"I shall be delighted," he answered, always in the same tone, "if my mother-in-law finds it worth while to make so great a journey as that from Switzerland to Bath—for Bath is the more suitable place, upon consideration. But seeing that, as I have twice said before, you will have every care you may require, I really think the suggestion would be a mere indiscretion—to all parties."
He was busy arranging the instruments in his laboratory. I should have left him; but I felt my heart swell and overflow, and remained standing by him in silence.
"It is too cold for you here," he said very tenderly after a moment, "had you not better go back to your rooms?"
I could not answer. But after a moment, "Eustace, Eustace!" I cried, "don't you care? Aren't you glad? Why do you talk only of plans and difficulties? Why do you want to send me away, to leave me all alone when our child is born?"
He gave a sigh, partly of impatience. "Do not let us discuss this again, dear Penelope," he said, "and oblige me by not talking nonsense. Of course I am glad; it goes without saying. And if I send you away—if I deprive myself of the joy of being with you, believe me, it is because I cannot help it. My presence is required here. And now," he added, putting his arm round my waist, but with small genuine tenderness, methought, "now let us have done with this subject, my dear, and do me the kindness to return to your warm room."
O God, O God, take pity on my loneliness! For with the dearest of mothers, and what was once the kindest of husbands, and the joy of this coming child, I am surely the loneliest of women!
February 27, 1773.
God forgive me, I say again, and with greater reason, for I now recognise that my sense of loneliness and of estrangement; all my selfish misery, has been the fruit of my own lack of courage and of loving kindness. This child, though yet unborn, has brought me strength and counsel; the certainty of its existence seems, in a way, to have changed me; and I look back upon myself such as I was but a few weeks ago, as upon some one different, an immature girl, without responsibilities or power to help. And now I feel as if I could help, and as if I must. For I am the stronger of the two. What has befallen Eustace? I can but vaguely guess; yet this I know, that without my help Eustace is a lost man; his happiness, his courage, his honour, going or gone. My mother used to tell us, I remember, the legend of a clan in her own country, where the future chieftain, on coming of age, was put into possession of some secret so terrible that it turned him from a light-hearted boy into a serious and joyless man. St. Salvat's has wrought on Eustace in some similar manner. On arriving here, or, indeed, before arriving, he has learned something which has poisoned his life and sapped his manhood. What that something is, I can in a measure guess, and it seems to me as if I ought to help him either to struggle with or else to bear it, although bearing it seems little to my taste. It is some time since I have seen through the silly fiction of the pilchard fishery of St. Salvat's; and although I have not been out of my way to manifest this knowledge, I have not hidden it, methinks, from Eustace or even from Uncle Hubert. The rooms and rooms crammed with apparent lumber, the going and coming of carriers' wagons (so that my husband's cases of instruments and my new pianoforte arrived from Bristol as by magic), the amount of money (the very maids gambling for gold in the laundry) in this beggarly house; and the nocturnal and mysterious nature of the fishing expeditions, would open the eyes even of one as foolish and inexperienced as I; nor is any care taken to deceive me. St. Salvat's Castle is simply the headquarters of the smuggling business, presided over by my uncles and doubtless constituting the chief resource of this poor untilled corner of the world. Breaking His Majesty's laws and defrauding his Exchequer are certainly offences; but I confess that they seem to me pardonable ones, when one thinks of the deeds of violence by which our ancestors mostly made their fortunes, let alone the arts of intrigue by which so many of our polished equals increase theirs. Perhaps it was being told the prowess of our Alpine smugglers, carrying their packs through snow-fields and along hidden crevasses, and letting themselves down from immeasurable rocks; perhaps it was these stories told to me in my childhood by the farm servants which have left me thus lax in my notions. This much I know, that the certainty of the uncles being smugglers, even if smuggling involve, as it must, occasional acts of violence against the officers of the Excise, does not increase the loathing which I feel towards the uncles. Nor would this fact, taken in itself, suffice to explain Eustace's melancholy. What preys upon his mind must rather be the disgust and disgrace of finding his house and property put to such uses by such men.
For Eustace is a man of thought, not of action; and I can understand that the problem how to change this order of things must weigh upon him in proportion as he feels himself so little fitted for its solution. With this is doubtless mingled a sense of responsibility towards me, and perhaps (for his dreamer's conscience is most tender) of exaggerated shame for bringing me here. If this be as I think, it is for me to help my husband to break the bad spell which St. Salvat's has cast over him. And I will and can! The child will help me. For no child of mine shall ever be born into slavery and disgrace such as, I feel, is ours.