There was something consolatory in the idea, and it did not seem wicked to wish for her own death! It seemed an escape from the unbearable present, and in the thought she found a strange sort of calm. She felt sure she was going to be very ill. After all, Geoffrey would not be troubled with her long. In the meantime she need not grudge what pleasure it was in her power to afford him. So after a while she got up, rang the bell for her maid, who was full of sympathy for her mistress’s bad headache, and smoothed her hair and arranged her dress; so that when she rejoined Geoffrey in the sitting-room, he delightedly congratulated her on looking “all right again.”
She did her best to be patient that evening, to endure her husband’s tender words and caresses. But it was hard work; and, oh, she was thankful when night fell, and she could again, for a time at least, forget the agony which she hoped was killing her. But in the morning, greatly to her surprise, she was better. She felt terribly disappointed that it was so; she had counted so surely on a return of the so-called low fever, of which she felt pretty certain a second attack would prove fatal. But she did not understand her own constitution. No sudden, short-lived emotion, however violent, would have power to prostrate one naturally so healthy; what rather was to be dreaded for her was a long course of suspense or suffering, such as already she had under-tone. Discontent, anxiety, uncongenial surroundings might gradually undermine the springs of her life; but she was too young and, physically, to elastic, to give way at a sudden, sharp assault.
Nevertheless, yesterday’s events had left their mark on her. Besides the suffering woven with many threads which henceforth must envelop her life, the actual, temporary excitement had been too violent not to affect her for some time to come. She was irritable and nervous to a miserable extent. Geoffrey’s creaking boots, the hasty closing of a door, even his voice, not always modulated to a nicety, nearly drove her frantic. Then sharp words were followed by bitter self-reproach and abasement. It was so undignified, so lowering, she said to herself, thus to bear her trial. If she had been called upon to do something great or heroic—to throw herself into fire or water to save the husband she did not love, it would have been easy. But to feel herself tied to him in this matter-of-fact way, to know that it was her duty to listen with patience, if not interest, to his commonplace conversation, his stupid talk of weather and crops or his anticipations of the coming season’s hunting—oh, this indeed was martyrdom, all but unendurable. For in these days she was far, very far from doing justice to the real character of the man she had married.
They did not stay long at the Peacock. The place grew hateful to her. At first there was a sort of fascination about the old arbour in the garden; she had a childish unreasoning fancy that some day Ralph would appear there again; that finding his life unendurable without her he would return in very recklessness of misery to see her again, if but for a moment. But he never came, and she learnt to loathe the place associated with such ever-recurring disappointment. There were times when she blamed herself bitterly for her behaviour to him during that last interview. She had been cold, repellent; she had belied herself in concealing from him, as she fancied she had, the depth, the intensity of her devotion, the anguish of parting from him forever. He had gone away, she thought, suffering in himself, terribly no doubt, but with no conception of the awfulness of the misery which he was leaving her to bear alone. Had he realised it would he have left her?—would he not, he was wise and far-seeing, have devised some means of freeing her from this terrible bondage, of even now joining her life to his, where alone it would be worthy of the name?
She had told him once she could not love him so entirely did she not know there was one thing he cared for more than her. “Doing right” she had called it in her silly childish ignorance and inexperience. But what was right? Could this, the life she was leading of misery to herself and sooner or later to her husband also, utter stagnation intellectually, and certain deterioration morally, could this be right? Was not her case altogether exceptional; were there not, must there not, be in-stances where the so-called right and wrong of other, more happily commonplace lives, changed places—in which it was worse than obstinate folly, actual suicide, to bow to the laws formed but with reference to every-day circumstances and individuals? These suggestions tormented her at her very worst times. In such moments I think, truly, the tempter himself had her.
Geoffrey, who remained sturdily convinced that physical suffering alone was to be blamed for her strange moodiness and irritability, agreed gladly to trying the effect of change of scene. For some weeks they never rested, hardly arrived at one place before Mrs. Baldwin took a dislike to it, and insisted on rushing off to another, with equally unsatisfactory results. In one thing, however, Geoffrey had his way. Marion found herself obliged to give in to consulting a doctor. A kindly and sensible man happened to be the one they lit upon, and what little was in his power he did for her. That something beyond his reach was at fault he suspected, though he wisely kept his ideas on the subject to himself. The young husband’s anxiety he was able, with perfect honesty, to relieve. Mrs. Baldwin was suffering physically from nothing but a certain amount of nervous prostration, consequent, in all probability, upon the long illness some months previously, of which Geoffrey told him. Time and care would alone set her “quite right.” To Marion herself he spoke more plainly. He judged that she could bear his doing so, and be, probably, “none the worse of it.”
“You are not really ill at present, my dear madam,” he said, “but you are fast going the way to make yourself so. Not seriously, not dangerously, at least,” he added hastily, misinterpreting the start with which Marion looked up at his words, “fretting and repining don’t kill. At least they take a good while about it, and an uncommonly disagreeable process it is. But what I wish to warn you of is, that continued yielding to mental depression or discomfort, such as I can see you are at present suffering from, ends, in nine cases out of ten, in chronic ill-health. A worse trial, my dear young lady, than you at your age and with your evidently small experience of sickness, can have any notion of. You have had your share of trouble in your short life—perhaps more than your share—but let me beseech you not to add to it, as you are too surely doing. Trouble is hard to bear at the best of times; but none the easier, I assure you, when our physical strength has failed us.”
“No one can understand other people’s troubles,” said Marion coldly, sullenly almost, if so ugly a word can be applied to such gentle tones. “You can prescribe for bodily illness, I have no doubt; but you can’t order a patient to get well. Neither can any one make himself happy at command.”
“Certainly not,” replied the kind old man; “but, unfortunately, it is in your power, as in mine, and every one else’s, to make ourselves more unhappy.”
Marion did not reply, and he went on.