geoffrey ludlow felt considerable anxiety about his wife after the day of their inauspicious visit to lord caterham; and as anxiety was quite a foreign element in geoff's placid temperament, it did not sit well upon him, and it rendered him idle and desultory. he could not make up his mind as to the true source of his anxiety,--the real spring of his discomfort. margaret's health was very good; her naturally fine physique shook off illness easily and rapidly, and her rare beauty was once more irradiated with the glow of health and strength. yet geoffrey's inquietude was not lessened. he loved this strange woman--this woman who compelled admiration, indeed, from others, but won love only from him with passionate and intense devotion. but he was ill at ease with her, and he began to acknowledge to himself that it was so. he knew, he felt, that there was some new element, some impalpable power in their lives, which was putting asunder those who had never been very closely united in real bonds of sympathy and confidence, with an irresistible, remorseless hand,--invisible and sure as that of death.
there are no words to tell what this good fellow suffered in his kindly, unselfish, simple way, as day by day the conviction forced itself upon him that the woman he had so loved, the woman for whom he lived, and worked, and thought, and hoped, was more and more divided from him by some barrier--all the more impassable because he could not point to it and demand an explanation of its presence, or utter a plea for its removal. he would sit in his painting-room quite idle, and with a moody brow--unlike the geoff ludlow of old times--and think and puzzle himself about his wife; he would sometimes work, in short desultory fits of industry, desperately, as though putting thought from him by main force; and then he would meet margaret, at meals or other times of association, with so indifferent an assumption of being just as usual, that it was wonderful she did not notice the change in her husband. but geoffrey did not interest her, and margaret did not observe him with any curiosity. the state of mind of this ill-assorted pair at this time was very curious, had there been any one to understand and analyse it.
"what can it be?" geoffrey would ask himself. "i cannot make it out. she does not take any interest in any thing. i thought all women loved their children at least, and the coldest warmed to their infants; but she does not."
geoffrey had ceased to wonder at margaret's coldness to him. she had always been cold, and latterly her reserve and silence had increased. she made no effort to hide the _ennui_ which wholly possessed her; she made no attempt to simulate the interest in his occupations which she had never felt in more than a lukewarm degree. his perceptions were not very quick; but when he did see a thing, he was apt to understand and reason upon it, and he reasoned upon this now; he pondered upon it and upon his marriage, and he wondered when he remembered the joy and hope with which he had entered upon the pretty, comfortable new home and the quiet industrious life. what had come to it all? what had changed it, and yet left it the same? he had not failed in any duty to this woman; he had not given her less, but more than he had promised; for he was much better off than he had hoped to be, and she had the command of every shilling he earned. never had an unkind word, a negligent act, a failure in the tenderest of household kindnesses, recorded itself in her memory against this man, who was her preserver, her protector, her husband. surprise, trouble, vague apprehension, above all, the bewilderment of inexplicable wrong, were in geoffrey's mind; but not a touch of bitterness against her. he remembered the story she had told him, and the promise he had pledged to her, and his generous heart rested in the assurance she had then given him, and sought no farther. his was not the nature which would count up the items in the bargain between them, and set down the large balance that really existed on his side. what had he given her? to answer this question aright, knowledge must have been had of her whole life and all its depths of suffering, of actual physical want sounded; all her love of luxury, all her incapacity to bear privation, all her indolence, her artistic sensuousness, her cultivated power of enjoyment, must have been known and weighed.
