He took his leave of Margaret with grave courtesy and left her standing on the leaf-littered grass, with the red berries of the nightshade gleaming through the rank green foliage above her head.
VIII.
Lydia’s reclining chair had been rolled close to the window and Margaret sat beside her, contemplating a melancholy drizzle, mingled with sweeping gusts of rain. The chickens stood in huddled groups under the garden shrubs, and the white and yellow chrysanthemums, from their long, bordering beds, shook out their frowsy petals and drank rejoicingly. Margaret loved to watch the splash of the shower upon the fallen leaves. Her nature reflected no neutral tints; rain and gray weather to her had never been coupled with sadness.
The emaciated hands by her side moved restlessly in the afghan. “What a bad day for Mell,” she said. “He is fond of the saddle, and now he will come home wet and cold, before his ride is half finished.”
Margaret looked at her curiously. She recalled Sempire’s stone-bruise and Creed’s version of it. Melwin she had left only a few minutes before, sitting statue-like in the library, with his chin upon his hands. She felt with a smarting of her eyelids that the pathetic deception was but a part of the consideration, the tender, watching guard with which he surrounded the invalid’s every thoughtfulness of him.
“Margaret!” Lydia spoke almost appealingly, laying a hand upon her arm, “do you think Mell seemed happy to-day? You remember him when we were married? I’ve seen him toss you many a time, as a little girl, on his shoulder. Don’t you remember how he used to laugh when he would pretend to let you fall over backward? Does he seem to you to be any different now? Not older—I don’t mean that (of course he is some older)—but soberer. He used to have friends out from the city, and be always bird-hunting or playing polo. I could go with him then; he liked to have me. He used to say he wanted to show me off. He seems to be so much more alone now, and to care less for such things. At first it made me happy to think that he couldn’t enjoy them any longer when I couldn’t share them with him. That was very selfish, I know, and now his not taking pleasure in them is a pain to me. I want him to. He is so good to me! It seems sometimes as if I were a reproach to him. I am so helpless, useless—such a hindering burden. I can’t do anything but go on loving him. If I could only help him! If I could dust his desk, or fill his pipe, or tend the primroses he loves, or put the buttons in his shirts for him, or do any one of the thousand little foolish things that a woman loves to do for her husband!”
Reaching over, Margaret patted her hand gently. The patient eyes looked up at her hungrily.
“Oh, Margaret, if I could only know that he was happy! If I could only fill his life wholly, completely, to the brim! I feel so bodiless lying here. Other women must mean so much more to their husbands. I used to pray to die—to be taken away from him. I thought that he would love me better dead. Love doesn’t die that way—it’s living that kills love. And I couldn’t bear to think that I might live to see it die slowly, horribly, little by little; and I watched, oh, so jealously! for the first sign. It’s a dreadful thing to be jealous of life! I have thought that if it could be right for him to marry another woman while I was still his wife—one who could give him all I lack—that I would even be content, if he were only happy! There is just my mind left now for him to love, and the mind, so denied, rusts away.”