“Well, I’m more in the dark than ever.”
“There you shall stick,” replied Miss Arden, lightly shaking her curls and laughing. “Married!—yes, but they don’t care for one another a straw.”
“Have they ever told you so?”
“How very ridiculous! Cannot you see for yourself?”
“I am not sure: it is very difficult to know whether people really love one another, and often equally difficult to know if they dislike one another.”
“What a philosopher you are! I’ll tell you one thing, though: I believe he has just a little liking for me. Not for his life dare he show it. Oh, my goodness, wouldn’t the fat be in the fire! Wouldn’t there be a flare-up! What would the Ponsonbys do? Polite letter to papa announcing that my education was complete! That’s what they did when Julia Jackson got in a mess. They couldn’t have a scandal: so her education was complete, and home she went. Now the first time we are out for a walk and he passes us and bows, you watch.”
Miss Julia Arden went to sleep directly she went to bed, but Catharine, contrary to her usual custom, lay awake till she heard twelve o’clock strike from St. Mary, Abchurch. She started, and thought that she alone, perhaps, of all the people who lay within reach of those chimes had heard them. Why did she not go to sleep? She was unused to wakefulness, and its novelty surprised her with all sorts of vague terrors. She turned from side to side anxiously while midnight sounded, but she was young, and in ten minutes afterwards she was dreaming. She was mistaken in supposing that she was the only person awake in Abchurch that night. Mrs. Cardew heard the chimes, and over her their soothing melody had no power. When she and her husband left the Limes he broke out at once, with all the eagerness with which a man begins when he has been repeating to himself for some time every word of his grievance—
“I don’t know how it is, Jane, but whenever I say anything I feel you are just the one person on whom it seems to make an impression. You have a trick of repetition, and you manage to turn everything into a platitude. If you cannot do better than that, you might be silent.”
He was right so far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary. The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons, who have no great command over language, are obliged to make one word do duty for a dozen, and that, if his wife was defective at one point, there were in her whole regions of unexplored excellence, of faculties never encouraged, and an affection to which he offered no response. He had not learned the art of being happy with her: he did not know that happiness is an art: he rather did everything he could do to make the relationship intolerable. He demanded payment in coin stamped from his own mint, and if bullion and jewels had been poured before him he would have taken no heed of them.
She said nothing. She never answered him when he was angry with her. It was growing dark as they went home, and the tears came into her eyes and the ball rose in her throat, and her lips quivered. She went back—does a woman ever forget them?—to the hours of passionate protestation before marriage, to the walks together when he caught up her poor phrases and refined them, and helped her to see herself, and tried also to learn what few things she had to teach. It was all the worse because she still loved him so dearly, and felt that behind the veil was the same face, but she could not tear the veil away. Perhaps, as they grew older, matters might become worse, and they might have to travel together estranged down the long, weary path to death. Death! She did not desire to leave him, but she would have lain down in peace to die that moment if he could be made to see her afterwards as she knew she was—at least in her love for him. But then she thought what suffering the remembrance of herself would cost him, and she wished to live. He felt that she moved her hand to her pocket, and he knew why it went there. He pitied her, but he pitied himself more, and though her tears wrought on him sufficiently to prevent any further cruelty, he did not repent.