he had given her ease, security, respectability,--a name, a home which was comfortable to the verge of luxury, which included all that any woman could reasonably desire who had voluntarily accepted a life upon the scale which it implied--a home to which his industry and his love constantly added new comforts and decorations. geoffrey never thought of these things,--he did not appraise them; nor did his generous heart dwell upon the sacrifice he had made, the risk he had incurred, in short, upon the extraordinary imprudence of his marriage. his nature was too magnanimous, and not sufficiently practical for such considerations he thought of nothing but the love he had given her,--the love she did not seem to understand, to care for,--and he wondered, in his simple way, why such love, so deep and quiet, so satisfied with home and her, could not make her more happy and cheerful. poor geoffrey, calm and peace were the conditions of life in which alone he could find or imagine happiness, and they were just those which were detestable to margaret. it is possible that, had she been caught from the depths of her degradation and despair in the grasp of a nature stronger and more violent than her own, the old thrall might have fallen from her, and she might have been swayed by the mingled charm and authority, the fierceness, the delight, the fear of a great passion, so preoccupying that she would have had no time for retrospect, so entrancing that she would have been forced to live in the present. but the hand that had raised her from the abyss was only gentle and tender; it lacked the force which would have wrung submission from her afterwards, the power to imply that it could wound as well as caress,--and its touch had no potency for that perverted nature. what had she given him? just her beauty,--nothing more. she was his wife, and she cared for him no more than she cared for the furniture of her rooms and the trinkets in her jewel-case (poor things, she thought, which once would have been unworthy of her wearing, but chosen with all geoff's humble science, and bought with the guerdon of many a day of geoff's hard work); he was her child's father; and the child bored her a little more unendurably than all the rest. indeed, all the rest was quiet--which at least was something--but the child was not quiet; and geoffrey made a fuss about it--a circumstance which lent a touch of impatience to her distaste. he talked about the infant,--he wanted to know if she thought her boy's eyes were like her own? and whether she would like him to be an artist like his father? he talked about the boy's eyes, and lionel's electric glances were haunting her troubled soul; he babbled about the boy's future, when she was enduring the tortures of tantalus in her terrible longing for the past.
the child throve, and geoffrey loved the little creature with a vigilant affection curious and beautiful to see. when he felt that the hopes he had built upon the infant, as a new and strong tie between himself and margaret, as a fresh source of interest, something to awaken her from her torpidity, were not destined to be realised, he turned, in the intensity of his disappointment and discomfiture, to the child itself; and sought--unconsciously it may be, at least unavowedly to himself--to fill up the void in his heart, to restore the warmth to his home, through the innocent medium of the baby. the child did not resemble his mother, even after the difficult-to-be-discovered fashion of likenesses in babyhood. when he opened his eyes, in the solemn and deliberate way in which young children look out upon the mysterious world, they did not disclose violet tints nor oval-shaped heavy lids; they were big brown eyes, like geoffrey's, and the soft rings of downy hair, which the nurse declared to be "the beautifullest curls she ever see on an 'ead at 'is age," were not golden but dark brown. geoffrey held numerous conferences with the nurse about her charge, and might be found many times in the day making his way with elaborate caution, and the noiseless step which is a characteristic of big men, up the nursery stair; and seen by the curious, had there been any to come there, gazing at the infant lying in his cradle, or on his nurse's knee, with a wistful rueful expression, and his hands buried in the pockets of his painting-coat.
he never found margaret in the nursery on any of these occasions, and she never evinced the slightest interest in the nursery government, or responded to any of his ebullitions of feeling on the subject. of course the servants were not slow to notice the indifference of the mother, and to comment upon it with unreserved severity. margaret was not a favourite at any time--"master" being perfection in their minds--and her cold reserve and apathy impressing the domestics, who could not conceive that "a good home" could be despicable in even the most beautiful eyes, very unfavourably.
margaret was arraigned before the domestic tribunal, unknown to herself; though, had she known it, the circumstance would have made no impression upon her. her cold pride would at all times have rendered her indifferent to opinion; and now that indifference, weariness, and distaste had entire possession of her, she had not even cared to hide the dreary truth from her husband's mother and sister. what had become of her resolutions with regard to them? where were her first impulses of gratitude? gone--sunk in the dead sea of her overmastering passion--utterly lost beneath the tide of her conscienceless selfishness. she could not strive, she could not pretend, she could not play any part longer. why should she, to whom such talk was twaddle of the trashiest description, try to appear interested because she had given birth to geoffrey's child? well, there was the child; let them make much of it, and talk nonsense to it and about it. what was geoffrey's child to her, or geoffrey's mother, or--she had gone very near to saying geoffrey himself either, but something dimly resembling a pang of conscience stopped her. he was very good, very honest, very kind; and she was almost sorry for him,--as nearly sorry as she could be for any but herself; and then the tide of that sorrow for herself dashed over and swept all these trifling scraps of vague regret, of perhaps elementary remorse, away on its tumultuous waves.
