Tom Brown at Oxford Part 104

She watched him for a short time in silence, her own fair young face changing like a summer sea as the light clouds pa.s.s over it.

Presently she seemed to have come to some decision; for, taking off her riding hat, she threw it, and her whip and gauntlets, on the turf beside her, and drawing nearer to his side, laid her hand on his. He looked at her fondly, and, stroking her hair, said--

"Take care of your complexion, Mary."

"Oh, it will take care of itself in this air, dear. Besides, you are between me and the sun; and now you _must_ tell me why you look so serious. It is not the first time I have noticed that look. I am your wife, you know, and I have a right to know your thoughts, and share all your joy, and all your sorrow. I do not mean to give up any of my rights which I got by marrying you."

"Your rights, dearest! your poor little rights, which you have gained by changing name, and plighting troth. It is thinking of that--thinking of what you have bought, and the Price you have paid for it, which makes me sad at times, even when you are sitting by me, and laying your hand on my hand, and the sweet burden of your pure life and being on my soiled and baffled manhood."

"But it was my own bargain, you know, dear, and I am satisfied with my purchase. I paid the price with my eyes open."

"Ah, if I only could feel that!"

"But you know that it is true."

"No, dearest, that is the pinch. I do not know that it is true. I often feel that it is just a bit not true. It was a one-sided bargain, in which one of the parties had eyes open and got all the advantage; and that party was I."

"I will not have you so conceited," she said, patting his hand once or twice, and looking more bravely than ever up into his eyes. "Why should you think you were so much the cleverer of the two as to get all the good out of our bargain? I am not going to allow that you were so much the more quick-witted and clear-sighted. Women are said to be as quick-witted as men.

Perhaps it is not I who have been outwitted after all."

"Look at the cost, Mary. Think of what you will have to give up.

You cannot reckon it up yet."

"What! are you going back to the riding-horses and lady's maid again? I thought I had convinced you on those points."

"They are only a very small part of the price. You have left a home where everybody loved you. You knew it; you were sure of it.

You had felt their love ever since you could remember anything."

"Yes, dear, and I feel it still. They will be all just as fond of me at home, though I am your wife."

"At home! It is no longer your home."

"No, I have a home of my own now. A new home, with new love there to live on; and an old home, with the old love to think of."

"A new home instead of an old one, a poor home instead of a rich one--a home where the cry of the sorrow and suffering of the world will reach you, for one in which you had--"

"In which I had not you, dear. There now, that was my purchase. I set my mind on having you--buying you, as that is your word. I have paid my price, and got my bargain, and--you know, I was always an oddity, and rather willful, am content with it."

"Yes, Mary, you have bought me, and you little know, dearest, what you have bought. I can scarcely bear my own selfishness at times when I think of what your life might have been had I left you alone, and what it must be with me."

"And what might it have been, dear?"

"Why, you might have married some man with plenty of money, who could have given you everything to which you have been used."

"I shall begin to think that you believe in luxuries, after all, if you go on making so much of them. You must not go on preaching one thing and practicing another. I am a convert to your preaching, and believe in the misery of multiplying artificial wants. Your wife must have none."

"Yes, but wealth and position are not to be despised. I feel that, now that it is all done past recall, and I have to think of you. But the loss of them is a mere nothing to what you will have to go through."

"What do you mean dear? Of course we must expect some troubles, like other people."

"Why, I mean, Mary that you might, at least, have married a contented man, some one who found the world a very good world, and was satisfied with things as they are, and had light enough to steer himself by; and not a fellow like me, full of all manner of doubts and perplexities, who sees little but wrong in the world about him, and more in himself."

"You think I should have been more comfortable?"

"Yes, more comfortable and happier. What right had I to bring my worries on you? For I know you can't live with me, dearest, and not be bothered and annoyed when I am anxious and dissatisfied."

"But what if I did not marry you to be comfortable?"

"My darling, you never thought about it, and I was too selfish to think for you."

"There now, you see, it's just as I said."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that you are quite wrong in thinking that I have been deceived. I did not marry you, dear, to be comfortable, and I did think it all over; ay, over and over again. So you are not to run away with the belief that you have taken me in."

"I shall be glad enough to give it up, dearest, if you can convince me."

"Then you will listen while I explain?"

"Yes, with all my ears and all my heart."

"You remember the year we met, when we danced and went nutting together, a thoughtless boy and girl--"

"Remember it! Have I ever--"

"You are not to interrupt. Of course you remember it all, and are ready to tell me that you loved me the first moment that you saw me at the window in High street. Well, perhaps I shall not object to being told it at a proper time, but now I am making my confessions. I liked you then, because you were Katie's cousin, and almost my first partner, and were never tired of dancing, and were generally merry and pleasant, though you sometimes took to lecturing, even in those days."

"But, Mary--"

"You are to be silent now and listen. I liked you then. But you are not to look conceited and flatter yourself. It was only a girl's fancy. I couldn't have married you then--given myself up to you. No, I don't think I could, even on the night when fished for me out of the window with the heather and heliotrope, though I kept them and have them still. And then came that scene down below, at old Simon's cottage, and I thought I should never wish to see you again. And then I came out in London, and went abroad.

I scarcely heard of you again for a year, for Katie hardly ever mentioned you in her letters, and though I sometimes wished that she would, and thought I should just like to know what you were doing, I was too proud to ask. Meantime I went out and enjoyed myself, and had a great many pretty things said to me--much prettier things than you ever said--and made the acquaintance of pleasant young men, friends of papa and mamma; many of them with good establishments, too. But I shall not tell you anything more about them, or you will be going off about the luxuries I have been used to. Then I began to hear of you again. Katie came to stay with us, and I met some of your Oxford friends. Poor dear Katie! She was full of you and your wild sayings and doings, half-frightened and half-pleased, but all the time the best and truest friend you ever had. Some of the rest were not friends at all; and I have heard many a sneer and unkind word, and stories of your monstrous speeches and habits. Some said you were mad; others that you liked to be eccentric; that you couldn't bear to live with your equals; that you sought the society of your inferiors to be flattered. I listened, and thought it all over, and, being willful and eccentric myself, you know, liked more and more to hear about you, and hoped I should see you again some day. I was curious to judge for myself whether you were much changed for the better or the worse.

"And at last came the day when I saw you again, carrying the poor lame child; and, after that, you know what happened. So here we are, dear, and you are my husband. And you will please never to look serious again, from any foolish thought that I have been taken in; that I did not know what I was about when I took you, 'for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.' Now, what have you to say for yourself?"

"Nothing, but a great deal for you. I see more and more, my darling, what a brave, generous, pitying angel I have tied to myself. But seeing that makes me despise myself more."

"What! you are going to dare to disobey me already?"

"I can't help it dearest. All you say shows me more and more that you have made all the sacrifice, and I am to get all the benefit.

A man like me has no right to bring such a woman as you under his burden."

"But you couldn't help yourself. It was because you were out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrongs you saw on every side, struggling after something better and higher, and siding and sympathizing with the poor and weak, that I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if you had been a young gentleman satisfied with himself and the world, and likely to get on well in society."

"Ah, Mary, it is all very well for a man. It is a man's business.

But why is a woman's life to be made wretched? Why should you be dragged into all my perplexities, and doubts, and dreams, and struggles?"

"And why should I not?"