Chapter 13

There was a convention of silence between Caro and Rose. From that day forward neither made any allusion to the escapade which had ended so unexpectedly. At the same time it was from the other's silence that each learned most; for Caro knew that if her eyes had deceived her and that last kiss been like the first, for fun, Rose would have spoken of it—while Rose knew that Caro had seen the transmutation of her joke into earnest, because if she had not she would have been full of comments, questions, and scoldings.
 
Sometimes Caro in her innocence would think that she ought to speak to Rose, warn her, and plead with her to go carefully. But a vague fright sealed her lips, and she was held at a distance by the reserve in which the merry communicative Rose had suddenly wrapped herself. Those few minutes by the brookside had changed her, though it would be hard to say exactly in what the change lay. Caro was both repelled and baffled by it. A more skilled observer would say that Rose had become suddenly adult in her outlook as well as her emotions. For the first time she had seen in its sorrowful reality the force which she had played with for so many years. The shock disorganised her, drove her into a strange silence. Love and she had always been hail-fellow-well-met, they had romped and rollicked together through life; she had never thought that her good comrade could change, or rather—more unimaginable still—that she should suddenly discover that she had never really known him.

She was sobered. Her attitude towards things insensibly altered—to her husband, her child, her servants she was different, and yet in such a manner that none could possibly lay hands on the difference. Reuben's jealousies and suspicions were increased. She avoided Handshut, and she flourished the shopmen and clerks but feebly, yet he mistrusted her in a way he had never done when her enthusiasms were flagrant. This was not due to any psychological deduction, rather to a vague kind of guess, an intuition, an uneasiness that communicated itself from her to him.

Rose had begun to question her attitude towards her husband. She had hitherto never doubted for a moment that she loved him—of course she loved him! But now she asked herself—"If I love him, how is it that our most tender moments have never meant so much to me as that second kiss of Handshut's?" None of Reuben's kisses stood out in her memory as that kiss,[Pg 287] he had never made the thrill of life go through her, he had never filled her heart to bursting with joy so infinite that it was sorrow, and sorrow so exquisite that it was joy. She would observe Reuben, and she would see him—old. He was fifty-four, and his hair was grey; there were crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes, and straight lines between his brows, where he had furrowed them as the pitiless sun beat down upon his face. There were other lines too, seamed and scored by hard struggles. He was strong as an ox, but she told herself he was beginning to move a bit stiffly. He had exposed himself so ruthlessly to the wet and cold that his joints had become rheumatic. It was nothing very much, but he liked to have her rub them occasionally, and up till then she had liked it too. Now she suddenly saw something dreary and preposterous in it—here she was married to a man thirty years older than herself, his chattel, his slave. She did not really love him—how could she, with all those years between them? She was fond of him, that was all—and he was getting older, and horribly cantankerous; and she was young—oh, God! she had never known till then how young.

Then suddenly it all changed. One day she found herself alone with Handshut—and nothing happened. His manner was quite that of the respectful servant towards his mistress, he made no allusion to the scene by the brook, spoke entirely of indifferent things. And she, she herself—that was the biggest, best surprise of all—did not feel the slightest embarrassment, or the slightest pang. On the contrary, all the passion which had scorched and withered her heart since the day of the kiss, seemed to die away, leaving her the old Rose, gay, confident, and at peace with all men.

She had been a fool—she had brooded over a little trivial incident till it had assumed unwarranted proportions and frightened her. Nothing whatever had happened to her and Handshut—they had shared a joke,[Pg 288] that was all. She did not love him, she loved her husband, and she was a fool to have thought anything else. Love was not a drama or a tragedy, but a game and a lark, or at times a comfortable emotion towards one's lawful husband, who was the best and finest man in the world.

The joy of this discovery quite restored Rose, and she flirted with Handshut so outrageously in front of Reuben, that afterwards they had one of the biggest quarrels of their lives.