Marriage had been no problem play for these two.
Catherine lay thinking that night, with her hair in tawny waves upon the pillow, waiting for her husband to come to bed. She was happier and less troubled at heart than she had been for many weeks. The strain had lessened for her husband with the summer, and he seemed his more breezy, strenuous self, a great child with his children, a man who appeared to have no dark corners in the house of life. Wilful optimist that she was, she could not conceive it possible that a mere “inherited lust” could bear down the man whose strength and honor were bound up for her in her religion. Where great love exists, great faith lives also. Catherine was too ready, perhaps, to forget her fears, to regard them as mere thunder-clouds, black for the hour, but destitute of heavier dread. She ascribed his momentary weakness to the brain strain of the winter’s work. The words that had terrified her in Porteus Carmagee’s garden had proved but a fantasy, for a trick of the heart had explained the incident and given the denial to Mrs. Betty’s insinuations. The ordeal need never be repeated, so she told herself. Murchison could be saved from overwork. The assistant he had engaged was a youngster of tact and education.
Love will stand trustfully through the storm, under a tree, braving the lightning; nor had Catherine realized how vivid his own frailty appeared to the man she loved. He was sitting alone in his study while she comforted herself with dreams in the room above, his head between his hands, his heart heavy in him for the moment. An inherited habit is never to be despised. The gods of old were prone to mortal weakness in the flesh, and no man is so masterful that he can command his own destiny unshaken. We are what the world and our ancestors have made us. The individual hand is there to hold the tiller, but even a Ulysses must meet the storm.
Murchison turned his tired face towards the light, heaved back his shoulders, and sighed like a man in pain. He rose, put out the lamp, locked the study door, and taking his candle went up to his dressing-room that looked out on the garden. The blind was up, the window open, the darkness of space afire with many stars. He stood awhile at the open window in deep thought, letting the night breeze play upon his face. He was glad of his home life, glad that a woman’s arms were waiting for him, ready to shelter him from himself. He thanked God, as a strong man thanks God, for blessings given. The breath of his home was sweet to him, its life full of tenderness and good.
His wife’s bedroom had an air of delicacy and refinement with its cherished antique furniture, its linen curtains flowered with red, the paper and carpet a rich green. Candles in brass sticks were burning on the dressing-table, where a silver toilet-set—brushes, mirror, combs, and pin-boxes—recalled to the wife her marriage day. There were books—red, green, and white—on a copper-bound book-shelf over the mantel-piece. The room suggested that those who slept in it had kept the romance of life untarnished and unbedraggled. There was no slovenly realism to hint at apathy or the materialism of desire.
“Have you been reading, dear?”
“Yes, reading.”
Murchison was not a man who could act what he did not feel. He looked at his wife’s face on the pillow, and wondered at the beauty of her hair.
“It is good to see you there, Kate,” he said.
The unrestrainable wistfulness of his look made her arms flash out to him. He knelt down beside the bed and let her fondle him with her hands.