"A queer couple," said the coachman shaking his head. "And they call that being married! The Lord preserve a man from such wedded bliss as that!"
A quarter of an hour later the carriage containing Arthur Berkow and his wife was rolling along the road which led to the town.
The weather had been tolerable enough during the morning, but had now changed for the worse. The sky was lowering and overcast; the wind, which had risen almost to a hurricane, drove the grey clouds before it, and every now and then a heavy shower fell from them on to the already over-saturated earth. It was, in truth, a rough and stormy spring, of a sort thoroughly to disgust those accustomed to a town-life with a sojourn in the country.
Although the month of May had come, the bare leafless trees in the park showed hardly any symptoms of sprouting forth. The piercing wind and cold rains had destroyed all the flowers, to the distraction of the head-gardener who had been at so much pains to train them to perfection in the beds and on the terraces, and every bud was mercilessly nipped and blighted so soon as it showed itself. The impracticable roads and drenched forests made all excursions, possible only in a close carriage, as unpleasant as they were objectless.
Day after day nothing but storms and heavy rain; a grey cloudy sky, mountains veiled in mist, through which, ever and anon, a pale ray of sunshine would struggle faintly; and with all this a joyless, desolate home, where the mists gradually sank deeper and deeper, so that there, at least, no sunshine could penetrate, where every blossom, possibly ready to unfold, was frozen by the icy breath of bitterness and hatred.
In this home two people endured, as a kind of martyrdom from which each strove to escape as much as possible, that undisturbed seclusion which is looked on by most newly-married couples as the height of bliss. Surely this was enough to account for the bride's pale face and for that expression of pain about her mouth which no amount of self-control could obliterate; to account also for the melancholy look with which she gazed out at the landscape.
She had given her strength credit for more than it could bear. The sacrifice had been promptly made in the flush of courage and of filial love, but the days and hours succeeding the sacrifice, the passive endurance of her chosen lot, called now, for the first time, all her moral courage, all her power of will, into action, and however much Eugénie might possess of both, it was yet plainly to be seen that this after-time was very bitter to her.
Her husband, leaning back in the opposite corner as far off as possible, so that the folds of her dress hardly touched his cloak, did not seem to carry the burden of his happiness much more lightly. His face had, it is true, always been as pale, his eyes as expressive of fatigue, his bearing as languid as now, but there were lines in his countenance which had not been there before--dark, bitter lines, stamped on it by the events of the last few weeks, and which no amount of the coolest indifference would ever again efface.
He too looked out silently through the window, and made no more attempt than Eugénie to renew the conversation. They had met for the first time that day when about to set out on this journey, and some formal little speeches had been exchanged about the weather, the drive and the object for which it was being made; then they had relapsed into an icy silence which was to last, apparently, until they reached the town.
The expedition, conducted in this fashion, was not very agreeable; though in the comfortable close carriage nothing was felt of the inclement weather without, yet even the softest cushions could not prevent their feeling some inconvenience from the bad state of the roads, and the heavy barouche could only advance slowly, though drawn by fine and powerful horses.