The honeymoon is a fortnight old.
Mrs. Armstrong, in a pale silk of grayish blue, with ruffles of creamy
lace at throat and wrists, and sparkling diamonds in her pretty pink
ears, is languidly toying with a bunch of muscatel grapes, listening to
the grateful plash of the waves breaking on the pebbly shore below.
The room in which she sits is a charming one, delicately yet
luxuriously furnished, bright with hothouse flowers, with big French
windows opening on to a canopied balcony overhanging the restless
waters of St. George's Channel. Her husband is leaning back in his
chair, sipping his post-prandial claret in blissful enjoyment.
"Headache all gone, Addie?" he asks, breaking a pleasant drowsy silence.
She turns her smiling face to him with a slight start.
"Headache? Had I a headache, Tom? Oh, I remember! That was this
morning--ages ago--after bathing! Fancy your remembering all that time!"
"Well, I hope I am not such a callous wretch as to forget my wife's
ailments, even after the long 'ages' of a summer morning."
"That is a real pretty speech, as Miss Tucker, on the flat below us,
would say. I'll treasure it in my memory, Tom, and recall it to you,
say, this day five years."
"You'll find it in tune, my dear. I'm not afraid."
She shakes her head doubtfully.
"Impossible! Even though your spirit was willing, the boys would have
corrupted you long before. Fancy Bob or Hal inquiring after a headache
six hours old! Listen to the music; how sweet it sounds!"
"Like a turn on the pier, dear?"
She assents gladly, and trips off to array herself, returning almost at
once with a chip-hat and light lace-scarf thrown round her shoulders.
"Addie, you're not going out in that flimsy garment at this hour of the
night--quite a sharp wind rising too! Go and put on something warmer."
"But I'm quite warm, Tom. Why, I have been out in the bitterest east
wind, with snow on the ground and with a bad sore throat, not more
heavily clad than this!"
"Well, my dear, that is an experience you may boast of, but which you
will not practically repeat. Go, like a good girl, and put on that
white woolly thing I saw in your wardrobe this morning."
She complies sweetly, but when out of sight, petulantly pulls the wrap
from its shell, muttering--
"Well, I hope this will satisfy him. Why it's first cousin to a
blanket! I shall be suffocated. Oh, dear!"
They sally forth and stroll slowly through the fashionable crowd,
Addie's feet keeping time to a swinging gavotte, while she furtively
eyes some dozen couples whose demeanor and gay attire incline her to
suspect that they are in the same interesting position as herself and
Tom.
After a time they leave the crowd and walk to the end of the pier,
which they have all to themselves. They clamber over the moonlit rocks
and stand arm in arm looking across the rippling waters, the music
reaching them mellowed by distance into divinely soothing harmony.
It is an hour, a moment to put poetry into the breasts of the Smallweed
family.
Armstrong feels its influence. He bends his dark face over his wife's,
and asks sentimentally--
"Are you happy, Addie?"
"Oh, yes--yes!" she whispers back, with sparkling eyes. "Why should I
not be? You are so very k--"
He blocks the sentence with a kiss.
"You need not have been in such a hurry," she laughs. "How do you know
I was going to say that, after all? There are lots of other adjectives
beginning with a 'k,' besides 'kind.' Let me see--'kantankerous,' for
instance--"
"Hem! When I was at school, 'cantankerous' began with a 'c,' Mistress
Addie."
"Oh, dear! I won't try repartee again, no matter how grievous the
assault. Tom, what a valuable governess you robbed the Moggeridges of!
You owe them compensation, sir."
A faint breeze brings to them a few bars of one of the sweetest,
saddest love-songs ever written. Addie's voice drops; she says,
scarcely above her breath--
"And you, Tom--are you happy too?"
"Happier, dear, than I ever thought I could be, even in my wildest
dreams of matrimonial bliss. I've had you only a fortnight, little
wife, and yet I don't know how I did without you during all the past
years, or what life would be to me it you went from me now."
"I have no immediate intention of going," she remarks, rubbing her soft
cheek against his coat-sleeve.
"No, you're bound for life now, thank Heaven!" he says fervently. "And,
when I think of the many times I have been within an ace of losing you,
child, of throwing the whole thing up and letting you go, I rejoice in
possessing the gift of pig-headedness, and--"
"You were within an ace of giving me up! When, Tom? I never knew."
"Scores of times. I thought I could not make you happy, or myself
either. I shrunk from the risk."
"Why? What risk?"
"We were so different, you see, Addie--there was such a gulf between
us, not only of years, but of experience, of habit, of thought and
mode of life. My past had been so rough, so lonely, so self-sufficing.
And then--then, you did not like me, Addie; I saw that plainly enough.
You used to shrink if I tried to come near you; and the way you hedged
yourself in with those blessed boys was disconcerting, to say the least
of it."
"I saw you did not like it," she says, with a low laugh.
