She would romp, mind and body, in all the freshness of youth, with the most entrancing grace of movement and with her natural brilliant play of thought.
“I belong to you!” she would exclaim, retreating before my advance. “Come—take me!”
Then, after I had captured her and she had looked up at me, wrinkling her nose playfully, she would suddenly grow serious, and from her smiling eyes tears of happiness would start, and then, for an hour afterward, she would go singing snatches of song through the house. So that more than once I saw Margaret Murchie stop her household task to listen, shut her old eyes and say, “Thank God for his care of her.”
It need not surprise you that I tell you of her, for, as you may understand when I have told you all, I am now facing circumstances which, for some reason, have caused me to fall in love with her with a strange, new, and even deeper desire, and which raise the necessity for me to save her from some unrevealed menace and win her a second time.
The extraordinary fact in the light of this new situation is that our married life has been, until a year ago, as peaceful as could be. Whatever I might have suffered at first from the fact that I had been forbidden to know or ask of the past, these stings soon lost their power to disturb me. I was glad to forget them because I so hated all things which might tend to disturb the well-ordered life with which well-bred families retain their respectable position.
We found our tastes adapted to a common enjoyment of outdoor and intellectual pleasures, and we spent many hours each week, when alone, in reading the books which pleased us and in playing duets, in which I, being an indifferent player of the piano, contrasted my cold technique with the warmth and expression of her performances upon the ’cello. Indeed, we showed ourselves in these duets as in our companionship, for though I loved her, I believe I may have fallen short in those attentions, those little demonstrations and caresses, upon which some women seem to be nourished. As for her, she remained unchanged by marriage or time. By her humor, her tender sympathy, her refreshing, unaffected ways, she won a large and devoted circle of acquaintance, composed of both women and men. If any of the former, however, desired intimacy, they always found a gentle resistance; if the latter, they were made to see that a fortress had been erected on the borderland.
Until a year ago we were very happy, I think. To be sure, as time passed without the coming of any child, Julianna suffered that peculiar grief which, whatever may be its severity, is like no other. The desire for children was not only in her heart and mind: it was also a keen, instinctive yearning. Quietly, and without inflicting upon me any of her distress over unfulfilled hopes of the past, she persisted in the belief that the gift she most desired would not be withheld from her forever. Other than this no cloud seemed to be creeping up our sky, and, indeed, it was only little by little that I realized that some peculiar change had taken place.
I may say to you, I think, that this strange influence came even more than a year ago. I have tried in my own mind to establish a connection between its beginning and an accident which happened at that time.
We had gone for a week-end visit to the Tencorts’ farm in the Sweetbriar Hills, and much against my wishes, expressed, however, sleepily, Julianna had gone out at sunrise, chosen a rangy mare, saddled the creature herself, for the grooms were not up, and had ridden off across the wet fields, alone. Breakfast had already been announced when we heard the hoofs of the animal and caught glimpses of the horse’s yellow neck and Julianna’s plaid jacket, bobbing toward us under the arching trees.
“Your lady is hardly what one might call a gentle rider,” said Jack Tencort. “As for me, I’m glad to see the mare in a foam for once, but I would not be pleased to have my own wife—Hello, she is using her right hand.”