Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
You are quite right! I have tried to avoid speaking bitterly to him, I must not speak bitterly about him. But, when the news came to me, I said: “Now indeed the bottom has fallen out of the world.” It was towards the end of the year, and I had been turning the pages of my journal. Catastrophe, disappointment, anxiety. . . But, whatever storms may blow, I said, I can always trust my husband. Arthur was my rock and anchor. He and I seemed to stand erect, with our heads level with the stars, while these others, one after another, tripped and sprawled. And then Arthur too. . .
I tell you now, as I told you then: I had heard and suspected nothing until you put me on my guard. I truly believe that the person most affected is commonly the last to hear. . . And Arthur’s way of life made it almost impossible for me even to guess: for years he has spent as much time away from me as with me—his board-meetings in London and Birmingham, his shooting . . . and, with Will at home, there was so much unhappy friction that I was not sorry when one or other went off and left me in peace for a few days. I did not enquire; so was it surprising that, if the board-meetings and so on were simply a blind, I should be the last person to hear? So with money.
182
