THEREwas a terrible silence in the little arbour.
Outside, in the garden, the sun and the flowers, the birds and the insects, went on with their song of rejoicing as before, but it reached no longer the ears of the two human beings who but now had re-echoed it in their hearts.
Was it hours or only minutes that it lasted —this silence as of death.
At last Ralph spoke, quietly—so very quietly, that though Marion could not see his face, his voice made her start with a strange, unknown terror.
“And who did this thing?” he asked. “Who forced you into this hideous mockery of a marriage?”
“No one,” she replied; “no one did it but myself. You can’t understand. Ralph;” and the anguish of appeal and remorse in her voice made it sound like a wailing cry. “You can never know all I have endured. I was so wretched, so very wretched; so utterly, utterly desolate and alone. And then I heard that of you, and I lost my trust, and it nearly killed me. Your own words had warned me not to build too securely on what might be beyond your power to achieve.” Ralph ground his teeth, but she went on: “I thought I was going to die, and I was glad. But I did not die, and he was kind and gentle to me, and I was alone. And I thought—oh! I thought, Ralph, till this very morning, that I had torn you out of my heart. The scar, I knew, would be always there, but the love itself, I thought it was dead and buried; and only just now I sat here thinking to myself in my blindness and folly, that I could even see the grass be ginning to grow on the grave.”
“And your husband?” Ralph asked, in the same dead, hard, feelingless tone. “Your husband—I forget the name you told me—do you then care for him? Do you love him?”
“Love him!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Ralph, have mercy! I did not mean to deceive him! I told him I could not give him what he gave me; for he, I know, loves me. He is good and true, and very kind to me. And he urged it very much, and said he was not afraid; he would be content with what I said, what I thought Icouldgive him. For remember, Ralph, that other I thought was dead—dead and buried for ever. I care for him too much to have yielded had I known it was not so. But ‘lovehim!’ When I think of the days when first I learnt what that word means, when you taught it me, Ralph—you, and no other! And now you ask me, calmly, if I lovehim! You of all!” She stopped suddenly, as if horrified at herself; and then, her excitement changed to bitter shame and self-reproach, she cried in an anguish, “Oh! what am I saying? Why has it all come back when I thought it was gone? You are making me wicked to Geoffrey. Ralph! Ralph! why do you mock me with these cruel questions? Have mercy! Have a little mercy!”
“Mercy!” said Ralph, turning from the door-post on which he had been leaning, and rising to his full height as he spoke. Standing right in front of her, and with a strange change in his voice. “ ‘Mercy!’ you ask? Yes child, I will have mercy. Mercy on you and on myself, who have done nothing, either of us, deserving of this hideous torment. You are ‘married’ you tell me—married to another man—but I tell you,you are not. Thatwas a blasphemous mockery of a marriage!Iam your husband, I, and no other! You are mine, Marion, and no one else’s! My wife! my own! Come away with me, child, now, this very moment, and have done at once and for ever with this horrible night-mare that is killing me. For I cannot lose you again! Oh, my God! I cannot!” And as he spoke, he tried to draw her towards him, not gently, but roughly, violently almost, in sore passion of anguish which was enraging him.
Hitherto, since he had begun to speak, Marion had allowed him to hold her clasped hand in his. But now, as she felt the hold of his fingers tighten, and as the full meaning of his wild, mad words broke upon her, with a sudden movement she rose from the bench on which she was sitting, and tore herself from his grasp, growing at the same moment as if by magic, perfectly, icily calm.
But only for an instant did her instinct of indignation against him last. One glance at the dark, passionate, storm-tossed face beside her—so changed, so terribly, sadly changed in its expression from its usual calm, gentle kindliness—and her mood softened. She laid her hand trustingly on his arm.
“Ralph,” she said, “poor Ralph, hush! If you are for a moment weak, I must be strong for both. This is terrible that has come upon us—so terrible that just now I do not see that I can bear it and live. For you know all my heart, and you can judge if it is not to the full as terrible for me as for you.” (This she said in her innocent instinct of appealing to his pity for her.) “You at least are alone—are bound by no vows to another, and that other, alas, so good and kind. I had rather, ten thousand times rather, he were hard and unloving and cruel! But though just now I can see nothing else, this one thing I see plainly—you must go Ralph, you must leave me now at once, and we must never, never see each other again. There is just one little glimpse of light left in the thought that hitherto we have neither of us done anything to forfeit the other’s respect—unless indeed that deceit of mine?—but no,” she added, glancing at his face, “I know you have not thought worse of me for that. Do not let us destroy this poor little rag of comfort left us, Ralph. Let me still think of you as good and brave—yes, as the best and bravest. And do not tempt me, Ralph, to say at this terrible moment what in calmer times might cause me shame and remorse to remember.” And she raised her face to his with a very agony of appeal in the grey eyes he loved so fervently.
“Child,” he said, still with the hard look on his face, “child, are you an angel or a stone? Have you a heart or have you none? If after all you are just like other women; utterly incapable of entering into the depths a man’s one love; at least you should pity what you cannot understand, instead of maddening me with that conventional humbug about mutual respect and so on. Who but a woman would talk so at such a time? But I will do as you wish,” he went on, lashing himself into fury against her, “I will not stay here longer to tempt you by my evil presence to outrage your delicate sense of propriety, or to say one word which hereafter you might consider it had not been perfectly ‘correct’ or ‘ladylike’ to utter. Good God! what a fool I have been! I had imagined you somewhat different from other women, but I see my mistake. It shall be as you wish. Good bye. You shall not again be distressed by the sight of me. Truly you do well to despise me.”
And with a bitter sneer in his voice, he turned away. It was at last too much. The girl threw herself down recklessly on the rough garden-seat. She shed no tears, she was not the sort of woman to weep in such dire extremity of anguish. She shook and quivered as she lay there, but that was all.
