"But you will have a doctor?"

"Of course. He was content to see one in Paris, though he would not let me be present. Hugh saw the gentleman afterwards, and he seemed to think that the body was worse than the mind." Then Nora told her the name of a doctor whom Lady Milborough had suggested, and took her departure along with Hugh in the carriage.

In spite of all the sorrow that they had witnessed and just left, their journey up to London was very pleasant. Perhaps there is no period so pleasant among all the pleasant periods of love-making as that in which the intimacy between the lovers is so a.s.sured, and the coming event so near, as to produce and to endure conversation about the ordinary little matters of life;--what can be done with the limited means at their mutual disposal; how that life shall be begun which they are to lead together; what idea each has of the other's duties; what each can do for the other; what each will renounce for the other. There was a true sense of the delight of intimacy in the girl who declared that she had never loved her lover so well as when she told him how many pairs of stockings she had got. It is very sweet to gaze at the stars together; and it is sweet to sit out among the hayc.o.c.ks. The reading of poetry together, out of the same book, with brows all close, and arms all mingled, is very sweet. The pouring out of the whole heart in written words, which the writer knows would be held to be ridiculous by any eyes, and any ears, and any sense, but the eyes and ears and sense of the dear one to whom they are sent, is very sweet;--but for the girl who has made a shirt for the man that she loves, there has come a moment in the last st.i.tch of it, sweeter than any that stars, hayc.o.c.ks, poetry, or superlative epithets have produced. Nora Rowley had never as yet been thus useful on behalf of Hugh Stanbury. Had she done so, she might perhaps have been happier even than she was during this journey;--but, without the shirt, it was one of the happiest moments of her life. There was nothing now to separate them but their own prudential scruples;--and of them it must be acknowledged that Hugh Stanbury had very few. According to his shewing, he was as well provided for matrimony as the gentleman in the song, who came out to woo his bride on a rainy night. In live stock he was not so well provided as the Irish gentleman to whom we allude; but in regard to all other provisions for comfortable married life, he had, or at a moment's notice could have, all that was needed. Nora could live just where she pleased;--not exactly in Whitehall Gardens or Belgrave Square; but the New Road, Lupus Street, Montague Place, the North Bank, or Kennington Oval, with all their surrounding crescents, terraces, and rows, offered, according to him, a choice so wide, either for lodgings or small houses, that their only embarra.s.sment was in their riches. He had already insured his life for a thousand pounds, and, after paying yearly for that, and providing a certain surplus for saving, five hundred a year was the income on which they were to commence the world. "Of course, I wish it were five thousand for your sake," he said; "and I wish I were a Cabinet Minister, or a duke, or a brewer; but, even in heaven, you know all the angels can't be archangels." Nora a.s.sured him that she would be quite content with virtues simply angelic. "I hope you like mutton-chops and potatoes; I do," he said. Then she told him of her ambition about the beef-steak, acknowledging that, as it must now be shared between two, the glorious idea of putting a part of it away in a cupboard must be abandoned. "I don't believe in beef-steaks," he said. "A beef-steak may mean anything. At our club, a beef-steak is a sumptuous and expensive luxury. Now, a mutton-chop means something definite, and must be economical."

"Then we will have the mutton-chops at home," said Nora, "and you shall go to your club for the beef-steak."

When they reached Eccleston Square, Nora insisted on taking Hugh Stanbury up to Lady Milborough. It was in vain that he pleaded that he had come all the way from Dover on a very dusty day,--all the way from Dover, including a journey in a Hansom cab to Twickenham and back, without washing his hands and face. Nora insisted that Lady Milborough was such a dear, good, considerate creature, that she would understand all that, and Hugh was taken into her presence. "I am delighted to see you, Mr. Stanbury," said the old lady, "and hope you will think that Nora is in good keeping."

"She has been telling me how very kind you have been to her. I do not know where she could have bestowed herself if you had not received her."

"There, Nora;--I told you he would say so. I won't tell tales, Mr.

Stanbury; but she had all manner of wild plans which I knew you wouldn't approve. But she is very amiable, and if she will only submit to you as well as she does to me--"

"I don't mean to submit to him at all, Lady Milborough;--of course not. I am going to marry for liberty."

"My dear, what you say, you say in joke; but a great many young women of the present day do, I really believe, go up to the altar and p.r.o.nounce their marriage vows, with the simple idea that as soon as they have done so, they are to have their own way in everything. And then people complain that young men won't marry! Who can wonder at it?"

