'I shall "declare to everyone" the simple truth. You have the opportunity of making one more effort to save us from degradation. You refuse to take the trouble; you prefer to drag me down into a lower rank of life. I can't and won't consent to that. The disgrace is yours; it's fortunate for me that I have a decent home to go to.'
'Fortunate for you!--you make yourself unutterably contemptible.
I have done nothing that justifies you in leaving me. It is for me to judge what I can do and what I can't. A good woman would see no degradation in what I ask of you. But to run away from me just because I am poorer than you ever thought I should be--'
He was incoherent. A thousand passionate things that he wished to say clashed together in his mind and confused his speech.
Defeated in the attempt to act like a strong man, he could not yet recover standing-ground, knew not how to tone his utterances.
'Yes, of course, that's how you will put it,' said Amy. 'That's how you will represent me to your friends. My friends will see it in a different light.'
'They will regard you as a martyr?'
'No one shall make a martyr of me, you may be sure. I was unfortunate enough to marry a man who had no delicacy, no regard for my feelings.--I am not the first woman who has made a mistake of this kind.'
'No delicacy? No regard for your feelings?--Have I always utterly misunderstood you? Or has poverty changed you to a woman I can't recognise?'
He came nearer, and gazed desperately into her face. Not a muscle of it showed susceptibility to the old influences.
'Do you know, Amy,' he added in a lower voice, 'that if we part now, we part for ever?'
'I'm afraid that is only too likely.'
She moved aside.
'You mean that you wish it. You are weary of me, and care for nothing but how to make yourself free.'
'I shall argue no more. I am tired to death of it.'
'Then say nothing, but listen for the last time to my view of the position we have come to. When I consented to leave you for a time, to go away and try to work in solitude, I was foolish and even insincere, both to you and to myself. I knew that I was undertaking the impossible. It was just putting off the evil day, that was all--putting off the time when I should have to say plainly: "I can't live by literature, so I must look out for some other employment." I shouldn't have been so weak but that I knew how you would regard such a decision as that. I was afraid to tell the truth--afraid. Now, when Carter of a sudden put this opportunity before me, I saw all the absurdity of the arrangements we had made. It didn't take me a moment to make up my mind. Anything was to be chosen rather than a parting from you on false pretences, a ridiculous affectation of hope where there was no hope.'
He paused, and saw that his words had no effect upon her.
'And a grievous share of the fault lies with you, Amy. You remember very well when I first saw how dark the future was. Iwas driven even to say that we ought to change our mode of living; I asked you if you would be willing to leave this place and go into cheaper rooms. And you know what your answer was. Not a sign in you that you would stand by me if the worst came. Iknew then what I had to look forward to, but I durst not believe it. I kept saying to myself: "She loves me, and as soon as she really understands--" That was all self-deception. If I had been a wise man, I should have spoken to you in a way you couldn't mistake. I should have told you that we were living recklessly, and that I had determined to alter it. I have no delicacy? No regard for your feelings? Oh, if I had had less! I doubt whether you can even understand some of the considerations that weighed with me, and made me cowardly--though I once thought there was no refinement of sensibility that you couldn't enter into. Yes, Iwas absurd enough to say to myself: "It will look as if I had consciously deceived her; she may suffer from the thought that Iwon her at all hazards, knowing that I should soon expose her to poverty and all sorts of humiliation." Impossible to speak of that again; I had to struggle desperately on, trying to hope. Oh!
if you knew--'
His voice gave way for an instant.
'I don't understand how you could be so thoughtless and heartless. You knew that I was almost mad with anxiety at times.
Surely, any woman must have had the impulse to give what help was in her power. How could you hesitate? Had you no suspicion of what a relief and encouragement it would be to me, if you said:
"Yes, we must go and live in a simpler way?" If only as a proof that you loved me, how I should have welcomed that! You helped me in nothing. You threw all the responsibility upon me--always bearing in mind, I suppose, that there was a refuge for you. Even now, I despise myself for saying such things of you, though Iknow so bitterly that they are true. It takes a long time to see you as such a different woman from the one I worshipped. In passion, I can fling out violent words, but they don't yet answer to my actual feeling. It will be long enough yet before I think contemptuously of you. You know that when a light is suddenly extinguished, the image of it still shows before your eyes. But at last comes the darkness.'
Amy turned towards him once more.
'Instead of saying all this, you might be proving that I am wrong. Do so, and I will gladly confess it.'
'That you are wrong? I don't see your meaning.'
'You might prove that you are willing to do your utmost to save me from humiliation.'
'Amy, I have done my utmost. I have done more than you can imagine.'
'No. You have toiled on in illness and anxiety--I know that. But a chance is offered you now of working in a better way. Till that is tried, you have no right to give all up and try to drag me down with you.'
'I don't know how to answer. I have told you so often-- You can't understand me!'