This engagement relieved the Lennoxes for the time being of their embarrassments. At four they dined, at six bade each other good-bye, and repaired to their respective theatres. Dick was playing in drama, Kate in opéra bouffe; and something before a quarter to eleven she expected him to meet her at the stage-door of the Prince's. On this point she was very particular; if he were a few moments late she questioned him minutely as to where he had been, what he had been doing, and little by little the jealousies and suspicions which her marriage had appeased returned, and tortured her night and day. At first the approach of pain was manifested by a nervous anxiety for her husband's presence. She seemed dissatisfied and restless when he was not with her, and after breakfast in the mornings, when he took up his hat to go out, she would beg of him to stay, and find fault with him for leaving her. He reasoned with her very softly, assuring her that he had the most important engagements. On one occasion it was a man who had given him an appointment in order to speak with him concerning a new theatre, of which he was to have the entire management; another time it was a man who was writing a drama, and wanted a collaborator to put the stage construction right; and as these séances of collaboration occupied both morning and afternoon, Kate was thrown entirely on her own resources until four o'clock. The first two or three novels she had read during her convalescence had amused her, but now one seemed so much like the other that they ended by boring her; and, too excited to be able to fix her attention, she often read without understanding what she was reading: on one side the memory of her baby's death preyed upon her—she still could not help thinking that it was owing to her neglect that it had died—on the other, the thought that her husband was playing her false goaded her to madness. Sometimes she attempted to follow him, but this only resulted in failure, and she returned home after a fruitless chase more dejected than ever.
'Ah! if the baby had not died, there would have been something to live for,' she murmured to herself a thousand times during the day, until at last her burden of remorse grew quite unbearable, and she thought of the brandy the doctor had ordered her. Since her engagement to play the Countess she had forgotten it, but now a strange desire seized her suddenly as if she had been stung by a snake. There was only a little left in the bottle, but that little cheered and restored her even more than she had expected. Her thoughts came to her more fluently, she ate a better dinner, and acted joyously that night at the theatre. 'There's no doubt,' she said to her self, 'the doctor was right. What I want is a little stimulant.' Of the truth of this she was more than ever convinced when next morning she found herself again suffering from the usual melancholy and dulness of spirits. The very sight of breakfast disgusted her, and when Dick left she wandered about the room, unable to interest herself in anything, with a yearning in her throat for the tingling sensation that brandy would bring; and she longed for yesterday's lightness of conscience. But there was neither brandy nor whisky in the house, not even a glass of sherry. What was to be done? She did not like to ask the landlady to go round to the public-house. Such people were always ready to put a wrong interpretation upon everything. But Mrs. Clarke knew that the doctor had ordered her to take a little brandy when she felt weak. All the same, she determined to wait until dinner-time.
Half an hour of misery passed, and then, excited till she could bear with the craving for drink no longer, she remembered that it would be very foolish to risk her health for the sake of a prejudice. To obey the doctor's orders was her first duty—a consoling reflection that relieved her mind of much uncertainty; and ringing the bell, she prepared her little speech.
'Oh! Mrs. Clarke, I'm sorry to trouble you, but—I'm feeling so weak this morning—and, if you remember, the doctor ordered me to take a little brandy when I felt I wanted it. Do you happen to have any in the house?'
'No, ma'am, I haven't, but I can send out for it in a minute. And you do look as if you wanted something to pick you up.'
'Yes,' said Kate, throwing as much weakness as she could into her voice, 'somehow I've never felt the same since my confinement.'
'Ah! I know well how it pulls one down. If you only knew how I suffered with my third baby!'
'I can well imagine it.'
The conversation then came to a pause, and Mrs. Clarke, not seeing her way to any further family confidences, said:
'What shall I send for, ma'am—half a pint? The grocer round the corner keeps some very nice brandy.'