It was in his honourable, if narrow, nature to tell her frankly that he had recognized his error, that he knew now that all his generosity, all the other gifts he had given her, had not availed, and could not have availed, while George's society had been denied; but the consigne was, "Mrs. Carruthers must not be agitated," and the great rule of Mr. Carruthers's life at present was, that the consigne was not to be violated. Hence, nothing had been said upon the subject, and after the subsidence of her first agitation, Mrs. Carruthers had appeared to take George's presence very quietly, as she took all other things.
The alteration which had taken place in his wife had tended to allay that unacknowledged ill which had troubled Mr. Carruthers's peace, and exacerbated his temper. The old feeling of jealousy died completely out. The pale, delicate, fragile woman, whose mind held by the past now with so very faint a grasp, whose peaceful thoughts were of the present, whose quiet hopes were of the future, had nothing in common with the beautiful young girl whom another than he had wooed and won. As she was now, as alone she wished to be, he was first and chief in her life, and there was not a little exaction or temporary fretfulness, a single little symptom of illness and dependence, which had not in it infinitely more reassuring evidence for Mr. Carruthers than all the observance of his wishes, and submission to his domestic laws, which had formerly made it plainer to Mr. Carruthers of Poynings that his wife feared than that she loved him.
And, if it be accounted strange and bordering on the ludicrous that, at Mr. Carruthers's respectable age, he should still have been subject to the feelings tauntingly mentioned as the "vagaries" of love, it must be remembered that George's mother was the only woman he had ever cared for, and that he had only of late achieved the loftier ideals of love. It was of recent date that he learned to hold his wife more dear and precious than Mr. Carruthers of Poynings.
He was not in the least jealous of George. He liked him. He was clever, Mr. Carruthers knew; and he rather disapproved of clever people in the abstract. He had heard, and had no reason to doubt--certainly none afforded by his stepson's previous career--that literary people were a bad lot. He supposed, innocent Mr. Carruthers, that, to be literary, people must be clever. The inference was indisputable. But George did not bore him with his cleverness. He never talked about the Piccadilly or the Mercury, reserving his confidences on these points for his mother and his uncle. The family party paired off a good deal. Mr. Carruthers and his wife, Mark Felton and his nephew. And then Mr. Carruthers had an opportunity of becoming convinced that the doubts he had allowed to trouble him had all been groundless, and to learn by experience that, happy in her son's society, truly grateful to him for the kindness with which he watched George, she was happier still in his company.
To a person of quicker perception than Mr. Carruthers, the fact that the invalid never spoke of her faithful old servant would have had much significance. It would have implied that she had more entirely lost her memory than other features and circumstances of her condition indicated, or that she had regained sufficient mental firmness and self-control to avoid anything leading directly or indirectly to the origin and source of a state of mental weakness of which she was distressingly conscious. But Mr. Carruthers lacked quickness and experience, and he did not notice this. He had pondered, in his stately way, over Dr. Merle's words, and he had become convinced that he must have been right. There had been a "shock." But of what nature? How, when, had it occurred? Clearly, these questions could not now, probably could not ever, be referred to Mrs. Carruthers. Who could tell him? Clare? Had anything occurred while he had been absent during the days immediately preceding his wife's illness? He set himself now, seriously, to the task of recalling the circumstances of his return.
He had been met by Clare, who told him Mrs. Carruthers was not quite well. He had gone with her to his wife's room. She was lying in her bed. He remembered that she looked pale and ill. She was in her dressing-gown, but otherwise dressed. Then she had not been so ill that morning as to have been unable to leave her bed. If anything had occurred, it must have taken place after she had risen as usual Besides, she had not been seriously ill until a day or two later--stay, until how many days? It was on the morning after Mr. Dalrymple's visit that he had been summoned to his wife's room; he and Clare were at breakfast together. Yes, to be sure, he remembered it all distinctly. Was the "shock" to be referred to that morning, then? Had it only come in aid of previously threatening indisposition? These points Mr. Carruthers could not solve. He would question Clare on his return, and find out what she knew, or if she knew anything. In the mean time, he would not mention the matter at all, not even to his wife's brother or her son. Mr. Carruthers of Poynings had the "defects of his qualities," and the qualities of his defects, so that his pride, leading to arrogance in one direction, involved much delicacy in another, and this sorrow, this fear, this source, of his wife's suffering, whatever it might be, was a sacred thing for him, so far as its concealment from all hitherto unacquainted with it was concerned. Clare might help him to find it out, and then, if the evil was one within his power to remedy, it should be remedied; but in the mean time, it should not be made the subject of discussion or speculation. Her brother could not possibly throw any light on the cause of his wife's trouble; he was on the other side of the Atlantic when the blow, let it have come from whatever unknown quarter, had struck her. Her son! Where had he been? And asking himself this question, Mr. Carruthers began to feel rather uncomfortably hot about the ears, and went creaking up the stairs to his wife's sitting-room, in order to divert his thoughts as soon as possible. He saw things by a clearer light now, and the recollection of his former conduct to George troubled him.
He found his stepson and Mark Felton in Mrs. Carruthers's room. The day was chilly and gloomy, and eminently suggestive of the advantages possessed by an English country mansion over the most commodious and expensive of foreign lodging-houses. George had just placed a shawl round his mother's shoulders, and was improving the fastenings of the windows, which were in their normal condition in foreign parts.
"Mark has been talking about Poynings," said Mrs. Carruthers, turning to her husband with a smile, "and says he never saw a place he admired more, though he had only a passing glimpse of it." Mr. Carruthers was pleased, though of course it was only natural that Mr. Felton should never have seen any place more to be admired by persons of well-regulated taste than Poynings.
"Of course," he said, with modest admission, "if you come to talk about the Dukeries, and that kind of thing, there's nothing to be said for Poynings. But it is a nice place, and I am very fond of it, and so is Laura."
He was rather alarmed, when he had said this, to observe his wife's eyes full of tears. Tears indicated recollection, and of a painful kind, he thought, being but little acquainted with the intricate symptoms of feminine human nature, which recollection must be avoided, or turned aside, in a pleasurable direction.