“You say nothing,” he continued after a moment, “from which I conclude that you are antagonistic and mean to throw your influence the other way.”
“Not antagonistic: but I cannot help feeling very much for Chatty, whose heart is so much in it, more perhaps than you think.”
“Chatty’s heart doesn’t trouble me much,” he said carelessly. “Chatty will always obey whatever impulse is nearest and most continuous, if she is not backed up on the other side.”
“I don’t believe you realise the strength of her feelings, Theo. That is what she is afraid of, not to be strong enough to hold out.”
“Oh! So you have been over that ground with her already!”
“She spoke to me. She was glad of the opportunity to relieve her mind.”
“And you promised to stand by her?” he said.
Lady Markland had been a woman full of dignity and composure. She was so still to all outward appearance, and the darkness concealed the flush that rose to her face; But it could not conceal the slight tremor with which she replied after a pause: “I promised not to be against her at least.”
A flood of angry words rose to Theo’s lips, the blood mounted to his head. He had taken the bias so fatal between married people of supposing when his wife disagreed with him that she did it on purpose, not because she herself thought so, but because it was opposition. Perhaps this was because of that inherent contempt for women which is a settled principle in the minds of so many men, perhaps because he had been used to a narrow mind and opinions cut and dry in the case of his sister, perhaps even because of his hot adoration and faith in Lady Markland as perfect. To continue perfect in his eyes, after their marriage, she would have needed to agree always with him, to think his thoughts. He exacted this accord with all the susceptibility of a fastidious nature, which would be content with no forced agreement, and divined in a moment when an effort was required to conform her opinions to his. He would not tolerate such an effort. He would have had her agree with him by instinct, by nature, not even by desire to please him, much less by policy. He could not endure to think of either of these means of procuring what he wanted. What he wanted was the perfect agreement of a nature which arrived at the same conclusions as his by the same means, which responded before he spoke, which was always ready to anticipate, to give him the exquisite satisfaction of feeling he was right by a perpetual seconding of all his decisions and anticipation of his thoughts. Had he married a young creature like Chatty, ready to take the impress of his more active mind, he might have found other drawbacks in her to irritate his amour propre, and probably would have despised her judgment in consequence of her perpetual agreement with him. But the fact was that he was jealous of his wife, not in the ordinary vulgar way, for which there was no possibility, but for every year of additional age, and every experience, and all the life she had led apart from him. He could not endure to think that she had formed the most of her ideas before she knew him: the thought of her past was horrible to him. A suspicion that she was thinking of that, that her mind was going back to something which he did not know, awoke a sort of madness in his brain. All this she knew by painful intuition now, as at first by discoveries which startled her very soul, and seemed to disturb the pillars of the world. She was aware of the forced control he kept over himself, not to burst forth upon her, and she would have fled morally, and brought herself round to his ideas and sworn eternal faith to him, if it would have done any good. But she knew very well that his uneasy nature would not be satisfied with that.
“I might have divined,” he said, after a long pause, during which they went quickly along, he increasing his pace unawares, she losing her breath in keeping up with him, “that you would see this matter differently. But I must ask, at least, that you won’t circumvent us, and neutralise all our plans. The only thing for Chatty to do is to drop it altogether, to receive no more letters, to cut the whole concern. It is a disreputable business altogether. It is better she should never marry at all than marry in that way.”
“I feel sure, Theo, that except in this way she will never marry at all—if you think that matters.”
“If I think that matters! It is not very flattering to me that you should think it doesn’t matter,” he said.
And then they reached their house, and he followed her into the drawing-room, where one dim lamp was burning, and the room had a deserted look. Perhaps that last speech had been a little unkind. Compunction visited him not unfrequently. He seated himself at the little table on which the lamp was standing, as she took off her hat and recovered her breath. “Since we are at home, and alone for once in a way,” he said, more graciously, “which happens seldom enough, I’ll read to you for an hour, if you like, Frances; that is, if you
