Part 43 (2/2)
And looking ahead she saw days of endless st.i.tching and basting, of endless gossip accompanied by the cheerful whirring of the little dressmaker's machine. ”I used to pity Miss w.i.l.l.y because she was obliged to work,” she thought with surprise, ”but now I almost envy her. I wonder if it is work that keeps her so young and brisk? She's never had anything in her life, and yet she is so much happier than some people who have had everything.”
The maid came to announce supper, and, gathering up her fancy-work, Virginia laid it beside the lamp on the end of Oliver's writing table.
As she did so, she saw that her photograph, taken the year of her marriage, which he usually carried on his journeys, had been laid aside and overlooked when he was packing his papers. It was the first time he had forgotten it, and a little chill struck her heart as she put it back in its place beside the bronze letter rack. Then the chill sharpened suddenly until it became an icy blade in her breast, for she saw that the picture of Margaret Oldcastle was gone from its frame.
CHAPTER IV
LIFE'S CRUELTIES
There was a hard snowstorm on the day Oliver returned to Dinwiddie, and Virginia, who had watched from the window all the afternoon, saw him crossing the street through a whirl of feathery flakes. The wind drove violently against him, but he appeared almost unconscious of it, so buoyant, so full of physical energy was his walk. Never had he looked more desirable to her, never more lovable, than he did at that instant.
Something, either a trick of imagination or an illusion produced by the flying whiteness of the storm, gave him back for a moment the glowing eyes and the eager lips of his youth. Then, as she turned towards the door, awaiting his step on the stairs, the mirror over the mantel showed her her own face, with its fallen lines, its soft pallor, its look of fading sweetness. She had laid her youth down on the altar of her love, while he had used love, as he had used life, merely to feed the flame of the unconquerable egoism which burned like genius within him.
He came in, brus.h.i.+ng a few flakes of snow from his sleeve, and it seemed to her that the casual kindness of his kiss fell like ice on her cheek as he greeted her. It was almost three months since he had seen her, for he had been unable to come home for Christmas, but from his manner he might have parted from her only yesterday. He was kind--he had never been kinder--but she would have preferred that he should strike her.
”Are you all right?” he asked gently, turning to warm his hands at the fire. ”Beastly cold, isn't it?”
”Oh, yes, I am all right, dear. The play is a great success, isn't it?”
His face clouded. ”As such things go. It's awful rot, but it's made a hit--there's no doubt of that.”
”And the other one, 'The Home'--when is the first night of that?”
”Next week. On Thursday. I must get back for it.”
”And I am to go with you, am I not? I have looked forward to it all winter.”
At the sound of her anxious question, a contraction of pain, the look of one who has been touched on the raw, crossed his face. Though she was not penetrating enough to discern it, there were times when his pity for her amounted almost to a pa.s.sion, and at such moments he was conscious of a blind anger against Life, as against some implacable personal force, because it had robbed him of the hard and narrow morality on which his ancestors leaned. The scourge of a creed which had kept even Cyrus walking humbly in the straight and flinty road of Calvinism, appeared to him in such rare instants as one of the spiritual luxuries which a rationalistic age had destroyed; for it is not granted to man to look into the heart of another, and so he was ignorant alike of the sanct.i.ties and the pa.s.sions of Cyrus's soul. What he felt was merely that the breaking of the iron bonds of the old faith had weakened his powers of resistance as inevitably as it had liberated his thought. The sound of his own rebellion was in his ears, and filled with the noise of it, he had not stopped to reflect that the rebellion of his ancestors had seemed less loud only because it was inarticulate. Was it really that his generation had lost the capacity for endurance, the spiritual grace of self-denial, or was it simply that it had lost its reticence and its secrecy with the pa.s.sing of its inflexible dogmas?
”Why, certainly you must go if you would care to,” he answered.
”Perhaps Jenny will come over from Bryn Mawr to join us. The dear child was so disappointed that she couldn't come home for Christmas.”
”If I'd known in time that she wasn't coming, I'd have found a way of getting down just for dinner with you. I hope you weren't alone, Virginia.”
”Oh, no, Miss Priscilla came to spend the day with me. You know she used to take dinner with us every Christmas at the rectory.”
A troubled look clouded his face. ”Jenny ought to have been here,” he said, and asked suddenly, as if it were a relief to him to change the subject: ”Have you had news of Harry?”
The light which the name of Harry always brought to her eyes shone there now, enriching their faded beauty. ”He writes to me every week. You know he hasn't missed a single Sunday letter since he first went off to school. He is wild about Oxford, but I think he gets a little homesick sometimes, though of course he'd never say so.”
”He'll do well, that boy. The stuff is in him.”
”I'm sure he's a genius if there ever was one, Oliver. Only yesterday Professor Trimble was telling me that Harry was far and away the most brilliant pupil he had ever had.”
”Well, he's something to be proud of. And now what about Lucy? Is she still satisfied with Craven?”
”She never writes about anything else except about her house. Her marriage seems to have turned out beautifully. You remember I wrote you that she was perfectly delighted with her stepchildren, and she really appears to be as happy as the day is long.”
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