She was surprised at the emotion
with which he spoke, not knowing anything of his married life.
“The result is not yet. Everything depends on their marriage, or their reason for not marrying.” He hesitated, then went on, as if incapable of keeping silence longer on a subject of which he had never spoken: “The fate of their mother is to me a constant warning and a constant pain. In one respect I can save them from that; for I shall never urge them to marry, and shall never oppose any choice of theirs, unless it should be a manifestly bad one. But I cannot guard them from the tyranny of some mistaken sense of duty, or mistaken pride or delicacy which they might conceal from all the world.”
Startled by this half-revelation, his companion kept silence, waiting for him to speak. It was impossible he should not speak after such a beginning.
“I do not know which was the more deeply wronged, I or my poor Bianca,” he said presently. “It all came from the blundering coarseness of parents who overstepped, not their authority—for they never commanded her—but their power to influence, which, with one like her, was quite as strong. Their mistake has taught me to interfere and control less the gentle, silent one than the one who speaks her mind out clearly and loudly. I have always thought that the mother of my daughters had some preference which she never acknowledged. Often, more often than not, these preferences come to nothing and are soon forgotten; but not always. She did not wish to marry me, but she consented without hesitation, and I believed that the slight reserve would vanish with time. Perhaps she believed it too. Her conscience was as pure as snow. She
did perfectly, with all her power, what she believed to be her duty. But that preoccupation, whether for another person or for a single life, was never vanquished. You have, perhaps, chased a butterfly when you were a child, beaten it with your hat from flower to flower, and at last imprisoned it under a glass; or you have caught a hummingbird that has strayed into your room, and flown from you as long as it had strength. Neither resisted when it was caught; but the down was brushed off the butterfly’s wings, and the bird was dead in your hand. My wife omitted nothing that a good will could accomplish. She was grateful for my efforts to make her happy; she was calm, and even cheerful; and I am sure that she never said to herself, even, that she was sorry for having married me. But the only beaming smile I ever saw on her face was when she knew that she was going to die.”
His voice trembled a little, and he stopped a moment, as if to steady it before going on.
“Was not I wronged too? Was not the unwilling jailer as unfortunate as the unwilling prisoner? I say nothing of my own personal disappointment, though that was great. The mutual confidence, the delightful companionship, the perfect union, to which I had looked forward, and which were my ideal of marriage—where were they? In place of them I never lost the feeling that I had a victim for ever at my side. I felt as if I had been unmanly and cruel; yet the fault was not mine. She gave herself to me in all that she could, yet she was never mine.”
He paused again; yet this time his voice trembled more in resuming than in leaving off his story.
“I rejoiced in her release; and I