Lover and Husband: A Novel

by Mrs. Molesworth

It was really not lively work, but the dreariness no doubt lay chiefly in herself. For after all there were sensible, kindly people among their entertainers, and though the world “is not all champagne, table-beer is not to be despised.” Not certainly when we are young and fresh, and vigorous; inclined, as youth should be, to the use of rose-coloured spectacles, and to mistaking electro-plate for the genuine article. But young Mrs. Baldwin was censorious because unhappy, difficult to please because dissatisfied with herself. People were kindly inclined to her. They knew she had long been motherless, and of late fatherless as well, her only brother separated from her by half the world, her present position, though the wife of “as fine a fellow as ever breathed,” far lower, socially speaking, than originally she might have aspired to. Altogether a good deal of kindness, really genuine so far as it went, might have been received by her, had she encouraged it. But she did not, “could not,” she told herself. So her new acquaintances felt repelled, naturally enough, and she, sensitive to a fault, felt she was not liked, and drew back still further into her shell of cold reserve. “Pride,” of course, it was called. And “what has she to be proud of?” next came to be asked, when the poor girl’s name was brought on the tapis.

After one of these visits she was invariably more depressed than before. She was not hardened to feeling herself disliked, nor callous to the womanly mortification of knowing she had not been seen to advantage. She fancied she was growing ugly; she knew she had grown unamiable, and she was angry with herself, while yet she was bitter at others. Geoffrey above all. When in company, he looked so well and in such good spirits, that at times Marion thought she almost hated him. Truly she was hard to please! Had he allowed himself to appear depressed, or in any way different from his former well-known joyous self, she would in her heart have accused him of indelicacy, of obtruding upon her regardless of her feelings, the pain she had brought upon him, the wreck she had made of his life.

And the season too was against her. Autumn again, nature’s dying hour, when all around was but too much in harmony with her desolate life, but too apt to foster the morbid unhealthiness which was fast enveloping her whole existence.

The jog-trot dullness of her daily life came to have a strange fascination for her. Its regularity seemed to be beating time to some approaching change, some crisis in her fate. For that some such was at hand, she felt convinced. The present was too unendurable, too essentially unnatural to be long, continuance.

So, in the intervals of her irritation at her husband, she lived, to all appearance, contentedly enough, in the death-in-life monotony so fatal to all growth and healthy development. Geoffrey had no idea how bad things were with her. He thought he was giving her all she would accept, undisturbed peace and perfect independence. Yet his very heart bled for her, often, very often when she little suspected it. He made one grand mistake; he gave her no responsibilities, no necessary duties. Her time was her own; the housekeeping was all attended to by a confidential and efficient servant, whose accounts even were overlooked by the master instead of by the mistress of the establishment.

Money Marion had in plenty, more than she knew what to do with; for she had never been “fanatica” on the subject of dress, and even her old love of books and music seemed to be deserting her. She would not ride. The horse destined for her use stood idle in the stable; and more than once Geoffrey so nearly lost heart that he was on the point of selling it. He had one great advantage over Marion. He was the possessor of that mysterious, and to mere spectators, somewhat irritating gift, known as “animal spirits.” There were times when, in spite of all, his unspeakable disappointment, his bitter self-reproach, the young man could not help feeling happy. An exciting run, a bracing frosty morning in his fields, filled him for the time with his old joyousness, the exhilaration of life in itself, apart from all modifying circumstances. Poor fellow! She need not have grudged him, what afterwards on looking back through a clearer atmosphere, she believed to have been the only compensatory influence in the lonely, unsympathised-with existence, to one so frank and affectionate, more trying even than she, with her greater powers of reserve and self-reliance, could altogether realize.

Now and then, though rarely, the cloudy gloom of mutual reserve and apparent indifference, into which day by day they were drifting further, was broken, painfully enough, by stormy flashes of outspoken recrimination and wounding reproach. Naturally, they were both sweet-tempered, but this wretched state of things was fast souring them. Scenes miserable to witness, had any friend been by, lowering in the extreme to reflect upon in calmer moments, from time to time occurred. In these it is but justice to Geoffrey to say that he was rarely, if ever, the aggressor.

One dull, foggy morning, a “by-day,” unfortunately, for Marion, yielding to atmospheric influences, was in a mood at once captious and gloomy, little disposed to take interest in anything—least of all in her husband’s stable—on this uninviting morning, she was sitting, discontented and unoccupied, in the little boudoir she had not yet found heart to re-furnish, when the door opened suddenly and Geoffrey appeared. He burst in, looking eager and happy. Like his old self, for the time at least.

“Oh, Marion,” he exclaimed, “do put on your hat and come round with me for a moment to the stables. That new mare I bought last week has just come. She is such a perfect beauty. Do come.”

But Marion did not move, but sat there, her face turned from him, affecting to warm her hands at the fire. Then she glanced at the door which Geoffrey had left open, and said peevishly: