CHAPTER XIII
Thewinter wore on, and Bridget remained with the Mansfields. Every attempt on her side to urge that she ought to take rooms was met by determined opposition on the part of her friends. Finally, it was settled, that she should stay at any rate, till after Helen’s marriage, which was arranged for the middle of May. Helen never forgot the evenings of that winter, when the curtains were drawn, and the shaded lamps and the firelight made their little drawing-room glow like a warmly tinted jewel. Nearly every night two or three people came in after dinner, in informal fashion. Her father would sit in his huge arm-chair on one side of the fire, talking with the eagerness of a boy of the last new poem, or the extraordinary promise of this or that young painter. Bridget, sometimes in a fantastic, sometimes a whimsical, less often in a serious mood, moved about the room, talking and laughing in her eager, vivid fashion. She was a girl again then, Helen said to herself with a thrill of pleasure—the Bridget of three years ago—quick, impulsive, with as many moodsas there were hours in the day, sometimes in the highest heaven of delight, sometimes the uttermost depths of dejection. She never spoke of her husband. By tacit consent, his name was rarely mentioned between them. “I want to tear out that chapter, and burn it,” she said once. “It will have to be destroyed in a slow fire; but in the end it will perish utterly.”
Imperceptibly, however, as the months went on, Helen noticed a change in her. A growing restlessness possessed her. “Bid, you’re getting too thin,” she said, one morning, looking at her critically, as she sat down to breakfast. “Also your eyes are too big.”
“The better to see you with, my dear,” Bridget replied, helping herself to sugar. She laughed a little nervously as she spoke.
“You rush about too much. I think you’ve undertaken far too much work,” Helen went on, in a dissatisfied tone. “I never see you all day now; you tear from one place to another like one possessed! Your writing will suffer. I don’t believe you’ve put pen to paper for weeks. Why don’t you?”
“I don’t know—there isn’t time,” Bridget said vaguely. “I can’t write now,” she went on, with a touch of desperation in her tone. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me!” She moved restlessly in her chair.
“I can tell you—over-work; isn’t it, Aunt Charlotte?”
“That’s what Mr. Carey always says about Bridget,” Miss Mansfield said, placidly sipping her tea. “By the way, he doesn’t come in so often now; he hasn’t been here for quite a fortnight. James was only remarking upon it yesterday. Ah!” as her brother entered the room at the moment. “James, we were just saying that Mr. Carey has deserted us.”
“Busy, I expect, seeing his book through,” the Professor said, taking his seat at the table. “Bridget, my dear, you’re not off, are you?”
“Yes, dear sir, if you will excuse me. I’m due at Hampstead at ten o’clock.” She waved a smiling farewell to him, and hurried from the room.
“That child doesn’t look strong,” Dr. Mansfield observed meditatively, taking his cup of coffee from his sister.
“She isn’t; she’s working herself to death for no reason whatever,” Helen exclaimed.
“Ah!” he returned, raising his eyes a moment to Bridget’s empty place. He was very silent throughout the meal. She was unusually gay that evening. Her color was so brilliant that at first sight the hollowness of her cheeks was hardly observable. Dr. Mansfield watched her as she talked. The men who stood round her laughed a good deal; their admiration was almostas plainly perceptible as their amusement. Once, when the door opened, he saw her quick eyes glance in the direction; he noticed the little half-expectant turn of her head, though she did not cease speaking. She crossed the room towards him a moment afterwards, followed by the young man with whom she was talking, to make some laughing appeal for his decision in an argument. The Professor experienced a sudden pang as he looked at her smiling face. Her eyes were bright with what he fancied were unshed tears; the look in them haunted him for the rest of the evening.
“Well,” Helen said, as they parted at Bridget’s bedroom door, “I’m glad to-morrow is Sunday. You’ll be obliged to rest. Do try to moderate the size of those eyes, child; they frighten me.”
“Any one would think I was made of priceless china, to hear the way this family talks,” Bridget returned, with a laugh and a shrug of her shoulders as she kissed her.
Her smile faded when she closed the door of her room. The fire sparkled on the hearth. Drawn up beside it was a little writing-table, at which she worked. She moved towards it, and stood absently fingering the scattered papers. On the shelf above were some framed photographs. She put up her hand mechanically,and took one of them from its place. It was the reproduction of a photograph of Carey, cut from one of the illustrated papers. She held it where the firelight shone upon it, and looked at it steadily for a moment. All at once, with a hurried movement, she rose and thrust it out of sight in one of the drawers of her dressing-table. She did not sit down again, but instead, began to walk up and down the room, feverishly clasping and unclasping her hands. Presently she turned the light higher, and went to her writing-table. She resolutely gathered up the loose papers, sorting and arranging them. Her lips were tightly closed, and her hands moved restlessly from one leaf to another. She took up a pen and bent over the sheets, pushing her hair from her face with a gesture familiar to her from childhood. She wrote a line or two—then paused; two or three words followed; then all at once she thrust the paper violently from her, and buried her face in her hands with a groan. “Oh, I can’t—Ican’tbear it!” she half whispered, incoherently. “I didn’t know it was like this. Why doesn’t he come?—at least—at least he might come. I should see him;—I shouldn’t be so starved.” She rose, and flung herself beside the bed, and buried her face in the pillow.