"I don't think the young men think much about the obedience," said Nora. "Some marry for money, and some for love. But I don't think they marry to get a slave."

"What do you say, Mr. Stanbury?" asked the old lady.

"I can only a.s.sure you that I shan't marry for money," said he.

Two or three days after this Nora left her friend in Eccleston Square, and domesticated herself for awhile with her sister. Mrs.

Trevelyan declared that such an arrangement would be comfortable for her, and that it was very desirable now, as Nora would so soon be beyond her reach. Then Lady Milborough was enabled to go to Dorsetshire, which she did not do, however, till she had presented Nora with the veil which she was to wear on the occasion of her wedding. "Of course I cannot see it, my dear, as it is to take place at Monkhams; but you must write and tell me the day;--and I will think of you. And you, when you put on the veil, must think of me."

So they parted, and Nora knew that she had made a friend for life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nora's veil.]

When she first took her place in the house at Twickenham as a resident, Trevelyan did not take much notice of her;--but, after awhile, he would say a few words to her, especially when it might chance that she was with him in her sister's absence. He would speak of dear Emily, and poor Emily, and shake his head slowly, and talk of the pity of it. "The pity of it, Iago; oh, the pity of it," he said once. The allusion to her was so terrible that she almost burst out in anger, as she would have done formerly. She almost told him that he had been as wrong throughout as was the jealous husband in the play whose words he quoted, and that his jealousy, if continued, was likely to be as tragical. But she restrained herself, and kept close to her needle,--making, let us hope, an auspicious garment for Hugh Stanbury. "She has seen it now," he continued; "she has seen it now."

Still she went on with her hemming in silence. It certainly could not be her duty to upset at a word all that her sister had achieved. "You know that she has confessed?" he asked.

"Pray, pray do not talk about it, Louis."

"I think you ought to know," he said. Then she rose from her seat and left the room. She could not stand it, even though he were mad,--even though he were dying!

She went to her sister and repeated what had been said. "You had better not notice it," said Emily. "It is only a proof of what I told you. There are times in which his mind is as active as ever it was, but it is active in so terrible a direction!"

"I cannot sit and hear it. And what am I to say when he asks me a question as he did just now? He said that you had confessed."

"So I have. Do none confess but the guilty? What is all that we have read about the Inquisition and the old tortures? I have had to learn that torturing has not gone out of the world;--that is all."

"I must go away if he says the same thing to me so again."

"That is nonsense, Nora. If I can bear it, cannot you? Would you have me drive him into violence again by disputing with him upon such a subject?"

"But he may recover;--and then he will remember what you have said."

"If he recovers altogether he will suspect nothing. I must take my chance of that. You cannot suppose that I have not thought about it.

I have often sworn to myself that though the world should fall around me, nothing should make me acknowledge that I had ever been untrue to my duty as a married woman, either in deed, or word, or thought.

I have no doubt that the poor wretches who were tortured in their cells used to make the same resolutions as to their confessions. But yet, when their nails were dragged out of them, they would own to anything. My nails have been dragged out, and I have been willing to confess anything. When he talks of the pity of it, of course I know what he means. There has been something, some remainder of a feeling, which has still kept him from asking me that question. May G.o.d, in his mercy, continue to him that feeling!"

"But you would answer truly?"

"How can I say what I might answer when the torturer is at my nails?

If you knew how great was the difficulty to get him away from that place in Italy and bring him here; and what it was to feel that one was bound to stay near him, and that yet one was impotent,--and to know that even that refuge must soon cease for him, and that he might have gone out and died on the road-side, or have done anything which the momentary strength of madness might have dictated,--if you could understand all this, you would not be surprised at my submitting to any degradation which would help to bring him here."

Stanbury was often down at the cottage, and Nora could discuss the matter better with him than with her sister. And Stanbury could learn more thoroughly from the physician who was now attending Trevelyan what was the state of the sick man, than Emily could do. According to the doctor's idea there was more of ailment in the body than in the mind. He admitted that his patient's thoughts had been forced to dwell on one subject till they had become distorted, untrue, jaundiced, and perhaps mono-maniacal; but he seemed to doubt whether there had ever been a time at which it could have been decided that Trevelyan was so mad as to make it necessary that the law should interfere to take care of him. A man,--so argued the doctor,--need not be mad because he is jealous, even though his jealousy be ever so absurd. And Trevelyan, in his jealousy, had done nothing cruel, nothing wasteful, nothing infamous. In all this Nora was very little inclined to agree with the doctor, and thought nothing could be more infamous than Trevelyan's conduct at the present moment,--unless, indeed, he could be screened from infamy by that plea of madness.

