‘But why not?’
‘You seem to forget that he married a second
wife, John, last year.’
’I’m sure Mrs. Gibson was most friendly
when we were there last month. And we’d
pay, of course—we’d pay.’
’I’m not going to plant myself and Carrie
down on Mrs. Gibson for six months and more, John,
so don’t ask me. No, we’ll stay here—we’ll
stay here!’
She began to pluck at the grass with her hand, staring
before her at the moonlit stream like one who sees
visions of the future. The beauty of her faintly
visible head and neck suddenly worked on John Fenwick’s
senses. He threw his arm round her.
’And I shall soon be back. You little silly,
can’t you understand that I shall always be
wanting you?’
‘We’ll stay here,’ she repeated,
slowly. ’And you’ll be in London
making smart friends—and dining with rich
folk—and having ladies to sit to you—’
‘Phoebe, you’re not jealous of me?’
he cried, with a great, good-humoured laugh—’that
would be the last straw.’
‘Yes, I am jealous of you!’ she said,
with low-voiced passion; ’and you know very
well that I’ve had some cause to be.’
He was silent. Through both their minds there
passed the memory of some episodes in their married
life—slight, but quite sufficient to show
that John Fenwick was a man of temperament inevitably
attracted by womankind.
He murmured that she had made mountains out of mole-hills.
She merely raised his hand and kissed it. ‘The
women make a fool of you, John,’ she said, ’and
I ought to be there to protect you—for you
do love me, you know—you do!’
And then with tears she broke down and clung to him
again, in a mood that was partly the love of wife
for husband and partly an exquisite maternity—the
same feeling she gave her child. He responded
with eagerness, feeling indeed that he had won his
battle.
For she lay in his arms—weak—protesting
no more. The note of anguish, of deep, incalculable
foreboding, which she had shown, passed away from
her manner and words; while on his side he began to
draw pictures of the future so full of exultation
and of hope that her youth presently could but listen
and believe. The sickle moon descended behind
the pikes; only the stars glimmered on the great side
of the fell, on solitary yews black upon the night,
on lines of wall, on dim, mysterious paths, old as
the hills themselves, on the softly chiding water.
The May night breathed upon them, calmed them, brought
out the better self of each. They returned to
the cottage like children, hand in hand, talking of
a hundred practical details, thankful that the jarring
moment had passed away, each refraining from any word
that could wound the other. Nor was it till Fenwick
was sound asleep beside her that Phoebe, replunged
in loneliness and dread, gave herself in the dawn-silence
to a passion of unconquerable tears.
