‘Edward,’ she cried, ‘if anything could make it more dreadful to me to think of that time, it would be hearing you speak so.’
‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘there is no occasion; after all, neither time nor anything else masters one if it is not in one’s nature. You think too well of me, Carry. Some people are made to float.’
‘And what was I then?’ she said. ‘I was swept away. I could not resist the force against me. It was worse for me, oh! far worse, Edward, than for you. I was caught by the torrent: there was no floating in my case. Perhaps you will say I was made to be carried away.’
‘My darling,’ he said, ‘that’s all over and past. Don’t let us think of what is done with. Here we are now, two people, not very old, quite able to enjoy all the good things of this life, and who have got them, thank Heaven! in a large share. What would you and I have attained with all the fighting possible, compared to the happiness of being together, having each other’s constant company? And we have got that, with many pretty things besides,’ he added, with his gentle laugh.
Lady Car felt the words like a flood pouring to her lips, but she was silent; how could she speak? Did it never occur to him how these pretty things were attained—how it was that he and she sat out here by this window looking out upon Lake Leman and the moonlight in circumstances such as only rich people can secure, both of them to start with being so poor—how it was that they had been able to wander about together, a pair of lovers, for years, with all the accessories of happiness as well as the happiness itself? She clasped her slight fingers together till the pressure hurt; but she said nothing, having nothing—having far too much to say. Such thoughts had glanced across her mind before, faintly, for a moment. She could not have told why they had become so much more vivid now. It was, no doubt, because of the change which was about to take place in their life, the giving up of the wandering, the settling down. Her thoughts carried her away altogether as she sat gazing out with vacant eyes at the lake and the moonlight, forgetting where she was and that she had an answer to make to the question addressed to her. At last her husband’s gentle voice, so refined and soft, startled her back to the reality of the moment.
‘You don’t say anything, Carry. If I were of a jealous temper I might ask whether, perhaps, you were beginning to doubt? but I don’t, I don’t, my love; you need not defend yourself. We both know that is the best that life could give us, and it has come to us almost without an effort. Isn’t it so? For my part, I’ve got all I want, and the rest of the circumstances are indifferent to me—where we live or what we do—you in my house and my home—and my occupation—and my content. I want no more.’
Could anything be said more sweet to a woman? According to all the conventionalities, no—according to many of the most natural feelings, no. What could be better than each other’s constant society, to be together always, to share everything, to own no thought that was not within the charmed circle of their happiness? As he said these words slowly, with little pauses between, she took in all the sweetness of them, with a commentary in her mind that was not sweet, an impatience which scarcely could be controlled, a blank sensation as of impossibility which held back the impatience. Was there not something more to be said—something more?
Mr. Beaufort had lit his cigarette, which was so habitual to him, so completely the breath of his reflective leisure and gentleness and calm, that the most sensitive of women could not have objected to it; nothing so aggressive as a cigar ever touched his lips, as little as any lady could he tolerate a pipe. The little curl of blue smoke, the pungent but aromatic odour, the very attitude of the shapely hand holding it, were characteristic. The smoke curled softly upwards from his soft brown beard and moustache. He was a very handsome man, handsomer in his way than Carry, whose nose was a trifle too long and her mobile lips a trifle too thin. She was, indeed, a little too thin altogether, whereas he was perfect in the fullness of his manhood, just over forty, but as young and strong as, and enjoying his youth and strength more than, at twenty-five. She looked at him and was silent. Is not a man better than a woman at that age above all? Is not he more likely to have discovered the real secret of life? Was not he better able to judge than Carry, a creature who had never been wise, who had been hurried, passive, through so many horrors, and dragged out of a tragedy of awful life, to be landed at last on this pleasant shore? Surely, seeing it must be so, her troubled mind made a wild circle from the point where they had parted until this, when they were one, and for a moment, in the dimness behind his chair, it seemed to Lady Car that she saw a spectre rise. She almost thought a shadowy face looked at her over Beaufort’s head—a face black-browed, with big, light, fiery eyes, burning as she had often seen them burn—the same eyes that were closed in sleep in little Janet’s crib—the same that sometimes gloomed out from her little boy’s dark countenance. Her faithful recollection made his picture on the air while Beaufort took dainty puffs of his cigarette. He had no such ghost to daunt him, his memory was pure and calm, while hers was filled with that dreadful shadow, and with reason, for without that shadow this happiness could never have been. What a thought for a woman—what a thought! and to think that it should never once cross the imagination of the man who was enjoying all the other had lost—all and so much more, and that but for the other this happiness could never have been!
These thoughts came like a wave over Carry while she sat with her fingers clasped tight, arrested, dumb, incapable of any reply. What a blessed thing that even one’s nearest and dearest cannot divine the quick thoughts that come and go, the visions that flash across us, while we sit by their side and reveal nothing! If Beaufort could have seen that black-browed spectre, and realised all that Torrance had brought for him, would he have maintained that attitude of thoughtful leisure, that calm of assured satisfaction and happiness? To be sure he did know; there was no secret in it; everybody knew. There was nothing wrong, no guilt, nothing to blush for. The shame was all fanciful, as was that sense of her husband’s strange obtuseness and want of perception which had seized upon Carry, as if they had been horrible things, when they were quite innocent, natural things, which she ought to have most desired for him. It was curious, too, to think that between two people who loved each other so, who were so entirely in sympathy, one could be so unimpressed by the feelings of the other; that the air should be so full for her of ghosts, of passion, and misery past, of the strange, horrible thought that it was by those passions and miseries that she had purchased both for him and herself this calm, and yet that he should divine nothing, but think it only a light question of locality, of where to settle down, of a desirable neighbourhood! Apparently the lightness of the decision they had to make, its entirely unimportant character, struck him as he lay back in his chair with his face towards the lake and the moonlight, and the faint blue curl of fragrant smoke rising in the air. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ he said suddenly, with a laugh, ‘to facilitate this tremendous decision. We’ll take a succession of houses in different places, and find out by experiment which we like best.’
She brought herself back to the triviality of the discussion with a gasp, as if she had fallen, and with a great effort to dismiss those other thoughts. ‘But that would be no better than travelling,’ she said, ‘of which I am a little tired. I want a home of my own, a house which belongs to no one else,’ she added, with a slight shiver, ‘but you and me, Edward, no ghosts of other people in it.’