Vexed; or, The Wife's Sister/Chapter 8

EDWARD and Albreda had been spending most of the afternoon about the grounds, not wasting their time though they walked slowly or seated themselves in the cool shade of the wood. They had much to say to one another, and everything to discover with regard to their mutual thoughts and feelings.

These early days of courtship are largely made up of question and answer. Individuals are thus explored like new countries, and the charm lies in the knowledge that there is yet more beyond. Hills not yet climbed, from which new views open out; rivers not traced to their source. If we put on our nailed boots and venture up the slippery sides of the glaciers (for there are ice-fields, too, in every healthy temperament), we are rewarded by the grandeur of ​crevasses and blue unthought-of depths. There is beauty and wonder in everything. It is all new and marvellous. Danger, of course, there must be; but it is worth the adventure, and we tread carefully at first. After marriage it may be different. The ascent having once been made, rashly confident up we go again, perhaps the self-same path, forgetful that meanwhile our mountain has not been idle, that avalanches have been forming and falling, glaciers receding or advancing. If we come to grief, it is not the mountain but our own imprudence that dares to climb without due reverence. We should never flatter ourselves that we know one another so perfectly that caution and respect are superfluous adjuncts to our most familiar intercourse. From such a voyage of exploration the two were returning, and seeing through the open window that most tempting of all sights on a warm May afternoon, namely, a teapot cosy, a silver urn, and daintily rolled brown bread, they were soon seated near a small wicker table partaking of five-o'clock tea.

It was hardly two minutes after they had entered the drawing-room before a noisy stamping along the hall, following the not very gentle closing of the front door, announced an arrival.

"Hallo! so here you are, old lady!" The door burst open, and Dick confronted them.

​Before Albreda had time for an exclamation, he went on as quickly as he could speak the words, "I came down by the ten train this morning. And how's Kitty? I dreamt such a dream about her last night that I got the governor's leave to come and see her. I thought I should find that something dreadful had happened. Is she all right?"

"She has been ill, but is better now," said Edward, answering to spare Albreda.

"What's the row? Why do you look so scared?" Dick continued, coming up to kiss his sister. His face looked haggard, and his eyes bloodshot. "Poor Kitty! I thought as much, and I know she has been wanting me. Is she in bed? May I go and see her?"

He spoke so fast, and rattled off his questions in a way that made it impossible to answer them.

"I will tell her you are here," said Albreda, getting up and leaving the room. She was anxious to hide the fact that Dick's unexpected arrival had frightened her. After Kitty's expressed wish of the morning, he seemed like an apparition, and she had more or less belief in dream-warnings on important occasions.

"How queer you look!" exclaimed Graham, as Albreda came into Kitty's room. "Have you seen a ghost?"

"Not exactly," she said, trying to smile; ​"but I was rather startled just now by an arrival."

"It's Dick!" said Kitty, quietly, without any change of colour.

"It is Dick; would you like to see him?"

"What do you mean? Did you say he's come?" asked Graham, who had again become engrossed in his netting.

"Yes, here I am. May I come in?"

The boy had followed Albreda upstairs, and there was no mistaking his broken unmusical voice. He did not wait for an answer, but was by his sister's side in a minute.

"Well, old lady, and how are you?"

He had instinctively lowered his voice, and instead of the usual bear-like embrace he kissed her almost gently. Then he stood back and looked at her.

"That's exactly like you were in my dream, Kitsy; you know, I've had an awfully queer dream about you. It funked me fearfully, and I don't feel right yet."

"It needn't have frightened you, Dick; but I'm very glad you've come."

She spoke brightly, and her voice seemed to reassure him. Graham laughed, and told him it was the result of spending his money in a tuck-shop, and that he had had a nightmare in consequence.

​This explanation was indignantly repudiated.

"Well, we are very glad to see you, Dick; you will cheer us all up, and help Kitty to get well again."

But Dick was still standing looking at his sister in a nervous way; then he turned round and examined the room.

“It's awfully queer," he said. "I knew what picture I should see over the mantelpiece, and I've never been here before."

