For a moment she looked at him aghast, and then hid her face in her hands. He towered over her in superior virtue condemning her woman’s weakness. ‘If it were for the child’s good. It is not our own pleasure we must think of.’ The sound of these sentiments bewildered Isabel. Was it possible that her eagerness to keep her baby at any cost or risk was but the selfishness of maternity? Could it be that he would actually be so self-denying as to leave even his own child behind him, if it was ‘for its good’? Isabel’s heart protested against such virtue, and yet it silenced her indignant cry.
‘I believe I have strength of mind enough to do it,’ he said, ‘if it was for the child’s good. Drag her out there with you to undergo all the hardships of a long voyage, to be exposed to disease perhaps, to be parted from her own relations and the country in which her property lies. If she had been unprovided for the case might be different.’
There was a shade of bitterness in his voice. Was he angry that little Margaret’s fortune was safe and out of reach, though he himself had taken pains to make all the arrangements? Isabel withdrew her hands from her face, and gazed at him confused by his vehemence. What could it be that he meant?
‘But she is very well provided for,’ he added, with meaning—‘quite a little heiress. And her friends would never be content that her property should go out of the country. I see a thousand difficulties in the way. And if I were you, I would choose the most careful guardian I could get for her, and leave her quietly at home, at least till she knows what is what, and can decide for herself.’
‘Oh, Horace, do you remember she is my child—my only child, that I love more than my life? If I had to leave her I would die!’ cried Isabel; ‘but I cannot leave my baby, it would be worse than leaving my life.’
‘Which shows you don’t make much account of me,’ said Stapylton. And then he went out suddenly and left her, leaving all those suggestions to take form and germinate within her. She threw herself down on the sofa in the little lodging-house parlour, and hid her face in the cushions. It would be too much to investigate what her thoughts were at this dreadful moment. A storm raged within her moving Heaven and earth. A hundred mocking spirits seemed to come round and gibe at her, and laugh at her vague, splendid anticipations. Was the joy over, and the consolation, along with the honeymoon? And were distress, and distrust, and a consuming terror to enter in and take possession so soon?
CHAPTER XLI
When a honeymoon has been thus disturbed the idyll is over, and the only safe thing for the two human creatures who have thus played too long the dangerous drama of Love in Idleness is to get back with as little delay as possible to common life and work. Most frequently it is the woman who retards this salutary change of scene, hoping fondly that the idyll may come back, and fearing the ordinary routine which must separate to some extent the two existences. But Isabel was not in the innocent, primitive position which could render such a delusion possible. She had thought that this alone was life, and that all that went before was a dream; but every day, as it went on, made her more and more aware that the past was no dream, that it could not be severed from her soul, or sink into annihilation, however rapturous and vivid the present might be. She sat at the window of her lodging and did her fancy work, and watched her husband’s moods, and longed to be back. Oh, to be back!—if he were but a labouring man in a cottage going out to his wholesome work, coming in to find everything prepared for him, his wife and his house bright with smiles at his approach—instead of the lounging, the caressing, the vacancy, the fits of fondness and fits of sullenness, and anxious watching of the changes of his face.
‘Did not you once speak of a farm, Horace?’ she said with a hesitation that was almost timidity, when he had himself burst forth into an angry exclamation about the dullness of the place.
‘I hate this country,’ he said, with impatience; ‘but if you have made up your mind you won’t go to America——’