He left her letters at last unopened. He could make no answer to them. He could give no explanation. Every day he had hoped that perhaps--perhaps. And now that his horror had come over him he was less disposed to write than ever. If it should be as, God forgive him, he feared, what was there in store for him? What should he do? The veins of his eyeballs seemed to fill with blood, and the air grew dark in his sight; a blank, sinking void opened before him; he could perceive only that he must be swallowed up in it, swept beyond sight and knowledge; but for the others who loved him, he did not know how to reveal to them the terrible cause.
During all this time of suspense he was very kind to the woman to whom he had linked himself like the living to the dead. He got her everything she wished for--delicate food, fine wine, all that could afford a little ease to her body or amusement to her mind. Such forms of kindness are appreciated in regions where life is more practical than sentimental. The mother and sister sang his praises. ‘Die! no, he don’t want you to die,’ they said. ‘What would he send you all these nice things for, and feed you up, and get you that water-bed that cost such a deal of money, if he wanted you to die? But you’re that exacting now you’re Mrs. Wentworth.’
‘I _am_ Mrs. Wentworth: that’s one thing none can take from me,’ she said.
He heard her as he came up the narrow stair, trying as no one else did to make as little noise as possible, and that wave of loathing which sickened his very soul came over him. How horrible it all was, incredible, impossible, that she should bear that name! that it should be bandied about in a place like this--his mother’s name, his wife’s. Ah! but she, and no other, was his wife. This was the evening when she said to him, ‘I feel I am really getting better, Oliver. I believe I’ll cheat the doctors yet: and it will all be your doing, dear. You’ll take me abroad, and my lungs will come right, and we shall be as happy as the day is long.’
He made no reply, but avoided the hand with which she tried to draw him to her, and asked a few questions of her mother, before he bade her good night. He met the doctor as he was going downstairs, and waited to hear his bulletin. The parish doctor had found his manners, which had only been put aside when there was no need for such vanities: but he was not used to fine words. He said,--