The Wellfields: A novel. Vol. 3 of 3

by Jessie Fothergill

At the time of Nita’s marriage, Mr. Bolton had retired to Monk’s Gate, with his Dante, and his books of voyages and travels; and there Avice Wellfield had been of great solace to him, as she had unconsciously betrayed in her letters to Sara.

John Leyburn generously divided his attentions between Monk’s Gate and the Abbey; a plan which made little real difference in the amount of his company bestowed upon either place, for often the Abbey party would be at Monk’s Gate, or Monk’s Gate would go to the Abbey; and thus they all met nearly as much as before.

At the Abbey, Nita was, as she always had been, the mistress. Jerome and Avice were the new elements. Jerome, probably by way of blunting disagreeable reflections, had taken in good earnest to business; and if he did not care to reflect upon the means by which he had arrived at his present position, he had perhaps some comfort in the knowledge that in that state of life he was doing what approximated, at any rate, to his duty, so far as he knew how.

Mr. Bolton went seldomer to the office, and had begun to trust more power and responsibility into the hands of his son-in-law. He had privately told John that his health was not all he could wish, but that he desired not to alarm Nita, and he therefore confided to him alone that his heart was wrong. He had privately consulted a great doctor or two, and they all said the same thing. He therefore desired gradually to retire from the business. Thus more and more work fell upon Jerome’s shoulders, and yet they were not overloaded. He went eagerly and readily to work: in this employment, which a year ago would have been utterly distasteful to him, he found some distraction; for the atmosphere at home was not altogether cheering. When a man has acted in a base and cowardly manner, but yet has sufficient moral sensitiveness left to desire that his surroundings may think well of him, it is a galling thing when one who is a portion of those surroundings tacitly shows him that she knows he has not been all that he ought to have been–to her and to others; and that, judging, not by some superlative code of high morality, but by the common hacked and hewed standard of honesty and decency patronised by the ordinary, unremarkable man, that he has not even washed his hands in the common brown soap and water of this working-day world, let alone cleansing them in the finer and more subtle essences of chivalry.

For some months after their marriage Nita continued to worship her husband with a silent, intense passion of devotion which soothed and pleased him, even while he was uneasily conscious of a certain volcanic, sulphurous sort of atmosphere, while he had the idea that he was as it were standing on the edge of a crater–a position not without its discomforts. Nita never asked him any question as to that other love of which he had spoken to her; she appeared satisfied with his emphatic assurance that it was ‘over, gone, passed away’ entirely, and she rejoiced in what he did give her of tenderness and affection. He never knew what it was that caused the change in her. He never asked, for he dared not, or Nita might perhaps have been able to tell him that one evening when he was away, Father Somerville had called to see him, and finding him out, had kindly bestowed his society upon her for half an hour. As it was, she never mentioned the interview except in the most casual way, merely saying that Mr. Somerville had been disappointed to find Jerome out. She did not mention that she had learnt during that half hour her own true position with regard to her husband, and his with regard to her–that she had heard about it without moving a muscle, and had sent Father Somerville away entirely disappointed of his hope to turn that position to his own advantage. The holy father came and went as before; Mrs. Wellfield never condescended to express any dislike to his visits. Jerome knew nothing of this; what he did know was that Nita’s whole manner and being had sustained a nameless yet palpable change; she did not show him coldness, nor aversion, but there was a wistful sadness, which gradually grew into a dejection–a quiet sorrow which at times tortured him.

It was very soon after she had learnt that she was to become a mother that this change became apparent in Nita. It was in vain that he lavished upon her every outward care and attention; that he watched her footsteps, and hung upon her looks, and attended her wherever she went. It was in vain that he would refuse invitations and tell her he did not care to go out until she could go out again too; in vain that he gratified, and even tried to anticipate her every wish: she faded and drooped before his eyes. And he dared not go beyond this outward form of devotion. He dared not ask the reason of the inward grief that consumed her, because he knew what the answer would be. He was perfectly satisfied that she knew something–how much he knew not, and that again he dared not ask–but something she knew of the deceit he had practised towards her; that he had taken her for his wife holding a lie in his right hand. The position grew terrible, even ghastly to him. Sometimes he wished that she would reproach him; tell him what she knew, ask him why he had treated her so–then he could at least have promised that since they were bound together, he would never deceive her any more, but would honestly devote his life to making her happy. But Nita never did anything of the kind. She was most gentle, and seemed to shrink in every way from giving him pain. With unstinting hand and ample generosity she asserted his rights in everything, and showed the most boundless confidence in him; making a point, if anything of the slightest importance were referred to her, of saying that she knew nothing about it, they must ask Mr. Wellfield. She never appeared to shrink from being alone with him, though, when it happened that they were alone, she would sit for hours silent, unless he spoke. When he talked to her she always tried to keep up the conversation. But she was woefully and mournfully changed. Between her and Avice existed a great, if not a demonstrative friendship. Jerome was thankful for it, and that his wife and his sister had no unseemly disputes. The only times when Nita was really bright, or at all like her old self, were those occasions on which her father was with them. Then she would collect her energies (and Jerome painfully felt that her gaiety was the result of such a collecting of energy, and not spontaneous), and be even merry, and that so exactly in her old manner that her father never suspected anything wrong, and put down her somewhat wan face and languid movements to her physical condition.

‘Are you happy, my child?’ he asked one afternoon, when he and she were strolling beside the river. This was very shortly before his death.

‘Quite happy, papa,’ she answered, and he concluded that the tears which filled her eyes as she looked up at him were tears of happiness.

‘And Jerome is all he should be–eh?’

‘You may see for yourself what Jerome is to me,’ replied Nita, in a vibrating voice, and with a heightened colour. ‘Surely no wife was ever treated with the attention that he gives to me!’