He looked across at me, and said.--

"If you would like to see Howard, I believe Thompson could get you admission any time."

His voice was low and sympathetic.

I raised my eyebrows and said,--

"What should I want to see him for?"

d.i.c.k looked surprised, and then said, hesitatingly,--

"Surely you were very great friends at one time!"

I laughed.

"Yes," I answered, "but there is a great deal in that at one time!"

A few days later my father pointed out the announcement of Howard's death in The Times as we sat at breakfast.

I nodded.

"Yes; I heard at the Club he was dying."

"What was it? They don't say here."

"No," I said; "they would not."

"What was it?"

"Excess."

We neither said anything further with reference to it, but Howard's death was in both our thoughts, and as we got up from the table he said, suddenly,--

"There's a great thing in having a quiet, moderate nature, or at least self-control," and then he added afterwards, as if struck by a sudden amending thought, "Well, of course, that comes virtually to the same thing."

"Does it?" I thought. "By Jove, not to the man himself!"

"Would you think, then," I asked, with a smile, looking across the rug at him as we stood by the fire, "that the existence of a lion-tamer was quite the same as that of a maiden lady who kept cats?"

He laid down his paper suddenly and stared at me.

"I don't understand--I--you don't mean that you"--

"I mean," I said, "that it's extremely difficult to see the best course. Howard has just died, raving mad, for giving way to his impulses; I may die, raving mad, for controlling mine."

He looked at me apprehensively. "I am sorry, Victor, if--You don't think you have overworked, do you?"

I laughed as I met his eyes scanning my face anxiously for traces of the possible insanity.

"No; none of the slates are loose at present," I said. "That's all right, but I am seedy altogether; out of sorts all round--that's all."

CHAPTER VII.

One unbroken flood of golden sunlight lay like a fallen silken veil over the points and peaks of the downs, over the swelling sides and the soft rolling dip of the valley, and the still September blue stretched cloudless overhead. It was the late afternoon of the thirteenth, a day that had been hot, oppressive, stifling in town, but here was simply warm, still, and tranquil.

All through the early hours of the day a parallel--if one may use the idea--oppression to the heat in the stirless air had weighed upon me.

We had been married that morning, and before the ceremony my one sensation had been that of strain, during it tense anxiety, and afterwards reproach, and none of these are pleasant emotions. When I looked back to the morning, now, it seemed to be in the far distance; I don't know why, but ages seemed to have elapsed in the hours of this day.

Lucia had come up to the altar, her face whiter, more absolutely colourless than the veil over it, and my heart sank with apprehension as I first caught sight of her. Never, except in death, and already with the coffin enclosing it, have I seen a face so pallid. She walked steadily--she was a woman who always walked well, as a swan swims well, by nature--and the graceful figure pa.s.sed on calmly towards us.

She kept the lids drooped over her eyes, and her white lips were closed firmly in repose. It seemed like a statue moving, and for a second I felt as if the church, the people, she, I, the whole scene were unreal, and my own blood changing into stone. The next second she was beside me, and then she suddenly lifted her eyes.

They glowed upon me as if there were actual fire stirring in the l.u.s.trous black pupils, and they gave back the joyous beat to my pulses, and sent my blood flowing onward again. The glance made us both human directly. But how anxious I felt all the time. Would she faint? I asked myself, desperately, over and over again. The colour of her face was terrifying, and the hand she gave me for the ring was cold as the touch of snow, and trembled convulsively. How long it all seemed! and how I loathed the prayers and the hymns, and sickened at the address! What earthly good is it to match words against a man's pa.s.sion? As it is, it is, and no admonitions will alter it. However, all was over at last, and we were in the vestry. Lucia could not write her name; she tried, for no woman had less affectation and more self-command than she had, but the tremulousness of the fingers would not be controlled, and the mere effort agitated her so that she fell back in the chair, quivering, till each point of lace in her dress shook, and every eye could see the violent heart-beats under her bodice.

"Don't sign it, dearest!" I exclaimed, feeling like a murderer as I looked into the blanched, nervous face, and widely-dilated eyes.

There was a blank pause for a moment of sympathy and apprehension, as her shaking hand dropped the pen, and then the clergyman picked it up and finished the half-written name. I felt a sharp self-reproach, and d.i.c.k did not mend matters as he turned from her to me and said, in an indignant mutter,--

"She is not in a fit state to be married at all, Victor!"

He looked at me as if I were committing a crime, and I coloured and felt like a brute. Then there was the long breakfast, and the reception, and, as I say, it seemed as if centuries were rolling over my head in each five minutes, but now it was all done with; the burden of other's society had slipped from us, and the weight of my own oppression I seemed to have left, together with the sullen heat of town air. In all the journey down Lucia had been recovering. The scarlet had been coming back to her lips, and as the first breath of air came to us, straight from the heart of the smiling, sun-lit valley, they parted in a laugh, the light leapt up in the soft azure eyes, the rose-colour under the skin, and she bent forward to me and said, impulsively,--

"Victor, if you want to know, I feel perfectly happy!"

"And I, too, you darling!" I said, smiling back into the brilliant face.

"It seems quite a new thing to feel. I don't ever remember feeling happy until now, and I am five-and-twenty. Think, a whole third of an ordinary lifetime pa.s.sed before I have known it!"

I laughed.

"Well, you are going to begin now, at any-rate," I said.

"Yes; I think so," she answered, both the carmine lips still curved in smiles. "But still it is late to begin. It is not wise; one should begin at fifteen--ten years back."

"Begin what?" I said, laughing.

"To be happy."

"By all means," I answered. "Begin as soon as you get the chance; but I think most people do. Only it is the chance that is generally wanting!"

"I don't know," Lucia said, looking away from me through the window, where the flying sunny slopes of the valley sped by. "People muddle away their chances of happiness in life. Ten years ago, when I was fifteen and you were twenty--well, we might have married then, and felt all that we feel now a whole ten years ago, which I have pa.s.sed without a single happy day."

A shade of sadness came into the eyes, and darkened them as she spoke.

"But why do you think of that now?" I asked. "It is no use. The ten years have gone beyond recall, and, if you have not been happy, you have something to show for the time. You have been working."