Part 27 (1/2)
”WINSTON!”
She gasped and blanched in pain or terror.
”What is the matter? Have I hurt you?” releasing his grasp.
”Yes--HERE!” laying his hand upon her heart, the beautiful eyes terrified and pathetic as those of a wounded deer. ”For the love of Heaven, never stab me again with such suggestions. When you die, I shall not care to live. When you cease to love me, I shall wish we had died together on our marriage-day--my husband!”
He let her twine her arms about his neck, laid his cheek to her brow, clasped her tightly and kissed her impetuously, madly, again and yet again--disengaged himself, and ran down the steps. She was standing on the top one, still flushed and breathless from the violence of his embrace, when he looked back from the gate, her commanding figure framed by the embowering creepers, as Mabel's girlish shape had been when Frederic Chilton waved his farewell to her from the same spot.
Did either of them think of it, or would either have reckoned it an ominous coincidence, if the remembrance of that long-ago parting had presented itself then and there?
Herbert spent the day upon the lounge in the family sitting-room--a cosy retreat, between the parlor and the conservatory, which had been added to the lower floor in the reign of the present queen. Her brother's seizure was no trifling ailment. Alternations of stupor and racking spasms of pain defied, for several hours, his wife's application of the remedies she had found efficacious in former attacks. Her ultimate resort was chloroform, and by the liberal use of this, relaxation of the tense nerves and a sleep that resembled healing repose were induced by the middle of the afternoon. The weather continued to threaten rain, although none had fallen as yet, and the wind moaned lugubriously in the leafless branches of the great walnut before the end window of the narrow apartment. It was a grand tree, the patriarch of the grove that sheltered the house from the north winds. Mabel, relieved from watchfulness, and to some extent from anxiety, by her husband's profound slumber, lay back in her chair with a long-drawn sigh, and looked out at the naked limbs of the wrestling giant--the majestic sway and reel she used to note with childish awe--and thought of many things which had befallen her since then, until the steady rocking of the boughs and hum of the November breeze soothed her into languor--then drowsiness--then oblivion.
She awoke in alarm at the sense of something hurtful or startling hovering near her.
The fire had been trimmed before she slept, and now flamed up gayly; the window was dusky, as were the distant corners of the room, and Herbert was gazing steadfastly at her.
”I fell asleep without knowing it. I am sorry! Have you wanted anything?
How long have you been awake?”
”Only a few minutes, my dearest!” with no change in the mesmeric intentness of his gaze. ”I want nothing more than to have you always near me. You have been a good, faithful wife, Mabel, better and n.o.bler--a thousandfold n.o.bler than I deserved. I have thought it all over while you were sleeping so tranquilly in my sight. I wish my conscience were void of evil to all mankind as is yours. I awoke with an odd and awful impression upon my mind. The firelight flamed in a bright stream between your chair and me--and I must have dreamed it--or the chloroform had affected my head--I thought it was a river of light dividing us! You were a calm, white angel who had entered into rest--uncaring for and forgetful of me. I was lost, homeless, wandering forever and ever!”
Had her prosaic spouse addressed her in a rhythmic improvisation, Mabel could not have been more astounded.
”You are dreaming yet!” she said, kneeling by him and binding his temples with her cool, firm palms. ”When we are divided, it will be by a dark--not a bright river.”
”Until death do us part!” Herbert repeated, thoughtfully. ”I wish I could hear you say, once, that you do not regret that clause of your marriage vow. I was not your heart's choice, you know, Mabel, however decided may have been the approval of your friends and of your judgment.
The thought oppresses me as it did not in the first years of our wedded life.”
”I am glad you have spoken of this,” began the wife. ”I would disabuse your mind--”
”All in the dark!” exclaimed Mrs. Aylett, at the door. ”And what a stifling odor of chloroform!”
Mabel got up, and drew a heavy travelling-shawl that covered Herbert's lower limbs over his arms and chest.
”I will open the window!” she said, deprecatingly.
A sluice of cold air rushed in, beating the blaze this way and that, puffing ashes from the hearth into the room, and eliciting from Mrs.
Aylett what would have been a peevish interjection in another woman.
”My dear sister! the remedy is worse than the offence. Chloroform is preferable to creosote, or whatever abominable element is the princ.i.p.al ingredient of smoke and cold! The thermometer must be down to the freezing-point!”
Mabel lowered the sash.
”You have been sitting in a room without fire, I suspect. The temperature here is delightful. I am sorry we have exiled you from such comfortable quarters.”
”Don't speak of it! I cannot endure to sit here alone--or anywhere else.
I have slept most of the afternoon. How the wind blows! I wish Winston were at home.”
”It is a dark afternoon. He seldom returns from court so early as this.