. Cahill into a
carnival of fools, and her own marriage--too miserable to think of that,
she tore up the letter, and then wrote another:


"DEAR MR. BAST,

"I have spoken to Mr. Wilcox about you, as I promised, and am sorry to
say that he has no vacancy for you.

"Yours truly,

"M. J. SCHLEGEL."


She enclosed this in a note to Helen, over which she took less trouble
than she might have done; but her head was aching, and she could not
stop to pick her words:


"DEAR HELEN,

"Give him this. The Basts are no good. Henry found the woman drunk on
the lawn. I am having a room got ready for you here, and will you please
come round at once on getting this? The Basts are not at all the type we
should trouble about. I may go round to them myself in the morning, and
do anything that is fair.

"M."


In writing this, Margaret felt that she was being practical. Something
might be arranged for the Basts later on, but they must be silenced
for the moment. She hoped to avoid a conversation between the woman
and Helen. She rang the bell for a servant, but no one answered it;
Mr. Wilcox and the Warringtons were gone to bed, and the kitchen was
abandoned to Saturnalia. Consequently she went over to the George
herself. She did not enter the hotel, for discussion would have been
perilous, and, saying that the letter was important, she gave it to the
waitress. As she recrossed the square she saw Helen and Mr. Bast looking
out of the window of the coffee-room, and feared she was already too
late. Her task was not yet over; she ought to tell Henry what she had
done.

This came easily, for she saw him in the hall. The night wind had been
rattling the pictures against the wall, and the noise had disturbed him.

"Who's there?" he called, quite the householder.

Margaret walked in and past him.

"I have asked Helen to sleep," she said. "She is best here; so don't
lock the front-door."

"I thought some one had got in," said Henry.

"At the same time I told the man that we could do nothing for him. I
don't know about later, but now the Basts must clearly go."

"Did you say that your sister is sleeping here, after all?"

"Probably."

"Is she to be shown up to your room?"

"I have naturally nothing to say to her; I am going to bed. Will you
tell the servants about Helen? Could some one go to carry her bag?"

He tapped a little gong, which had been bought to summon the servants.

"You must make more noise than that if you want them to hear."

Henry opened a door, and down the corridor came shouts of laughter. "Far
too much screaming there," he said, and strode towards it. Margaret went
upstairs, uncertain whether to be glad that they had met, or sorry. They
had behaved as if nothing had happened, and her deepest instincts told
her that this was wrong. For his own sake, some explanation was due.

And yet--what could an explanation tell her? A date, a place, a few
details, which she could imagine all too clearly. Now that the first
shock was over, she saw that there was every reason to premise a Mrs.
Bast. Henry's inner life had long laid open to her--his intellectual
confusion, his obtuseness to personal influence, his strong but furtive
passions. Should she refuse him because his outer life corresponded?
Perhaps. Perhaps, if the dishonour had been done to her, but it was done
long before her day. She struggled against the feeling. She told herself
that Mrs. Wilcox's wrong was her own. But she was not a barren theorist.
As she undressed, her anger, her regard for the dead, her desire for a
scene, all grew weak. Henry must have it as he liked, for she loved him,
and some day she would use her love to make him a better man.

Pity was at the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if
one may generalise, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is
for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not
be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness
stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil.

Here was the core of the question. Henry must be forgiven, and made
better by love; nothing else mattered. Mrs. Wilcox, that unquiet yet
kindly ghost, must be left to her own wrong. To her everything was in
proportion now, and she, too, would pity the man who was blundering
up and down their lives. Had Mrs. Wilcox known of his trespass? An
interesting question, but Margaret fell asleep, tethered by affection,
and lulled by the murmurs of the river that descended all the night from
Wales. She felt herself at one with her future home, colouring it and
coloured by it, and awoke to see, for the second time, Oniton Castle
conquering the morning mists.

 Margaret spends hours thinking over everything that's happened, then writes a bunch of letters. The first is to Henry; she writes it instinctively, saying that everything will be fine between them, then edits it according to his taste. He's clearly changed her. Margaret then reevaluates, and wonders if she really can deal with the fact that Mr. Wilcox had an affair with Jacky. She tears up the letter she just wrote. Next, she writes a brief note to Leonard, saying that Mr. Wilcox can't get him a job. She also writes a letter to Helen, telling her that they found Jacky drunk, and that the Basts are not worth her while - she should ditch them, and come to stay with the Wilcoxes at the house. Margaret feels like she's handling the matters in a practical fashion. She delivers the letters to the hotel herself, and sees Helen watching her through the window. She goes to inform Henry of what she's done, telling him that Helen is coming to spend the night. They act like nothing's happened, but obviously, something important has. Margaret tries to decide if she can stay with Henry or not. She goes back and forth between anger and pity - and ultimately decides to forgive him.

