“All right, dear,” answered Morris, with a fine access of forced cheerfulness, “we will have some champagne for dinner and play picquet after it.”
“Champagne! What’s the use of champagne when you only pretend to drink it and fill up the glass with soda-water? Picquet! You hate it, and so do I; and it is silly losing large sums of money to each other which we never mean to pay. That isn’t the real thing, there’s no life in that. Oh, Morris, if you love me, do cultivate some human error. It is terrible to have a husband in whom there is nothing to reform.”
“I will try, love,” said Morris, earnestly.
“Yes,” she replied, with a gloomy shake of the head, “but you won’t succeed. When Mrs. Roberts told me the other day that she was afraid her husband was taking to drink because he went out walking too often with that pretty widow from North Cove—the one with the black and gold bonnet whom they say things about—I answered that I quite envied her, and she didn’t in the least understand what I meant. But I understand, although I can’t express myself.”
“I give up the drink,” said Morris; “it disagrees; but perhaps you might introduce me to the widow. She seems rather attractive.”
“I will,” answered Mary, stamping her foot. “She’s a horrid, vulgar little thing; but I’ll ask her to tea, or to stay, and anything, if she can only make you look rather less disembodied.”
That night the champagne appeared, and, feeling his wife’s eyes upon him, Morris swallowed two whole glasses, and in consequence was quite cheerful, for he had eaten little—circumstances under which champagne exhilarates—for a little while. Then they went into the drawing-room and talked themselves into silence about nothing in particular, after which Morris began to wander round the room and contemplate the furniture as though he had never seen it before.
“What are you fidgeting about?” asked Mary. “Morris, you remind me of somebody who wants to slip away to an assignation, which in your case is absurd. I wish your father were back, I really do; I should be glad to listen to his worst and longest story. It isn’t often that I sit with you, so it would be kinder if you didn’t look so bored. I’m cross; I’m going to bed. I hope you will spend a pleasant night in the chapel with your thoughts and your instruments and the ghosts of the old Abbots. But please come into my room quietly; I don’t like being woke up after three in the morning, as I was yesterday.” And she went, slamming the door behind her.
Morris went also with hanging head and guilty step to his accustomed haunt in the old chapel. He knew that he was doing wrong; he could sympathise with Mary’s indignation. Yet he was unable to resist, he must see again, must drink once more of that heavenly cup.
And he failed. Was it the champagne? Was it Mary’s sharp words which had ruffled him? Was it that he had not allowed enough time for the energy which came from him enabling her to appear before his mortal eyes, to gather afresh in the life-springs of his own nature? Or was she also angry with him?