"What was Chatty saying to you? I rely upon your good sense, Frances, not to encourage her in this sentimental folly."
"Is it sentimental folly? I think it is very true feeling, Theo."
"Perhaps these are interchangeable terms," he said, with the angry smile she knew so well; "but without discussing that matter I am determined that this business shall go no farther. A sister of mine waiting for a married man till he shall be divorced! the very thought makes my blood boil."
"Surely that is an unnecessarily strong statement. The circumstances must be taken into consideration."
"I will take no circumstances into consideration. It is a thing which must not be. The Cavendishes see it in precisely the same light, and my mother,—even my mother begins to hear reason."
Lady Markland made no reply. They were walking home, as their house was close at hand, a house taken for the season, in which there was not the room and space of the country, nor its active interests, and which she, having come there with much hope in the change, would already have been glad to exchange for Markland, or the Warren, or almost any other place in the world. He walked more quickly than suited her and she required all her breath to keep up with him; besides that she was silenced by what he said to her, and did not know how to reply.
"You say nothing," he continued after a moment, "from which I conclude that you are antagonistic and mean to throw your influence the other way."
"Not antagonistic: but I cannot help feeling very much for Chatty, whose heart is so much in it, more perhaps than you think."
"Chatty's heart doesn't trouble me much," he said carelessly. "Chatty will always obey whatever impulse is nearest and most continuous, if she is not backed up on the other side."
"I don't believe you realise the strength of her feelings, Theo. That is what she is afraid of, not to be strong enough to hold out."
"Oh! So you have been over that ground with her already!"
"She spoke to me. She was glad of the opportunity to relieve her mind."
"And you promised to stand by her?" he said.
Lady Markland had been a woman full of dignity and composure. She was so still to all outward appearance, and the darkness concealed the flush that rose to her face; But it could not conceal the slight tremor with which she replied after a pause: "I promised not to be against her at least."
A flood of angry words rose to Theo's lips, the blood mounted to his head. He had taken the bias so fatal between married people of supposing when his wife disagreed with him that she did it on purpose, not because she herself thought so, but because it was opposition. Perhaps this was because of that inherent contempt for women which is a settled principle in the minds of so many men, perhaps because he had been used to a narrow mind and opinions cut and dry in the case of his sister, perhaps even because of his hot adoration and faith in Lady Markland as perfect. To continue perfect in his eyes, after their marriage, she would have needed to agree always with him, to think his thoughts. He exacted this accord with all the susceptibility of a fastidious nature, which would be content with no forced agreement, and divined in a moment when an effort was required to conform her opinions to his. He would not tolerate such an effort. He would have had her agree with him by instinct, by nature, not even by desire to please him, much less by policy. He could not endure to think of either of these means of procuring what he wanted. What he wanted was the perfect agreement of a nature which arrived at the same conclusions as his by the same means, which responded before he spoke, which was always ready to anticipate, to give him the exquisite satisfaction of feeling he was right by a perpetual seconding of all his decisions and anticipation of his thoughts. Had he married a young creature like Chatty, ready to take the impress of his more active mind, he might have found other drawbacks in her to irritate his amour propre, and probably would have despised her judgment in consequence of her perpetual agreement with him. But the fact was that he was jealous of his wife, not in the ordinary vulgar way, for which there was no possibility, but for every year of additional age, and every experience, and all the life she had led apart from him. He could not endure to think that she had formed the most of her ideas before she knew him: the thought of her past was horrible to him. A suspicion that she was thinking of that, that her mind was going back to something which he did not know, awoke a sort of madness in his brain. All this she knew by painful intuition now, as at first by discoveries which startled her very soul, and seemed to disturb the pillars of the world. She was aware of the forced control he kept over himself, not to burst forth upon her, and she would have fled morally, and brought herself round to his ideas and sworn eternal faith to him, if it would have done any good. But she knew very well that his uneasy nature would not be satisfied with that.
"I might have divined," he said, after a long pause, during which they went quickly along, he increasing his pace unawares, she losing her breath in keeping up with him, "that you would see this matter differently. But I must ask, at least, that you won't circumvent us, and neutralise all our plans. The only thing for Chatty to do is to drop it altogether, to receive no more letters, to cut the whole concern. It is a disreputable business altogether. It is better she should never marry at all than marry in that way."
"I feel sure, Theo, that except in this way she will never marry at all—if you think that matters."
"If I think that matters! It is not very flattering to me that you should think it doesn't matter," he said.
