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Chapter IV.

‘And o'er those scrolls, not oft so mute,
Reclines her now neglected lute,
And round her lamp of fretted gold
Bloom flowers in urns of China's mould;
The richest work of Iran's loom,
And Sheeraz' tribute of perfume;
All that can eye or sense delight
Are gathered in that gorgeous room;
But yet it hath an air of gloom.’

Bride of Abydos.

With the swiftness of thought we have traversed the world, and the place is changed, but not the time. It is December still: an English one, and one of the unkindest—dismal and dreary; an untoward, captious, querulous December. Chilly rain and fog, hard frost and sloppy thaw, alternate with one another, and only now and then a few feeble sunbeams peep in between, to show that the old fires up there have not quite gone out. This is what we have gained in exchange for brilliant days of summer and a sky of unclouded blue.

But one thing can always ‘expel the winter's flaw,’ and that is wealth. In the luxurious room whose threshold we have passed summer's heat or winter's snow makes little difference. Let there be page 48 biting frost and wintry skies outside there is warmth and comfort here. Let there be dust, and drought, and stifling heat everywhere else, here the lace and silken hanging enclose a haven of cool shade. And here it is always quiet; so that, when summer breezes are murmuring drowsily through the trees in the garden, and rustling the leaxes and blossoms of the flowers that deck the casements, it is hard to believe that within a short distance lies that great city, the modern Babylon, as some have kindly termed it.

But, even, before you had taken note of all this you would have guessed that the room was some lady's bower. It was dedicated to the lady of the house. Here she hid herself when she was not at home to her friends, here she came to spend her leisure moment and here she was almost unapproachable. Even her husband had come to understand that he was not wanted here. Perhaps he had not dreamed when, some years ago, he had been happy in preparing this beautiful room for his wife, contriving with untiring care and pains that everything there in should please her fastidious caste, —it had not occured to him then that in it he should be the most unwelcome visitor of all.

What was most singular about this room, and perhaps also most beautiful was the utter absence of brilliant or decided colouring. Every hue which met the eye was softened to a pale delicacy, as fine and pure in tint as the loveliest of flowers. White page 49 velvet the carpet seemed, strewn with pale pink flowers. The curtains were rose pink, and the light that came through them was like a faint sunset glow. The furniture indeed was of some wood dark as ebony; but it was upholstered in white and gold. There was neither picture nor mirror, but there were flowers everywhere; the costliest hothouse flowers in this winter time. The lady's husband might know how costly they were; but, judging from the careless profusion with which she arranged them in large vases and china bowls,—themselves of great price—either she did not, or did not care.

Some people pretend they can discover a woman's tastes and favourite pursuits by glancing round her room. A very close investigation would have been needed in this case. There were two musical instruments—a piano and a harp, and the lady was a skilled performer on both, but both might be neglected for days at a time. There were portfolios of drawings by her hand, and they were executed in a pleasing style, but, from the dates they bore, this art must have been abandoned soon after school days had come to an end. There was always some fine needlework lying on her table, but the silk embroideries or the lace threads were so elaborately and minutely wrought that no one could suspect a sensible woman of sacrificing her eyesight by spending much time at once upon them. It was more usual to find her with a book than a needle in page 50 her hand; and, moreover, some book whose very title was unintelligible to the majority of her visitors. Now, if you raised the curtain that hung before an alcove, you had in view what engrossed most of the hours this lady could spare from the claims of society and the duties of her household, neither of which were neglected.

Books—books. Not frivolous nor frothy literature, but good solid reading. The kind of books, for instance, which novels, periodicals, and journals leave most of us no time to read. To be sure, they were uninviting in their appearance, they were bound in dull colours, they were full of close printing, and their contents could not be seized upon by any process of light-skimming. They could not—and this would most surely prevent a large class of readers from ever opening them—be understood without some thought: once get fairly into them, and you would be compelled to think deeply. Very few of the lady's friends knew of her taste for harder and more serious studies than are generally affected by women. They never suspected that she was deep in mathematics for one thing, and that her active brain was often busied with these, when to all appearance her only desire was to go correctly through the formulæ of some select but exceedingly dull drawing-room entertainment. As for her husband, it is not too much to say that he would have beheld with delight all her books blazing on a bonfire.