But soon the thought came over her “was it not better so?” Better that Ralph should thus cruelly misjudge her, for in the end it might help him to forget her. Forget her—yes. This was what she must now pray for, if her love for him were worthy of the name.
“Ah but he might have said good-bye gently,” broke forth again from the over-charged heart. “He might have spoken kindly when it was for the last, last time.”
As the wish crossed her thoughts, and she half unconsciously murmured it in words, she felt that some one was beside her. An arm raised her gently and replaced her on the seat. It was Ralph again. Something in his touch soothed and quieted her. She did not this time shrink from him in alarm, but for a moment leant her throbbing head restfully on his shoulder.
“Marion, my poor child. Marion, my lost darling, forgive me.”
“Forgive you, Ralph? Yes, a thousand times, yes,” she replied. “But do not so grievously misjudge me. It is no conventional humbug, as you call it. It is the old plain question of right and wrong.”
As she said the words there flashed across her mind—or was it some mocking imp that whispered it?—the remembrance of some other scene, when this same phrase, “a plain question of right and wrong,” had been used by herself or another. When was it? Ah yes! Long, long ago, the first morning in the little house at Altes. She recalled it all perfectly. The room in which they sat, the position of their chairs. And she heard Cissy’s voice saying, timidly, “I don’t pretend to be as wise as you, May, but are you quite sure there is not a plain question of right and wrong in the matter?” And, to add to her misery, the thought darted into her mind—what if she had then allowed herself to see it thus? If instead of acting as she had done to screen him, she had encouraged Harry bravely to appeal to her father, how different might all have been? This terrible complication avoided, her life and Ralph’s saved from this irremediable agony? Could it indeed be that this terrible punishment had come upon her for this?
Well for us is it, truly, that our sins and mistakes are not judged as in such times of morbid misery and exaggerated self reproach we are apt to imagine!
The remembrance of that bygone scene at Altes flashed through Marion’s mind in an instant, but not too quickly to add its sting to her suffering. And, half mechanically, she repeated:
“Yes, the old plain question of right and wrong.”
“I know it is,” said Ralph, “and I knew it in my heart when you just now said it. I was mad, I think, doubly mad. First, to torture you with my wild, wicked words, and then to turn upon you with my sneers. So I have come back to you for a moment, just for one little last moment, child, to ask you to forgive me and say goodbye. Look up at me, dear, and let me see that you forgive me.”
She looked up at him; looked with her true, clear eyes into his, while he gazed down on her—oh, with what an agony of earnestness, as if he would burn her face into his brain for ever!
For a moment neither spoke.
Then he said:
“It is as if one of us were dying, Marion, though that I think would be easy to bear compared with this. ‘The bitterness of death’ they talk of! All, they little know! Good-bye, my own true darling. My one love, my life’s love—goodbye.” And as he said the words he stooped and kissed her—gently, but long and fervently, on the forehead.
Poor Ralph! It was the first time.
Was it wrong of her to allow it? Those who think so may judge her, and I for one shall not argue it with them.
She stood with bent head, motionless, staring at the ground, but seeing nothing. Then she looked up hastily, with eyes for the first time blinded with burning, slow-coming tears. Tears that bring no relief, wrung from the sore agony of a bleeding heart.
But he was gone!
And so “the old, old story” was over for ever for these two; as for how many others, whose suffering is never suspected!
Ralph walked back slowly to the inn, along the very garden path which half-an-hour before, half a lifetime it seemed to him, he had paced so light-heartedly. The same little stiff box-edging he had noticed before, the same scent from the roses and honeysuckle, the same sun and sky and air. Then, he remembered he had said to himself, it was all sweet and bright and fair. Could he have said so? Was the change in himself only? “Could it indeed be,” he asked, as we all do at these awful times, beating our poor bruised wings against the bars of the inexorable “it is”—“couldit be that nature should remain thus unmoved and indifferent when human beings were riven in agony?”
And a feeling of intensest disgust, amounting almost to rage, seized him at the sight of the hateful, heartless, beautiful world! But when he found this mood coming over him he checked it violently.
“I shall go mad,” he thought, “if I yield to this just now. I must not think of my part of it yet. Time enough for that soon— Time enough, surely, in the desolation of the long years stretching away before me.” And he writhed at the thought. “What can I do?” he asked himself, “what can I do to lighten it to her, or to strengthen her to bear it? Oh, my darling, my darling. I that would have sheltered you from sorrow as never yet woman was sheltered. And to think that of all living beings on this earth, I am the one who must ever to you be less than nothing! But I am maddening myself again.”
A sudden idea struck him.
“Yes,” he thought. “I should like to see him. One glance at his face would give me a better notion of him than anything I could gather by hearsay. And it will be a sort of satisfaction to know in whose hands my poor child’s future lies.”
But on thinking it over he remembered that actually he had heard and asked nothing about this same “him.” In the absorbing personal interest of his interview with Marion he had forgotten all but themselves.
Whom she had married, what his station, where they had met—was utterly unknown to him. Nor, indeed, if she had attempted to tell would he have cared to listen. All, in that first bitter, bewildering agony, was to him comprised in the fact that she did in truth belong to another.
He walked on slowly through the garden, the hot sun beating on his head, trying as he went to recall the name which he half fancied had been once mentioned by Marion. But in vain. When he got to the house he was seized upon by the landlord and obliged to listen to a long string of apologies for the over-done state of the unfortunate chop. Various emissaries had been despatched, it appeared, to inform him that his “something in the way of lunch” was ready, but had all failed in their mission. “Not expectin’, sir, as you would have strolled beyond the garden, which as being so you must please excuse.”
