"You don't mind my coming out here alone, papa?" said Dorothy, as, after a little chat with the gate-keeper, they left the park. "I have of late found it so good to be alone! I think I am beginning to learn to think."
"Do in every thing just as you please, my child," said her father. "I can have no objection to what you see good. Only don't be so late as to make me anxious."
"I like coming early," said Dorothy. "These lovely mornings make me feel as if the struggles of life were over, and only a quiet old age were left."
The father looked anxiously at his daughter. Was she going to leave him? It smote him to the heart that he had done so little to make her life a blessed one. How hard no small portion of it had been! How worn and pale she looked! Why did she not show fresh and bright like other young women—Mrs. Faber for instance? He had not guided her steps into the way of peace! At all events he had not led her home to the house of wisdom and rest! Too good reason why—he had not himself yet found that home! Henceforth, for her sake as well as his own, he would besiege the heavenly grace with prayer.
The opening of his heart in confessional response to his daughter, proved one of those fresh starts in the spiritual life, of which a man needs so many as he climbs to the heavenly gates.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
PAUL FABER'S DRESSING-ROOM.
Faber did not reach home till a few minutes before the dinner hour. He rode into the stable-yard, entered the house by the surgery, and went straight to his dressing-room; for the roads were villianous, and Ruber's large feet had made a wonderful sight of his master, who respected his wife's carpet. At the same time he hoped, as it was so near dinner-time, to find her in her chamber. She had, however, already made her toilet, and was waiting his return in the drawing-room. Her heart made a false motion and stung her when she heard his steps pass the door and go up stairs, for generally he came to greet her the moment he entered the house.—Had he seen any body!—Had he heard any thing? It was ten dreadful minutes before he came down, but he entered cheerily, with the gathered warmth of two days of pent-up affection. She did her best to meet him as if nothing had happened. For indeed what had happened—except her going to church? If nothing had taken place since she saw him—since she knew him—why such perturbation? Was marriage a slavery of the very soul, in which a wife was bound to confess every thing to her husband, even to her most secret thoughts and feelings? Or was a husband lord not only over the present and future of his wife, but over her past also? Was she bound to disclose every thing that lay in that past? If Paul made no claim upon her beyond the grave, could he claim back upon the dead past before he knew her, a period over which she had now no more control than over that when she would be but a portion of the material all?
But whatever might be Paul's theories of marriage or claims upon his wife, it was enough for her miserable unrest that she was what is called a living soul, with a history, and what has come to be called a conscience—a something, that is, as most people regard it, which has the power, and uses it, of making uncomfortable.
The existence of such questions as I have indicated reveals that already between her and him there showed space, separation, non-contact: Juliet was too bewildered with misery to tell whether it was a cleft of a hair's breadth, or a gulf across which no cry could reach; this moment it seemed the one, the next the other. The knowledge which caused it had troubled her while he sought her love, had troubled her on to the very eve of her surrender. The deeper her love grew the more fiercely she wrestled with the evil fact. A low moral development and the purest resolve of an honest nature afforded her many pleas, and at length she believed she had finally put it down. She had argued that, from the opinions themselves of Faber, the thing could not consistently fail to be as no thing to him. Even were she mistaken in this conclusion, it would be to wrong his large nature, his generous love, his unselfish regard, his tender pitifulness, to fail of putting her silent trust in him. Besides, had she not read in the newspapers the utterance of a certain worshipful judge on the bench that no man had any thing to do with his wife's ante-nuptial history? The contract then was certainly not retrospective. What in her remained unsatisfied after all her arguments, reasons, and appeals to common sense and consequences, she strove to strangle, and thought, hoped, she had succeeded. She willed her will, made up her mind, yielded to Paul's solicitations, and put the whole painful thing away from her.