she was cursed with such keen memory, she was haunted with such a terrible sense of contrast! had it been more dreadful, more agonising, when she was a wanderer in the pitiless streets,--starving, homeless, dying of sheer want; when the bodily suffering she endured was so great that it benumbed her mind, and deadened it to all but craving for food and shelter? the time of this terrible experience lay so far in the past now, that she had begun to forget the reality of the torture; she had begun to undervalue its intensity, and to think that she had purchased rescue too dear. too dead--she, whose glance could not fall around her without resting on some memorial of the love she had won; she, whose daily life was sheltered from every breath of ill and care! she had always been weary; now she was growing enraged. like the imprisoned creatures of the desert and the jungle, in whom long spells of graceful apathetic repose are succeeded by fierce fits of rebellious struggle, she strove and fought with the gentle merciful fate which had brought her into this pretty prison and supplied her with dainty daily fare. it had all been bearable--at least until now--and she had borne it well, and never turned upon her keeper. but the wind had set from the lands of sun and fragrance, from the desert whose sands were golden, whose wells were the sparkling waters of life and love, and she had scented the old perfume in the breeze. all the former instincts revived, the slight chain of formal uncongenial habit fell away, and in the strength of passion and beauty she rebelled against her fate. perhaps the man she loved and longed for, as the sick long for health or the shipwrecked for a sail, had never seen her look so beautiful as she looked one day, when, after mrs. ludlow and her daughter, who had come to lunch at elm lodge, had gone away, and geoffrey, puzzled and mortified more than ever, had returned to his painting-room, she stood by the long window of the drawing-room, gazing out over the trim little space which bloomed with flowers and glowed in the sunshine, with eyes which seemed indeed as if their vision cleft distance and disdained space. her cheeks, usually colourless, were touched with a faint rose-tinge; and the hurry and excitement of her thoughts seemed to pervade her whole frame, which was lighted by the rays of the afternoon sun, from the rich coils of her red-gold hair to the restless foot which tapped the carpet angrily. as she stood, varying expressions flitted over her face like clouds; but in them all there was an intensity new to it, and which would have told an observer that the woman who looked so was taking a resolution.
suddenly she lifted her hands above her head to the full extent of her arms, then tore the twisted fingers asunder with a moan, as if of pain or hunger, and letting them fall by her side, flung herself into a chair.
"have you heard any thing of lord caterham lately?" asked mrs. geoffrey ludlow of her husband, a few days after his mother's visit, just as geoffrey, having breakfasted, was about to retire to his painting-room. she asked the question in the most careless possible manner, and without removing her eyes from the _times_, which she was reading; but geoffrey was pleased that she should have asked it at all,--any sign of interest on margaret's part in any one for whom he cared being still precious to geoffrey, and becoming rarer and more rare.
"no, dear," he replied; "annie said she would write as soon as lord caterham should be well enough to see me. i suppose i may tell her, then, that she may come and see you. you are quite well now, margaret?"
"o yes, quite well," she replied; and then added, with the faintest flicker of colour on her cheek, "lord caterham's brother is not at home, i believe. have you ever seen him?"
"captain brakespere? no, net i. there's something wrong about him. i don't understand the story, but annie just mentioned that lord caterham had been in great distress about him. well, margaret, i'm off now to the esplanade."
he looked wistfully at her; but she did not speak or lift up her eyes, and he went out of the room.
if there was trouble of the silent and secret kind in geoffrey's home, there was also discontent of the outspoken sort at his mother's cheerful house in brompton.
mrs. ludlow was wholly unprepared to find that margaret cared so little for her child. it was with no small indignation that she commented upon margaret's demeanour, as she and her daughter sat together; and deeper than her indignation lay her anxiety, and a vague apprehension of evil in store for her darling son.
"she is sulky and discontented,--that's what she is," repeated mrs. ludlow; "and what she can want or wish for that she has not got passes my comprehension."
miss ludlow said that perhaps it was only accidental. she would be sorry to think margaret had such faults of temper to any confirmed degree. it would be dreadful for dear old geoff, who was so sweet-tempered himself, and who never could understand unamiable persons. but she added she did not think geoff perceived it. she was sure he would never think that margaret was not fond of the child.
