“Happy? For whom?” she asked, with a harsh little laugh. “No, Lady Markham, there is no change for the better: the other way—they say there is no hope. It will not be very long, they say, before——”
“And Nelly, Nelly! you here, in your fine new dress.”
“Yes; it seems ridiculous, does it not?” she said, laughing again. “I away—going out to pay visits in my best gown, and my husband—dying. Well! I know that if I had stayed any longer in that dreary house without any air, and with Sarah Winterbourn, I should have died. Oh, you don’t know what it is. To be shut up there, and never hear a step except the doctor’s, or Robert’s carrying up the beef-tea. So I burst out of prison, to save my life. You may blame me if you like, but it was to save my life, neither less nor more.”
“Nelly, my dear,” said Lady Markham, taking her hand, “there is nothing wonderful in your coming to see so old a friend as I am. It is quite natural. To whom should you go in your trouble, if not to your old friends?”
Upon which Nelly laughed again in an excited hysterical way. “I have been on quite a round,” she said. “You always did scold me, Lady Markham; and I know you will do so again. I was determined to show myself once more before—the waters went over my head. I can come out now in my pretty gown. But afterwards, if I did such a thing everybody would think me mad. Now you know why I have come, and you can scold me as much as you please. But I have done it, and it can’t be undone. It is a kind of farewell visit, you know,” she added, in her excited tone. “After this I shall disappear into—crape and affliction. A widow! What a horrible word. Think of me, Nelly St John; me, a widow! Isn’t it horrible, horrible? That is what they will call me, Markham and the other men—the widow. I know how they will speak, as well as if I heard them. Lady Markham, they will call me that, and you know what they will mean.”
“Nelly, Nelly, my poor child!” Lady Markham held her hand and patted it softly with her own. “Oh Nelly, you are very imprudent, very silly. You will shock everybody, and make them talk. You ought not to have come out now. If you had sent for me, I would have gone to you in a moment.”
“It was not that I wanted. I wanted just to be like others for once—before—- I don’t seem to care what will happen to me—afterwards. What do they do to a woman, Lady Markham, when her husband dies? They would not let her bury herself with him, or burn herself, or any of those sensible things. What do they do, Lady Markham? Brand her somewhere in her flesh with a red-hot iron—with ‘Widow’ written upon her flesh?”
“My dear, you must care for poor Mr Winterbourn a great deal more than you were aware, or you would not feel this so bitterly. Nelly——”
“Hush!” she said, with a sort of solemnity. “Don’t say that, Lady Markham. Don’t talk about what I feel. It is all so miserable, I don’t know what I am doing. To think that he should be my husband, and I just boiling with life, and longing to get free, to get free: I that was born to be a good woman, if I could, if you would all have let me, if I had not been made to—— Look here! I am going to speak to that little girl. You can say the other thing afterwards. I know you will. You can make it look so right—so right. Frances, if you are persuaded to marry Claude Ramsay, or any other man that you don’t care for, remember you’ll just be like me. Look at me, dressed out, paying visits, and my husband dying. Perhaps he may be dead when I get home.” She paused a moment with a nervous shivering, and drew her summer cloak closely around her. “He is going to die, and I am running about the streets. It is horrible, isn’t it? He doesn’t want me, and I don’t want him; and next week I shall be all in crape, and branded on my shoulder or somewhere—where, Lady Markham?—all for a man who—all for a man that——”
“Nelly, Nelly! for heaven’s sake, at least respect the child.”