He drove her home, and she went upstairs to lie down.
“Commonplace rubbish!” she said to herself; “what I used to hear at Miss Ponsonby’s, but dressed up a little better, the moral prosing of an old man of sixty who never knew what it was to have his pulse stirred; utterly incapable of understanding Mr. Cardew, one of whose ideas moves me more than volumes of Turnbull copybook.”
Pulse stirred! The young are often unjust to the old in the matter of pulsation, and the world in general is unjust to those who prefer to be silent, or to whom silence is a duty. Dr. Turnbull’s pulse was unmistakably stirred on a certain morning thirty years ago, when he crept past a certain door in Bloomsbury Square very early. The blinds were still all drawn down, but he lingered and walked past the house two or three times. He had come there to take a last look at the bricks and mortar of that house before he went to Eastthorpe, under vow till death to permit no word of love to pass his lips, to be betrayed into no emotion warmer than that of man to man. His pulse was stirred, too, when he read the announcement of her marriage in the Times five years afterwards, and then in a twelvemonth the birth of her first child. How he watched for that birth! Ten days afterwards she died. He went to the funeral, and after the sorrowing husband and parents had departed he remained, and the most scalding tears shed by the grave were his. It was not exactly moral prosing, but rather inextinguishable fire just covered with a sprinkling of grey ash.
With that dreadful capacity which some people possess, for the realisation of that which is not present, the parting with Mr. Cardew came before Catharine as she shut her eyes on her pillow: the arm was behind her—she actually felt it; his eyes were on hers; she was on fire, and once more, as she had done before, she cursed herself for what she almost called her cowardice in leaving him. She wrestled with her fancies, turned this way and that way; at times they sent the blood hot into her face, and she rose and plunged it into cold water. She was weary, but sleep was impossible. “Commonplace rubbish!” she repeated: “of what use is it to me?” She was young. When we grow old we find that what is commonplace is true. We must learn to bear our troubles patiently, says the copper-plate line for small text, and the revolving years bring nothing more. She heard outside a long-drawn breath, apparently just under the door. She opened it, and found Alice, her retriever. Alice came in, sat down by the chair, and put her head on her mistress’s lap, looking up to her with large, brown, affectionate eyes which spoke almost. There is something very touching in the love of a dog. It is independent of all our misfortunes, mistakes, and sins. It may not be of much account, but it is constant, and it is a love for me, and does not desert me for anything accidental, not even if I am a criminal. That is because a dog is a dog, it may be said; if it had a proper sense of sin it would instantly leave the house. Perhaps so, perhaps not: it may be that with a proper sense of sin it would still continue to love me. Anyhow, it loves me now, and I take its fidelity to be significant of something beyond sin. Alice had a way of putting her feet on her mistress’s lap, as if she asked to be noticed. When no notice was taken she generally advanced her nose to Catharine’s face—a very disagreeable habit, Mrs. Furze thought, but Catharine never would check it. The poor beast was more than usually affectionate to-day, and just turned Catharine’s gloom into tears. She was disturbed by a note from Dr. Turnbull. He thought that what she needed was rest, and she was to go to bed and take his medicine. This she did, and she fell into a deep slumber from which she did not wake till morning.
Mr. Cardew, when Catharine left him, walked homewards, but he went a long distance out of his way, much musing. As he went along something came to him—the same Something which had so often restrained Catharine. It smote him as the light from heaven smote Saul of Tarsus journeying to Damascus. His eyes were opened; he crept into an outhouse in the fields, and there alone in an agony he prayed. It was almost dark when he reached his own gate, and he went up to his wife’s bedroom, where she lay ill. He sat down by the bed: some of her flowers were on a little table at her side.
“I am so ignorant of flowers, Doss (the name he called her before they were married); you really must teach me.”
“You know enough about them.”
He took her hand in his, put his head on the pillow’s beside her, and she heard a gasp which sounded a little hysterical.
“What is the matter, my dear? You are tired. You have walked a long way.”
She turned round, and then without another word he rose a little, leaned over her, and kissed her passionately. She never knew what his real history during the last year or two had been. He outlived her, and one of his sorrows when she was lying in the grave was that he had told her nothing. He was wrong to be silent. A man with any self-respect will not be anxious to confess his sins, save when reparation is due to others. If he be completely ashamed of them he will hold his tongue about them. But the perfect wife may know them. She will not love him the less: he will love her the more as the possessor of his secrets, and the consciousness of her knowledge of him and of them will strengthen and often, perhaps, save him.