“Why?”
It was not easy to explain. The sailor, sinking with his ship at twenty-five, does not in his last moments wish that he had been a grocer, though if he had he might have gone on contentedly selling tea and candles for half a century. George, struck down by misfortune in the prime of his youth, had tasted some of life’s supremest joys, and the rolling years could give him no delight such as he had felt in running the whole gamut of an absorbing passion. He hesitated before he answered her.
“If I had not married you,” he said at last, “you would never have been poor, you would have had as many lovely dresses and diamonds as you wanted, and nobody would ever have teased you to tell the truth, or to do anything you didn’t want to do. And yet you are not sorry you married me. What’s the reason?”
She curled herself about him. “I don’t know,” she said shyly. “You’ve made me feel things I didn’t—feel—before.”
“Well, Nouna, and you’ve done the same to me. Are you satisfied?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then so am I.”
And in this state of placid but languid contentment these two shipwrecked creatures drifted on day by day, tired out by the buffets of fortune, and making no effort to escape from the black archer who seemed to have marked them down. The young come to this stage more easily than the middle-aged; when their strong passions and eager desires burn low, quenched suddenly by ill-health or desperate misfortune, all the busy wheels of the world seem to stand still with them, and they cry, when they feel that the pulse of life beats weakly: “This is the end!” While older sufferers, who have shaken Time by the hand, and know his ways, and have learnt to bear his penalties patiently, see only the daily work interrupted against their will, waiting to be taken up again when the storm is over.
There came to Plymouth, when Lauriston and his wife had been a week there together, a friend who saw something of this, and set her wits to work, after her custom, to put right what she saw was wrong. Ella Millard had brought her whole family to the town on the plea that a fortnight of the Devonshire air would improve her sisters’ complexions, and arm them for the triumphs of the coming season. Having gained over her mother, from whom she inherited her own strong will, the rest yielded like lambs, and within a week of her resolution to come they were all installed in a house at the upper end of Lockyer Street, near the Hoe. By Sir Henry and his two eldest daughters, who all enjoyed a serene animal health, and to whose lymphatic temperament trials of the nervous system were meaningless words, the wan faces and languid movements of the Lauristons were looked upon as altogether fatal signs. But the more discriminating Ella would not give up hope so easily. It seemed to her contrary to common sense, and to the lofty qualities she attributed to him that the man who had been her ideal should allow himself to be snuffed out of life so easily. Afraid to depend entirely upon her own judgment in such an important matter, she refrained from setting her scathing little tongue to jibe at him for the inertness of his mind until she had found some person of authority to pronounce upon the health of his body. But George had never before in his life been in need of a doctor, and scouted the idea of seeing one now; while Nouna, on whose behalf Ella then pleaded, shrank sensitively from the ordeal of meeting a stranger, and only consented at last to see the physician whom George had called in to dress her arm on the memorable evening of his first visit to Mary Street. The very next day Dr. Bannerman arrived, and had an interview with both his patients. The entrance of the tall, slightly stooping figure, the sight of his dark, penetrating face, lean, lined, and impressive as that of a magician, raised a flush of excitement to Nouna’s face, and brought back to her husband’s mind a vivid recollection of the prophecy uttered by the doctor on that May evening. If the sharp eyed man of science knew all the circumstances that had chequered Lauriston’s life since he disregarded that warning, he would indeed think that his sinister prophecy had been amply fulfilled.
The interview was a short one. The doctor affected to have no recollection of either of his patients until George followed him out of the room, and stood face to face with him on the landing.