Part 44 (1/2)
”So do I. You told me then that you were going to marry Mr. Kennedy.
How much has happened since then!”
”Much indeed! Enough for a whole lifetime. And yet how slow the time has gone!”
”I do not think it has been slow with me,” said Phineas.
”No; you have been active. You have had your hands full of work. I am beginning to think that it is a great curse to have been born a woman.”
”And yet I have heard you say that a woman may do as much as a man.”
”That was before I had learned my lesson properly. I know better than that now. Oh dear! I have no doubt it is all for the best as it is, but I have a kind of wish that I might be allowed to go out and milk the cows.”
”And may you not milk the cows if you wish it, Lady Laura?”
”By no means;--not only not milk them, but hardly look at them. At any rate, I must not talk about them.” Phineas of course understood that she was complaining of her husband, and hardly knew how to reply to her. He had been sharp enough to perceive already that Mr. Kennedy was an autocrat in his own house, and he knew Lady Laura well enough to be sure that such masterdom would be very irksome to her. But he had not imagined that she would complain to him. ”It was so different at Saulsby,” Lady Laura continued. ”Everything there seemed to be my own.”
”And everything here is your own.”
”Yes,--according to the prayer-book. And everything in truth is my own,--as all the dainties at the banquet belonged to Sancho the Governor.”
”You mean,” said he,--and then he hesitated; ”you mean that Mr.
Kennedy stands over you, guarding you for your own welfare, as the doctor stood over Sancho and guarded him?”
There was a pause before she answered,--a long pause, during which he was looking away over the lake, and thinking how he might introduce the subject of his love. But long as was the pause, he had not begun when Lady Laura was again speaking. ”The truth is, my friend,” she said, ”that I have made a mistake.”
”A mistake?”
”Yes, Phineas, a mistake. I have blundered as fools blunder, thinking that I was clever enough to pick my footsteps aright without asking counsel from any one. I have blundered and stumbled and fallen, and now I am so bruised that I am not able to stand upon my feet.” The word that struck him most in all this was his own Christian name. She had never called him Phineas before. He was aware that the circle of his acquaintance had fallen into a way of miscalling him by his Christian name, as one observes to be done now and again in reference to some special young man. Most of the men whom he called his friends called him Phineas. Even the Earl had done so more than once on occasions in which the greatness of his position had dropped for a moment out of his mind. Mrs. Low had called him Phineas when she regarded him as her husband's most cherished pupil; and Mrs. Bunce had called him Mr. Phineas. He had always been Phineas to everybody at Killaloe. But still he was quite sure that Lady Laura had never so called him before. Nor would she have done so now in her husband's presence. He was sure of that also.
”You mean that you are unhappy?” he said, still looking away from her towards the lake.
”Yes, I do mean that. Though I do not know why I should come and tell you so,--except that I am still blundering and stumbling, and have fallen into a way of hurting myself at every step.”
”You can tell no one who is more anxious for your happiness,” said Phineas.
”That is a very pretty speech, but what would you do for my happiness? Indeed, what is it possible that you should do? I mean it as no rebuke when I say that my happiness or unhappiness is a matter as to which you will soon become perfectly indifferent.”
”Why should you say so, Lady Laura?”
”Because it is natural that it should be so. You and Mr. Kennedy might have been friends. Not that you will be, because you are unlike each other in all your ways. But it might have been so.”
”And are not you and I to be friends?” he asked.
”No. In a very few months you will not think of telling me what are your desires or what your sorrows;--and as for me, it will be out of the question that I should tell mine to you. How can you be my friend?”
”If you were not quite sure of my friends.h.i.+p, Lady Laura, you would not speak to me as you are speaking now.” Still he did not look at her, but lay with his face supported on his hands, and his eyes turned away upon the lake. But she, where she was sitting, could see him, and was aided by her sight in making comparisons in her mind between the two men who had been her lovers,--between him whom she had taken and him whom she had left. There was something in the hard, dry, unsympathising, unchanging virtues of her husband which almost revolted her. He had not a fault, but she had tried him at every point and had been able to strike no spark of fire from him. Even by disobeying she could produce no heat,--only an access of firmness.
How would it have been with her had she thrown all ideas of fortune to the winds, and linked her lot to that of the young Phoebus who was lying at her feet? If she had ever loved any one she had loved him. And she had not thrown away her love for money. So she swore to herself over and over again, trying to console herself in her cold unhappiness. She had married a rich man in order that she might be able to do something in the world;--and now that she was this rich man's wife she found that she could do nothing. The rich man thought it to be quite enough for her to sit at home and look after his welfare. In the meantime young Phoebus,--her Phoebus as he had been once,--was thinking altogether of some one else.
”Phineas,” she said, slowly, ”I have in you such perfect confidence that I will tell you the truth;--as one man may tell it to another. I wish you would go from here.”