Nancy by Rhoda Broughton - CHAPTER XXXVIII
And thus I, ingenious architect of my own ruin, build up the barrier of a lie between myself and Roger. It is a barrier that hourly grows higher, more impassable. As the days go by, I say to myself in heart-sickness, that I shall never now cross it�never see it leveled with the earth. Even when we too are dead it will still rise between us in the other world; if�as all the nations have agreed to say�there be another. For my part, I think at this time that, if there is any chance of its bearing aught of resemblance to this present world, I had far fainer there were none.
With all due deference to Shakespeare�and I suppose that even the one supreme genius of all time must, in his day, have made a mistake or two�I have but faint belief in the "sweet uses of adversity." I think that they are about as mythical as the jewels in the toad's ugly skull, to which he likened them. It is in prosperity that one looks up, with leaping heart and clear eyes, and through the clouds see God sitting throned in light. In adversity one sees nothing but one's own dunghill and boils.
At least such has been my experience. I think I could have borne it better if I had not looked forward to his return so much�if he had been an austere and bitter tyrant, to whose coming I had looked with dread, I could have braced my nerves and pulled myself together, to face with some stoutness the hourly trials of life. But when one has counted the days, hours, and moments, till some high festival, and, when it comes, it turns out a drear, black funeral, one cannot meet the changed circumstances with any great fortitude.
It is the horrible contrast between my dreams and their realization that gives the keenest poignancy to my pangs.
To his return I had referred the smoothing of all my difficulties, the clearing up of all my doubts, the sweeping of all clouds from my sky; and now he is back! and, oh, how far, far gloomier than ever is my weather! What a sullen leaden sky overhangs me!
I never tell him about Algy after all! I do not often laugh now; but I did laugh loudly and long the other day, although I was quite alone, when I thought of my wily purpose of setting Roger on his guard against Mrs. Huntley's little sugared unveracities.
No, I never tell him about Algy! Why should I? it would be wasted breath�spent words. He would not believe me. In the more important case has not he taken her word in preference to mine? Would not he in this too? For I know that he knows, as well as I know it myself, that in that matter I lied.
Sometimes, when I am by myself, a mighty yearning�a most constraining longing seizes me to go to him�fall at his feet, and tell him the truth even yet. After all, God knows that I have no ugly fault to confess to him�no infidelity even of thought. But as soon as I am in his presence the desire fades; or at least the power to put it in practice melts away. For he never gives me an opening. After that first evening never does he draw nigh the subject: never once is the detested name of Musgrave mentioned between us. If he had been one most dear to us both and had died untimely, we could not avoid with more sacred care any allusion to him. And, even if, by doing infinite violence to myself, I could bring myself to overcome the painful steepness of the hill of difficulty that lies between me and the subject, and tell the tardy truth, to what use, pray? Having once owned that I had lied, could I resent any statement of mine being taken with distrust? Would he believe me? Not he! He would say, "If you were as innocent as you say, why did you lie? If you were innocent, what had you to fear?" So I hold my peace. And, as the days go, and the winter wanes, it seems to me that I can plainly see, with no uncertain or doubtful eyes, Roger's love wane too.
After all, why should I wonder? I may be sorry, for who ever saw gladly love�the one all-good thing on this earth, most of whose good things are adulterated and dirt-smirched�who ever saw it gladly slip away from them? But I cannot be surprised.
With Roger, love and trust must ever go hand-in-hand; and, when the one has gone, the other must needs soon follow.
After all, what he loved in me was a delusion�had never existed. It was my blunt honesty, my transparent candor, the open-hearted downrightness that in me amounted to a misfortune, that had at first attracted him. And now that he has found that the unpolished abruptness of my manners can conceal as great an amount of deception as the most insinuating silkiness of any one else's, I do not see what there is left in me to attract him. Certainly I have no beauty to excite a man's passions, nor any genius to enchain his intellect, nor even any pretty accomplishment to amuse his leisure.
Why should he love me? Because I am his wife? Nay, nay! who ever loved because it was their duty? who ever succeeded in putting love in harness, and driving him? Sooner than be the object of such up-hill conscientious affection, I had far rather be treated with cold indifference�active hatred even. Because I am young? That seems no recommendation in his eyes! Because I love him? He does not believe it. Once or twice I have tried to tell him so, and he has gently pooh-poohed me.
