THE only malady that put Herbert Dorrance in frequent and unpleasant
remembrance of his mortality was a fierce headache, which had of
late years supervened upon any imprudence in diet, and upon excessive
agitation of mind or physical exertion. His invariable custom, when
he awoke at morning with one of these, was to trace it to its supposed
source, and after determining that it was nothing more than might have
been expected from the circumstance, to commit himself to his wife's
nursing for the day.
She ought, therefore, to have been surprised when, while admitting that
the pain in his head was intense, he yet, on the morrow succeeding Mrs.
Tazewell's funeral, persisted in rising and dressing for breakfast.
“It must have been the roast duck at dinner yesterday,” he calmly and
languidly explained the attack. “It was fat, and the stuffing reeked
with butter, sage, and onion. An ostrich could not have digested it. I
was tired, too, and should not have eaten heartily of even the plainest
food.”
Mabel neither opposed nor sustained the theory. She had slept so ill
herself as to know how restless he had been; had heard his hardly
suppressed sighs and tossings to and fro, infallible indications with
him of serious perturbation. Had his discomfort been bodily only, he
would have felt no compunction in calling her to his aid, as he had
done scores of times. Her sleepless hours had also been fraught with
melancholy disquiet. Putting away from her--with firmness begotten by
virtue born of will--and so much of this thoughtfulness as pertained to
the bygone days with which Frederic Chilton was inseparable associated,
she yet deliberated seriously upon the expediency of speaking out
courageously to Herbert of the relation this man had once borne to
her, the incidents of their recent meeting, and the effect she saw was
produced upon her husband's mind by the sight of him.
“If we would have this negative happiness continue, this matter ought
to be settled at once and forever,” she said, inwardly. “He must not
suspect me of weak and wicked clinging to the phantoms of my youth; must
believe that I do not harbor a regret or wish incompatible with my duty
as his wife. I will avail myself of the first favorable moment to assure
him of the folly of his fears and of his discomfort.”
Another consideration--the natural sequence of her conviction of his
unhappiness--was a touching appeal to her woman's heart. If he had
not loved her more fervently than his phlegmatic temperament and
undemonstrative bearing would induce one to suppose, he would not dread
the rekindling of her olden fancy for another. The image of him who,
she had confessed, had taught her the depth and weight of her own
affections, whom she had loved as she had never professed to care for
him, would not have haunted his pillow to chase sleep, and torture him
with forebodings.
“I must make him comprehend that Mabel Aylett at twenty, wilful,
romantic, and undisciplined, was a different being from the woman who
has called him 'husband,' without a blush, for fourteen years!”
It was these recollections that softened her kindly tones to tenderness;
made the pressure of her hand upon his temples a caress, rather than a
manual appliance for deadening pain; while she combated his intention of
appearing at the breakfast-table.
“Lie down upon the sofa!” she entreated. “Let me bring up a cup of
strong coffee for you; then darken the room, and chafe your head until
you fall asleep, since you turn a deaf ear to all proposals of mustard
foot-baths and Dr. Van Orden's panacea pills.”
“No!” stubbornly. “Aylett and Clara would think it strange. They do not
understand how a slight irregularity of diet or habit can produce such a
result. They would attribute it to other causes. I may feel better when
I have taken something nourishing.”
The dreaded critics received the tidings of his indisposition without
cavil at its imputed origin, treated the whole subject with comparative
indifference, which would have mortified him a week ago, but seemed now
to assuage his unrest. The breakfast hour was a quiet one. Herbert
could not attempt the form of eating, despite his expressed hope of the
curative effects of nourishment, and sipped his black coffee at tedious
intervals of pain, looking more ill after each. Mabel was silent, and
regardful of his suffering, while Mrs. Aylett toyed with the tea-cup,
broke her biscuit into small heaps of crumbs upon her plate, and under
her visor of ennui and indolent musing, kept her eye upon her vis-a-vis,
whose face was opaque ice; and his intonations, when he deigned to
speak, meant nothing save that he was controller of his own meditations,
and would not be meddled with.
“You are not well enough to ride over to the Courthouse with me,
Dorrance?” he said, interrogatively, his meal despatched. “It is
court-day, you know?”