“Certainly,” replied poor Ralph, feeling that indeed his cup had not been full if he were now to be called upon to partake of this wretched chop in the presence of landlord, waiters, and stable boys, as appeared to be their intention. But he succeeded in dismissing them; and, thankful for silence and solitude, sat down to his semblance of a meal in the little parlour opening out of the hall.
While eating, or making a pretence of so doing, he kept his mind directed to the consideration of his present object; a sight for himself of the “him,” the husband who possessed for him so strange an interest. After a time he rang the bell, intending to enter into conversation with the waiter, and to gather from him indirectly the information he sought. In the meantime, however, a new arrival had distracted the attention of the household of the Peacock, and his summons was not at once obeyed. While waiting he turned to the window and stared out vacantly, as we so often do when utterly indifferent to all passing around us. But Ralph’s indifference was not of long duration. A carriage drove into the little court-yard, drew up at the door, and a gentleman alighted—jumped out in a light-hearted, boyish fashion, hardly waiting till the horse had stopped. He was smoking, and had several letters in his hand, one of which he appeared to be in the act of reading. He stood still for a moment, then sauntered leisurely into the porch and remained there while he finished the perusal of his letter. It was Geoffrey.
From where Ralph stood at the parlour window, he had an excellent view of the young man, whom he no sooner caught sight of than he felt an intuitive conviction that here before him was Marion’s husband.
Geoffrey for a wonder was in a thoughtful mood, or looked so at least, as he stood there reading his letter under the shade of the honeysuckle and clematis climbing over the porch, the sunlight between the branches falling softly on his bright brown hair. A pleasant picture truly; and so Ralph owned to himself as he looked at him. The tall, manly figure, the fair, almost boyish face, made an attractive whole. It was a strange position. The two men, as to years nearly of an age, but in all else so marvellously dissimilar. And yet though utter strangers to each other, with the one absorbing interest in common. Ralph, from his concealment, gazed at the young man, standing in perfect unconsciousness full in his view, as if he would read every smallest characteristic, every hidden feeling of his heart. Never did anxious mother scan more narrowly the man to whom she was asked to confide her darling’s happiness, than did Ralph the countenance of his unconscious rival, the being who had robbed him of all that made life worth having.
Just then some one from within came to the door and spoke to Geoffrey. It was only a servant with some trivial message, but Ralph, still watching earnestly, noticed the gentle courtesy, the smile sunnying over the clear, honest eyes and mouth, the frank, bright readiness with which the young man looked up and answered. Then refolding the letter he had been reading, replaced it in his pocket, and sauntered away in an opposite direction.
“Yes,” thought Ralph, “I am satisfied she spoke truly. Heis‘good and true and kind.’ And attractive too, personally, very. Most women would not find it difficult to love that man. But then, alas, my poor child is not like most women! Come what may however, I don’t think that man will ever be unkind to her. Heaven knows I am not vain, but it would be nonsense to pretend to myself that I think she will ever come to feel for him, good fellow though I don’t doubt he is, what I know she has felt for me. But yet, in time and when totally separated from all associations connected with me, I trust a sort of moonlight happiness may yet be in store for her.”
Here Ralph’s reflections were interrupted by the tardy entrance of the servant, who waited to receive his orders.
“How soon will the horses be ready?” asked he.
“Whenever you please, Sir,” replied the man. “In a quarter of an hour at most your carriage can be round.”
“Very well,” said Ralph, “you can order it to come round in twenty minutes from now. In the meantime, bring me pens and ink and paper, as I have a letter to write,” adding as the man was leaving the room, “By-the-by, who is the gentleman that drove in just now?”
“Mr. Baldwin, Sir. Comes from Brentshire, I believe. Least-ways the lady’s maid does. Mrs. Baldwin is here too, Sir. A walkin’ in the garden she is, I believe. Were you wishing to speak to Mr. Baldwin, Sir? He has just stepped round to look at a horse which the ostler was thinking might carry the lady while here, but I can run after him if so be you wish to see him, Sir.”
“I; oh dear no, not at all,” replied Ralph, who began to think a more appropriate sign for the little inn would have been “The Magpie.” “Only be so good as bring in the writing materials at once.”
When they were brought, he sat down and wrote; quickly and unhesitatingly, as if perfectly prepared with what he had to say. His letter folded and directed, he sauntered out into the garden again.
“There’s just a chance,” he thought, “that I may get it unobserved into her own hands, otherwise I must post it, which, however, I would much prefer not to risk.”
Looking about he spied a small boy busy weeding. He called the child to him and led him, to the top of the long narrow path, at the end of which was the green with the peacock bush in the centre, and the old arbour at the side. He felt no doubt that Marion was still there, her husband fortunately having gone to the stables.
“Now, my boy,” said he, “run as fast as you can to the summer-house down there and give this letter to the lady you’ll see there. If she is gone bring it back to me. Be as quick as you can and I’ll have a shilling ready for you when you come back.”
The child was soon back again.
“Was the lady still there?” asked Ralph.
“Yes, Sir,” said the little messenger, glowing with delight at the thought of a day’s wages so easily earned. “Yes, Sir, the young lady were there, and she said, ‘Thank you, and would I give this to the gentleman,’ ” holding out a little turquoise ring, as he spoke. A simple, common little ring enough. She had had it from childhood. He had often seen it on her little finger. He seized it eagerly, and turned away. Then recollecting himself, he gave the boy the promised reward, thanked him quietly, and returned to the house.
At the door the post-chaise stood waiting, and in another minute he was gone, thankful at last to feel free to think over, as he phrased it,hispart of the day’s tragedy. Think of it! Did he evernotthink of it during that weary day and night, and many a weary day and night to come? Women say men do not know what it is to be broken-hearted! That little turquoise ring might have told a different tale.
