Who was the Alien? Isabel had asked Mr. Raymond that question, and had been a little crashed by the reply. The Alien was a Midlandshire squire, Mr. Raymond had told her; and the word 'squire' suggested nothing but a broad-shouldered, rosy-faced man, in a scarlet coat and top-boots. Surely no squire could have written those half-heartbroken, half-cynical verses, those deliciously scornful elegies upon the hollowness of lovely woman and things in general! Isabel had her own image of the writer—her own ideal poet, who rose in all his melancholy glory, and pushed the red-coated country squire out of her mind when she sat with the "Alien's Dreams" in her lap, or scribbled weak imitations of that gentleman's poetry upon the backs of old envelopes and other scraps of waste paper.
Sometimes, when George had eaten his supper, Isabel would do him the favour of reading aloud one of the most spasmodic of the Alien's dreams. But when the Alien was most melodiously cynical, and the girl's voice tremulous with sudden exaltation of feeling, her eyes, wandering by chance to where her husband sat, would watch him yawning behind his glass of ale, or reckoning a patient's account on the square tips of his fingers. On one occasion poor George was terribly perplexed to behold his wife suddenly drop her book upon her lap and burst into tears. He could imagine no reason for her weeping, and he sat aghast, staring at her for some moments before he could utter any word of consolation.
"You don't care for the poetry, George," she cried, with the sudden passion of a spoiled child. "Oh, why do you let me read to you, if you don't care for the poetry?"
"But I do care for it, Izzie, dear," Mr. Gilbert murmured, soothingly,—"at least I like to hear you read, if it amuses you."
Isabel flung the "Alien" into the remotest corner of the little parlour, and turned from her husband as if he had stung her.
"You don't understand me," she said; "you don't understand me."
"No, my dear Isabel," returned Mr. Gilbert, with dignity (for his common sense reasserted itself after the first shock of surprise); "I certainly do not understand you when you give way to such temper as this without any visible cause."
He walked over to the corner of the room, picked up the little volume, and smoothed the crumpled leaves; for his habits were orderly, and the sight of a book lying open upon the carpet was unpleasant to him.
Of course poor George was right, and Isabel was a very capricious, ill-tempered young woman when she flew into a passion of rage and grief because her husband counted his fingers while she was reading to him. But then such little things as these make the troubles of people who are spared from the storm and tempest of life. Such sorrows as these are the Scotch mists, the drizzling rains of existence. The weather doesn't appear so very bad to those who behold it from a window; but that sort of scarcely perceptible drizzle chills the hapless pedestrian to the very bone. I have heard of a lady who was an exquisite musician, and who, in the dusky twilight of a honeymoon evening, played to her husband,—played as some women play, pouring out all her soul upon the keys of the piano, breathing her finest and purest thoughts in one of Beethoven's sublime sonatas.
"That's a very pretty tune," said the husband, complacently.