Sometimes it has occurred to me that, perhaps, if I had him all to myself, I might even yet bring him back to me�might reconcile him to my paucity of attractions, and persuade him of my honesty; but what chance have I, when every day, every hour of the day if he likes to put himself to such frequent pain, he may see and bitterly note the contrast between the woman of his choice and the woman of his fate�the woman from whom he is irrevocably parted, and the woman to whom he is as irrevocably joined. And I think that hardly a day passes that he does not give himself the opportunity of instituting the comparison.
Not that he is unkind to me; do not think that. It would be impossible to Roger to be unkind to any thing, much more to any weakly woman thing that is quite in his own power. No, no! there is no fear of that. I have no need to be a grizzle. I have no cross words, no petulances, no neglects even, to bear. But oh! in all his friendly words, in all his kindly, considerate actions, what a chill there is! It is as if some one that had been a day dead laid his hand on my heart!
How many, many miles farther apart we are now, than we were when I was here, and he in Antigua; albeit then the noisy winds roared and sung, and the brown billows tumbled between us! If he would but hit me, or box my ears, as Bobby has so often done�a good swinging, tingling box, that made one see stars, and incarnadized all one side of one's countenance�oh, how much, much less would it hurt than do the frosty chillness of his smiles, the uncaressing touch of his cool hands!
I have plenty of time to think these thoughts, for I am a great deal alone now. Roger is out all day, hunting or with his agent, or on some of the manifold business that landed property entails, or that the settlement of Mr. Huntley's inextricably tangled affairs involves. Very often he does not come in till dressing-time. I never ask him where he has been�never! I think that I know.
Often in these after-days, pondering on those ill times, seeing their incidents in that duer proportion that a stand-point at a little distance from them gives, it has occurred to me that sometimes I was wrong, that not seldom, while I was eating my heart out up-stairs, with dumb jealousy picturing to myself my husband in the shaded fragrance, the dulcet gloom of the drawing-room at Laurel Cottage, he was in the house with me, as much alone as I, in the dull solitude of his own room, pacing up and down the carpet, or bending over an unread book.
I will tell you why I think so. One day�it is the end of March now, the year is no longer a swaddled baby, it is shooting up into a tall stripling�I have been straying about the brown gardens, alone, of course. It is a year to-day since Bobby and I together strolled among the kitchen-stuff in the garden at home, since he served me that ill turn with the ladder. Every thing reminds me of that day: these might be the same crocus-clumps, as those that last year frightened away winter with their purple and gold banners. I remember that, as I looked down their deep throats, I was humming Tou Tou's verb, "J'aime, I love; Tu aimes, Thou lovest; Il aime, He loves."
I sigh. There was the same purple promise over the budded woods; the same sharpness in the bustling wind. Since then, Nature has gone through all her plodding processes, and now it is all to do over again. A sense of fatigue at the infinite repetitions of life comes over me. If Nature would but make a little variation! If the seasons would but change their places a little, and the flowers their order, so that there might be something of unexpectedness about them! But no! they walk round and round forever in their monotonous leisure.
I am stooping to pick a little posy of violets as these languid thoughts dawdle through my mind�blue mysteries of sweetness and color, born of the unscented, dull earth. As I pass Roger's door, having re�ntered the house, the thought strikes me to set them on his writing-table. Most likely he will not notice them, not be aware of them: but even so they will be able humbly to speak to him the sweet things that he will not listen to from me. I open the door and listlessly enter. If I had thought that there was any chance of his being within, I should not have done so without knocking; indeed, I hardly think I should have done it at all, but this seems to me most unlikely. Nevertheless, he is.
As I enter, I catch sudden sight of him. He is sitting in his arm-chair, his elbows leaned on the table before him, his hand passed through his ruffled hair, and his gray eyes straying abstractedly away from the neglected page before him. I see him before he sees me. I have time to take in all the dejection of his attitude, all its spiritless idleness. At the slight noise my skirts make, he looks up. I stop on the threshold.
