The opportunity I was waiting for came one winter's afternoon when she was playing with the baby. It was a moment of leisure with me, the afternoon tea-time, which I always arranged to spend with her if possible, and especially if she would otherwise have been alone, as was the case on this occasion.
I had been responding for half an hour, as well as I could, to incessant appeals for sympathy and admiration—not that I found it difficult to admire the boy, who was certainly a splendid specimen of the human race, although perhaps I ought not to say so; but my command of language never answered his mother's expectations, somehow, when it came to expressing my feelings.
"Do you think you care as much for him as I do, Don?" she burst out at last.
"More," I answered seriously.
"Why? How?" she demanded, surprised by my tone.
"Because I never could have hurt him."
"Hurt him!" she exclaimed, gathering him up in her arms. "Do you mean that I could hurt him! hurt my baby! Oh!" She got up and stood looking at me indignantly for a few seconds with the child's face hidden against her neck; and then she rang the bell sharply, and sent him away.
"What do you mean, Don?" she said, when we were alone together again."Tell me? You would not say a cruel thing like that for nothing."
"I am referring to that night before he was born," I said, taking the little bottle from my pocket. This seems to me to have been the cruellest operation that I have ever had to perform.
"O Don!" she cried, greatly distressed. "I understand I should have killed him. But why, why do you remind me of that now?"
"I want to be quite sure that you have learnt what a mistaken notion that was, and that you regret the impulse."
She sat down on a low chair before the fire, with her elbows on her knees and her face buried in her hands, and remained so for some time. She wanted to think it out, and tell me exactly.
"I do not feel any regret," she said at last. "I would not do the same thing now, but it is only because I am not now occupied with the same thoughts. They have fallen into the background of my consciousness, and I no longer perceive the utility of self-sacrifice."
"But do you not perceive the sin of suicide?"
"Not of that kind of suicide," she answered. "You see, we have the divine example. Christ committed suicide to all intents and purposes by deliberately putting himself into the hands of his executioners; but his motive makesthemresponsible for the crime; and my motive would place society in a similar position."
"Your view of the great sacrifice would startle theologians, I imagine," was my answer. "But, even allowing that Christ was morally responsible for his own death, and thereby set the example you would have followed to save others from suffering; tell me, do you really see any comparison between an act which had the redemption of the world for its object and the only result that could follow from, the sacrifice of one little mother and child?"
"What result, Don?"
"Breaking your husband's heart, spoiling his life, and leaving him lonely forever."
She started up and threw herself on her knees beside me, clasping her hands about my neck.
"O Don, don't say that again!" she cried, "Don't say anything like that again—ever—will you?"
"You know I should never think of it again if I could be sure—"
She hid her head upon my shoulder, but did not answer immediately.
"I am seeking for some assurance in myself to give you," she said at last; "but I feel none. The same train of thought would provoke me again—no, not to the same act, but to something desperate; I can't tell what. But I suffer so, Don, when such thoughts come, from grief, and rage, and horror, I would do almost anything for relief."
"But just think—" I began,
"No, don't ask me to think!" she interrupted. "All my endeavour is not to think. Let me live on the surface of life, as most women do. I will do nothing but attend to my household duties and the social duties of my position. I will read nothing that is not first weeded by you of every painful thought that might remind me. I will play with my baby by day, and curl up comfortably beside you at night, infinitely grateful and content to be so happily circumstanced myself—Don, help me to that kind of life, will you? And burn the books. Let me deserve my name and be 'well pleasing one' to you first of all the world, and then to any with whom I may come in contact. Let me live while you live, and die when you die. But do not ask me to think. I can be the most docile, the most obedient, the most loving of women as long as I forget my knowledge of life; but the moment I remember I become a raging fury; I have no patience with slow processes; 'Revolution' would be my cry, and I could preside with an awful joy at the execution of those who are making the misery now for succeeding generations."
