Chapter XXVIII: Julia's Cogitations

JULIA was very ill, and she knew it, and she had no fear. It seemed wonderful. For years she had dreaded the end of life, had shrunk from the thought of death. And now suddenly it might be close at hand, yet she was not terrified.

It had not occurred to her that while she, the wandering sheep, sought the Shepherd, the Shepherd also sought her. And not till the moment of dire peril and need came did she realise that He had found her, that she was actually safe in His keeping, that under the shadow of His Hand no harm could arrive. She had not known Him well hitherto, but knowledge grew fast in the hours of silent suffering, when she had just to lie and wait for what He might will to do to her.

Julia said little through those days of weakness. Much talk was forbidden and impossible. If it had not been, her sense of peace was too new for careless handling. She wanted to learn, not to teach. The peace was apparent, however, in her quiet face, in the absence of all murmurs. From time to time she asked anxiously after her husband, and smiled to hear that he was doing well. For herself, she wished to get better, but there were no impatient longings.

Then the tide turned, and Julia knew that she was on the highroad to recovery.

A certain reaction followed, not in actual loss of peace, for that remained, but in thronging recollections and conjectures. The burdens of common life had to be taken up once more, or they would have to be soon. Julia could not put them aside till the necessary moment: Her very lack of physical power made control of thought the more difficult.

She could not get Hermione out of her head, and the remembrance of her husband's words, at the moment of extreme peril, was incessantly present.

What where Hermione's rights?

Did Harvey know something more than she knew? If so—what did he know?— and what would he do?

What had he meant her to do if his life had been taken? To give Hermione twenty thousand pounds? Was that it? Had Hermione a right to so much?

Mr. Selwyn knew! Then of course there was some additional fact hidden from herself. She would have had to appeal to Mr. Selwyn.

Would have had—if Harvey had died, and if she had been left a lonely widow! Julia shuddered at the thought!

That great sorrow had not come. She and Harvey were spared each to the other.

But Hermione's "rights" claimed attention still from Harvey and Julia together.

What "rights" again? What had Harvey meant?

Something precise and definite surely? Something beyond the general sense that Hermione ought not to have been left unprovided for.

Things might be easily set straight. Only, since Harvey felt so strongly on the subject, why had he not taken action sooner?

Thus round and round on one pivot Julia's mind circled, sometimes for hours together, as she lay recovering.

But Julia would not breathe a word of all this to any human being. She had no notion of betraying an iota of her husband's confidence. What she had to say would be said to himself, not to Mrs. Ogilvie or Mr. Fitzalan, least of all to Francesca.

"How soon are we to be allowed to see one another?" she often asked, and Mrs. Ogilvie always answered, "Before long, I hope." Julia knew that Harvey might be expected to come to her before she would be allowed to go to him. She did not know that he already had leave, if he could or would arouse himself to make the effort.

Somehow Harvey seemed very inert, very averse to the said effort. He was so affectionate a husband, so full of solicitude about Julia's state, that those around were puzzled. It would have seemed to them more natural if he had been in a hurry to go to Julia before permission was given, than that he should fail to use the permission when it came. His reluctance was ascribed purely to physical weakness, still it was looked upon as odd.

Nobody knew what had passed between him and Julia just before the accident. Harvey forgot it himself for a short time, but after a few days the whole came back vividly.

Came back, yet with a difference. He was not disposed now to view matters precisely as he had viewed them from the standpoint of immediate danger to life. It is one thing to be willing to give up twenty thousand pounds or so, if one does not expect to have any further use for the money. It is quite another thing to give up the same, if one expects to feel the loss permanently through thirty or forty or more years of earthly existence.

Somehow, too, that old simple question of right and wrong is apt to assume new aspects when looked upon from the bank of a certain dark river, into which one may have immediately to plunge. Right is unequivocal right, and wrong is unequivocal wrong, seen thus. But when a man leaves the said river behind, and gets back into the foggy atmosphere of common life, right and wrong sometimes assume very misty shapes, and so many matters of will and inclination are involved that the question loses a good deal of its simplicity. The question is of course the same, and the answer must be the same, but the mode of viewing it is different.

Not that approaching death necessarily makes a coward of a man, but it clears his eyesight. We are all much given to thinking that life will last indefinitely, and that what is crooked will somehow manage to get straight before the end. Many a deed is done in broad earthly daylight, quite placidly and with scarcely a whisper from conscience, which would not pass muster for an instant if the doer stood face to face with the last enemy.

This was Harvey's experience. As Prince and Emperor rushed madly down the hill, Harvey had very clear views indeed of right and wrong in connection with a certain vexed point. There was no hesitation at all in his mind just then as to what might or might not be Hermione's claims upon himself. The legal aspect of the matter slipped out of his thoughts altogether, as not worth consideration. The great moral question of right and wrong overshadowed all else.

But now Harvey was back in the fogs again. He remembered what he had felt, and he told himself that it was absurd—extravagant—mere over-excitement, and so on.

He would have given a good deal for power to blot out those short utterances to his wife. Harvey could not resist a consciousness that Julia's conscience might prove less malleable than his own—not that his own was quite so submissive as he could have wished. But Julia— why, Julia was a woman, more than that, a mere girl. Women never would hear reason, if they took up a certain notion on any subject. It was always with them a matter of feeling, not of logic. And as for Julia, she knew about as much of business and money affairs as little Mittie.

It was a marvel to Harvey how he could have done so unadvised a thing as to speak out to Julia at all. Dear good creature she was, and the best of wives, but Harvey feared she might give him no end of trouble here. The decision of course rested with him, and he was not afraid that she would let out anything to anybody else; still he did not wish to lower himself in her eyes. He would have to discuss the whole question with her; more than this, he would undoubtedly have to settle some amount on Hermione without further delay, as the best hope of pacifying Julia.

Then the old bother would have to be met and answered. How much was the least that would do? How little was the most he must part with?

If only he had kept his own counsel, and said nothing! After all, he and Julia had both come through the peril with only passing hurts. From his present position of safety he could hardly remise how dire the peril had been. It mystified him that for a short space he should have viewed things so differently. For past scenes soon lose their vividness; and earthly life seemed now so full of reality, so likely to go on for another half-century or thereabouts, that Harvey was little disposed to look further ahead. He wanted to get along comfortably in this present life; and to give up twenty thousand pounds, or even half of twenty thousand pounds, would not be comfortable.

"We should have to consider every sixpence before spending it. And as for keeping hunters! But there could not be a more extravagant idea! Absurd! The estate simply could not stand it. I shall have to explain all this to Julia."

Explaining means trouble, however, and Harvey hated trouble. So, much as he really wished to see Julia again, he was on the whole languidly disposed to plead weakness, and to defer the first interview.