And Torrance, for a wonder, did not disturb this calm. He stopped to touch the child’s cheek with his finger as his wife passed him, but as this broke once more the partial slumber, he subsided into quiet with a sense of guiltiness, puffing his cigar at intervals, but stepping as lightly as he could with his heavy feet, and saying nothing. A touch of milder emotion had come to his rude bosom. Not only was that great park, those woods, and a large share of the surrounding country, his own, but this woman with her baby was his, his property, though so much more delicate, and finer than he. This moved him with a kind of wondering sense of the want of something which amid so much it might yet be possible to attain—happiness, perhaps, in addition to possession. His breast swelled with pride in the thought that even while thus engrossed in the humblest feminine occupation, like any cottager, nobody could mistake Lady Car Torrance for anything less than she was. They might think her a princess, perhaps. He did not know any princess that had that carriage, he said to himself; but less or meaner, nobody could suppose her to be. And he was touched to see her with his child, her whole soul—that soul which had always eluded him, and retained its chill superiority to him—wrapped up in the baby, who was his as much as hers. There was in the air a kind of flutter of far-off wings, as if peace might be coming, as if happiness might be possible even between this ill-matched pair.
John Erskine was the spectator in this curious domestic scene. He looked on with wondering, half-pleased, half-indignant observation. He was almost angry that Carry should be lowered to the level of this husband of hers, even if it gave her for a time a semblance of happiness; and yet his heart was touched by this possibility of better things. When the child went to sleep, she looked up at the two men with a smile. She was grateful to her husband for his silence, for bringing no disturbance of the quiet with him; and grateful to John for having, as she thought, subdued Torrance by his influence. She made to them both that little offering of a grateful smile as she sat down on the garden-seat, letting the child rest upon her knee. The baby’s head had slid down to her arm, and it lay there in the complete and perfect repose which a mother’s arms, protecting, sustaining, warm, seem to give more than any bed. The air was so sweet, the quiet so profound, that Carry was pleased to linger out of doors. Not often had she shown any desire to linger in her husband’s society when not bound by duty to do so. This evening she did it willingly. For the moment, a faux air of well-being, of happiness and domestic peace, seemed to pervade the earth and the air. “It is so sweet, it cannot do her any harm to stay out a little,” she said, smiling at them over the baby’s sleeping face, which was half hidden in the soft, fleecy white shawl that enveloped it. John Erskine sat down at a little distance, and Torrance stood with a half humility about him, half ashamed, willing to do or say something which would be tender and conciliatory, but not knowing how. They began to talk in low tones, Erskine and Carry bearing the frais of the conversation. Sometimes Torrance put in a word, but generally the large puffs of his cigar were his chief contribution. He was willing to let them talk. Nay, he was not without a certain pleasure, in this softened mood of his, in hearing them talk. He would have allowed freely that conversation was not in his way.
“They are coming now in about ten days,” Carry said. “Of course they have stayed longer than they meant to stay. People never leave town on the appointed day.”
“There are so many people to see.”
“And so many things are put off till the last. I remember how hurried we were—how rapidly the days flew at the end.”
“You do not go to town now?”
“No,” she said, hurriedly; “it is no deprivation. We—neither of us—care for London.”
Torrance felt a certain gratitude to his wife for thus identifying her inclinations with his. “If truth were told, maybe that might be modified,” he said. “I daresay you would like it, Car. You would get people to talk to. That’s what amuses her,” he added, with an explanatory glance at John. It was a novel sort of pleasure to him to give this amiable explanation of Lady Caroline’s peculiarities, without any of the rough satire in it with which he was accustomed to treat the things he did not understand; and his constant pride in her found a new outlet. “It’s not gaieties she wants, it’s conversation,” he said, with a softened laugh. “Next year we must see if we can’t manage it, Car.”
She turned to him with a startled glance, not knowing whether to deprecate all change so far as herself was concerned, or to thank him for this unusual thoughtfulness. Fortunately, her instinct chose the latter course. “It is kind of you to think of me,” she said, in her soft voice. In all their wretched married life, they had never been