"I�I thought you were out," say I, hesitatingly, and reddening a little, as if I were being caught in the commission of some little private sin.
"No, I came in an hour ago."
"I beg your pardon," I say, humbly; "I will not disturb you; I would have knocked if I had known!"
He has risen, and is coming toward me.
"Knock! why, in Heaven's name, should you knock?" he says, with something of his old glad animation; then, suddenly changing his tone to one of courteous friendly coldness, "Why do you stand out there? will not you come in?"
I comply with this invitation, and, entering, sit down in another arm-chair not far from Roger's, but, now that I am here, I do not seem to have much to say.
"You have been in the gardens?" he says, presently, glancing at my little nosegay, and speaking more to hinder total silence from reigning, than for any other reason.
"Yes," I reply, trying to be cheerful and chatty, "I have been picking these; the Czar have not half their perfume, though they are three times their size! these smell so good!"
As I speak, I timidly half stretch out the little bunch to him, that he, too, may inhale their odor, but the gesture is so uncertain and faint that he does not perceive it�at least, he takes no notice of it, and I am sure that if he had he would; but yet I am so discouraged by the failure of my little overture that I have not resolution enough to tell him that I had gathered them for him. Instead, I snubbedly and discomfortedly put them in my own breast.
Presently I speak again.
"Do you remember," I say�"no, I dare say you do not, but yet it is so�it is a year to-day since you found me sitting on the top of the wall!�such a situation for a person of nineteen to be discovered in!"
At the recollection I laugh a little, and not bitterly, which is what I do not often do now. I can only see his profile, but it seems to me that a faint smile is dawning on his face, too.
"It was a good jump, was not it?" I go on, laughing again; "I still wonder that I did not knock you down."
He is certainly smiling now; his face has almost its old, tender mirth.
"It will be a year to-morrow," continue I, emboldened by perceiving this, and beginning to count on my fingers, "since Toothless Jack and the curates came to dine, and you staid so long in the dining-room that I fell asleep; the day after to-morrow, it will be a year since we walked by the river-side, and saw the goslings flowering out on the willows; the day after that it will be a year since�"
"Stop!" he cries, interrupting me, with a voice and face equally full of disquiet and pain; "do not go on, where is the use?�I hate anniversaries."
I stop, quenched into silence; my poor little trickle of talk effectually dried. After a pause, he speaks.
"What has made you think of all these dead trivialities?" he asks in a voice more moved�or I think so�less positively steady than his has been of late; "at your age, it is more natural to look on than to look back."
"Is it?" say I, sadly, "I do not know; I seem to have such a great deal of time for thinking now; this house is so extraordinarily silent! did you never notice it?�of course it is large, and we are only two people in it, but at home it never seemed to me so deadly quiet, even when I was alone in the house."
"Were you ever alone?" he asks, with a smile. He is thinking of the noisy multitude that are connected in his memory with my father's mansion; that, during all his experience of it, have filled its rooms and passages with the hubbub of their strong-lunged jollity.
"Yes, I have been," I reply; "not often, of course! but several times, when the boys were away, and father and mother and Barbara had gone out to dinner; of course it seemed still and dumb, but not�" (shuddering a little)�"not so aggressively loudly silent as this does!"
He looks at me, with a sort of remorseful pain.
"It is very dull for you!" he says, compassionately; "shut up in endless duet, with a person treble your age! I ought to have thought of that; in a month or so, we shall be going to London, that will amuse you, will not it? and till then, is there any one that you would like to have asked here?�any friend of your own?�any companion of your own age?"
"No," reply I, despondently, staring out of the window, "I have no friends."
"The boys, then?" speaking with a sudden assurance of tone, as one that has certainly hit upon a pleasant suggestion.
I shake my head.
"I could not have Bobby and the Brat, if I would, and I would not have Algy if I could!" I reply with curt dejection.
"Barbara, then?"
Again I shake my head. Not even Barbara will I allow to witness the failure of my dreams, the downfall of my high castles, the sterility of my Promised Land.
"No, I will not have Barbara!" I answer; "last time that she was here�" but I cannot finish my sentence. I break away weeping. |
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