She turned quickly towards me again, biting her under lip as she fixed her eyes wistfully, eagerly, upon my face. Then with tears rolling down her cheeks, she laid her head on my arm, and clinging to my hand, to my sleeve, began to sob and to whisper incoherent words of gladness at my coming.
"My child, my child!" I said hoa.r.s.ely, with a pa.s.sionate yearning to comfort the fragile little creature whose whole body was trembling with repressed sobs. I got into a sort of frenzy as she went on helplessly crying, and eloquence soon ran dry in my efforts to comfort her. "Look here, child, this won"t do any good. Hold up your head, Babiole; for goodness sake don"t go on like this, my dear, or I shall be snivelling myself in a moment," I said, with more of the same matter-of-fact kind, until she presently looked up and laughed at me through her tears.
"There now, you"ve quite spoilt yourself by this nonsense," I continued severely. "Go and put yourself to rights before your husband comes in."
And I led her to the looking-gla.s.s with my arm round her, feeling, though I did not recognise the fact at the time, a great relief in this little demonstration of an affection which was growing every moment stronger.
"Do you know," she asked presently, as she turned her head away from the gla.s.s before which she had, by some dexterous feminine sleight of hand with two or three hairpins, arranged her disordered hair, "why Fabian had proofs to correct to-night?"
I confessed with shame that my male mind had been content with the reason he had given.
"He wanted to leave me alone with you," she explained, "because he knows what a strong influence you have over me, and he hoped that you would give me a lecture."
"A lecture! What did he want me to lecture on?"
"Oh, on my general conduct, I suppose; on my acquaintance, intimacy with people he dislikes; on my taking part in amateur theatricals; on a lot of things--on everything in fact."
"But if your husband can"t induce you to do what he wishes, what chance have I, an outsider?"
"Oh, Mr. Maude, dear Mr. Maude, have you been so long among the hills as to think like that? Or is it that life was a different thing when you took an active part in it? It"s only in books that husbands are husbands, and wives are wives."
She had sat down on the sofa beside me, but I was not going to be talked over like that. Her words had roused in me the instinctive antagonism of the s.e.xes, and I got up and walked up and down, an occupation which demanded some care amidst the miniature inlaid furniture with which the small room was somewhat overcrowded.
"You know, my dear," I began rather drily, looking at the ceiling, which was not far above my head, "when things get so radically wrong between husband and wife, as they seem to be between you and Fabian, the fault is very seldom all on one side."
"But it is in this case."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, quite sure."
"You think you are not to blame in the least?"
"In this, no."
"And that all the fault lies on poor Fabian"s side?"
"Oh no."
"Well, on whose side does it lie then?"
"On yours."
I stopped short in front of her, and looked down on the little Dresden china figure, sitting with clasped hands and crossed feet in exasperating demureness on the sofa below me.
"Do you know that you are a confoundedly ungrateful little puss?"
"No, I"m not," she answered pa.s.sionately, raising her head and meeting my gaze with eyes full of fire. "I think of you by day and by night. I read over the books I read with you, to try to feel as if you were still by my side explaining them to me. I talk to you when I am by myself, I sing my best songs to you, I almost pray to you. But just as the heathen beat their G.o.ds and throw them in the dust when they lose a battle, so I, when things go wrong with me, find a consolation in accusing you of being the cause." She laughed a little as she finished, as if ashamed of her temerity, and anxious to let it pa.s.s as a joke. But I held my ground and looked at her steadily.
"That is very flattering," said I, more moved than I cared to show, "but it is nothing in support of your accusation. Women, the very best of you, think nothing of bringing against your friends charges which a man----"
She interrupted hastily, "I brought no charge."
"You only accused me of deliberately spoiling the lives of two of my dearest friends."
"No, no, not that; I only said that you brought about our marriage."
"Which then seemed to you the climax of earthly happiness. Remember, you married him with your eyes open, content not even to expect him to be a good husband. You admitted that yourself. Is it my fault that your love has proved a weaker thing than you thought?"
"Weaker!" This was apparently a new idea to her. She now spoke in a humbler tone. "How could I know," she asked meekly, "what strong things it would have to conquer? I thought all men were something like you--at heart, and that to please them one had only to try. Oh, and I did try so hard!"
The poor little face was drawn into piteous lines and wrinkles as she sighed forth this lament.
"But what has he done, child?"
She shook her head. "Nothing. If I could have seen before marriage a diary of my married life as it would be, I should have thought, as I did, that I was going into an earthly paradise. There is nothing wrong but the atmosphere, and there is only one thing wanting in that."
"He does not care for you?" I scarcely did more than form the words with my lips, but the answering tears rolled down her cheeks again at once.
"Not a bit. At least, not so much as _you_ care for To-to or--Janet.
And it isn"t his fault. He is perfectly kind to me in his fashion, admires the way I have worked to please him, is grieved that I am dissatisfied with the result. Only--he did not take me in--of his own accord, and so I have remained always--outside. That"s all!"
She spread out her little hands, and clasped them again, with a plaintive gesture of resignation.
"And--and if I seem ungrateful you must forgive me; I"ve never been able to tell it all to any one for all these four years."
I was stricken with remorse, but I dared not give it the least expression for fear of the lengths to which it might carry me.
I made another journey among the gipsy tables and the pestilent _bric-a-brac_, and returning sat down, not on the sofa beside her, but in a chair a few feet away. I took a book up from a table by my side; I remember that it was _Marmion_, and that it had very exquisite ill.u.s.trations.
"How about these friends, then, whose intimacy your husband disapproves of?"
"Oh, those!" contemptuously. "One doesn"t open one"s heart quite wide to such friends as those."
"Then if you care about them so little, why not give them up and please your husband?"
"One must be intimate with somebody," she said entreatingly, "even if it"s only a tea-drinking and scandal-talking intimacy."
"But why with these particular people?"
"Because we all have a particular grievance: we all have bad husbands.
At least--no, Fabian"s not a bad husband," she corrected hastily; "but we are all dissatisfied with our husbands."
"Perhaps the husbands of those ladies I saw with you at the theatre--forgive me if I am making a rude and ridiculous mistake--are dissatisfied with them?" I suggested, very meekly and mildly.
"I daresay they are," she answered, flushing. "The less a man has of domestic virtues, the more he invariably expects from his wife."
"I am not surprised that Fabian shrinks from the thought of your looking as they do."