And then they reached their house, and he followed her into the drawing-room, where one dim lamp was burning, and the room had a deserted look. Perhaps that last speech had been a little unkind. Compunction visited him not unfrequently. He seated himself at the little table on which the lamp was standing, as she took off her hat and recovered her breath. "Since we are at home, and alone for once in a way," he said, more graciously, "which happens seldom enough, I'll read to you for an hour, if you like, Frances; that is, if you have no letters to write."
There was a little irony in the last words, for Lady Markland had, if the truth must be told, a foible that way, and liked, as so many women do, the idea of having a large correspondence, and took pleasure in keeping it up. She answered eagerly that she had no letters to write (though not without a glance at her table where one lay unfinished) and would like his reading above everything: which was so far true that it was a sign of peace, and an occupation which he enjoyed. She got her work while he got the book, not without a horrible sense that Geoff, always wakeful, would have heard her come in, and would call for her, nor without a longing desire to go to him, if only for a moment, which was what she had intended to do. Perhaps it was to prevent this that Theo had been so ready with his offer, and so sensitive was he to every impression that the poor lady felt a thrill of terror lest her half-formed intention, or Geoff's waking, might thrill through the atmosphere to her husband's mind, and make him fling down the book with impatience. She got her work with a nervous haste, which it seemed he must divine, and seated herself opposite to him. "Now, I am ready," she said.
Poor Lady Markland! He had not read a page—a page to which she gave the most painful attention, trying not to think that the door might open any moment, and the nurse appear begging her to speak a word to Lord Markland—when a faint cry reached her ears. It was faint and far away, but she knew what it was. It was the cry of "Mamma," from Geoff's bed, only given forth, she knew, after much tossing and turning, and which a year ago she would have heard from any corner of the house and flown to answer. She started when she heard it, but she had been so much on the alert, and prepared for some interruption of the kind, that she hoped Theo did not see the little instinctive movement "Mamma!" She sat with a nervous thrill upon her, taking no notice, trying to listen, seeing in the dark the little sleepless boy tossing upon his uneasy pillow, and calling in vain for his mother, but resisting all the impulses both of heart and habit. If only Theo might not hear! After a while, however, Theo's ear caught the sound. "What's that?" he said sharply, stopping and looking at her across the table. Alas! the repressed agitation in her smile told its own story to Theo. He knew that she pretended to listen, that she knew very well what it was. "That" she said, faltering. "What? Oh! it sounds like Geoff calling—some one."
"He is calling you; and you are dying to be with him, to rush upstairs and coax and kiss him to sleep. You are ruining the boy."
"No, Theo. It is probably nurse he is calling. He sleeps so badly," she said, with a broken voice, for the appeals to mamma came quicker, and she felt as if the child was dragging at her very heart-strings.
"He would have slept better, had he been paid less attention to; but don't let me keep you from your boy," he said, throwing down the book on the table. She made an attempt at an appeal.
"Theo! please don't go away. I will run for a moment, and see what is the matter."
"You can do what you please about that: but you are ruining the boy," said Warrender. And then he began to hum a tune, which showed that he had reached a white heat of exasperation, and left the room. She sat motionless till she heard the street door closed loudly. Her heart seemed to stand still: yet was there, was it possible, a certain relief in the sound? She stole upstairs noiselessly and into Geoff's room and threw herself down by the bedside. "Oh, Geoff, what is the matter?" she asked: though her heart had dragged her so, there was in her tone a tender exasperation too.
"I can't sleep," the boy said, clinging to her, with his arms round her neck.
"But you must try to sleep—for my sake. Don't toss about, but lie quite still, that is far the best way."
"I did," said Geoff, "and said all the poetry I knew, and did the multiplication table twice. I wanted you. I kept quiet as long as I could—but I wanted you so."
"But you must not want me. You are too big to want your mother."
"I shall never be too big, I want you always," said Geoff, murmuring in the dark, with his little arms clinging close round her neck.
"Oh, Geoff, my dearest boy! but for my sake you must content yourself—for my sake."
"Was he angry?" the child asked, and in the cover of the darkness he clenched his little hands and contracted his brows; all of which she guessed, though she saw not.
"That is not a question to ask," she said. "You must never speak to me so; and remember, Geoff,—they say I am spoiling you—I will never come when you call me after to-night."
But Lady Markland's heart was very heavy as she went downstairs. She had put her child away from her; and she sat alone in the large still drawing-room all the evening, hearing the carriages come and go outside, and hansoms dashing up which she hoped might be coming to her own door. But Theo did not come back. This was one of many evenings which she spent alone, in disgrace, not knowing how to get her pardon, feeling guilty, yet having done nothing. Her second venture had not brought her very much additional happiness so far.