"But, my dear child, it would surely be happier for you to try to alleviate—"
"No, no," she again interrupted. "I know all you can say on that score; but I cannot bear to be brought into contact with certain forms of suffering. I cannot bear the contradictions of life; they make me rage."
"What I want to say is that you should act, and not think," I ventured.
"How can I act without thinking?" she asked.
"You see, if you don't act you must think," I pursued; "and if you do think without acting, you become morbid. The conditions of an educated woman's life now force her to know the world. She is too intelligent not to reason about what she knows. She sees what is wrong; and if she is high-minded she feels forced to use her influence to combat it. If she resists the impulse her conscience cannot acquit her, and she suffers herself for her cowardice."
"I know," she answered. "But don't let us discuss the subject any more."
We were silent for some time after that, and then I made a move as if to speak, but checked myself.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I was going to ask you to do something to oblige me; but now I do not like to."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, much hurt; "do you really think there is anything I would not do for you, if I could?"
"Well, this is mere trifle," I answered. "I want you to take that sturdy much be-ribboned darling of yours to see my poor sick souls in the hospital. A sight of his small face would cheer them. Will you?"
"Why,surely," she said. "Howcouldyou doubt it? I shall be delighted."
"And there was another thing—"
"Oh, don't hesitate like that," she exclaimed. "You can't think how you hurt me."
"I very much wish you would take charge of the flowers in the hospital for me, that was what I was going to say, I should be so pleased if you should make them your special care. If you would cut them yourself, and take them and arrange them whenever fresh ones are wanted, you would be giving me as much pleasure as the patients. And you might say something kind to them as you pass through the wards. Even a word makes all the difference in their day."
"Why didn't you ask me to do this before?" she said, reproachfully.
"I was a little afraid of asking you now," I answered.
"I shall begin to-morrow," she said. "Tell me the best time for me to go?"
There is a great deal in the way a thing is put, was my trite reflection afterward. If I had given Evadne my reason for particularly wishing her to visit the hospital, she would have turned it inside out to show me that it was lined with objections; but, now, because I had asked her to oblige me simply, she was ready to go; and would have gone if had cost her half her comfort in life. This was a great step in advance. As in the small-pox epidemic, so now at the hospital, she had no horror of anything shesaw. It was always what she imagined that made her morbid.
Following these days there came a time of perfect peace for both of us, Evadne's health was satisfactory; she led the life she had planned for herself; and so long as she shut out all thought of the wicked world and nothing occurred to remind her of the "awful needless suffering" with which she had become acquainted in the past, she was tranquilly happy.
Donino rapidly grew out of arms. He was an independent young rascal from the first, and would never be carried if he could walk, or driven from the moment he could sit a pony—grip is the word, I know, but his legs were not long enough to grip when he began, and his rides were therefore conducted all over the pony's back at first. His object was to keep on, and in order to do so without the assistance he scorned, he rode like a monkey.
Evadne was proud of the boy, but she missed the baby, and complained that her arms were empty. It was not long, however, happily,—andà proposof the number of my responsibilities, I was taken to task severely one day, and discovered that I had in my son a staunch supporter and a counsellor whose astuteness was not to be despised.
I was finishing my letters one afternoon in the library when Evadne came in with her daughter in her arms, and Donino clinging to her skirt. I expected the usual "Don, I am sure you have done enough. Come and have some tea," and turned to meet it with the accustomed protest; "Just five minutes more, my sweetheart." But Evadne began in quite another tone.
"I have just heard such adisgracefulthing about you," she said.
"A disgraceful thing about me!" I exclaimed.
"Yes. I hear you were asked the other day how many children you had, and you answered 'Two or three!' Now, will you kindly count your children, and when you are quite sure you know the number off by heart, repeat it aloud to me, so that I may have some hope that you will not commit yourself in that way again."
"Oh," I answered, "I know how manybabiesthere are; my difficulty is about you. I am never quite sure whether to count you as a child or not."
"Now, I call that a mean little score," she said, carrying her baby off with an affectation of indignation which deceived Donino.