“What do you say, Mabel?” was Herbert's clumsy reference to his nurse.
“Don't you think I might venture?”
“I would not, if I were in your place,” she replied, cautiously
dissuasive. “The day is raw, and there will be rain before evening.
Dampness always aggravates neuralgia.”
“It is neuralgia, then, is it?” queried Winston, shortly, drawing on his
boots.
His sister looked up surprised.
“What else should it be?”
“Nothing--unless the symptoms indicate softening of the brain!” he
rejoined, with his slight, dissonant laugh. “In either case, your
decision is wise. He is better off in your custody than he would
be abroad. I hope I shall find you convalescent when I return. Good
morning!”
His wife accompanied him to the outer door.
“It is chilly!” she shivered, as this was opened. “Are you warmly clad,
love?” feeling his overcoat. “And don't forget your umbrella.”
Her hand had not left his shoulder, and, in offering a parting kiss, she
leaned her head there also.
“I wish you would not go!” she said impulsively and sincerely.
“Why?”
“I cannot say--except that I dread to be left alone all day. You may
laugh at me, but I feel as if something terrible were hanging over
me--or you. The spiritual oppression is like the physical presentiment
sensitive temperaments suffer when a thunder-storm is brooding, but not
ready to break. Yet I can refer my fears to no known cause.”
“That is folly.” Mr. Aylett bit off the end of a cigar, and felt in his
vest pocket for a match-safe. “You should be able always to assign a
reason for the fear as well as the hope that is in you. You have no
idea, you say, from what recent event your prognostication takes its
hue?”
She laughed, and straightened her fine neck.
“From the same imprudence that has consigned poor Herbert to the house
for the day, I suspect--a late and heavy dinner. I had the nightmare
twice before morning. You will be home to supper?”
“Yes.”
Hesitating upon the monosyllable, he took hold of her elbows, so as to
bring her directly before him, and searched her countenance until it was
dyed with blushes.
“Why do you color so furiously?” he asked in raillery that had a sad or
sardonic accent. “I was about to ask if you would be inconsolable if I
never came back. Perhaps your presentiment points to some such fatality.
These little accidents have happened in better-regulated families than
ours.”
“WINSTON!”
She gasped and blanched in pain or terror.
“What is the matter? Have I hurt you?” releasing his grasp.
“Yes--HERE!” laying his hand upon her heart, the beautiful eyes
terrified and pathetic as those of a wounded deer. “For the love of
Heaven, never stab me again with such suggestions. When you die, I shall
not care to live. When you cease to love me, I shall wish we had died
together on our marriage-day--my husband!”
He let her twine her arms about his neck, laid his cheek to her brow,
clasped her tightly and kissed her impetuously, madly, again and yet
again--disengaged himself, and ran down the steps. She was standing
on the top one, still flushed and breathless from the violence of his
embrace, when he looked back from the gate, her commanding figure framed
by the embowering creepers, as Mabel's girlish shape had been when
Frederic Chilton waved his farewell to her from the same spot.
Did either of them think of it, or would either have reckoned it an
ominous coincidence, if the remembrance of that long-ago parting had
presented itself then and there?
Herbert spent the day upon the lounge in the family sitting-room--a cosy
retreat, between the parlor and the conservatory, which had been added
to the lower floor in the reign of the present queen. Her brother's
seizure was no trifling ailment. Alternations of stupor and racking
spasms of pain defied, for several hours, his wife's application of
the remedies she had found efficacious in former attacks. Her ultimate
resort was chloroform, and by the liberal use of this, relaxation of the
tense nerves and a sleep that resembled healing repose were induced by
the middle of the afternoon. The weather continued to threaten rain,
although none had fallen as yet, and the wind moaned lugubriously in
the leafless branches of the great walnut before the end window of the
narrow apartment. It was a grand tree, the patriarch of the grove
that sheltered the house from the north winds. Mabel, relieved from
watchfulness, and to some extent from anxiety, by her husband's profound
slumber, lay back in her chair with a long-drawn sigh, and looked out at
the naked limbs of the wrestling giant--the majestic sway and reel she
used to note with childish awe--and thought of many things which had
befallen her since then, until the steady rocking of the boughs and hum
of the November breeze soothed her into languor--then drowsiness--then
oblivion.