"Perhaps I told you about it," said Kitty; "it's a great favourite of mine. It's the Christ holding out His arms to receive the frightened child that was set in the midst of the disciples."

"But it doesn't put the child," said Dick, without turning to look at it.

"No; it is only the central figure taken out of that picture."

Dick was silent. He walked towards the mantelpiece and examined it; then, hearing Graham say that he should go down for his tea, he offered to stay with Kitty.

"I'll give her the medicine and everything quite properly, and I won't make a row."

So he took his place as nurse, and looked so grave and steady that Graham felt no compunction about leaving him.

In the evening Kitty was reported to be decidedly better.

​"She seems inclined to sleep," Graham had said, as he wished them "Good-night."

"Now for a chat," said Dick, ensconcing himself in an easy chair in Albreda's room, which was next to his own.

The fact was, that his dream of the night before had left such an unpleasant impression that he dreaded being alone, but was too proud to own it. So he drew out the conversation to such a length as seriously to encroach upon the normal hours of sleep. But Dick was clever in his generation, and having begun by saying that he wanted to hear all about Foley—he supposed they were engaged, etc.—Albreda was caught in the trap, and had not noticed how the time was passing till a clock struck twelve, and then she sent him off.

She had been asleep for about two hours, happy in the thought that anxiety for Kitty was at an end, when she was awakened by the strangest words in her ear, and Dick, with his hair ruffled up like the wildest of wild Indians, was standing by her.

"I can't get a wink, Breda," he was saying. "You know she went into that picture."

"What do you mean, Dick? Who went into a picture? You're talking in your sleep."

"No, I'm not, Breda. It was my dream, and I know it's true."

​He burst out crying in a way that at once convinced her that he was awake; but she could not the least understand what he said, and wondered for a minute whether the boy was demented.

"I mean Kitty," he went on, when he could at last speak. "I dreamt that the figure in the picture beckoned, and she went straight from her bed into it; and I believe she'll go, my poor, poor Kitsy." He sobbed so violently and with such outbursts of grief that there was no consoling him, and Albreda feared that the whole house would be disturbed.

Presently there was a knock at the door.

"There it is!" cried Dick, and flew past her and out into the passage, nearly upsetting Graham on the way.

"Where are you going?" he said, catching hold of the boy's sleeve. "I came to ask Albreda to come. Kitty seems rather faint."

"Yes, yes, I know; let me go to her, Graham."

He tore himself away, and was up the passage in a minute, but went softly in at the door.

When, soon after, they followed with the restoratives, he was on the bed, with his rough head hanging over her and his arm round her pillow. He held up his hand as they approached. He was listening. There was that in his look that made them both stand motionless. Presently ​he moved his arm and slipped quietly off the bed. His lips were quite white, and as he opened them to speak they could only just make out the words, "She's gone to the Christ;" and he pointed with his hand to the picture.

For many days Graham was as one in a trance. He had lifted up the wavy hair and kissed his wife's cold forehead because they told him to; but he never knew it for days afterwards.

When at last he began to recover from the shock, and memory pieced together with terrible exactness the events of the past, he stood amazed before the greatness of his grief.

How many wedded souls have felt the impossibility of such a sundering! That two can be one flesh, and yet that one can die and one linger on seems so abnormal and unnatural a state of things. And truly it is as unnatural as death itself. Surely "an enemy hath done this." That happy, early pair were never intended to have their Eden-life embittered with the thoughts of separation. Perhaps, after all, they died together hand in hand. Who knows? Such events have been even since their day. But for the majority, alas! It is the common lot.

Graham stood alone, and bowed his head before the God who "had joined them together." ​For the time all his strength of limb had left him, but now it was returning, and for the first time he was able to walk across his room. He had found himself in a spare room of the house; how long he had been there he knew not, and had not asked. Edward was with him; Graham longed to put one question to him, but dared not, and now he stood with his hand on the door-handle and looked round, hoping that he would understand what he was waiting to know.

"Could he see Kitty once again, or was she for ever out of his sight?"

Edward answered by taking his arm and leading him out of the room and to his own. They paused for a moment at the door, and then, as Edward opened it, Dick silently passed out.