But then there was more behind. Trevelyan had been so wasted by the kind of life which he had led, and possessed by nature stamina so insufficient to resist such debility, that it was very doubtful whether he would not sink altogether before he could be made to begin to rise. But one thing was clear. He should be contradicted in nothing. If he chose to say that the moon was made of green cheese, let it be conceded to him that the moon was made of green cheese.

Should he make any other a.s.sertion equally removed from the truth, let it not be contradicted. Who would oppose a man with one foot in the grave?

"Then, Hugh, the sooner I am at Monkhams the better," said Nora, who had again been subjected to inuendoes which had been unendurable to her. This was on the 7th of August, and it still wanted three days to that on which the journey to Monkhams was to be made.

"He never says anything to me on the subject," said Hugh.

"Because you have made him afraid of you. I almost think that Emily and the doctor are wrong in their treatment, and that it would be better to stand up to him and tell him the truth." But the three days pa.s.sed away, and Nora was not driven to any such vindication of her sister's character towards her sister's husband.

CHAPTER XCVI.

MONKHAMS.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

On the 10th of August Nora Rowley left the cottage by the river-side at Twickenham, and went down to Monkhams. The reader need hardly be told that Hugh brought her up from Twickenham and sent her off in the railway carriage. They agreed that no day could be fixed for their marriage till something further should be known of Trevelyan's state.

While he was in his present condition such a marriage could not have been other than very sad. Nora, when she left the cottage, was still very bitter against her brother-in-law, quoting the doctor's opinion as to his sanity, and expressing her own as to his conduct under that supposition. She also believed that he would rally in health, and was therefore, on that account, less inclined to pity him than was his wife. Emily Trevelyan of course saw more of him than did her sister, and understood better how possible it was that a man might be in such a condition as to be neither mad nor sane;--not mad, so that all power over his own actions need be taken from him; nor sane, so that he must be held to be accountable for his words and thoughts.

Trevelyan did nothing, and attempted to do nothing, that could injure his wife and child. He submitted himself to medical advice. He did not throw away his money. He had no Bozzle now waiting at his heels.

He was generally pa.s.sive in his wife's hands as to all outward things. He was not violent in rebuke, nor did he often allude to their past unhappiness. But he still maintained, by a word spoken every now and then, that he had been right throughout in his contest with his wife,--and that his wife had at last acknowledged that it was so. She never contradicted him, and he became bolder and bolder in his a.s.sertions, endeavouring on various occasions to obtain some expression of an a.s.sent from Nora. But Nora would not a.s.sent, and he would scowl at her, saying words, both in her presence and behind her back, which implied that she was his enemy. "Why not yield to him?"

her sister said the day before she went. "I have yielded, and your doing so cannot make it worse."

"I can't do it. It would be false. It is better that I should go away. I cannot pretend to agree with him, when I know that his mind is working altogether under a delusion." When the hour for her departure came, and Hugh was waiting for her, she thought that it would be better that she should go, without seeing Trevelyan. "There will only be more anger," she pleaded. But her sister would not be contented that she should leave the house in this fashion, and urged at last, with tears running down her cheeks, that this might possibly be the last interview between them.

"Say a word to him in kindness before you leave us," said Mrs.

Trevelyan. Then Nora went up to her brother-in-law's bed-side, and told him that she was going, and expressed a hope that he might be stronger when she returned. And as she did so she put her hand upon the bed-side, intending to press his in token of affection. But his face was turned from her, and he seemed to take no notice of her.

"Louis," said his wife, "Nora is going to Monkhams. You will say good-bye to her before she goes?"

"If she be not my enemy, I will," said he.

"I have never been your enemy, Louis," said Nora, "and certainly I am not now."

"She had better go," he said. "It is very little more that I expect of any one in this world;--but I will recognise no one as my friend who will not acknowledge that I have been sinned against during the last two years;--sinned against cruelly and utterly." Emily, who was standing at the bed-head, shuddered as she heard this, but made no reply. Nor did Nora speak again, but crept silently out of the room;--and in half a minute her sister followed her.