"Not like it! By Jove, if you could have guessed the many times my
fingers have itched to close on the shapely throat of that brother of
yours, my dear, you would--"
"Poor Bob!"--a little anxiously. "You must not bear him ill-will, Tom;
he's off his guard now. You see, I did not understand you then--did not
know how to talk to you; you looked so big--so out of my world. But now
it is all different." Then, after a short pause--"And so you think I
can make you happy, husband--you don't regret it? You won't find us too
much for you at Nutsgrove? For we're--we're not a comfortable family to
live with, Tom! Oh, indeed we're not! Poor Aunt Jo had an awful time of
it with us, and the Beechers found Pauline very trying at Greystones.
Then I have a shocking temper; and Lottie, poor child, is dreadful when
her questioning mood is on. Now don't be ridiculous, Tom, for I'm quite
serious."
"I like Lottie," he says, smiling; "she's persevering, to be sure,
but quite without guile. Pauline I think I can put up with too. Your
temper, sweetheart, may be a bit of a trial; but fortunately I've a
broad back, and a constitution, physical and mental, of granite."
"You'll want it, I suspect. But tell me, Tom, something about your
early life. Had you no father or mother that you remember?"
"No; my mother died when I was an infant, and my father left me on the
parish and went to America."
"How very strange--both our fathers behaving in much the same way! I
think fathers are rather a mistake in families, Tom."
He laughs.
"So I began life unembarrassed by family connections--a--a--foundling,
in fact--you don't mind, do you, Addie? And for the thirty-seven years
of my life I've lived alone, entirely for myself--worked for myself,
struggled for myself, dreamed for myself, built castles in the air to
be inhabited by myself alone. A despicable state of existence, wasn't
it? I blush when I look back on it now."
"You were not unhappy?"
"No, because I did not know any better. I could not go back to it
now; you have broken the charm of egotism and sordid ambition. Oh,
sweetheart, you cannot imagine how strange and refreshing it is to
shake off the monotony of self at last, to be absorbed in another night
and day, to forget one's separate existence, to feel that life before
one will be full to overflowing of goodly promise, unfading blossom! It
is like stepping back from the blightful shade of a late autumn night
into the glory of a fresh spring morning. Ah, you cannot follow me
there, little one! You have not been baptized in selfishness as I have
been; and, though you like me well enough not to shrink from the future
which is to me a vista of undimmed sunshine, yet I am not to you what
you are to me, Addie; I doubt sorely if I can ever be."
"Hush!" she says, quickly, with a shudder she cannot repress, "It is
no good discussing such matters now. You cannot expect me to follow
you in your pretty simile, because I am only passing from spring into
summer, and so I do not know what autumn may be like--it will come in
time. You like my youth, don't you? You would not have me older? I am
young in years, in experience, and in feeling. I cannot help that. I do
not know much; but I know that I like you, Tom. I know that; I know too
that you are good and stanch and true--ah, twice too good for me!" she
adds, with a dry sob that startles him and makes him drift into a more
cheerful channel as quickly as he can, into which she follows him with
evident relief.
"And so, Tom," she asks, presently, "you have no relatives that you
know of, except that old Mrs. Murphy who sent me that lovely patchwork
quilt as a wedding present? And she is--"
"Only a third or fourth cousin on my mother's side."
"And have you lived all your life at Kelvick?"
"No, dear. I have been half over the world, knocking about east and
west since I was twelve years old."
"Fancy that! I never knew. Your life must have been an interesting one."
"Hardly. It was not exactly commonplace; but it certainly wasn't
picturesque in any of its phases. I went to Australia when I was
quite a lad--worked my way before the mast, and made a little money
out there. I came home, and the demon of invention got hold of me. I
conceived some wondrous piece of agricultural mechanism which was to
make my name and my fortune, over which I spent every farthing I had
scraped together. Well, it proved to be a mere worthless abortion, and
the discovery was a smart blow to my conceit and my energy. I lost
heart for a time, went to the States, where I joined the Confederate
Army, fought for two years--it was the time of the struggle for
emancipation--and, when it was over, I steered further west, to
California, where I did fairly at mining."
"Why, you have been a Jack-of-all-trades, Tom--sailor, soldier,
inventor, miner, manufacturer--what else?"
"That's the whole list. I found at last that liquid-manufacturing paid
the best; so I stuck to it. Vitriol gave me my decisive lift. Now,
Addie, I will not allow that disdainful little sniff, for vitriol lies
very close to my bosom just now. Vitriol bought me Nutsgrove, and
Nutsgrove bought me you, and you bought--"
"Armstrong of Kelvick, is that you in the flesh? What can have
tempted you into the giddy haunts of fashion, so far from your savory
chimney-pots, my dear fellow?"
"Like the man in the Scriptures, 'I married a wife.' Addie"--to his
wife, who stands rather shyly in the background--"let me introduce you
to my friend, Mr. Henderson."
They leave the pier and walk to the hotel, remaining for a few minutes
talking under the porch; then the two men return to the pier for a
smoke. Addie watches them disappear, hatching a little moonlit scamper
on her own account to a solitary part of the shore, where she can
plunge her free hands and hot face into the rippling water. Alas, woman
proposes, but man disposes! She has just cleared the last step of the
terrace, when she meets her husband face to face.