“I wonder,” thought Ralph as he drove along on his solitary hopeless journey. “I wonder what she will think it right to do. She said her part was the worse to bear. I fear it is. She is stronger and more unselfish than most women, but, on the other hand, she is truthful and ingenuous. Will she be strong enough forhissake to leave things as they are, to let him think that at least she is giving him nolessthan she promised? Or will it be impossible for her to live with him without to some extent confiding in him, even though by so doing she wrecks, for the time at least, his happiness, poor fellow, and what chance she has of any herself? I see no distinct right or wrong in the case, but I wonder what she will do. Oh, if I could have saved her this! Suffering for myself I can bear. If only I could have borne it all, my burden would have seemed lighter!”
He caught the express at Bexley and went on in it to London. For no reason, with no object, save that he felt it would be a relief to him to escape the unendurable cross-questioning which would certainly have awaited him, had he returned straight to Friar’s Springs.
Late in the evening, as he travelled on through the twilight into the intense darkness of a moon-less midsummer night, a strange feeling came over him, bringing with it a faint, slight breath of consolation.
“She said truly,” he thought, “that I was more fortunate than she in that I am free and unfettered, bound by no uncongenial ties to another. For me at least it is no sin to love her still, for I know it is not in my nature ever to replace her by any other woman. And who knows but what some day in the far future, though I may never see her again, I may in some way be able to serve her, to lighten the lot it is so bitter to me to think I have been the means of darkening.” And somehow there came into his mind the remembrance of a well-known, simple little German ballad, that years and years ago, as a mere boy, he had liked and been struck by. For he had been peculiar as a boy—dreamy, morbid and sentimental. The two last verses rang in his ears that night, over and over again he heard them. And ever after they were associated with what this bitter day had brought to pass. And the face of the dead maiden on the bier grew to him like that of his own lost love.
These were the words that thus haunted him—
“Der dritte hub ihn wieder sogleichUnd kusste sie an den Mund so bleich.”“Dich liebt’ ich immer, dich lieb ich noch heut,Und werde dich lieben in Ewigkeit.”
From London a day or two later he wrote to his mother, telling her simply, and in as few words as possible, that the hopes he had confided to her, were utterly and for ever at an end. He begged her to spare him the pain of entering into useless particulars, and enjoined her never, if she valued his peace and comfort, to allude to the affair directly or indirectly to him or anyone else.
Lady Severn obeyed him implicitly, and only in the recesses of her own heart, as I said, abused “Sir Archibald’s niece” for the sorrow she had brought upon her son.
Late in the autumn, after seeing his mother and nieces comfortably re-established at Medhurst, and assisting at the gorgeous nuptials of Florence Vyse and Mr. Chepstow, Sir Ralph left England for an indefinite time: to travel in strange and distant lands, in search—not of happiness—but of interest and occupation sufficient to make life endurable.
“O death, death, death, thou ever floating cloud,There are enough unhappy on this earth,Pass by the happy souls that love to live:I pray thee pass before my light of lifeAnd shadow all my soul that I may die.Thou weighest heavy on the heart within,Weigh heavy on my eyelids: let me die.”
ŒNONE.
THISwas the letter the little boy gave to the young lady in the arbour, and which without moving from her seat she opened and read. It was addressed outside correctly enough to “Mrs. Baldwin.” It was the first letter she had ever received from Ralph! She read it slowly, though it was short enough, dwelling on each phrase, each word, with the sort of hungry eagerness with which we strain our ears to catch each last precious whisper from loved lips which we know shall soon, very soon, be silent for ever.
“Marion,” it began, “my dearest, for I may call you that in the only letter I shall ever write to you. I said just now it was as if one of us were dying—will you try to receive what I am going to say to you as if indeed it were a dying man’s request? It may seem cruel and heartless to ask it just now, but it is my last chance; and afterwards, though you may reject it just now, my earnest entreaty may come back to your mind. What I would ask of you, my poor child, is to try to be happy. For the sake of the love you have had for me, for the sake of the love you well know I have for you, let me leave you trusting that some day you may again be at least as happy, as you were today when I so rudely destroyed the poor little fabric you had begun to build up.
You are so young, my child, so young and sweet-natured, and your husband you tell me is good and kind. I have seen him, and I believe he is so. Happiness cannot but to some extent return to you, if only you do not repel it by dwelling on the past or by undeserved self-reproach. Let me trust you will not do this; let me urge on you with more earnestness than I know how to put in words not to refuse or shut out from you the sunshine which will still come into your life. To know that you are happy is the one remaining great wish of my life.
For me it is very different. I am not young and I have been accustomed to live alone. You are the only being I ever took into my life; and I must now return to the old loneliness, only a little drearier and darker than before, for having known one short blessed glimpse of light.
God bless you, my dearest, and lighten to you the terrible trial it has been my bitter fate to bring upon you. Leave me the hope that some day you may be able to think of me without suffering. Forget all about me except that you had never a truer friend, or one who would more gladly sacrifice himself to ensure your well-being, than
“RALPHSEVERN.”
She read it slowly and quietly. No one observing her would have guessed from the expression of her face that its contents were of more than ordinary interest. In point of fact she hardly as yet understood it. She was still stunned and bewildered: otherwise it is probable that her first sensation on reading Ralph’s letter would have been of indignation, bitter anger at him for daring to speak to her of such a mockery as “happiness,” for thinking it possible that a human being could bear such torture as hers and live.
But as yet no such reflection occurred to her, no definite thought of any kind was at present possible for her. The short-lived strength which had enabled her to think and decide rightly both for herself and Ralph, had already deserted her. She was literally crushed; unable even to realize what had taken place; in a dull stupor of suffering, which to natures like hers comes instead of the physical unconsciousness, in weaker organisations succeeding to extremity of nervous tension and over-excitement.