He had been standing with his back to the writing table and his feet firmly planted before him, gravely watching us, and now when his mother left the room he came to my knee and looked up at me confidentially.
"Ou bin naughty, dad?" he asked.
"It looks like it," I answered.
"Ou say ou sorry," he advised.
"What will happen then?" I wanted to know.
"Den de missus 'ill kiss ou," he explained. "Dendatall right."
"Truly 'a wise son maketh a glad father,'" I observed.
Donino knitted his brows, and grumbled a puzzled but polite assent. I saw signs of reflection afterward, however, which warned me not to be too sure that I knew exactly where the limits of the little understanding were. But one thing was evident. The boy was being educated on the principle of repent and have done with it. Old accounts are not cast up in this establishment.
Donino watched me putting my writing things away; he was waiting to see me through my trouble. When I was ready, he took as much of my hand as he could hold in his, protectingly, and led me to the drawing room with a dignified air of importance. Sir Shadwell Rock was staying with us at the time, and my daughter was creeping from her mother to him as we entered the room, and receiving a large share of his attention. Donino glanced at him, fearing, perhaps, that his presence as audience would make matters more unpleasant for me.
"Mumme," he said, "dad's turn."
Evadne looked up inquiringly.
"I've come to say I am sorry," I exclaimed.
"Oh," said Evadne, a little puzzled, "that's right."
Donino looked from one to the other expectantly; but as his mother made no move, he edged up to her side, and repeated with emphasis: "Dad's sorry."
"That's right," his mother answered, putting her arm round him, and caressing him fondly.
He drew away from her dissatisfied, and walked to the window, where he stood, with his thumbs in his belt, and his chin on his chest.
"O Don," Evadne whispered, "do look at yourself in miniature! But what is the matter? What have I done to disturb him? or left undone?"
"I said I was sorry, and you haven't kissed me," I replied.
Evadne grasped the situation at last, and got up.
"I suppose I must kiss you," she said. "I hope you won't be naughty again."
The boy made no sign at the moment, but presently he sauntered back to the tea-table as if he were satisfied.
When the children were gone Sir Shadwell asked for an explanation.
"It is beautiful to watch the mind of a young child unfold," he observed; "to notice its wonderful grasp, on the one hand, of ideas one would have thought quite beyond its comprehension, and, on the other, its curious limitations. Now, that boy of yours reasons already from what he observes."
"Clearly," I answered. "He observes that my position in this house is quite secondary, and therefore, although he sees his mother 'naughty' every day, he never thinks for a moment of suggesting that she should 'own up' to me."
"Don, you are horrid!" Evadne exclaimed.
The next day she went out early in the afternoon to pay calls.
Sir Shadwell and I accompanied her to the door to see her into her carriage, and she drove off smiling, and kissing her hand to us.
"Now," I said, as we lingered on the doorstep, watching the carriage glint between the trees: "what do you think about the wisdom of my marriage?"
"Oh," he answered, his eyes twinkling. "You didn't explain, you know, so I naturally concluded that you were merely marrying for your own gratification, in which case you would have been, disappointed when you found what I foresaw, that, under the circumstances, the pleasure would not be unmixed. You should have explained that your sole purpose was to make a very charming young lady healthy-minded again and happy, if you wanted to know what I thought of your chances of success."
"You're a confounded old cynic," I said, turning into the house.
Sir Shadwell went out into the grounds, and there I found him later, patiently instructing Donino in the difficult art of stringing a bow, his white head bowed beside the boy's dark one, and his benign face wrought into wrinkles of intentness.
I was busy during the afternoon, but I fancied I heard the carriage return. Evadne did not come to report herself to me, however, as was her wont after an expedition, and I therefore thought that I must have been mistaken, and more especially so when she did not appear at tea-time. After tea, Sir Shadwell settled himself with a book, and I left him. In the hall I met the footman who had gone out with Evadne.
"When did you return?" I asked.
"I can't say rightly, Sir George," the man replied. "We only paid one call this afternoon, and then came straight back. Her ladyship seemed to be poorly."
