"So happy as any wife can hope to be, who has no child."
Margaret made herself finish the sentence; for everything that happened to her now revolved upon it. She explained the least little cloud or shadow of cloud thus; she referred the least impatience or short word to the same cause. There was no rift, no failure of understanding, no lessening of love--so the wife assured herself--but she must do her duty. She must not much longer delay to bring to David the thing his soul most desired.
Her thoughts ran unduly upon this theme, and her own anxiety seemed like to stand between her and her object. She exaggerated the truth; out of a natural and innate diffidence she imagined a condition of mind in her husband which did not exist. David indeed desired children and expected them; but he was in no violent hurry, and had not as yet even entertained the possibility of having none. When she mentioned the matter, he consoled her and blamed her for giving it a thought. In reality, the thing in their lives that she marked and deplored and thus explained, belonged to a far different and deeper cause. After love's fever certain differences of temperament began slowly and steadily to declare themselves. There was no radical change in David; but his self-absorption increased with his prosperity--a circumstance inevitable. For comradeship and for sympathy in business he had Rhoda; and her understanding of dumb animals so much exceeded Margaret's, that brother and sister unconsciously made common cause and seemed to live an inner life and develop personal interests from which Margaret found herself in some measure excluded. None could be blamed. The thing simply so fell out; and as yet not one of the three involved perceived it. David and Rhoda were full of his enterprises, and she did much man's work afield for him and advanced his welfare to the best of her strength and sense. Margaret shopped, cooked, mended clothes, and made ready for the others in the intervals of work. She relieved her sister-in-law of much sewing and other toil that Rhoda might have the more leisure to aid David. This woman, indeed, was unlike most women, and for that reason she did not clash with Margaret as much as another might have.
Rhoda Bowden had struck an observer from without as an exotic creature, who homed here by accident, but who by right belonged to no dwelling made with hands. A sister of the deep green glade was she--a denizen of the upland wilderness and the secret antre. She followed the train of Selene. The silver light and the domain of nocturnal dew were hers. Silence was her familiar; from her own brother she hid a part of her days and her nights. And of the varied aspects of her mistress, the moon, Rhoda shared not a few. The young of beasts seemed her special care and joy.
"The tender whelps, new-dropped, of creatures rude,"
found a ready friend in her; but while thus gracious to all the lesser things that shared her place in time, this girl revealed for humanity, beyond her brother, but little love. She was zealous for him, but to other men she stood as heretofore: in an attitude enigmatic, tending to aloofness. Margaret, however, had yet to be convinced that she was not to be won.
To women Rhoda's aspect of late was made more widely manifest. Out of her own virginal fount of feeling no drop of sympathy with the unvirginal could flow; and the thing that Dorcas had accomplished was above all measure infamous, treacherous to womankind, beyond hope of pardon in her eyes. Had the power to do so rested with Rhoda, she had swept her sister out of life; and in her mind this yielding wanton, and her husband, and her new-born baby were already as objects dead and banished from existence.
Margaret's thoughts now centred on Rhoda and she lost sight of her own misty tribulations. Two great problems awaited solution, and with the optimism of a large heart this woman hoped yet to solve them. She wanted to see Rhoda a wife; and she wanted to see her reconciled to Dorcas. The one achievement might depend upon the other. Let Rhoda once wed, and there must come understanding into her life.
Margaret had spoken often, with tact and warmth, of Bartley Crocker; and she had been helped in a very valuable quarter, as it seemed, for David also considered the man as among his closest friends at this season. There had recently been some talk between them of a sort specially interesting to David, for Bartley was attracted, or declared himself attracted, by the prospect of leaving England to farm in Canada, and the information he had gathered together respecting that wider world of the Colonies could not fail to be of interest to Bowden. At David's invitation Bartley had spent a Sunday afternoon recently at 'Meavy Cot'; and Madge was now at Crazywell to tell the lover what had followed his visit.
She waited yet half an hour; then Bartley appeared on the hither bank of the pool, looked about him a while, caught sight of Madge's sunbonnet, and approached her. So busy with her own thoughts was she that she did not see him until he was beside her: then she rose and bade him find some shade.