Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/438

5, 1860.] in her hair; it was fine dark hair, but very much like anybody else’s. So much, thought I, for lovers’ rhapsodies! I was examining her attentively, as we sat talking, and approved what I saw very much. She was handsome, with a regular style of beauty, and a slightly disdainful expression about the Ups, which I fancied deepened as Sir Alfred by-and-bye came out of the house to us, and began overwhelming me with apologies for having mistaken the day of my arrival.

“And have you seen the boy?” asked Alfred eagerly. “Oh I must fetch him to you, he is just gone into his tea; he has been with me all the afternoon. Now, Markham, you must admire him.” And off he ran to the house.

“Sir Alfred is mad about the child,” said Lady Standish to me, as we watched his retreating figure. “I believe he considers it quite perfect, and thinks of nothing else.”

“An amiable weakness, we must allow,” said I, smiling.

“Must we?” said she. “I am afraid I should never consider any weakness amiable, at any rate in a man.”

“You would not expect any very great decision from Alfred’s chin, would you?”

“You are a physiognomist?” she asked, in answer.

“I could scarelyscarcely [sic] be a painter without having a little knowledge of the science,” I replied. “I am going to study you for the next two days if you will allow me; for I should like the picture to be a picture of you, not only of Lady Standish the outer.”

She turned and gave me her first smile, which made her face positively beautiful for a moment; but the next it faded, as Sir Alfred reappeared, carrying his son.

“I must go in,” she said, hurriedly; and passing them without a word, she left her husband to show off the child to me, which he did with the greatest delight: indeed he might well be proud of the handsome little fellow, though I certainly thought he looked delicate.

I thought Sir Alfred and his wife the most melancholy examples of married lovers I had ever come across—how sad, I mused, if so much love can so degenerate by custom. I knew how madly Alfred had been in love, and I saw there was much about her that might have warranted it when her manner to him had not that blighting bitterness, almost insulting to a man. It was at times difficult, as I often found, to keep up the ball of conversation at dinner. She talked well, and was evidently clever, but the moment he joined in the discussion, on whatever subject it might be, she instantly closed her lips and retired from the field.

It was after one of these rather awkward pauses, that to introduce a new subject, I one evening brought forward some sentiment about the sea:

“You must love it dearly, Lady Standish, for I believe you have lived near it all your life, have you not?”

“Never till I married, and I dislike it particularly,” was her reply, and gathering the lace shawl she wore round her line figure, she rose and left the dining room.

“I thought Lady Standish used to live near here in your uncle’s time,” I said to Standish.

“It was not that Isabel I married,” said Sir Alfred, rising, and going to the chimney-piece, against which he leant his head as he spoke. “The manœuvres of others, and my own lamentable weakness, against which you, Markham, so often warned me, separated us.”

Then the next moment, as though to console himself, he began talking about his boy. Certainly never was any one more wrapped up in another, than Standish in that child; a frail tenure of happiness, I used to think, as I was drawing his pale oval face. His very beauty had a warning in it, those strange spiritual eyes, in a child, with the dark rims under them, predicted anything but a long or easy life. Meantime I seemed to have a talent for introducing disagreeable subjects: one evening, Alfred Standish, approaching a side-table uttered a sudden exclamation, then correcting himself said angrily, as he took up a vase with some passion flowers in it:

“Who brought these flowers here?”

“I did,” said I, looking up from the sofa where I was lounging exhausted with the day’s labours; “I brought them for Lady Standish, thinking she might like the novelty of them. I have not seen any in your gardens: they are passion flowers, Lady Standish, and the place where I found them would make a picture in itself—they were the sole remains of civilisation in a deserted house, about five miles from here, along the cliff; it seems partly pulled down. Who lived there, Alfred?”

“I—What does it signify? I am sure, Isabel—Lady Standish does not care for those flowers.”

“You are mistaken, Sir Alfred,” replied Lady Standish, for once looking full at him with her clear liquid eyes. “I like them very much, and am much obliged to Mr. Markham.”

Before her hand could touch the flower I extended to hers, Sir Alfred had snatched it from me.

“I can’t bear the sight of them,” he said—then as if ashamed of his impetuosity, he walked to the other end of the room.

“Let us have some music,” said Lady Standish, calmly, after following him with her eyes, in a disdainful questioning manner, for a moment; but I thought her hand shook as she turned over the music in the portfolio, and her full deep voice was more passionate than ever, as its rich cadence swelled on my ear. There were tones in her voice that quite surprised you with their pathos. When she was about to retire for the night, she said: “I forgot to tell you, Sir Alfred, that the Bruces were here to-day, and I asked them to dinner next week. We owe the county a feast, so we may as well get over them all at once. I fixed Friday week, the 20th.”

When I came back from opening the door for her, I found Alfred as pale as death.

“Is it not astonishing, amazing,” he said passionately, “how some women love to wound and hurt you. Was there no other day she could have fixed for her company than this one—this 20th. She knew how I must feel it.”

“Is it an anniversary then?” I asked.

“Markham! it is the day she—my Isabel destroyed herself—for my sake.”