After a time she grew chilly, and the sensation roused her somewhat to a consciousness of the outer world.
She wondered why she shivered and trembled with cold, for the sun was still shining outside, and all looked bright and warm. Then the thought occurred to her that soon Geoffrey would be returning from Bexley, and she wished she could reach her room unobserved by him or her maid. Once there, it would be easy to say she felt ill, and thus obtain some hours’ quiet and solitude in which to brace herself for what lay before her. For what lay before her, she repeated to herself. Words easy to say, but in her case what did they mean? She could not tell, could not even attempt to consider.
She rose from her seat, first folding and concealing the precious letter, and began slowly to walk towards the house. Her steps at first tottered a little, but gradually became steadier. There was no one about the door as she approached it, so she took courage, and succeeded in gaining her own room without meeting any one but a stupid, unobservant servant or two, who noticed nothing unusual in her appearance.
She looked at her face in the queer, old-fashioned toilet glass. It was pale as death, and her lips looked blue. So she drank some water, and drew down the blinds, and then in her old childish fashion threw herself down on the side of the bed, hiding her face in the pillow.
“Now,” she said to herself,” I will begin to think. What must I do? How can meet Geoffrey? What ought I to tell him?”
Hopeless questions; unanswerable at least by the poor child in the state she was in. She thought it all over, again and again, that strange scene in the garden. There was a terrible fascination about it. She reminded herself of every word he had uttered, every glance and gesture through the whole of the interview. She could not force herself to think of anything else. Geoffrey, her future life, everything but this one remembrance seemed of little consequence.
Gradually she found herself thinking of it all as if it had happened to some one else and not to her; as if she had seen it acted on the stage, or read it in a book; and then she seemed to have known it always. It was nothing new—the arbour, and the flowers, and the sunshine, the dark figure in the doorway, their mutual amazement, the mingled anguish and joy of their meeting, the agony of their farewell—all seemed to have been a part of her whole life; she had never been separate from it; she would evermore exist in the thought of it.
Then the images became confused. She was no longer herself, but some one else, who, she could not decide. Ralph, still standing in the doorway, grew strangely like Geoffrey. Again a change—the whole was a dream. She was back at Altes, with Cissy and Ralph on the terrace, and Ralph was smiling on her lovingly while she recounted to him the terrible dream that had visited her. She was asleep! From very exhaustion, both mental and physical, from extremity of suffering, though compressed into the short space of a few hours, she was for the time laid to rest in the peaceful unconsciousness, which, though the waking therefrom may be bitter, is yet, at such times, an unspeakable mercy. I am not learned in medical matters, but I believe this sleep saved her from a brain fever or worse.
Geoffrey came in from his visit to the stables, which had been prolonged beyond his intentions. Not finding his wife in the little sitting-room appropriated to their use, he came along the passage to seek her in her bedroom. He was not a light stepper, and his boots creaked loudly as he approached the room. But the sound did not disturb her, nor did his tap on the door. He repeated it, but with no effect. Then, imagining she must be in the garden, he opened the door, merely to glance in and satisfy himself as to her absence. The room was very dark, all the blinds drawn down, and a general air of sombreness and desertedness. No, there was her hat on the floor, and a glance at the bed revealed herself. In no very comfortable attitude, just as she had flung herself down, but fast asleep, breathing soft and regularly as an infant, and, as he looked more closely, with a sweet smile on her lips, though her face looked paler than its wont.
“My poor darling,” murmured Geoffrey to himself, “she has been tired with her long morning alone. I must not leave her again for so long. She looks pale too. I trust she has not been ill.”
And very gently he drew the bed-curtains so as to shade her still more from the light, closed the door with noiseless hand, and softly crept back along the passage to occupy himself as best he could without her, till she awoke.
Already he had grown very dependent upon her. Indoors especially. He never felt quite in his element in the house, his life for many years past having literally been almost altogether spent in the open air.
But now it was very different. Indoors meant Marion and cheerful talk, flowers and work, and books even in moderation now and then; a sweet face, and a graceful flitting figure, and tea at all hours of the day, and pipes only on sufferance! It was all so new to him, so wonderfully pretty and delicate, this atmosphere of womanhood for the first time really brought home to him, great rough clod-hopper as he called himself. And if so unspeakably charming here, in a strange, unhomelike house, what would it not be at the Manor Farm, where this sweet presence was to take root and bloom for evermore? “Till death u do part!” came into Geoffrey’s mind that afternoon, as he fidgeted about, not knowing what to do with himself, wishing she would wake, and yet afraid to go near her for fear of disturbing her. “Till death us do part!” he thought to himself. “A queer sort of life it would be without her!” After an hour or two’s patience he crept back again to her room to see if she were awake. But she was still asleep. He stood beside her for a minute or two. Just as he was turning away she awoke: awoke from her dream that the real was a dream; awoke from her sweet vision of Ralph’s dark eyes gazing down on her tenderly, to find herself back in the hateful world of facts, and Geoffrey Baldwin, her husband whom she did not love, standing at her side with a happy smile on his honest face. She glanced at him for an instant, then with a recoil of something very like actual aversion, turned from him, and closed her eyes again, as if she wished to shut out him and all beside from her sight.
Geoffrey did not read correctly the expression of her face, fortunately for him. He fancied only she was wearied, or in pain, and his voice sounded anxious as he spoke to her.
“Have I disturbed you, Marion dear? I was in the room more than an hour ago, but went away for fear of waking you. You don’t look well, but I hoped this sleep would have refreshed you. You are not in pain, my darling, are you?”
“Yes,” she said, without moving, or opening her eyes.
Considerably alarmed, Geoffrey asked eagerly “Where? How? What was the matter? Was it her head? Had she been out in the sun? Where was the pain?”
