without softening or prevarication. I'm afraid a free rein unleashes the worst in such a nature." She pauses. "If you were to entrust the task to me, I would accept it as my Christian duty to try to impress upon her—"
"It's too late for such conversations," interrupts Harry. "Recently—" That sounds slightly more considered than last night. "Recently, I must tell you in all confidence that I've come to suspect—"
Her gaze is owlish. What big eyes you've got, grandmama, he thinks irrelevantly, though Mrs. Watson can't be more than ten years older than his wife.
"That it's not only her manner," he goes on gruffly. "That here in London, her conduct itself—that she might possibly have actually stepped beyond the bounds of—beyond the bounds." He makes himself produce a brief account of last night.
Mrs. Watson's mouth forms a tiny circle. She turns to meet the reverend's watery eyes.
Harry's shocked them, he knows it. "But I have no proof," he winds up, "and I'm aware that jealousy's the besetting fault of older husbands."
"No!"
Her roar makes him jump.
"You, Admiral—the kindest, the least suspicious—" Mrs. Watson presses her fingers to her mouth, then takes them away. "The only wonder is that you've tolerated the intolerable for so long."
Harry stares at her. "You knew?" he asks in a boy's squeak.
"Not for sure. We only feared, didn't we, my dear?"
Another speechless nod from the reverend.
What shocks Harry is what lies behind the shock. Beneath the rage, beneath the mortification, he's feeling something he has to recognize as relief.
She's risen and crossed the room; she perches beside him on the horsehair sofa. "We never dared speak out. We hinted, we probed on occasion, but how could we put words to our dreadful deductions, when you were too gallant to hear a word against her? In conscience, we couldn't take it upon ourselves to be the first to accuse the mother of your children, without firm evidence—but I can tell you now, it seemed to us in Malta that Helen's dealings with various man-friends were consistent with the worst interpretation!"
Various man-friends? Harry's head suddenly weighs too much for him; he drops it into his hands. The points of his collar prick his jaw like knives. He tries to answer, but all that comes out is a sob. The tears stop up his mouth: slippery in his palms, soaking his beard, spilling into his collar and cravat. Salt as seawater but hot. He's weeping like a child, weeping for all the times over the years that he's shrugged instead, weeping for all he hoped when he stood up in that chapel in Florence beside his dazzling little bride and said so ringingly, I do.
Beside him, Mrs. Watson waits.
Finally he clears his throat with a sound like a rockfall. "I've been an utter idiot," he says into his wet fingers.
"Never that! Only the best of husbands." Her voice is as sweet as a mother's. "We considered you as a martyr among men, didn't we, Reverend?"
"We did," confides the old man.
Harry is mopping himself up with his handkerchief. "Well," he says through the folds of cotton. "No longer."
"No," agrees Mrs. Watson. "There comes an end to forbearance. For the little girls' sake—"
At the thought of Nan and Nell, he almost breaks down again.
"—not to mention your own. For the sake of religion, and, and decency itself," she goes on, "you must prove her guilt."
He balks at the word. "Or otherwise. It's still possible—"
"Of course, of course. It must be investigated, that's the word I was looking for," she assures him. "Enquiries must be made."
"How—" Harry breaks off. "It's all so tawdry."
"That's why it had much better be put on a professional footing at once, oughtn't it, Reverend?"
"Oh yes, at once, my dear."
"So that a man of your noble character needn't be embroiled in sordid details," she tells Harry.
"Professional?" he repeats dully.
"Why don't you let us play Good Samaritans—leave that in our hands?" says Mrs. Watson, giving him a light, careful pat on the sleeve.
Engagement
(an agreement to enter into marriage;
the act of giving someone a job;
a hostile meeting of opposing forces)
The fast young lady and the strong-minded woman are
twins, born on the same day, and nourished with the same
food, but one chose scarlet and the other hodden gray; one
took to woman's right to be dissipated and vulgar, the other
to her right to be unwomanly and emancipated.
Eliza Lynn Linton,
"Modern English Women No. 11,"
London Review (December 15, 1860)
Is it possible to silence that bird?" asks Fido, at Eccleston Square that same afternoon.