"Did that stop it? She died of course," said Cecil. "She could not have left off loving him."
"She did not die, but her family were wearied out by the continual objections to their overtures, and the supercilious way of treating them. They thought it a struggle of influence, and that he was too entirely dominated for a daughter-in-law to be happy with her. So they broke it off."
"And she-" Cecil looked up with searching eyes.
"She had acutely felt the offence, the weakness, the dutifulness, whatever you may choose to call it, and in the rebound she married."
"Who is she?" gasped Cecil.
"It is not fair to tell you," was the gentle answer, with a shade of rebuke. "You need not look for her. She is not in the county."
"I hope I shall never see her!"
"You need not dread doing so if you can only have fair play, and establish the power that belongs rightly to you. She would have no chance with you, even if he had forgiven her."
"Has not he?"
"Never!"
"And he used up all his heart?" said Cecil in a low, musing tone.
"All but what his mother absorbed. She was a comparatively young and brilliant woman, and she knew her power. It is a great ascendancy, and only a man's honest blindness could suppose that any woman would be content under it."
Cecil's tongue refused to utter what oppressed her heart-those evenings beside the sofa, those eager home expeditions for Sunday, the uniform maintenance of his mother's supremacy.
"And you think absence from her would lessen her influence?"
"I am sure of it. There might be a struggle, but if I know Mr. Charnock Poynsett rightly, he is too upright not to be conscious of what is due to you, and be grieved not to be able to give you more- that is, when his mother is not holding him in her grasp. Nor can there be any valid objection, since Mrs Miles Charnock is always at her service."
"She will return to Africa. I don't know why she and Rosamond have been always so much more acceptable."
"They are not her rivals; besides, they have not your strength. She is a woman who tries to break whatever she cannot bend, and the instant her son began to slip from her grasp the contest necessarily began. You had much better have it over once and for ever, and have him on your side. Insist on a house of your own, and when you have made your husband happy in it, then, then-Ah! Good morning-Sir George!"
She had meant to say, "Then you win his heart," but the words would not come, and a loathing hatred of the cold-hearted child who had a property in Raymond so mastered her that she welcomed the interruption, and did not return to the subject.
She knew when she had said enough, and feared to betray herself; nor could Cecil bear to resume the talk, stunned and sore as she was at the revelation, though with no suspicion that the speaker had been the object of her husband's affection. She thought it must have been the other sister, now in India, and that this gave the key to many allusions she had heard and which she marvelled at herself for not having understood. The equivocation had entirely deceived her, and she little thought she had been taking counsel with the rival who was secretly triumphing in Raymond's involuntary constancy, and sowing seeds of vengeance against an ancient enemy.
She could not settle to anything when she came home. Life had taken a new aspect. Hitherto she had viewed herself as born to all attention and deference, and had taken it as a right, and now she found herself the victim of a mariage de convenance to a man of exhausted affections, who meant her only to be the attendant of his domineering mother. The love that was dawning in her heart did but add poignancy to the bitterness of the revelation, and fervour to her resolve to win the mastery over the heart which was her lawful possession.
She was restless till his return. She was going to an evening party, and though usually passive as to dress, she was so changeable and difficult to satisfy that Grindstone grew cross, and showed it by stern, rigid obedience. And Cecil well knew that Grindstone; who was in authority in the present house, hated the return to be merely the visitor of Alston and Jenkins.
In the drawing-room Cecil fluttered from book to window, window to piano again, throwing down her occupation at every sound and taking up another; and when at last Raymond came in, his presence at first made her musings seem mere fancies.
Indeed it would have been hard to define what was wanting in his manner. He lamented his unavoidable delay, and entertained her with all the political and parliamentary gossip he had brought home, and which she always much enjoyed as a tribute to her wisdom, so much that it had been an entire, though insensible cure for the Rights of Woman. Moreover, he was going with her to this 'drum,' though he would greatly have preferred the debate, and was to be summoned in case of a division. She knew enough of the world to be aware that such an attentive and courteous husband was not the rule. But what was courtesy to one who longed for unity?
"Is Frank to be there this evening?" he asked.
"Yes, I believe so."
"I thought he was to have gone with us."
"He told me not to depend on him. He had made an engagement to ride into the country with Sir Harry Vivian." And she added, though the proud spirit so hated what seemed to her like making an advance that it sounded like a complaint, "So you can't avoid going with me?"
"I should any way have gone with you, but I may have to leave you to Frank to see you away," he said. "And I had rather have Frank here than with that set."
"Breaking up one of our few tete-a-tete evenings, and they are becoming few enough!"
This murmur gratified him, and he said, "We shall be more alone together now. The Rectory is almost ready, and Julius means to move in another week, and I suppose Miles will carry Anne off before the year is over."
"Yes, we are the only ones with no home."
"Rather, we hold fast to the old home."
"Not my old home."
"Does not mine become yours?"
"Not while-." She paused and started afresh. "Raymond, could we not live at Swanslea, if it is bought for us?"
"Swanslea! Five miles off! Impossible."
Cecil was silent.
"My dear Cecil," he said, after a few moments' consideration, "I can understand that you felt unfortunately crowded last year, but all that is over, and you must see that we are necessary to my mother, and that all my duties require me to live at home."
"You could attend to the property from Swanslea."
"The property indeed! I meant my mother!"
"She has Anne."
"Anne will soon be in Africa-even if she were more of a companion. I am sorry it is a trial to you; for my proper place is clearly with my mother, the more in her helpless state, and with my brothers gone out into the world. Now that the numbers are smaller, you will find it much easier to take the part that I most earnestly wish should be yours."
"I cannot get on with her."
"Do not say so! Do not think so! To have Rosamond there with her Irish ease, and her reserve, kept you in the background before; I say it, but I could not help it; and now there will be no hindrance to your drawing together. There is nothing I so desire."
If the carriage had not stopped as he spoke Cecil would not have uttered the thought that smote her, namely, that his desire was on behalf, not of his wife, but of his mother, to whom he was ready to sacrifice her happiness without a pang. She did not see that he could imagine no greater happiness for her than a thorough love of his mother.
They certainly were not the happiest couple present as they walked up-stairs, looking like a model husband and wife, with their name echoing from landing to landing.
If any expression savouring of slang could possibly be applied to Raymond, he might be said to be struck all of a heap by his wife's proposition. He had never even thought of the possibility of making a home anywhere but at Compton Poynsett, or of his wife wishing that he should do so; and proverbial sayings about the incompatability of relatives-in-law suddenly assumed a reasonableness that he could not bear to remember.