"I should like to be alone," said Graham, without looking towards the bed.

It was noon when he went in, but evening was drawing on before they ventured to disturb him. He rose up as Albreda came in, and there was peace in his face.

"This must be good-bye," she said, softly.

There were no passionate tears now; that had been over long ago; but he stooped once more over the motionless form, laid his cheek against hers, and caressed the little head, and the parting was over.

​Two months had passed, and once more Albreda found herself in the company of the obnoxious captain. He had gone considerably out of his way to present himself at the docks, which would be the scene of Edward's departure for Ceylon. He had given no notice of his intention, and startled them both by laying his hand on Edward's shoulder as they stepped into the tug which was to convey him to the steamship.

They could not pretend to be grateful for this interruption to their last remaining hour before separation, and rather unceremoniously left him to his own devices, and betook themselves to the bridge of the boat, in a way which said as plainly as the sternest words, "Follow us if you dare!"

He did not dare, fortunately for them; but he meant to indulge his yet unsatisfied spleen by giving Edward the treat of witnessing his return in the tug with Miss Darcy, and by a last farewell promise that he would take every care of her, and take up his abode while in England within reach of her home.

While he was concocting these little barbless arrows, which would not even graze the skin of the intended victims, Edward was doing his best to crowd into the short length of the journey all that he had left unsaid to Albreda.

​"One confession I must make," he said, "or I shall carry a guilty conscience which might bring ill-luck to the ship."

"Wait a minute," cried Albreda, "I have a confession to make too!"

It was the first time he had seen any gaiety about her since her sister's death. Now, for the minute, there was quite the old expression, and he waited, laughing, for some playful banter.

"No, seriously," she said, forcing herself to look grave again.

She was standing leaning over the bridge. Captain Foley, from below, was taking a survey of her through his eyeglass, and instead of turning away she stood contemplating him for some time without speaking. Edward was slightly annoyed.

"Hang the fellow! how dare he stare at you like that?" he said, testily.

"What harm?" asked Albreda, facing round upon him. "I will tell you what my confession is," she went on, standing in front of him and looking into his face without a smile. "I was thinking of that Bill which you approve, and I now see that with one amendment I could agree with you, only let it be equal for men and women. Why should men have all the advantage? Let women, too, have a right to marry ​their deceased husbands' brothers, and then it will be fair and, doubtless, a very wise law."

"What!" cried Edward, for the moment taken in by her pretended gravity. "Abominable!—monstrous! It is against nature, and would cause no end of hatred and jealousy."

He spoke so angrily, and looked so fiercely towards his brother, that Albreda's face at once relapsed into a smile.

"I don't mean it, Edward," she said, leaving the bridge and coming towards him.

He did not like to be laughed at, but felt he deserved it for all that.

"I see, you want to show that jealousy between brothers is also possible; but you should have waited. I was going to tell you that I have quite come round to your view of the Bill. To tell the truth, I see no good argument that will stand in favour of it when examined, and I have gone really deeply into the matter. Certainly, from a legal point of view, there can be no doubt to an honest mind that it has always been part of the old common law, and not first prohibited, as some would pretend, in the Statute Law of 1835. Then, with regard to the Scriptural view of it, did you know that in the oldest manuscript of the Septuagint at the Vatican that passage in Deuteronomy xxvii. ver. 23, which is translated in our English version, ​"Cursed is he that (taketh) his mother-in-law," stands thus, "Cursed is he that (taketh) the sister of his wife"?

"I did not know that before; it is very important and interesting," said Albreda.

But Edward could see that her mind was hardly on the subject, and he had something else to say before they parted, so he merely continued—

"When I return home in six months' time, we shall have great talks about it. I have much to tell you about the Levirate custom, which is so often brought up in defence of the Bill."

What most engrossed their thoughts and conversation for the next half-hour surely need not be explained. I only know that they were not thinking about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, and that it did not even cross Edward's mind as, leaning over the bulwarks while his ship steamed away, he watched the two figures standing together on the fast-receding tug.