_ CHAPTER LXIX. IN AND OUT
"And Boniface Newt has failed," said Mr. Bennet to his wife, in a low voice.
He was shading his eyes with his hand, and his wife was peacefully sewing beside him.
She made no reply, but her face became serious, then changed to an expression in which, from under his hands, for her husband's eyes were not weak, her husband saw the faintest glimmering of triumph. But Mrs. Bennet did not raise her eyes from her work.
"Lucia!" He spoke so earnestly that his wife involuntarily started.
"My dear," she replied, looking at him with a tear in her eye, "it is only natural."
Her husband said nothing, but shook his slippered foot, and his neck sunk a little lower in his limp, white cravat. They were alone in the little parlor, with only the portrait on the wall for company, and only the roses in the glass upon the table, that were never wanting, and always showed a certain elegance of taste in arrangement and care which made the daughter of the house seem to be present though she might be away.
"What a beautiful night!" said Mr. Bennet at last, as his eyes lingered upon the window through which he saw the soft illumination of the full moonlight.
His wife looked for a moment with him, and answered, "Beautiful!"
"How lovely those roses are, and how sweet they smell!" he said, after another interval of silence, and as if there were a change in the pleasant dreams he was dreaming.
"Yes," she replied, and looked at him and smiled, and, smiling, sewed on.
"Where is Ellen to-night?" he asked, after a little pause.
"She is walking in this beautiful moonlight."
"All alone?" he inquired, with a smile.
"No! with Edward."
"Ah! with Edward." And there was evidently another turn in the pleasant dream.
"And Gabriel--where is Gabriel?" asked he, still shaking the slippered foot.
His wife smoothed her work, and said, with an air of tranquil happiness,
"I suppose he is walking too."
"All alone?"
"No, with May."
Involuntarily, as she said it, she laid her work in her lap, as if her mind would follow undisturbed the happy figures of her children. She looked abstractedly at the window, as if she saw them both, the manly candor of her Gabriel, and the calm sweetness of May Newt--the loyal heart of her blue-eyed Ellen clinging to Edward Wynne. Down the windings of her reverie they went, roses in their cheeks and faith in their hearts. Down and down, farther and farther, closer and closer, while the springing step grew staid, and the rose bloom slowly faded. Farther and farther down her dream, and gray glistened in the brown hair and the black and gold, but the roses bloomed around them in younger cheeks, and the brown hair and the black and gold were as glossy and abundant upon those younger heads, and still their arms were twined and their eyes were linked, as if their hearts had grown together, each pair into one. Farther and farther--still with clustering younger faces--still with ever softer light in the air falling upon the older forms, grown reverend, until--until--had they faded in that light, or was she only blinded by her tears?
For there were tears in her eyes--eyes that glistened with happiness--and there was a hand in hers, and as she looked at her husband she knew that their hands had clasped each other because they saw the same sweet vision.
He looked at his wife, and said,
"Could I have been the rich man I one day hoped to be--the great merchant I longed to be, when I asked you to marry me--I could have owned nothing--no diamond--so dear to me as that very tear in your eye. I wanted to be rich--I felt as if I had cheated you, in being so poor and unsuccessful--you, who were bred so differently. For your sake I wanted to be rich." He spoke with a stronger, fuller voice. "Yes, and when Laura Magot broke my engagement with her because of my first failure, I resolved that she should see me one of the merchant princes she idolized, and that my wife should be envied by her as being the wife of a richer man than Boniface Newt. Darling, you know how I struggled for it--you did not know the secret spur--and how I failed. And I know who it was that made my failure my success, and who taught a man who wanted to be rich how to be happy."
While he spoke his wife's arm had stolen tenderly around him. As he finished, she said, gently,
"I am not such a saint, Gerald."
"If you are not, I don't believe in saints," replied her husband.
"No, I will prove it to you."
"I defy you," said Gerald, smiling.
"Listen! Why did you say Lucia in such a tone, a little while ago?" asked his wife.
Gerald Bennet smiled with arch kindness.
"Shall I answer truly?"
"Under pain of displeasure."
"Well," he began, slowly, "when I heard that Laura Magot's husband had failed, as I knew that Lucia Darro's husband had once been jilted by Laura Magot because he failed, I could not help wondering--now, Lucia dear, how could I help wondering?--I wondered how Lucia Darro would feel. Because--because--"
He made a full stop, and smiled.
"Because what?" asked his wife.
He lingered, and smiled.
"Because what?" persisted his wife, with mock gravity.
"Because Lucia Darro was a woman, and--well! I'll make a clean breast of it--and because, although a man and woman love each other as long and dearly as Lucia Darro and her husband have and do, there is still something in the woman that the man can not quite understand, and upon which he is forever experimenting. So I was curious to hear, or rather to see and feel, what your thoughts were; and, at the moment I spoke, I thought I saw them, and I was surprised."
"Exactly, Sir; and that surprise ought to have shown you that I was no saint. Listen again, Sir. Lucia Darro's husband was never jilted by Laura Magot, for the impetuous and ambitious young man who was engaged to that lady is an entirely different person from my husband. Do you hear, Sir?"
"Precisely; and who made him so entirely different?"
"Hush, Sir! I've no time to hear such folly. I, too, am going to make a clean breast of it, and confess that there was the least little sense of--of--of--well, justice, in my mind, when I thought that Laura Magot who jilted you, who were so unfortunate, and with whom she might have been so happy--"
Gerald Bennet dissented, with smiles and shaking head.
"Hush, Sir! Any woman might have been. That she should have led such a life with Boniface Newt, and have seen him ruined after all. Poor soul! poor soul!"
"Which?" asked her husband.
"Both--both, Sir. I pity them both from my heart."
"Thou womanest of women!" retorted her husband. "Art thou, therefore, no saint because thou pitiest them?"
"No, no; but because it was not an unmixed pity."
"At any rate, it is an unmixed goodness," said her husband.
The restless glance, the glimmering uncertainty, had faded from his eyes. He sat quietly on the sofa, swinging his foot, and with his head bent a little to one side over the limp cravat.
"Gerald," said his wife, "let us go out, and walk in the moonlight too." _