That, to Celia, was the end of the story.
Everything that happened afterwards seemed to her not to count. There were proceedings in a police court – there was the cockney young man who pulled her out of the river – there was the magistrate’s censure – the paragraphs in the Press – Dermot’s annoyance – Miss Hood’s loyalty – all that seemed unimportant and dreamlike to Celia as she sat up in bed telling me about it.
She didn’t think of committing suicide again.
She admitted that it had been very wicked of her to try. She was doing exactly what she blamed Dermot for doing – abandoning Judy.
‘I felt,’ she said, ‘that the only thing I could do to make up was to live only for Judy and never think of myself again … I felt ashamed …’
She and Miss Hood and Judy had gone abroad to Switzerland.
There Dermot had written to her, enclosing the necessary evidence for divorce.
She hadn’t done anything about it for some time.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘I felt too bewildered. I just wanted to do anything he asked, so that I should be left in peace … I was afraid – of more things happening to me. I’ve been afraid ever since …
‘So I didn’t know what to do about it … Dermot thought I didn’t do anything because I was vindictive … It wasn’t that. I’d promised Judy not to let her father go … And here I was ready to give in just through sheer disgusting cowardice … I wished – oh, how I wished – that he and Marjorie would go away together – then I could have divorced them … I could have said to Judy afterwards: “I had no choice …” Dermot wrote to me saying all his friends thought I was behaving disgracefully … all his friends … that same phrase!
‘I waited … I wanted just to rest – somewhere safe – where Dermot couldn’t get at me. I was terrified of his coming and storming at me again … You can’t give in to a thing because you’re terrified. It isn’t decent. I know I’m a coward – I’ve always been a coward – I hate noise or scenes – I’ll do anything – anything to be left in peace … But I didn’t give in out of fear. I stuck it out …
‘I got strong again in Switzerland … I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. Not to want to cry every time you walked up a hill. Not to feel sick whenever you looked at food. And that awful neuralgia in my head went away. Mental misery and physical misery is too much to have together … You can bear one or the other – not both …
‘In the end, when I felt really strong and well again, I went back to England. I wrote to Dermot. I said I didn’t believe in divorce … I believed (though it might be old-fashioned and wrong in his eyes) in staying together and bearing things for the sake of the children. I said that people often told you that it was better for children if parents who didn’t get on together parted. I said that I didn’t think that was true. Children needed their parents – both parents – because they were their own flesh and blood – quarrels or bickering didn’t matter half so much to children as grown-up people imagine – perhaps even it’s a good thing. It teaches them what life is like … My home was too happy. It made me grow up a fool … I said too, that he and I never had quarrelled. We had always got on well together …
‘I said I didn’t think love affairs with other people ought to matter very much … He could be quite free – so long as he was kind to Judy and a good father to her. And I told him again that I knew he meant more to Judy than I could ever mean. She only wanted me physically – like a little animal when she was ill, but it was he and she who belonged together in mind.
‘I said if he came back I wouldn’t reproach him – or ever throw things in his face. I asked if we couldn’t just be kind to each other because we’d both suffered.
‘I said the choice lay with him, but he must remember that I didn’t want or believe in divorce, and that if he chose that, the responsibility rested with him only.
‘He wrote back and sent me fresh evidence …
‘I divorced him …
‘It was all rather beastly … divorce is …
‘Standing up before a lot of people … answering questions … intimate questions … chambermaids …
‘I hated it all. It made me sick.
‘It must be easier to be divorced. You don’t have to be there …
‘So, you see, I gave in, after all. Dermot got his way. I might as well have given way at the beginning and saved myself a lot of pain and horror …
‘I don’t know whether I’m glad I didn’t give in earlier or not …
‘I don’t even know why I did give in – because I was tired and wanted peace – or because I became convinced it was the only thing to be done, or because, after all, I wanted to give in to Dermot …
‘I think, sometimes, it was the last …
‘That’s why, ever since, I’ve felt guilty when Judy looked at me …
‘In the end, you see, I betrayed Judy for Dermot.’