Nora, with Lady Milborough’s carriage, and Lady Milborough’s coach and footman, and with a cab ready for the luggage close behind the carriage, was waiting at the railway station when the party from Dover arrived. She soon saw Hugh upon the platform, and ran to him with her news. They had not a word to say to each other of themselves, so anxious were they both respecting Trevelyan. ‘We got a bed-carriage for him at Dover,’ said Hugh; ‘and I think he has borne the journey pretty well but he feels the heat almost as badly as in Italy. You will hardly know him when you see him.’ Then, when the rush of passengers was gone, Trevelyan was brought out by Hugh and the courier, and placed in Lady Milborough’s carriage. He just smiled as his eye fell upon Nora, but he did not even put out his hand to greet her.
‘I am to go in the carriage with him,’ said his wife.
‘Of course you are, and so will I and Louey. I think there will be room: it is so large. There is a cab for all the things. Dear Emily, I am so glad to see you.’
‘Dearest Nora! I shall be able to speak to you by-and-by, but you must not be angry with me now. How good you have been.’
‘Has not she been good? I don’t understand about the cottage. It belongs to some friend of hers; and I have not been able to say a word about the rent. It is so nice and looks upon the river. I hope that he will like it.’
‘You will be with us?’
‘Not just at first. Lady Milborough thinks I had better not, that he will like it better. I will come down almost every day, and will stay if you think he will like it.’
These few words were said while the men were putting Trevelyan into the carriage. And then another arrangement was made. Hugh hired a second cab, in which he and the courier made a part of the procession; and so they all went to Twickenham together. Hugh had not yet learned that he would be rewarded by coming back alone with Nora in the carriage.
The cottage by the River Thames, which, as far as the party knew, was nameless, was certainly very much better than the house on the top of the hill at Casalunga. And now, at last, the wife would sleep once more under the same roof with her husband, and the separation would be over. ‘I suppose that is the Thames,’ said Trevelyan; and they were nearly the only words he spoke in Nora’s hearing that evening. Before she started on her return journey, the two sisters were together for a few minutes, and each told her own budget of news in short, broken fragments. There was not much to tell. ‘He is so weak,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, ‘that he can do literally nothing. He can hardly speak. When we give him wine, he will say a few words, and his mind seems then to be less astray than it was. I have told him just simply that it was all my doing, that I have been in fault all through, and every now and then he will say a word, to shew me that he remembers that I have confessed.’
‘My poor Emily!’
‘It was better so. What does it all matter? He had suffered so, that I would have said worse than that to give him relief. The pride has gone out of me so, that I do not regard what anybody may say. Of course, it will be said that I went astray, and that he forgave me.’
‘Nobody will say that, dearest; nobody. Lady Milborough is quite aware how it all was.’
‘What does it signify? There are things in life worse even than a bad name.’
‘But he does not think it?’
‘Nora, his mind is a mystery to me. I do not know what is in it. Sometimes I fancy that all facts have been forgotten, and that he merely wants the childish gratification of being assured that he is the master. Then, again, there come moments, in which I feel sure that suspicion is lurking within him, that he is remembering the past, and guarding against the future. When he came into this house, a quarter of an hour ago, he was fearful lest there was a mad doctor lurking about to pounce on him. I can see in his eye that he had some such idea. He hardly notices Louey though there was a time, even at Casalunga, when he would not let the child out of his sight.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I will try to do my duty, that is all.’
‘But you will have a doctor?’
‘Of course. He was content to see one in Paris, though he would not let me be present. Hugh saw the gentleman afterwards, and he seemed to think that the body was worse than the mind.’ Then Nora told her the name of a doctor whom Lady Milborough had suggested, and took her departure along with Hugh in the carriage.
In spite of all the sorrow that they had witnessed and just left, their journey up to London was very pleasant. Perhaps there is no period so pleasant among all the pleasant periods of love-making as that in which the intimacy between the lovers is so assured, and the coming event so near, as to produce and to endure conversation about the ordinary little matters of life — what can be done with the limited means at their mutual disposal; how that life shall be begun which they are to lead together; what idea each has of the other’s duties; what each can do for the other; what each will renounce for the other. There was a true sense of the delight of intimacy in the girl who declared that she had never loved her lover so well as when she told him how many pairs of stockings she had got. It is very sweet to gaze at the stars together; and it is sweet to sit out among the haycocks. The reading of poetry together, out of the same book, with brows all close, and arms all mingled, is very sweet. The pouring out of the whole heart in written words, which the writer knows would be held to be ridiculous by any eyes, and any ears, and any sense, but the eyes and ears and sense of the dear one to whom they are sent, is very sweet; but for the girl who has made a shirt for the man that she loves, there has come a moment in the last stitch of it, sweeter than any that stars, haycocks, poetry, or superlative epithets have produced. Nora Rowley had never as yet been thus useful on behalf of Hugh Stanbury. Had she done so, she might perhaps have been happier even than she was during this journey, but, without the shirt, it was one of the happiest moments of her life. There was nothing now to separate them but their own prudential scruples and of them it must be acknowledged that Hugh Stanbury had very few. According to his shewing, he was as well provided for matrimony as the gentleman in the song, who came out to woo his bride on a rainy night. In live stock he was not so well provided as the Irish gentleman to whom we allude; but in regard to all other provisions for comfortable married life, he had, or at a moment’s notice could have, all that was needed. Nora could live just where she pleased — not exactly in Whitehall Gardens or Belgrave Square; but the New Road, Lupus Street, Montague Place, the North Bank, or Kennington Oval, with all their surrounding crescents, terraces, and rows, offered, according to him, a choice so wide, either for lodgings or small houses, that their only embarrassment was in their riches. He had already insured his life for a thousand pounds, and, after paying yearly for that, and providing a certain surplus for saving, five hundred a year was the income on which they were to commence the world. ‘Of course, I wish it were five thousand for your sake,’ he said; ‘and I wish I were a Cabinet Minister, or a duke, or a brewer; but, even in heaven, you know all the angels can’t be archangels.’ Nora assured him that she would be quite content with virtues simply angelic. ‘I hope you like mutton-chops and potatoes; I do,’ he said. Then she told him of her ambition about the beef-steak, acknowledging that, as it must now be shared between two, the glorious idea of putting a part of it away in a cupboard must be abandoned. ‘I don’t believe in beef-steaks,’ he said. ‘A beef-steak may mean anything. At our club, a beef-steak is a sumptuous and expensive luxury. Now, a mutton-chop means something definite, and must be economical.’
‘Then we will have the mutton-chops at home,’ said Nora, ‘and you shall go to your club for the beef-steak.’
When they reached Eccleston Square, Nora insisted on taking Hugh Stanbury up to Lady Milborough. It was in vain that he pleaded that he had come all the way from Dover on a very dusty day, all the wa............