"o yes, he does perceive it," said mrs. ludlow; "i can see that very plainly; i saw it in his face when he came up to the nursery with us, and she never offered to stir; and did you not notice, til, that when i asked her what the doctor said about vaccinating baby, she looked at me quite vacantly, and geoffrey answered? ah, no; he knows it well enough, poor fellow; and how ever he is to get through life with a woman with a bad temper and no heart, i'm sure i can't tell."
geoffrey had never relaxed in his attention to his mother. in the early days of his marriage, when he had persuaded himself that there was nothing in the least disappointing in margaret's manner, and that he was perfectly happy; in those days to which he looked back now, in the chill dread and discomfort of the present, as to vanished hours of paradise, he had visited his mother, sent her presents, written short cheery notes to her and til, and done every thing in his power to lesson their sense of the inevitable separation which his marriage had brought about. his love and his happiness had had no hardening or narrowing effect upon geoffrey ludlow. they had quickened his perceptions and added delicacy to his sympathies. but there was a difference now. geoffrey felt unwilling to see his mother and sister; he felt that their perception of margaret's conduct had been distinct, and their disapproval complete; and he shrank from an interview which must include avoidance of the subject occupying all their minds. he would not willingly have had margaret blamed, even by implication by others; though there was something more like anger than he had ever felt or thought he could feel towards her in his gentle heart, as he yielded to the conviction that she had no love for her child.
thus it happened that geoffrey did not see his mother and sister for a week just at this time, during which interval there was no change in the state of affairs at home. he wrote, indeed, to til, and made cheery mention of the boy and of his picture, which was getting on splendidly, and at which he was working so hard that he could not manage to get so far as brompton for a day or two yet, but would go very soon; and margaret sent her love. so geoffrey made out a letter which might have been written by a blundering schoolboy--a letter over which his mother bent sad and boding looks, and til had a "good cry." though geoffrey had not visited them lately, the ladies had not been altogether deprived of the society of men and artists. the constancy with which charley potts paid his respects was quite remarkable; and it fell out that, seeing matilda rather out of spirits, and discerning that something was going wrong, charley very soon extracted from til what that something was, and they proceeded to exchange confidences on the subject of geoffrey and his beautiful wife. charley informed matilda that none of "our fellows" who had been introduced to mrs. geoffrey liked her; and as for stompff, "he hates her all out, you know," said the plain-spoken charley; "but i don't mind that, for she's a lady, and stompff--he--he's a beast, you know."
when geoffrey could no longer defer a visit to his mother without the risk of bringing about questions and expostulations which must make the state of things at home openly known, and place him in the embarrassing position of being obliged to avow an estrangement for which he could assign no cause, he went to brompton. the visit was not a pleasant one, though the mother and sister were even more demonstrative in their affectionate greeting than usual, and though they studiously avoided any reference to the subject in their minds and in his. but this was just what he dreaded; they did studiously avoid it; and by doing so they confirmed all his suspicions, they realised all his fears. geoffrey did not even then say to himself that his marriage was a mistake, and his mother and sister had discovered it; but had his thoughts, his misgivings been put into words, they must have taken some such shape. they talked energetically about the child, and asked geoff all sorts of feminine questions, which it would have affected a male listener rather oddly to have heard geoff answer with perfect seriousness, and a thorough acquaintance with details. he had several little bits of news for them; how mr. stompff, reminiscent of his rather obtrusive promise, had sent the clumsiest, stumpiest, ugliest lump of a silver mug procurable in london as a present to the child, but had not presented himself at elm lodge; how miss maurice had been so delighted with the little fellow, and had given him a beautiful embroidered frock, and on lord caterham's behalf endowed him with a salver "big enough to serve himself up upon, mother," said geoff, with his jolly laugh: "i put him on it, and carried him round the room for annie to see."
beyond the inevitable inquiries, there was no mention made of margaret; but when his mother kissed him at parting, and when til lingered a moment longer than usual, with her arms round his neck, at the door, geoffrey felt the depth and bitterness of the trouble that had come into his life more keenly, more chillingly than he had felt it yet.
"this shall not last," he said, as he walked slowly towards home, his head bent downwards, and all his features clouded with the gloom that had settled upon him. "this shall not last any longer. i have done all i can; if she is unhappy, it is not my fault; but i must know why. i cannot bear it; i have not deserved it. i will keep silence no longer. she must explain what it means."