"Addie, I just ran back to see that you did not remain standing in that
draught. Where are you going, child?"--and in an accent of intense
surprise.
"Oh, nowhere in particular--at least, only to the edge of the sea for a
moment!" she answers, a little hurriedly.
"To the shore at eleven o'clock at night, alone! You must have lost
your senses, my dear. You must learn to understand that things of that
sort cannot be done, and particularly in a place of this kind. Go up to
your room at once, please, or you will grieve me very much."
For an instant she stands irresolute, trying to repress a wild instinct
of rebellion, for there is a ring of authority in his voice which stirs
the haughty Lefroy blood.
"I do not see what harm there is; I have been out at all hours of the
night at home, and nobody said anything," she persists sullenly.
"It is of no use," he says almost sternly--at least it sounds so to
her--"drawing parallels between your past life and your present; they
are meaningless. If you wish to return to the shore, I will accompany
you, and tell my friend not to wait for me."
"It is not necessary," she answers, in a low voice. "I am going in."
He follows her a few steps and lays his heavy hand on her shoulder.
"Addie darling, forgive me; I do not make allowance for your youth and
the habits of your past life, and--and--I'm so accustomed to be obeyed,
to command inferiors, that I--I forgot I was speaking to a lady, to one
dearer to me than my life. Forgive me, sweetheart, forgive me!"
"Yes--oh, yes!" she says, slowly withdrawing herself from his detaining
hand.
She walks listlessly up the stairs, stands panting heavily in her
flower-scented room, looking to right and left with the quick, restless
movement of an animal newly caged. She takes off her hat and cumbrous
wrapping, removes the diamonds from her ears, the heavy gold bands from
her fingers, and throws them from her; her arms drop to her sides.
She remains thus, erect, motionless, rigid, for nearly half an hour,
fighting against the sultry storm that sways her young soul; then
she sinks quivering into a chair by the table, her head falls on her
outstretched hands, and her passion finds vent in a storm of sobs and
wild complaints.
At last she is alone; the long _tête-à-tête_ is broken. A stranger's
voice had broken the spell; she can be herself again--can wake Addie
Lefroy from her maiden grave for a few short moments, and bid her live
and suffer; she can throw the suffocating mask aside, let the hot tears
rain from her weary eyes; the quick word, petulant, peevish, fall from
her quivering lips--can be herself again, can seek to find the problem
of her troubled life, can ask herself if it was a lie, a fraud, a
base sequence of hypocrisy, or a glorious martyrdom, an heroic act of
self-sacrifice. But nothing answers her, the problem remains unsolved,
all before her is blurred with passion, misty with thunderous clouds
that veil the transient gleams of a sunshine sweet and tender which
she has dimly felt struggling to reach her path during the most trying
fortnight of her life. But they do not touch her now; black night
shrouds her everywhere.
"He is too good, too generous, too kind, too--too fond of me!" she
wails, not conscious that her grief has found articulate sound. "His
care, his affection, his watchfulness stifle me. I am not accustomed
to them. It is like being transplanted to a hothouse after living all
one's life on the top of a breezy hill. I feel I cannot breathe--that
is it; I want breath, I want air. Only a fortnight, only a fortnight,
and it must go on--I must keep it up to the end! Oh, it is too
much--too much! I cannot bear it--I cannot bear it; it will kill me!"
Her voice sinks into a dry sob; there is a faint sound in the room,
as if a door was being softly closed, a sound which rouses her with a
start from her absorbed passion. She looks up quickly, and glances at
the closed door leading into her husband's dressing-room. A horrible
suspicion flashes across her mind, changing the heat of her blood to an
icy chill. She passes noiselessly into the dressing-room; but there is
no one there.
"An unnecessary alarm, a trick of the imagination!" she breathes with a
sigh of relief.
The distraction has the effect of quieting her excited nerves, soothing
the storm of her mind. She wipes her eyes briskly, tidies her hair,
replaces her wedding-ring.
"I have been a fool! I wonder what set me off like that so suddenly!
Such a strange feeling it was--as if I were choking; but I think it has
done me good. I feel quite cool, light, and refreshed now, ready for a
cup of tea."
She passes into her bedroom to replace her hat and wrap; then, drawing
aside the blind, she peers out of the window, which is in the front of
the hotel, facing the station.
"What a lovely night! No wonder one is tempted to remain out. Still he
ought to be soon in now; it's past eleven some time, and I should like
a cup--Oh, great Heaven!"
With a cry she falls back from the window, cowering, for at that
moment forth from the gloom of the porch underneath, his brave head
hanging low on his breast, her husband moves into the moonlight, where
he stands motionless for a moment, then lifts his arms with a weary,
bewildered gesture, and stumbles forward heavily toward the sleeping
sea.
She knows that her sacrifice has been in vain, that she has blighted
the prime of him who has enriched her and hers with his best, who has
loved her more than his own life.