Perhaps among the minor difficulties of social life there are none which are more often or more painfully felt than that almost insurmountable one of concealing from the watchful eyes of affection the heavy cares and inward anxieties from which we may be suffering. By the weaker sex, who are trained from infancy to the art of hiding their feelings under the cloak of reticence and decorum, the task is comparatively an easy one. Almost unconsciously, and as an affair of habit, they daily practise it, till practice makes perfect, and art becomes to them a second, and sometimes a more winning and graceful nature. But with men it is widely different. Even the best performers among them are apt to forget, to stumble over, or to overact their parts; and though they may sometimes succeed in deceiving one of their own sex, it rarely happens that the least observant of the other does not possess the moderate clear-sightedness requisite to lay a finger on the truth at once.
Conscious as he was of this masculine imperfection, and well aware that he could not keep up before his wife the appearance of a contentment which he was far from feeling, it was a relief to Arthur that the autocratic guardian of his wife’s health—the stout, somniferous lady, who looked the higher order of monthly nurse all over—objected strongly to any conversation taking place between her patient and the inexperienced young husband, who was “so attentive, bless you,” as she said afterwards to the Mrs. Harris of her elevated sphere, and who was “one of the best of ’usbands to the nicest young lady she had ever nussed.”
Nor did Sophy, in her “mother’s prime of bliss,” desire and crave for more than the privilege of looking at her well-loved Arthur’s handsome face, of pressing very softly and tenderly the dear hand that held her own, and of murmuring into his bent-down ear that she was very, very happy.
“Isn’t he a darling?” she whispered, alluding to the precious object of her new-found hopes; “I am sure—quite sure, though nurse said he didn’t—that he looked at me just now. You can see his dear little face. There!” And that Arthur might enjoy this privilege, the happy young creature turned away a few inches of the bedcovering, gazing down the while with touching fondness on her sleeping treasure.
And Arthur—who really was goodnatured, and who, but for the anxieties and annoyances which were oppressing him, would probably have been almost as contented and joyous as herself—did his best to seem interested in the small atom of humanity which he could hardly bring himself to believe he had the right to call his son; but smile and flatter tenderly as he might, Sophy, with the intuitive perception that love alone can give, heard a something in his voice which told her that all was not as it should be with the father of her child.
“Now, Atty,” she said, pressing his hand to her soft lips, “you have been teased and worried again, I know you have, by something or somebody. It isn’t poor papa, is it, dear? I daresay he is tiresome, poor old man, just now; but you musn’t mind. It is all so new to him, you know, and he thinks baby such a wonderful thing.”
“Well, and so he is,” Arthur said with a smile, which quite reassured the young mother, who was so willing to see everything en rose, “and your father is a brick, and doesn’t bore me the least in life. What made you fancy such nonsense, you foolish child? O, I’m to go, am I? I wish we had you downstairs again, dear. The governor and I miss you dreadfully at dinner. By Jove, there’s the bell, and I haven’t even washed my hands—all your fault, Fee,” and he left her with the memory of another kiss to brighten her hours of silence.
Poor, gentle, unsuspicious Sophy! She little guessed the troubled heart, the wearisomeness of spirit, on which the door of that spacious chamber closed when Arthur Vavasour went out from her presence. She loved the man who only liked, respected, cared for her, with a passion almost equal to his for the beautiful woman of whose very existence the trusting wife had ceased to think; loved him with a love which was rapidly superseding, crushing, nay well-nigh annihilating with its rapid and luxuriant growth the lowlier flowerets of a daughter’s tenderness—flowerets that had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength till such time as the stronger seed was sown, the produce of which was destined, according to the law of nature, to suppress, if not indeed actually to destroy, the weaker herbage amongst which it had chanced to take root and flourish. Already was this girl, the child of a doting father, apologising for and more than half-regretting the presence of that father in the home which the old man’s excessive fondness for herself might render less agreeable to her husband; already she was giving to Arthur proofs, open and unrestrained, that he, and he alone, reigned paramount in her affections; and could the loving old man, to whom she was all in all, have looked into the young heart he thought he knew so well, the father would have learned there some very bitter truths. For the ignorance that was bliss to him, Andrew Duberly paid afterwards a heavy price. The wish to believe in what rendered him a happy man was father to the joyful thought that in his daughter’s affections her young and handsome husband held but a secondary place, and in that belief old Dub continued to his dying hour. But a day of reckoning—a day which, in the full flush, in the almost fever of his prime of bliss, the millionaire was far as are the poles asunder from anticipating—was, alas, very near at hand! The day of retribution for time misspent and wasted, for wealth abused, for golden opportunities neglected, for benefits unthankfully enjoyed, for—to sum up all—the myriad sins which render it no easy thing for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Yes, the day of retribution for the minor and unnoticed sins of this “just man” was near at hand; but in the mean time not a care oppressed him, nor did a single foreboding of evil to come mar his keen enjoyment of the present.
The game at picquet with Arthur, who, poor fellow, was all the while wishing his father-in-law, if not exactly in his grave, at least a hundred miles away, was played by this light-hearted grandpapa with a zest and spirit which set Arthur (who was at that time taking rather a gloomy view of human life) wondering how any man in his senses could have lived to the age of three-score years and ten without having arrived at the conclusion that all things (including a dull game with painted pasteboard) here below are, with no single exception, only vanity and vexation of spirit.