I ran upstairs to my wife's sitting room. She was lying on a couch asleep, her face gray, her eyelids swollen and purple with weeping, her hair disordered. As I stood looking down at her, she opened her eyes and held up her arms to me. She looked ten years older, a mere wreck of the healthy, happy, smiling woman who had driven off kissing her hand to us only a few hours before.
"Tell me the trouble, my sweetheart," I said, kneeling down beside her."Where did you go to-day?"
"Only to Mrs. Guthrie Brimston," she answered. "But Mrs. Beale was there with Edith's boy, and we talked—O Don!" she broke off. "I wish my children had never been born! The suffering! the awful needless suffering! How do I know that they will escape?"
Alas! alas! that terrible cry again, and just after we had allowed ourselves to be sure that it had been silenced at last forever.
I did not reason with her this time. I could only pet her, and talk for the purpose of distracting her attention, as one does with a child. So far, I had never for a moment lost heart and hope. I could not believe that the balance of her fine intelligence had been too rudely shaken ever to be perfectly restored; but now at last it seemed as if her confidence in her fellow-creatures, the source of all mental health, had been destroyed forever, and with that confidence her sense of the value of life and of her own obligations had been also injured or distorted to a degree which could not fail to be dangerous on occasion. There are injuries which set up carcinoma of the mind, we know, cancer spots confined to a small area at first, but gradually extending with infinite pain until all the surrounding healthy tissue is more or less involved, and the whole beautiful fabric is absorbed in the morbid growth, for which there is no certain palliative in time, and no possible prospect of cure except in eternity. Was this to be Evadne's case? Alas! alas! But, still, doctors sometimes mistake the symptoms, and find happily that they have erred when they arrived at an unfavourable diagnosis. So I said to myself, but the assurance in no way affected the despair which had settled upon my heart, and was crushing it.
Late that night I was sitting alone in my study. I had been reading Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple, and the book still lay open before me. It was a habit of mine to read the Bible when I was much perturbed. The solemn majestic march of the measured words seldom failed to restore my tranquillity in a wonderful way, and it had done so now. I felt resigned. "Hearken therefore unto the supplication of Thy servant"—I was repeating to myself, in fragments, as the lines occurred to me—"that Thine eyes may be upon this house day and night … hear Thou from Thy dwelling place, even from heaven; and when Thou hearest forgive."
I must have dozed a moment, I think, when I had pronounced the words, for I had heard no rustle of trailing garments in the library beyond, yet the next thing I was conscious of was Evadne kneeling beside me. She put her arms round my neck, and drew my face down to her.
"Don," she said, with a great dry sob, "I am sorry. I have annoyed you somehow—"
"Not annoyed me, my wife."
"Hurt you then, which is worse. I have taken all the heart out of you—somehow—I can see that. But I cannot—cannot tell what it is I have done." She looked into my face piteously, and then hid her own on my shoulder, and burst into a paroxysm of sobs and tears.
If only I could have made her comprehend what the trouble was! But there!Ihadtried, and I had failed.
One little white foot peeped out from beneath her dressing gown, the pink sole showing. She had got out of bed and slipped on herpantouflesonly, and the night was cold. I might have thought that she would lie awake fretting if she were left alone on a night when her mind was so disturbed, and here had I been seeking solace myself and forgetting that great as my own trouble was hers must surpass it even as the infinite does the finite.
But that error I could repair, I hoped, and it should never be repeated.
"Come, my sweetheart," I said, gathering her up close in my arms. "So long as you will let me be a comfort to you, you will not be able to hurt me again; but if at any time you will not listen to my words, if nothing I can do or say strengthens or helps you, if I cannot keep you from the evil that it may not grieve you, then I shall know that I have lost all that makes life worth having, and I shall not care how soon this lamp of mine goes out."
She looked up at me in a strange startled way, and then she clung closer; and I thought she meant that, if she could help it, I should not lose the little all I ask for now—the power to make her life endurable.