“Oh, a really happy marriage!” Edith had murmured.
“My dear,” her aunt had replied briskly, “you are one of those unfortunate people who ask too much, and do not take steps to get it. You should do one or the other. What your husband needs is something to shake him. It is a pity you are not a delicate woman; you might try nerves. I suppose you are too high and mighty to stoop to flirtation.”
“I should do it so badly,” said Edith, laughing, “and besides I’m forty.”
“You have such a tiresome habit of remembering your own age,” her aunt replied; “it even makes me remember mine. I will take a nap.”
Edith had left her and gone home. It was something, she reflected, to have a home, and--every one would have agreed--such a comfortable home.
She had had a difficult life these past ten years; she had not only to make her husband happy which had been her unswerving purpose from the first, but she had had to watch her failure, and accept the lower level of opportunity allowed to her--and make him contented; she had, at least, done this.
Miss Lestrange had taken Leslie slowly and vaguely away; there was still a talk of his return home--there would always be a talk of it. Meanwhile the boy, his aunt, and an excellent tutor (almost as amenable as Mr. Flinders) divided their time between Mallows and Brighton. The boy had been definitely delicate; a determined effort to send him to Harrow failed, and he was taken away once more by his aunt and tutor. Oxford remained; he was now quite strong enough for Oxford. Still Miss Lestrange held him back; she could not follow him to Oxford.
From time to time he visited his father. The tie between them had never ceased to be strong; but for Edith there had never been a second chance. The boy was beautiful as his mother had been, and suspicious with all the hard, cramping suspicion of a weak nature. Edith’s unvarying sweetness and companionableness roused a sharp antagonism in him; she was “trying to get round him,” as his aunt had said. He fought Edith because he could so easily have loved her; he pushed her away from him because he wanted to confide in her. He treated her with a studied polite insolence which made her dumb before him.
Horace Lestrange looked from one to the other wistfully; something was wrong. Etta said it was Edith’s fault, and Edith said nothing, and the boy said nothing; so it ended in Horace saying nothing too. He merely went down by himself for week-ends to Mallows, and felt that his marriage had been, not a failure exactly, but not very definitely a success.
He had indeed frequently felt tenderness for his wife, and he always felt friendship. She was his most delightful fireside and holiday companion; they read the same books, laughed at the same things; but they hardly lived the same life. He missed his boy with a kind of dull ache that would have been difficult to fathom; and if it wasn’t Edith’s fault--well--it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for her. Edith stood with her hand on the mantelpiece gazing into the study fire; on one side of it sat her husband, glancing through the evening paper; and, on the other, the boy on one of his occasional visits (lately they had been much more frequent) to his London home. He was half-smoking cigarette after cigarette, and as Edith turned her attention to him she was struck afresh by the expression in his eyes. It was the tyrannical selfish face of a pleasure-seeker. She compared it, with a sharp pang of disappointment, to the controlled, honest manliness of her husband’s expression. Couldn’t they have made his boy more like him--have put something better than hungry discontent into Leslie’s beautiful eyes?