Laurence, still holding the telegram in his thin, transparent hand, gazed at his wife for some seconds in silence. How changed she was, he thought, with a pang of self-reproach. She was shabby—very genteelly shabby. Her black dress was all mended and pieced, her face was haggard, her eyes sunken, their look eager, anxious, almost desperate.
An intelligent spectator would have declared that she was obviously half-starved, and so she was. But how furiously she would have disclaimed such a pronouncement. She would rather have died than have admitted that truth. As long as Laurence had meat once a day, as long as baby had milk, she did very well on anything, and anything may mean almost nothing—it is an elastic word. Meanwhile, Laurence had been telling himself that he had been a culpable wretch to marry Madeline West. What would he say to her father when he placed his daughter in his arms—a daughter in all but rags, with a face pinched with famine, without a friend, without a penny, and weighted with a dying husband and a peculiarly ill-tempered baby?
How much better would it have been if he had curbed his foolish fancy—nipped it in the bud, and left Madeline to her fate. Why had he not wired to Mrs. Wolferton? What would her father say? Would he cast her off?
Madeline had hinted that, as well as she could judge her father from his letters, he was fond of show and style and great people. He wished her to dance and sing and play well, and to speak French; but he had never said a word about literature, or the English classics, or what Laurence called “the higher education of women.” On the other hand, he hoped that she would always make acquaintance with girls her equals, or even superiors, and never lower herself by school-friendships that it would be impossible for him to recognize. Madeline had once innocently repeated this to her husband verbatim, and it came vividly before him now. Madeline had done more than form a friendship of which her aspiring parent would disapprove, a friendship that could be slipped out of like an old glove. Here she was tied for life to a poor man, whose only career seemed likely to be that of an invalid—a stone round her neck as long as he lived.
He had but faint hopes of his own recovery; everything was against it. He knew that this could not be helped, and he was very patient. If he had good wine, wholesome delicacies to tempt his appetite, instead of gruesome scraps of stale, ill-cooked meat and poisonous port at a shilling; if he could have a change to pure, invigorating air, he might yet have a chance. And he knew that he might as well long for the moon—for the entire firmament!
“What is to be done, Laurence?” asked Madeline, rather surprised at his long silence. “What do you think of it?”
“You must go, of course,” he returned at last. “Go to-day.”
“To-day! My dear Laurence, what are you thinking of?” sitting down on a rush chair as she spoke, and staring at him in amazement. “Where is the money to come from? Look here,” producing a shabby little purse, with a brass clasp, and turning out the pitiably small contents, “all I possess is two and sevenpence.”
“Still you must go, Maddie, by hook or crook; much may depend on it. A return third-class——”
“A return third-class would be twenty-two shillings—one pound two,” she interrupted. “And, besides, I could not go in this,” looking down at her gown; “now,” appealingly, “could I?”