Majendie had waited for this. He believed that if the child made her so
happy, she could hardly continue to cherish an aversion from its father.
In the months that followed he witnessed the slow destruction of this
hope. The very fact that Anne had become "normal" made its end more
certain. There were no longer any affecting moods, any divine caprices
for him to look to, nor was there much likelihood of a profounder change.
Such as his wife was now, she always would be.
She had settled down.
And he had accepted the situation.
He had had his illusions. He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and
sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It
kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came
to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell
asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It
had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small
tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had
abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said
to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. She has no further use
for me."
Thus the child that should have united separated them. Anne took from
him whatever small comfort it might have given him. She was disposed to
ignore those paternal passages in the night-watches, and to combat the
idea of his devotion to the child. That situation he had accepted, too.
But Anne, in appearing to accept everything, accepted nothing. She was
conscious of a mute rebellion, even of a certain disloyalty of the
imagination. She disapproved of Majendie more than ever. She guarded
her own purity now as her child's inheritance, and her motherhood
strengthened her spiritual revolt. Her mind turned sometimes to the ideal
father of her child, evoking visions of the Minor Canon whom her soul had
loved. Lent brought the image of the Minor Canon nearer to her, and
towards his perfections she turned the tender face of her dreams, while
she presented to her husband the stern face of duty. She had never
swerved from that. There was no reason why she should close her door to
him, since the material bond was torture to her, and the ramparts of the
spiritual life rose high. Her marriage was more than ever a martyrdom and
a sacrifice, redemptive, propitiatory of powers she abhorred and but
dimly understood.
Majendie was aware that she had now no attitude to him but one of apathy
touched by repugnance. He accepted the apathy, but the repugnance he
could not accept. The very tenderness and fineness of his nature held him
back from that, and Anne found once more her refuge in his chivalry. She
made no attempt to reconcile it with her estimate of him.
By the time the child was a year old their separation was complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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