Part 51 (1/2)

”We shall be married very soon,” Barbara added; ”as soon as a house can be chosen. Of course it must be in London, or very near. We shall go somewhere or other, and then, very likely, pay a formal visit to the 'place in Lincolns.h.i.+re.' Think of that! Sir Roland seems a good sort of man; he will welcome us. Think of visiting at the 'place in Lincolns.h.i.+re'! Isn't it all like a dream?”

”What will mamma do without you?”

”Oh, Zillah is to come home. We'll see about that.”

”I suppose he forgot to bring me some flowers today?”

”No But I declare I forgot to bring them up. I'll fetch them at once.”

She did so, running downstairs and up again like a child, with a jump at the landings. The flowers were put in the usual place. Madeline looked at them, and listened to her sister's chatter for five minutes.

Then she said absently:

”Go away now, please. I've heard enough for the present.”

”You shall have all sorts of comforts, Maddy.”

”Go away, Barbara.”

The sister obeyed, looking back with compa.s.sion from the door. She closed it softly, and in the room there was the old perfect stillness.

Madeline had let her eyelids fall, and the white face against the white pillows was like that of one dead. But upon the eyelashes there presently shone a tear; it swelled, broke away, and left a track of moisture. Poor white face, with the dark hair softly shadowing its temples! Poor troubled brain, wearying itself in idle questioning of powers that heeded not!

CHAPTER V

MULTUM IN PARVO

Elgar's marriage had been a great success. For a year and a half, for even more than that, he had lived the fullest and most consistent life of which he was capable; what proportion of the sons of men can look back on an equal span of time in their own existence and say the same of it?

Life with Cecily gave predominance to all the n.o.blest energies in his nature. He loved with absolute sincerity; his ideal of womanhood was for the time realized and possessed; the vagrant habit of his senses seemed permanently subdued; his mind was occupied with high admirations and creative fancies; in thought and speech he was ardent, generous, constant, hopeful. A happy marriage can do no more for man than make unshadowed revelation of such aspiring faculty as he is endowed withal.

It cannot supply him with a force greater than he is born to; even as the happiest concurrence of healthful circ.u.mstances cannot give more strength to a physical const.i.tution than its origin warrants. At this period of his life, Reuben Elgar could not have been more than, with Cecily's help, he showed himself. Be the future advance or retrogression, he had lived the possible life.

Whose the fault that it did not continue? Cecily's, if it were blameworthy to demand too much; Elgar's, if it be wrong to learn one's own limitations.

His making definite choice of a subject whereon to employ his intellect was at one and the same time a proof of how far his development had progressed and a warning of what lay before him. However chaotic the material in which he proposed to work, however inadequate his powers, it was yet a truth that, could he execute anything at all, it would be something of the kind thus vaguely contemplated. His intellect was combative, and no subject excited it to such activity as this of Hebraic constraint in the modern world. Elgar's book, supposing him to have been capable of writing it, would have resembled no other; it would have been, as he justly said, unique in its anti-dogmatic pa.s.sion. It was quite in the order of things that he should propose to write it; equally so, that the attempt should mark the end of his happiness.

For all that she seemed to welcome the proposal with enthusiasm, Cecily's mind secretly misgave her. She had begun to understand Reuben, and she foresaw, with a certainty which she in vain tried to combat, how soon his energy would fail upon so great a task. Impossible to admonish him; impossible to direct him on a humbler path, where he might attain some result. With Reuben's temperament to deal with, that would mean a fatal disturbance of their relations to each other. That the disturbance must come in any case, now that he was about to prove himself, she antic.i.p.ated in many a troubled moment, but would not let the forecast discourage her.

Elgar knew how his failure in perseverance affected her; he looked for the signs of her disappointment, and was at no loss to find them. It was natural to him to exaggerate the diminution of her esteem; he attributed to her what, in her place, he would himself have felt; he soon imagined that she had as good as ceased to love him. He could not bear to be less in her eyes than formerly; a jealous shame stung him, and at length made him almost bitter against her.

In this way came about his extraordinary outbreak that night when Cecily had been alone to her aunt's. Pent-up irritation drove him into the extravagances which to Cecily were at first incredible. He could not utter what was really in his mind, and the charges he made against her were modes of relieving himself. Yet, as soon as they had once taken shape, these rebukes obtained a real significance of their own.

Coincident with Cecily's disappointment in him had been the sudden exhibition of her pleasure in society. Under other circ.u.mstances, his wife's brilliancy among strangers might have been pleasurable to Elgar.

His faith in her was perfect, and jealousy of the ign.o.bler kind came not near him. But he felt that she was taking refuge from the dulness of her home; he imagined people speaking of him as ”the husband of Mrs.

Elgar;” it exasperated him to think of her talking with clever men who must necessarily suggest comparisons to her.

He himself was not the kind of man who s.h.i.+nes in company. He had never been trained to social usages, and he could not feel at ease in any drawing-room but his own. The Bohemianism of his early life had even given him a positive distaste for social obligations and formalities.

Among men of his own way of thinking, he could talk vigorously, and as a rule keep the lead in conversation; but where restraint in phrase was needful, he easily became flaccid, and the feeling that he did not show to advantage filled him with disgust. So there was little chance of his ever winning that sort of reputation which would have enabled him to accompany his wife into society without the galling sense of playing an inferior _role_.

In the matter of Mrs. Travis, he was conscious of his own arbitrariness, but, having once committed himself to a point of view, he could not withdraw from it. He had to find fault with his wife and her society, and here was an obvious resource. Its very obviousness should, of course, have warned him away, but his reason for attacking Mrs. Travis had an intimate connection with the general causes of his discontent. Disguise it how he might, he was simply in the position of a husband who fears that his authority over his wife is weakening. Mrs.