She awoke in alarm at the sense of something hurtful or startling
hovering near her.
The fire had been trimmed before she slept, and now flamed up gayly; the
window was dusky, as were the distant corners of the room, and Herbert
was gazing steadfastly at her.
“I fell asleep without knowing it. I am sorry! Have you wanted anything?
How long have you been awake?”
“Only a few minutes, my dearest!” with no change in the mesmeric
intentness of his gaze. “I want nothing more than to have you always
near me. You have been a good, faithful wife, Mabel, better and
nobler--a thousandfold nobler than I deserved. I have thought it all
over while you were sleeping so tranquilly in my sight. I wish my
conscience were void of evil to all mankind as is yours. I awoke with an
odd and awful impression upon my mind. The firelight flamed in a bright
stream between your chair and me--and I must have dreamed it--or the
chloroform had affected my head--I thought it was a river of light
dividing us! You were a calm, white angel who had entered into
rest--uncaring for and forgetful of me. I was lost, homeless, wandering
forever and ever!”
Had her prosaic spouse addressed her in a rhythmic improvisation, Mabel
could not have been more astounded.
“You are dreaming yet!” she said, kneeling by him and binding his
temples with her cool, firm palms. “When we are divided, it will be by a
dark--not a bright river.”
“Until death do us part!” Herbert repeated, thoughtfully. “I wish I
could hear you say, once, that you do not regret that clause of your
marriage vow. I was not your heart's choice, you know, Mabel, however
decided may have been the approval of your friends and of your judgment.
The thought oppresses me as it did not in the first years of our wedded
life.”
“I am glad you have spoken of this,” began the wife. “I would disabuse
your mind--”
“All in the dark!” exclaimed Mrs. Aylett, at the door. “And what a
stifling odor of chloroform!”
Mabel got up, and drew a heavy travelling-shawl that covered Herbert's
lower limbs over his arms and chest.
“I will open the window!” she said, deprecatingly.
A sluice of cold air rushed in, beating the blaze this way and that,
puffing ashes from the hearth into the room, and eliciting from Mrs.
Aylett what would have been a peevish interjection in another woman.
“My dear sister! the remedy is worse than the offence. Chloroform is
preferable to creosote, or whatever abominable element is the principal
ingredient of smoke and cold! The thermometer must be down to the
freezing-point!”
Mabel lowered the sash.
“You have been sitting in a room without fire, I suspect. The
temperature here is delightful. I am sorry we have exiled you from such
comfortable quarters.”
“Don't speak of it! I cannot endure to sit here alone--or anywhere else.
I have slept most of the afternoon. How the wind blows! I wish Winston
were at home.”
“It is a dark afternoon. He seldom returns from court so early as this.
It is not six yet.”
Mabel still essayed pacification of the other's ruffled mood.
“You are better, I see,” Mrs. Aylett said abruptly to her brother. “You
were not subject to these spells formerly. People generally outlive
constitutional headaches--so I have noticed. It is queer yours should
occur so often and wax more violent each time. You should have medical
advice before they ripen into a more serious disorder.”
Herbert shaded his eyes from the fire, and lay with out replying, until
his wife believed he had relapsed into a doze.
She was convinced of her mistake by his saying, slowly and distinctly,--
“You do not enter into Clara's whole meaning, Mabel. We have been
careful, all of us, never to tell you that our father was imbecile by
the time he was fifty and died, in his sixtieth year, of the disease
your brother named this morning--softening of the brain. I, of all his
children, am most like him physically. If it be true that this danger
menaces me, you should be informed of it, and know, furthermore, that it
is incurable.”
Mabel also paused before answering.
“I cannot assent to the hypothesis of your inherited malady, Herbert.
These headaches may mean nothing. But let that be as it may, you should
have told me of this before.”
“You see,” broke in Mrs. Aylett's triumphant sarcasm. “The reward of
your maiden attempt at conjugal confidence is reproof. What have I
warned you from the beginning?”
“Not reproof,” corrected Mabel, in mild decision. “My knowledge of the
secret he deemed it wise and kind to withhold would have gained for him
my sympathy, and my more constant and intelligent care of his health. It
is the hidden fear that grows and multiplies itself most rapidly. Before
it is killed it must be dragged to the light.”