“Everywhere,” she replied, in the same tone.
Awful visions of rheumatic fever, neuralgia, every sort of illness of which, his experience being of the smallest, his horror was correspondingly great—flitted before poor Geoffrey’s vision. He carefully covered Marion with the shawl she had tossed aside, and, without speaking, turned to leave the room.
His step across the floor roused her.
“Where are you going, Geoffrey?” she asked, in a sharp, impatient tone, so unlike her own, that it increased his alarm.
“To call Bentley, in the first place,” he answered, hesitatingly; “and then—”
“Well, what then?” she persisted.
“To go or send for a doctor,” he replied.
“A doctor!” she repeated, contemptuously, muttering to herself; “a clever doctor, truly, he would be who could cure me. A doctor!” she repeated aloud. “How can you be so foolish, Geoffrey? I don’t interfere with you, why should you interfere with me? Am I not to have liberty to rest for an hour or two, without you making yourself and me absurd by talking of doctors?”
“But you said you were in pain remonstrated her husband, considerably relieved, and yet not a little amazed by this sudden and uncalled-for ebullition of petulance.
“Well, and if I did?” she replied, wearily, but more gently. “Surely, Geoffrey, you can understand there are pains and pains! I am weary and exhausted, but I want no doctor. Leave me, I beg of you, leave me alone. I want to go to sleep—and to dream,” she added, to herself.
Geoffrey left her, without saying more.
Then, when she heard his steps receding down the passage, there visited her the first of a long chain of tormentors, who from that day became no strangers to her. A pang of self-reproach darted through her, for having so cruelly wounded the heart whose only fault was its devotion to her.
“I have vexed him,” she thought, “vexed and hurt him for the first time since, since—that terrible mistake of ours! It is all a part of the wretched whole.” And then the ungenerous thought occurred to her—“It is his own fault. He has brought it on himself by persisting as he did. Save for that—.” And she hardened her heart against him.
But not for long. She had wronged him, wronged him cruelly, in thinking those few petulant words of hers would have had power, even temporarily, to chill or alienate him.
In five minutes he was back again, with a fragrant cup of tea and a delicate slice of bread and butter, which (forgive me, romantic readers) Marion was in her heart not sorry to see. She had eaten nothing since early morning, and violent emotion consumes the physical “tissue” no less surely than it exhausts the mental powers.
She drank the tea eagerly, for her throat felt parched and dry. Then with a sudden revulsion of deep pity for the man whom she began to see she had so grievously deceived, she said timidly, glancing up at him with a world of conflicting feelings in her eyes—
“Thank you, Geoffrey. You are very good. Are you vexed with me for being so cross?”
“Vexed with you, my darling!” he replied, as he had done once before; “vexed with you! No, never fancy anything so impossible.” And he stooped and kissed heron the forehead.
That was more than she had expected. She shrank back, half raising her hand, as if to repel him. Geoffrey looked surprised and concerned, but not hurt. The change in her would take a long time to come home to his unsuspecting heart.
“I did not mean to tease you,” he said. “Is your head aching? I fear, my poor dear, you are suffering very much.”
“Yes,” she said, “I am suffering very much. But don’t begin again about a doctor, Geoffrey,” she went on, growing excited. “I won’t see a doctor. There is nothing the matter with me that a doctor is needed for. I shall be well again by the morning, you’ll see. Iwon’tsee a doctor.”
“Very well,” he said, “you know best, I suppose. What will you do? Won’t you get up a little and come into the other room? You can be quite quiet there, and I should be horribly dull by myself,” he added, wistfully, half smiling at himself as he spoke.
But no answering smile broke on Marion’s face. She moved impatiently, and answered coldly—
“I don’t know if I shall get up or not. Leave me, any way, for the present and go and smoke or something. Perhaps I will get up in a while; but oh,dogo.”
So he went. And then, when alone, she cried with remorse for her unkindness.
“But I can’t help it,” she said—“I can’t help it. I don’t want to be wicked, but I am forced into it. I shall grow worse and worse, till I die. Oh, if only I might die now!”
There was something consolatory in the idea, and it did not seem wicked to wish for her own death! It seemed an escape from the unbearable present, and in the thought she found a strange sort of calm. She felt sure she was going to be very ill. After all, Geoffrey would not be troubled with her long. In the meantime she need not grudge what pleasure it was in her power to afford him. So after a while she got up, rang the bell for her maid, who was full of sympathy for her mistress’s bad headache, and smoothed her hair and arranged her dress; so that when she rejoined Geoffrey in the sitting-room, he delightedly congratulated her on looking “all right again.”
She did her best to be patient that evening, toendureher husband’s tender words and caresses. But it was hard work; and, oh, she was thankful when night fell, and she could again, for a time at least, forget the agony which she hoped was killing her. But in the morning, greatly to her surprise, she was better. She felt terribly disappointed that it was so; she had counted so surely on a return of the so-called low fever, of which she felt pretty certain a second attack would prove fatal. But she did not understand her own constitution. No sudden, short-lived emotion, however violent, would have power to prostrate one naturally so healthy; what rather was to be dreaded for her was a long course of suspense or suffering, such as already she had under-tone. Discontent, anxiety, uncongenial surroundings might gradually undermine the springs of her life; but she was too young and, physically, to elastic, to give way at a sudden, sharp assault.
