Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/116

108 that it was neither new nor strange to you, as it was to me. I did not care much then, however; I was too happy, and I trusted to time. So that I might be with you, and know that you were my promised wife, I could be satisfied.

And you had always a welcome for me; were always ready to listen to my eager plans for the future, and to sympathise with them. Do you remember those summer evenings? How we lingered in the coppice of Fernwood, and saw the sun-light on the mill-stream; glancing through the trees, and playing amongst the underwood? How we sat on grassy knolls and talked, letting the time slip by unheeded, till you would suddenly start up and say there would be a scolding waiting for you at home? I know about those scoldings, do I not? A grave word of anxiety lest you should have taken cold, or stayed out too long; for I was not half careful enough of you. And do you remember standing with me in the shrubbery on the spot where Ernest Haughton had parted from you; and a momentary fancy came into my head that you were thinking of him. But when I looked into your quiet, contented face, and my thought died before it could have reached my lips. That was the eve of our wedding-day. We were married. I cannot think of that time calmly; even now, when I would put the sterner touches to my picture, the excitement of that new happiness comes back to bid me pause.

Idiot, that I was! How came it that, by and by, dark thoughts began to rise up in my heart, and to have a recognised place there? That I looked upon your calm content, and thought, with a jealous pang, that you were not happy with me; that what you had given me was not love, but the dregs of the warm heart which had gone down under the waves with Ernest Haughton? I don’t know how it came about, but so it was. With a wonderful aptitude for self-torment, I raked up all the circumstances, throwing over them the one colour which distorted my own vision. And there grew up a strange coldness between us; I sought after solitude, that I might brood over my thoughts: and if at times you came near and I caught the look of wondering sorrow in your face, I stifled the pang it gave me with the counter thought that it was a sorrow to which I could not minister if I would; a sorrow for the dead.

Why did you bear with me so long and patiently, never uttering one word of reproach? At first, indeed, you used to ask why I was moody and sad, but a cold answer, or a vehement one which you did not understand, sent you away silenced. And this mute forbearance only strengthened the idea that I was nothing to you. Foolish then, if you like: and yet in that folly I was unutterably miserable. Miserable because you were so dear to me; because your very presence, or the touch of your hand, would send a thrill through every pulse, and yet I could do nothing to make you happy. I could do nothing but indulge bitterly the feeling that our marriage was a mistake, and you did not love me. What wonder if day by day you grew more distant and reserved, and I more gloomy, while the barrier between us strengthened? Ours was a strange honeymoon, was it not?

sitting over the fire moodily, thinking as usual, wondering how long our life was to go on thus, and how it would end; wandering back again to my wild days among the Scotch hills, to the pile of old newspapers, and the tidings that sent me off through the pouring rain in search of you. My back was to the door, but when I heard it open gently I knew that you were there. You came and stood near me on the rug, and spoke, with your voice a little roused from its usual passionless calm. For you see from the very first you had been so quiet, and my vehement nature craved something more demonstrative. I heard you then with the old thrill stirring my heart, and I traced unwonted excitement in your tone.

“A strange thing has happened,” you said, “and I have come to tell you of it.”

“Well, I am listening.”

For a moment you hesitated, and then went on. And I saw that you held an open letter in your hand.

“My Cousin Ernest was not drowned as we believed. He and four of the crew were saved; they have been brought off one of the lone islands of the Pacific and are in England.”

I never moved. Sitting there with your shadowy presence near me, my wife, I saw in the fire the first panel of my picture, and heard the voice of Ernest break in upon the Nuns’ chorus. For you the sea gave back its dead, and for me what remained? But I knew that you expected me to say something, and I spoke, not in congratulation or rejoicing, I was not false enough for that.

“You must give your cousin a welcome,” I said. “You will be glad to see him—of course he will come here.”

You did not answer. I would not raise my face though I was conscious that you sought to read it. I could not meet that mournful inquiring look of yours which was wont to fill me with inexpressible tenderness.

You turned and went away silently, and left me to my musing. I hardly know what I thought or felt, or wished for. The jealous envy which had been growing up for Ernest dead, changed into disgust and hatred against Ernest living; and across it there came a mockery of gladness in your pleasure at seeing him again. I shunned you less at that time than usual; I could not keep from following you with my eyes compassionately, thinking how I was in the way for ever, and but for me you might be happy.

You remember the day your cousin came. I got up a show of welcome: though lionised and fêted as the hero of the wreck had been, he seemed more intolerable to me than ever. But you were gayer than usual; at dinner you talked lightly, with a make-believe, as I thought, of happiness before him. You were interested in his adventures and drew him out; I alone sat silent and stupid. When you left us, I, holding open the door for you, ventured to look once into your face. Its gaiety was gone, and a wan, dreary