Had she loved him less, the foregoing scene would have completely disenchanted her; but love sealed her eyes, and she saw no selfishness, no unmanly weakness in his horror at the idea of a child. She saw nothing, in fact, but what he chose her to see: his affection, and his warm caressing manners.
Although Cecil never again allowed Blanche to suspect that he was otherwise than delighted, and although he even tried to convince himself that, after all, there was nothing disagreeable in having a family; that it was one of the inevitable conditions of marriage, and therefore should be accepted with cheerful resignation; yet did the idea frequently depress him.
This much is to be urged in favour of the unwillingness of fathers to incur the burden of children: that while the maternal instinct from the very first—nay, even in girlhood—makes the woman look forward with anticipative joy to the time of becoming a mother, the paternal instinct is seldom developed until the child is actually there to call it forth. Fathers love their children as much, or nearly so, as mothers; but fathers do not, as mothers do, love prospective children. The man contemplates the expense, trouble, and responsibility of children, which the woman, with beautiful improvidence, never thinks about; but when the children are born, the man joins the woman in forgetting, in their joy, the drawbacks to their joy.
Cecil was just the man to make a doating spoiling father to the very child whose announcement made him so serious.
The seriousness with which he accepted his lot would have been incalculably beneficial to him, had he possessed a grain or two more of moral resolution. It impressed him once more with the conviction of the necessity for work. It stimulated him again to daily labour. Warned by the state of his finances, he relinquished the idle dreaming of genius awaiting inspiration, and began to set his shoulder to the wheel.
So strenuously did he work, that in less than three weeks he finished his comic opera, words and music, and had now to begin the arduous task of getting it performed.
CHAPTER V.
RENUNCIATION.
J'aurais dans ta mémoire une place sacrée;
Mais vivre près de toi, vivre l'âme ulcérée,
O ciel! moi qui n'aurais jamais aimé que toi,
Tous les jours, peux-tu bien y songer sans effroi,
Je te ferais pleurer, j'aurais mille pensées
Que je ne dirais pas, sur les choses passées
J'aurais l'air d'épier, de douter, de souffrir.
VICTOR HUGO.—Marion de Lorme.
The termination of Cecil's opera was coincident with that fearful scene recorded at the close of our second volume, wherein Marmaduke avowed his passion to Violet, and unwittingly achieved his vengeance upon Mrs. Vyner.