Nevertheless, yesterday’s events had left their mark on her. Besides the suffering woven with many threads which henceforth must envelop her life, the actual, temporary excitement had been too violent not to affect her for some time to come. She was irritable and nervous to a miserable extent. Geoffrey’s creaking boots, the hasty closing of a door, even his voice, not always modulated to a nicety, nearly drove her frantic. Then sharp words were followed by bitter self-reproach and abasement. It was so undignified, so lowering, she said to herself, thus to bear her trial. If she had been called upon to do something great or heroic—to throw herself into fire or water to save the husband she did not love, it would have been easy. But to feel herself tied to him in this matter-of-fact way, to know that it was her duty to listen with patience, if not interest, to his commonplace conversation, his stupid talk of weather and crops or his anticipations of the coming season’s hunting—oh, this indeed was martyrdom, all but unendurable. For in these days she was far, very far from doing justice to the real character of the man she had married.
They did not stay long at the Peacock. The place grew hateful to her. At first there was a sort of fascination about the old arbour in the garden; she had a childish unreasoning fancy that some day Ralph would appear there again; that finding his life unendurable without her he would return in very recklessness of misery to see her again, if but for a moment. But he never came, and she learnt to loathe the place associated with such ever-recurring disappointment. There were times when she blamed herself bitterly for her behaviour to him during that last interview. She had been cold, repellent; she had belied herself in concealing from him, as she fancied she had, the depth, the intensity of her devotion, the anguish of parting from him forever. He had gone away, she thought, suffering in himself, terribly no doubt, but with no conception of the awfulness of the misery which he was leaving her to bear alone. Had he realised itwouldhe have left her?—would he not, he was wise and far-seeing, have devisedsomemeans of freeing her from this terrible bondage, of even now joining her life to his, where alone it would be worthy of the name?
She had told him once she could not love him so entirely did she not know there was one thing he cared for more than her. “Doing right” she had called it in her silly childish ignorance and inexperience. Butwhatwas right? Could this, the life she was leading of misery to herself and sooner or later to her husband also, utter stagnation intellectually, and certain deterioration morally, couldthisbe right? Was not her case altogether exceptional; were there not,mustthere not, be in-stances where the so-called right and wrong of other, more happily commonplace lives, changed places—in which it was worse than obstinate folly, actual suicide, to bow to the laws formed but with reference to every-day circumstances and individuals? These suggestions tormented her at her very worst times. In such moments I think, truly, the tempter himself had her.
Geoffrey, who remained sturdily convinced that physical suffering alone was to be blamed for her strange moodiness and irritability, agreed gladly to trying the effect of change of scene. For some weeks they never rested, hardly arrived at one place before Mrs. Baldwin took a dislike to it, and insisted on rushing off to another, with equally unsatisfactory results. In one thing, however, Geoffrey had his way. Marion found herself obliged to give in to consulting a doctor. A kindly and sensible man happened to be the one they lit upon, and what little was in his power he did for her. That something beyond his reach was at fault he suspected, though he wisely kept his ideas on the subject to himself. The young husband’s anxiety he was able, with perfect honesty, to relieve. Mrs. Baldwin was suffering physically from nothing but a certain amount of nervous prostration, consequent, in all probability, upon the long illness some months previously, of which Geoffrey told him. Time and care would alone set her “quiteright.” To Marion herself he spoke more plainly. He judged that she could bear his doing so, and be, probably, “none the worse of it.”
“You are not really ill at present, my dear madam,” he said, “but you are fast going the way to make yourself so. Not seriously, not dangerously, at least,” he added hastily, misinterpreting the start with which Marion looked up at his words, “fretting and repining don’t kill. At least they take a good while about it, and an uncommonly disagreeable process it is. But what I wish to warn you of is, that continued yielding to mental depression or discomfort, such as I can see you are at present suffering from, ends, in nine cases out of ten, in chronic ill-health. A worse trial, my dear young lady, than you at your age and with your evidently small experience of sickness, can have any notion of. You have had your share of trouble in your short life—perhaps more than your share—but let me beseech you not to add to it, as you are too surely doing. Trouble is hard to bear at the best of times; but none the easier, I assure you, when our physical strength has failed us.”
“No one can understand other people’s troubles,” said Marion coldly, sullenly almost, if so ugly a word can be applied to such gentle tones. “You can prescribe for bodily illness, I have no doubt; but you can’tordera patient to get well. Neither can any one make himself happy at command.”
“Certainly not,” replied the kind old man; “but, unfortunately, it is in your power, as in mine, and every one else’s, to make ourselves moreunhappy.”
Marion did not reply, and he went on.
“I am not prying into your sorrows, my dear young lady. I can quite believe that, notwithstanding the blessings you possess, your troubles have been very great. The more earnest, therefore, must be the effort to live them down in the best sense. But I have been talking more like a clergyman than a doctor—you must forgive me. Can I see your husband for a moment? I am anxious to tell him that so far there is nothing much amiss. He, I think, is inclined to err on the side of spoiling you, is he not? Must I give him a hint that a little scolding now and then would do you no harm?”
“I wish you would,” she replied; “he is far too good and patient, and I am very bad.” She looked up as she spoke with a half smile, but her eyes were full of tears; and something in the tone of her voice haunted the good doctor for many a day to come.
His word, however, more than his medicine, acted upon her to some extent as a tonic. Her health improved, her nervousness and irritability decreased. Geoffrey was enchanted with the success of his first exertion of marital authority.
“You are looking ever so much better, my darling,” he exclaimed joyfully, “that old fellow was a regular brick. By Jove, I wish I had doubled his fee! You won’t be looking ill after all when I take you home next week. How thankful I am! What would the world be to me without you, my dearest?” And his voice grew husky as he looked at her and tenderly raised her face to his.
But she could not return his gaze of loving, devotion, could not meet his honest eyes, bright with pleasure at her improved and spirits. For, with returning strength, and powers of self-control, a new misery had come upon her—the growing consciousness of how grievously, though unintentionally, she had deceived Geoffrey Baldwin when she told him that at least what heart was left her was free to give to him, that the old love was dead, “dead and buried for ever.” In the first selfishness of her overpowering wretchedness this feeling had somewhat fallen into the background: now that her powers were regaining their balance it revived with redoubled force. It was agony to her to receive Geoffrey’s constant expressions of trusting, almost reverential love. A hundred times she had it on her lips to confess to him, not the whole, but so much of her secret as she felt it due to him to own. Only the thought of what this knowledge would be to him, of his happiness wrecked as well as her own, withheld her.
