“And to whom you never listened?”
“Not I; and I never could remember names, periods, or dates. You must make the best of me. In some ways you will find that I am hopelessly stupid.”
In spite of these tiresome readings, Madeline was thoroughly happy; there was not one single drawback, not one little cloud on her sky, if we except an occasionally heavy magazine article to which she was obliged to lend her ears. And Laurence was happy too. It was delightful to come home those dark, wet nights, and find a kiss, a blazing fire, and his pretty Madeline awaiting him. She was always smiling, always so ready to see the comic side of everything, a veritable sunbeam in that drawing-room.
“Who would be a bachelor?” he asked himself contemptuously, as he watched her flitting to and fro after dinner, pulling up his armchair and filling his pipe. If he had one little arrière pensée, it was this, that she would not always give him mutton chops, and a wish that her ideas of a menu were a little more expansive.
Nevertheless he was perfectly content. He had an incentive to work hard now, and he did work. He was getting known in a small way. He had the gift of oratory, of what is known as legal tact, a handsome presence, and the power—given to so few—of swaying men’s minds with his eloquence, as the flame of a candle in the wind. But, then, he was only twenty-eight—a mere boy in the eyes of the ancient profession, where a man begins to make a start about fifty. Still Laurence Wynne had his foot on the lower rung of the ladder. More than one shrewd solicitor had noted him. His luck had turned; his marriage had brought him good fortune, though it had scared away all his relations, and he had completely dropped out of society.
But this fool’s Paradise was not to last—it never does. The angel that opened the gate, and drove the foolish pair out into the everyday, hard, stony world was typhoid fever.
The hot summer succeeding their marriage was a trying one, and in the sultry September days typhoid fever laid hold on many victims, among others on the hard-working young barrister—seized him with a death-like grip, flung him on a sick bed, and kept him there for months.
The fever was so difficult to shake off, and it had brought so many other ills in its train. Finances were low—as they are sure to be when the bread-winner is idle. Doctors’ bills and chemists’ bills were mounting up, as well as the butcher’s and baker’s, not to speak of the landlady’s little account.
All the burden now lay upon one pair of young shoulders—Madeline’s; and, to quote a homely but expressive phrase, she absolutely did not know where to turn. She had neither money nor friends. Her husband had no capital; his slender fortune had been invested in his education and profession. And as to his friends and his distant connections, they had disowned him. When they had heard of what they were good enough to call “his low marriage with a teacher in a school,” they had washed their hands of him with wonderful unanimity. Society had lost sight of him for months; Mr. and Mrs. Wynne had no acquaintances. Poor Madeline was in terrible straits, but her courage rose with the occasion; she was brave and energetic, and did not sit down with her hands before her and cry.
A schoolfellow of her husband’s (another young barrister) came to see her and him, and gave help in the shape of advice, which for once was valuable. They moved to the top story—the attics. (That was a step of which their landlady highly approved.) And he procured some law copying for Madeline—who wrote a clear, neat hand—which brought in a few shillings, and kept the actual wolf from the door. He sent fish, grapes, and other little delicacies to the invalid, and was in truth that rara avis—a friend in need.