Wee Wifie

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Sir Hugh stood and watched them once, and they came skimming across the ice to meet him, hand in hand, Fay looking like a bright-eyed bird in her furs.

It was delicious, Fay said, and would not Hugh join them? but her husband shook his head. When other people came to skate too, and Fay poured out tea for her friends in the damask drawing-room, he always kept near her, as in duty bound; but he took no active part in the festivities, and people wondered why Sir Hugh seemed so grave and unlike himself, and then they glanced at Fay’s happy face and seemed mystified.

Erle in his heart was mystified too. He had always liked his cousin and had looked up to him, thinking him a fine fellow; but he noticed a great change in him when he came down to the old Hall to pay his respects to the little bride. He thought Hugh looked moody and ill; that he was often irritable about trifles. He had never noticed that sharp tone in his voice before. His cheerfulness, too, seemed forced, and he had grown strangely unsociable in his habits. Of course he was very busy, with his own estate and his wife’s to look after; but he wondered why Fay did not accompany him when he rode to some distant farm, and why he shut himself up so much in his study. The old Hugh, he remembered, had been the most genial of companions, with a hearty laugh and a fund of humor; but he had never heard him laugh once in all these ten days.

Erle felt vaguely troubled in his kind-hearted way when he watched Hugh and his little wife together. Hugh’s manners did not satisfy Erle’s chivalrous enthusiasm. He thought he treated Fay too much like a child. He was gentle with her, he humored her, and petted her; but he never asked her opinion, or seemed to take pleasure in her society.

“Why on earth has he married her?” he said once to himself as he paced his comfortable room rather indignantly. “He is not a bit in love with her—one sees that in a moment, and yet the poor little thing adores him. It makes one feel miserable to see her gazing at him as though she were worshiping him; and he hardly looks at her, and yet she is the prettiest little creature I have seen for a long time. How Percy would rave about her if he saw her; but I forgot, Percy’s idol is a dark-eyed goddess.”

“All the same,” went on Erle, restlessly; “no man has any right to treat his wife as a child. Hugh never seems to want to know what Fay wishes about anything. He settles everything off-hand, and expects her to be satisfied with what he has done; and she is such a dear, gentle thing that she never objects. It is ‘Yes, dear Hugh,’ or ‘certainly, if you wish it, Hugh,’ from morning to night; somehow that sickens a fellow. I dare say she is a little childish and crude in her ideas; that aunt of hers must be a duffer to have brought her up like a little nun; but she is sensible in her way. Hugh had no idea that she was reading the paper for an hour yesterday, that she might talk to him about that case in which he is so interested, or he would hardly have snubbed her as he did, by telling her she knew nothing about it. She looked so disappointed, poor little thing, there were tears in her eyes; but Hugh never saw them, he never does see if she is a little tired or dull, and I don’t call that treating a wife well.”

Erle was working himself up into quite a virtuous fit of indignation on Fay’s behalf; but presently he became secretly anxious. Before the end of his visit he grew afraid that more was amiss with Hugh than he at first guessed. He had often stayed with him before, and Hugh had visited them at Belgrave House, but he had never noticed any sign of self-indulgence.

He thought Hugh was beginning to take more wine than was good for him. He complained of sleeping badly, and had recourse to narcotics. He was reckless of his health too, and worked often far into the night, and when Erle remonstrated with him, he only said he could not sleep, and he might as well occupy himself.

But in reality he never guessed, except in a vague way, the real reason for this change in his cousin. He would have been shocked and startled if he had known the strange morbid fever that was robbing Hugh of all rest.

He was hungering and thirsting for the sight of a face that he said to himself he had better never look on again; his very nearness to Margaret kept him restless, and made his life intolerable.