But she felt that before long it must come. Whatever misery it might entail, it must be done; for she could not live with him feeling that systematically and deliberately she was deceiving him. She grew strangely silent, and absent in manner. Geoffrey feared she was growing ill again, and hastened their return home.
“Once in our own house, dear, with all home comforts about you, you’ll feel so different,” he said; “this constant travelling is really very tiring. No wonder you’re done up. How delightful it will be to see you at the old farm I shall then feel quite sure that you really belong to me, my dearest.”
She did not answer. He drew round her averted face. To his amazement she was in tears.
“Marion,” he exclaimed in astonishment, “my dearest, whatisthe matter?”
She seized his hand convulsively and held it fast. Then restraining with difficulty the hysterical weeping which she felt coming upon her, she spoke, fast and excitedly, to her bewildered listener.
“Geoffrey,” she said, “I cannot bear it. All these weeks you have borne with me—with all my strange fancies and wayward tempers. You have been very good to me, for truly I have been very trying. You must have thought me strangely unlike what you fancied me. Iamstrangely unlike what I was, sadly changed from my old self, for I used to be gentle and sweet tempered, Geoffrey. I must tell you the truth, cost what it may, for otherwise I cannot live beside you. Geoffrey, poor Geoffrey, it is dreadful for me to say, and dreadful for you to hear. I told you a falsehood that day—the day I promised to marry you. I said at least you had now no rival. I told you I no longer loved that other whom Ihadloved so intensely. It was no intentional falsehood. I believed it myself; but for all that it was not true. I did still love him, Geoffrey, then when I said I did not. I did love him even then, with all the love of my nature. And, oh, Geoffrey, I love himnow. Forgive me, for I am most miserable —pity me, for I cannot forgive myself.”
There was not the slightest sound. The hand she still held tightly clasped was not withdrawn, but Geoffrey spoke not a word.
Marion went on. “I will tell you all about it. All at least that you ought to know. How I found it out I mean. It was a fortnight after we were married. That day, do you remember, at the Peacock when you thought I was ill? I—”
“Hush!” said her husband, “you need not tell me. I have no need to hear what it must cost you much to tell. You saw him, I suppose, saw him, or heard from him—it does not matter which. There had been some mistake, I suppose. He was not married as you had been told?”
“Yes,” she said, repeating his very words mechanically, “there had been a mistake. He was not married.”
“Ah!” muttered Geoffrey. It sounded like a groan.
“I will tell you”—she began again, but he stopped her again.
“No,” he said, “do not tell me. Do not treat me as if I were a judge and you a culprit at the bar. Heaven knows, I have heard enough. And God knows, I trust you, Marion, trust you utterly and entirely. Were you less worthy of my trust this might be easier to bear. I can’t quite see it yet. I can’t get it plain to myself. But that will come, I suppose. Only do not ever tell me any more. It need never again be mentioned between us. I think —I think I should thank you for telling me. It was right, I suppose, but I can’t quite see it yet. For my part in it all, for what I did wrong—the persisting in trying to win you, I mean—I ask you to forgive me.”
“Forgive you?” she exclaimed; “oh, Geoffrey, your asking it crushes me.”
“I do not wish to pain you,” he said, gently but resolutely withdrawing the hand she still held.
“But you must remember it is rather hard on me—all this. I cannot just yet get accustomed to it. So if in any way I Fain you, you must forgive me.”
Then he got up and strolled to the window. It was a beautiful summer evening—a picture of peace and calm loveliness.
“It is hard upon me,” he murmured to him-self, “very hard upon me. But, good God, how she must have suffered! How she must suffer still, tied to a rough boor like me! That other, I don’t want to know who he is, I should pity him too, I suppose, but I’m not quite good enough for that; for I can’t see that his case is as bad as mine. Heaven knows, though he may be a hundred times my superior in every-thing else he can’t love her better. And to think —! My darling, how you must have suffered!”
If only Geoffrey could have uttered his thoughts, his generous, unselfish thoughts aloud, who knows what even then might have been the result?
But he could not. A strange reserve had fallen upon this naturally open and outspoken being. Gentle and attentive as ever to Marion, she was yet utterly changed. He avoided most pointedly the slightest demonstration of the affection with which his very heart was bursting; not a word of endearment, not a gesture of fondness did he allow himself. It was what Marion had been wishing for, and yet it pained her. But gradually she grew accustomed to it; and slowly but surely began that lamentable drifting apart so sad to see in two lives which should be as one. Henceforth she felt free to live yet more entirely in the past and in herself; for she was no longer fettered by the necessity of maintaining a semblance of affection. Geoffrey, she fancied, had felt it much less than she had feared. He would soon be absorbed and happy in his home-life and country pursuits.
So she did not trouble herself very much about him. “He was not after all,” she decided, “a man of very deep feeling. His dogs and horses would soon make up to him for any disappointment he might have experienced in a wife.”
Yet being a woman, with all a woman’s illogical “contrariness,” the reflection was not without a certain amount of bitterness.
“The little bird now to salute the mornUpon the naked branches sets her foot,The leaves still lying at the mossy root;And there a silly chirruping cloth keepAs if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep.Praising fair summer that too soon is gone,And sad for winter too soon coming on.”
DRAYTON.
“Perhaps the windWaits so in winter for the summers dead,And all sad sounds are nature’s funeral cries,For what has been and is not?”
THESPANISHGYPSY.