Chapter Twenty Two.
Judgment of Youth.
For the rest of the afternoon the house was still as the grave, each member of the little party preserving a rigorous silence for the sake of those others who were presumably asleep, but with the exception of Cassandra sleep was conspicuous by its absence. The Squire retired to a distant corner of the garden, and practised putting by himself, reflecting ruefully on his interrupted game. Martin sat by Grizel’s couch, mentally abusing himself for the morning’s desertion. Grizel had asked him to join the picnic, and he had preferred to go off on his own devices. Probably if he had been present, the accident would have happened just the same, but he would have been beside her to help and support. Excuse himself as he might, the fact remained that Grizel had gone through an appalling experience alone. The thought filled him with a passion of tenderness and remorse, and even in the depths of her mental and physical exhaustion, Grizel luxuriated in the consciousness, and lured him on with tender wiles. It was all the rest she wanted, just to lie still, holding Martin’s hand, to feel his touch on her forehead. The unconsciousness of sleep would have been poor in comparison, for her heart needed healing more than her body. A few hours, a few days at most, and even Cassandra herself would have surmounted the physical strain of the morning, but what of the hidden danger from which the veil had been torn aside? Now that it had been revealed—what was to happen to those three young lives?
Grizel had given her husband a detailed account of the accident, but she had refrained from telling him of Dane’s mad words. Whether or not she would ever tell him, would depend on future events. He had a right to know everything that concerned herself, but she would have felt it to be a disloyalty to her friends to have betrayed the new complication which had come into their lives. It was for them to work out their own salvation; for her, as the onlooker, to be silent, and wait.
As for Martin, he was too much absorbed in his wife to display undue curiosity, and his eyes had discovered nothing mysterious in the condition of either Teresa or Dane himself.
“The fellow is played out. He must have been half crazed to do what he did. No man would have the strength in a normal condition. In the great moments of life we draw drafts on our reserve forces, and no effort seems too great. But we have to pay up. Peignton condensed the energy of months into three or four minutes, and for the moment he is bankrupt. It must have been a blood-curdling sight for you, my darling,—and that poor girl, Teresa! She seemed the calmest of the party, by the way.”
“Calmness is comparative—everything is comparative. It’s impossible to know how much people feel... Oh, Beloved, there are so many sorts, and if they don’t feel our way, it may be just as bad to them! Martin! we’ve been married six months, we know each other six hundred times better than when we began, and there’s this virtue about me—I don’t pretend! You know the worst of me, as well as the best. Honestly—on your solemnest oath,—have you ever been sorry?”
Martin did not reply. He smiled a smile of ineffable content. Grizel tilted her head on the cushion, and smiled back. “I knew you haven’t. That’s why I asked. If there had been the faintest doubt, I couldn’t have faced it to-day. But there are so many months—life is so long. Martin! you might change!”
Martin’s face sobered. His thoughts flew back to the girl wife who, for a few short months, had shared his life; at whose death life itself had seemed to end. He had been but twenty-five at the time, and he had suffered with all the fierce intensity of youth. If Juliet had made a similar suggestion in those far-off days, he would have refuted it with scorn, yet he had changed; the young image had faded, and a living woman now filled his heart. Was it the remembrance of Juliet, which made Grizel doubt?