“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 life
And shadow all my soul that I may die.
Thou weighest heavy on the heart within,
Weigh heavy on my eyelids: let me die.”
ŒNONE.
THIS was 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
“RALPH SEVERN.”
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 her on 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. I won’t see 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, do go.”
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, to endure her 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 it would he have left her?—would he not,
he was wise and far-seeing, have devised some means 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. But what
was 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, could this be right? Was not her case
altogether exceptional; were there not, must there 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 “quite right.” 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’t
order a 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 more
unhappy.”
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, what is the
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. I am strangely 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 I had
loved 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 him now. 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.