It was not only that such abstruse studies had page 51 for her, as they have for many minds, a strange fascination. They were her refuge. She had been unhappy since her marriage, and had found it possible to forget herself and her troubles in them. For the severest trials may be borne in patience if the head or the hands are kept at work. It is idleness, not sorrow, that eats like a canker into the hearts of those who have nothing to do but to brood over their misfortunes.

She was young and beautiful—too young and too beautiful, people said, to be a suitable wife for a grave and elderly business man. Of course the same people were sure that she had married him for his wealth, and the reckless manner in which she spent it gave some colour to this assertion. Certainly they were an ill-matched pair—he, gray haired and stooping with age; she, tall and straight, with the brilliant complexion and the rounded figure of youth. People said again that he made an idol of her, and that he squandered for her sake the fortune he had been half a lifetime in amassing. She was one whom splendour suited, and yet who seemed to disdain it. It had been heaped around her to reconcile her to her lot, and she was not reconciled.

Mrs. Moresby had been shut up in her room for nearly the whole of the cold and gloomy day. During the last week she had been more than usually constant to this retirement. There was a strange feeling throughout the house that some change was impending. The servants whispered to each other page 52 that all was not right between the master and mistress, and, as usual, they were correct in their suppositions.

The mistress sat at her writing-table finishing a letter. Her only child, a little boy about three years old, was on the floor at her feet, amusing himself by tying in knots the heavy silk fringes of his mother's dress. He was oftener in his mother's room than in the nursery, and had many a time worked dire destruction among the fragile ornaments that abounded there. Mrs. Moresby finished her letter and signed it, and then looked up to see her husband standing behind her chair.

‘Do I intrude?’ he asked, with a deference which she fancied was assumed in mockery. ‘I do not often disturb you here.’

‘No. I am writing to my mother, as you see.’

‘I suppose you have told her?’

‘Exactly what I said to you, and almost in the same words.’

‘Emily,’ said Mr. Moresby, sitting down near his wife, ‘you may not have considered what will be the consequence of the step you wish to take ?’

‘You are in a conciliatory mood to-day, I perceive,’ she answered coldly. ‘I have considered. I have made my resolve, and yesterday you appeared to agree with it.’

‘I agreed with you in saying that it was hopeless to expect that two people, so opposed to each other and differing so widely as we do, could spend their page 53 lives together in comfort, to say nothing of happiness.’

‘It is impossible. We have tried it long enough to find that out. One or the other is always harping on a jarring string, and I suppose it can't be helped.’

‘But,’ continued Mr. Moresby in the slow, measured tone habitual to him, ‘understand, Emily, you are the one, not I, who wishes to bring this state of things to an end. Unpleasant as it is, I am ready to bear with it always. I don't want you to leave your home, though you may be dissatisfied with it. I don't care that all our friends should know we are not at peace with one another. Our marriage may have been a great mistake. I think I have heard that from you pretty often. I think also you have been kind enough to say that it was a great sacrifice on your part and a great deception on mine.’

‘Don't misquote any words of mine, if you please. Whatever I may have said I mean to say nothing further. There is only one question which we need discuss now, and that is whether it would not be better for both of us to live apart?’

‘I thought we had always lived apart. Has there ever been any great intimacy, any confidence, between us? Do we ever converse except when obliged?’

‘I know,’ she replied sadly; ‘and it is killing me. You may smile, if you like, but it is true. You have been generous, you have given me a great deal; give page 54 me a house of my own, or let me go abroad somewhere with my child. I would like to leave this country for ever, if it were possible.’

‘My child! always my child. Do you think I have no right to be remembered? Don't I love the boy as well as you—isn't he my child as well—and haven't I most right to keep him ?’

‘Oh, no; no one can be so much to him as I am,’ she cried, ‘and nothing can make it right to take a child from its mother. At least, while he is so young, I have the most right to him.’

‘Listen to me, Emily,’ said the gentleman impatiently. ‘Of course you don't understand what you want to do.’

‘Oh, of course not.’