“That is YOUR hypothesis,” was the bright retort. “We Dorrances have
justly earned a reputation for discretion by the excellent preservation
of our own secrets, and those committed to our keeping by our friends.
My motto is, tell others nothing about yourself which they cannot learn
without your confession. An autobiography is always either a bore or
a blunder. Not that I would regulate the number and nature of your
divulgations to your wife, Herbert. As to Winston's unlucky hit this
morning, it was mere fortuity. I have never felt myself called upon to
enlighten him in family secrets, and his is an incurious disposition.
He never asks idle questions. He has a marvellous faculty of striking
home-blows in the dark, but that is no reason why one should betray his
wound by crying out. Apropos to darkness, may I ring for a lamp, or will
the light hurt your eyes?”
“The fire-light is more trying,” rejoined Mabel, pushing a screen before
the sofa, and placing herself where she could, in its shadow, hold her
husband's hand.
It was cold and limp when she lifted it, but tightened upon hers with
the instinctive grip of gratitude too profound to be uttered.
She had never been so near loving him as at the instant in which he
believed he had incurred her ever-lasting displeasure. Generosity
and pity were fast undoing the petrifying influences of her early
disappointment, their mutual reserve, and tacit misunderstandings. If
half he feared were true, his need of her affection, her counsel and
companionship were dire. Whatever wrong he had done her by keeping back
the tale of hereditary infirmity, he had suffered more from the act than
she could ever do. Who knew how much of what she, with others, mistook
for constitutional phlegm and studied austerity, was the outward sign
of the battle between dread of his inherited doom and the resolve of an
iron will to defy natural laws and the sentence of destiny herself, and
hold reason upon her rickety throne?
Heaven's gentlest and kindest angels were busy with Mabel Dorrance's
heart in that reverie, and, as they wrought, the cloud that had rested
there for fifteen years broke into rainbow smiles that illumined her
countenance into the similitude of the shining ones.
“I bless Thee, Father, the All-wise and Ever-merciful, that she is
safe!” was her voiceless thanksgiving.
No more bitter tears over the lonely, sunken grave! no more hearkening,
with aching, never-to-be-satisfied ears for the patter of the “little
feet that never trod.” The great sorrow of her life that had been
good in His sight was at length a blessing in hers. Her “hereafter” of
knowledge of His doings had come to her in this world.
“Does it rain, Peter?” questioned Mrs. Aylett of the lad who brought in
lights.
“Yes, ma'am. It's beginnin' to storm powerful!” he said, respectfully
communicative.
“Your master has not come?”
“No, ma'am.”
“See that the lantern over the great gate is lighted, and that some
one is ready to take his horse. And, Peter,” as he was going out, “tell
Thomas not to bring in supper until Mr. Aylett returns.”
She moved to the window, bowed her hands on either side of her eyes to
exclude the radiance within, and strained them into the black, black
night.
“He will have a dark and a disagreeable ride,” she said, coming back to
the fire.
Her uneasiness was so palpable as to excite Mabel's compassion.
“Every step of the road is familiar to him, and he is accustomed to
night rides,” she said, encouragingly. “Yes,” absently. “But he will be
very wet. Hear the rain!”
It plashed against the north window, and tinkled upon the tin roof of
the conservatory, and Mabel, though aware of her brother's habitual
disregard of wind and weather, could not but sympathize with the wifely
concern evinced by the sober physiognomy and unsettled demeanor of one
generally so calm. She observed, now, that her sister-in-law was arrayed
more richly than usual, and her attire was always handsome and tasteful.
A deep purple silk, trimmed upon skirt and waist with velvet bands of
darker purple, showed off her clear skin to fine advantage, and was
saved from monotony of effect by a headdress of lace and buff ribbons.
A stately and a comely matron, she was bedight for her lord's return;
weighed as heavy each minute that detained him from her arms.
She was still standing by the low mantel, her arm resting lightly upon
it, the fire-blaze bringing out lustrous reflections in her drapery
and hair, and tinging her pensive check with youthful carmine, when her
husband entered.