The Tragic Bride

by Francis Brett Young

"I shall never see you, Mrs. Considine!" She was still Mrs. Considine to him. For answer she only took his hand and smiled.

From that time he followed obediently his master's plans. Considine kept him busy, and the walks and drives that he had taken with Gabrielle almost ceased. At first, making a deliberate sacrifice, she had wondered if she would lose him; but she need never have feared this. The moments in which they met were stolen and therefore sweet. She still remained the confidante of all his emotions and thoughts, and since the time in which these confidences could be given to her was now so short, each moment of it burned with a new intensity. They met by calculated chances and in strange places; and their meetings were lovers' meetings, even if they never spoke of love.

If the holidays at Christmas had been a desolation to Gabrielle, her parting from Arthur next Easter was clouded by a sense of more positive want. It was the season of lovers, days of bright sunshine, evenings of a surpassing tenderness. She went to the station with him in the pony-cart alone. She sat like a statue in the trap while the train puffed its way slowly up the gradient and its noise died away in a rhythmical rumble. When she awoke to the fact that he had gone she felt a sudden impulse to do something desperate, if only she could think of anything desperate to do. She felt that she would like to shock Considine and the Halbertons and the whole county, to be, for one moment, outrageous and unrestrained. But she couldn't do anything of the kind; her wild spark of energy seemed so pathetically small and feeble against the vast inertia of that dreamy countryside. Even if she were to cry out at the top of her voice she couldn't assert her identity; those huge passive folds of green country wouldn't believe her. They wouldn't accept the fact that she was Gabrielle Hewish, now called Considine. To them she was just the wife of a country parson dawdling through the leafy lanes in a pony-trap. She lashed the pony into a canter, but felt no better for it. The animal settled down again into his shamble. No power on earth could make him keep on cantering over the hills of the South Hams, and he knew it.

Arrived at Lapton she handed over the pony to a groom and set off walking violently across country, hoping in this way to cool the heat of her blood. She felt that she would like to go on walking till she dropped, but as soon as her limbs began to tire she knew that this would not bring her content. She hurried back to the Manor a few minutes late for dinner. Considine, to whom unpunctuality was the eighth deadly sin, was pacing up and down the hall, his hands behind his back, with the impatience of an animal prowling in a cage.

"Ah, here you are at last!" he said.

They went in to dinner, but she could not eat. Considine's appetite was as regular as everything else in his time-table. He ate heartily and methodically. She found it difficult to sit still and watch him eating.

"What's the matter with you?" he said at last.

"I don't know. I'm restless to-day."

"Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't rest now that the house is empty again. The holidays come as a great relief in a place like this. And the Spring Term is always the most trying."

He watched her narrowly, then and for several days afterwards. When he became solicitous about her health she always knew that he was wondering if at last she was going to fulfil his desire for a child of his own. On these occasions he overwhelmed her with attentions.