‘I say, you don't understand. It is not well with the woman who lives away from her husband. Even if she knows she has acted for the best, and even if he approves of her conduct, other people will not.’

‘It may be so,’ she answered; ‘but what have others to do with us? Why should we make one another miserable? I do not blame you; it is not your fault. You were happier without me. I was happier—far happier—before I knew you. This child is ours: let me have him while he is old enough to go to school, then he shall be yours. I will be satisfied if he remembers me, and sometimes visits me. Perhaps I shall not live till he is that age; then he will be yours altogether.’

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He was touched by this, and took her hand. ‘Emily, why can't you stay ? Is there anything you want?’

‘Yes,’ she said eagerly. ‘I want my brother. Help me to find him, and restore him to the position he has lost, and I will never leave you.’

Her hand was dropped hastily. ‘Like most women, you ask the one thing impossible. For yourself and your mother I have never thought anything too much. You can hardly expect me to be as lavish with regard to your brother when you recollect how he left me. Anything but that I could have done. Answer me, what have I denied you?’

‘You have never denied money,’ she replied pointedly. ‘Money is what you work with. But I don't want it for myself. I was never influenced by your money.’

‘I must acknowlege I cannot understand you. You were never influenced by my money! Once at least it went for something with you. Had I been a poor man you would never have been my wife.’

‘No!’ she exclaimed passionately. ‘No one shall say that. It was to save my brother. You broke your promise—you did not save him!’

‘I am excessively obliged to you. It was so convenient that I could be useful to your brother once, and I shall be very hard-hearted if I do not bolster him up again with that money you affect to despise. page 56 I don't think he would despise it—he did not once.’

A vivid colour rushed over her face. ‘You taunt me with that! But it is no use; we must make one another wretched. Does not this convince you that I am right in wishing to go?’

‘Do as you please,’ said Mr. Moresby rising; ‘but remember once for all your brother shall not come between us. I know how it is with you, Mrs. Moresby. To advantage your brother the interests of husband and child are as nothing in your eyes. If he were found he would be no credit to his family. He does not even concern himself so much about you as to tell you that he still exists. Has he ever written to you or your mother since he left England? And yet, for such a brother, you would neglect every duty to the child and me.’

‘I neglect no duty, and you know it,’ she said, looking him full in the face. ‘I told you at the first there could be no pretence of anything more between us. But this is the last time—I, at least, will never speak of these things again. I must go.’

‘Very well. My business now will be to provide for you suitably. You have always had a separate allowance: it must be increased.’

‘No, it is enough—quite enough. I want no more. I have done with all this;’ and she threw a contemptuous glance around her. ‘Did you ever think I should like you better for it?’

It was the unkindest speech she had made, and page 57 the one which stung him the most. She was ashamed of it herself the next minute, and would have acknowledged that she was, but for that miserable species of pride which too often prevents us from making such reparation.

‘Well,’ he said slowly, looking down, not at her, ‘I suppose I was a fool at that time. There is no fool like an old one, they say. I did it to please you. To please you again, I say you shall go, if you like, and if you ever return to this house it shall be at your own pleasure, not mine. I will have my way in only one thing;—a provision will be made for all your wants, and I shall expect you to live suitably to the position you hold as my wife.’

‘I do not want more than I have already,’ persisted his wife.

‘Nonsense! Mrs. Moresby. It would look well indeed for me to live in abundance, and you and my son to be economical on two or three hundred a year. People shall not say I grudge you anything.’

‘I thought it would come to what “people” might say at last,’ she replied sarcastically.

‘I shall see to it at once,’ said Mr. Moresby.

He went towards the door. The boy crept back again from the corner behind a sofa where he had taken his playthings as soon as his father had come into the room. Young as he was, he knew, without understanding why, that his parents were at variance, and already he took his mother's side. Mr. Moresby went out, and fortunately for Maria, Mrs. Moresby's page 58 maid, his exit was slow and dignified. That excellent young woman had found herself (quite accidentally) near the unlatched door of her mistress' room, and had been an unseen witness of the interview. ‘Well,’ was her comment, ‘I don't think I'll get married, if this is what comes of it.’