Louie's married life

BEGINNING.

"Sweetheart, sweetheart," I hear the two clear notes, And see the sunlight shining through the shower; "Sweetheart," how faintly from the meadow floats The early fragrance of the cuckoo-flower! The wind is keen, and April skies are grey; But love can wait till rain-clouds break apart; And still the bird sings through the longest day; "Sweetheart, sweetheart."

When lives are true, the springtide never dies, When souls are one, the love-notes never cease; Our bird sings on beneath the cloudy skies, Our little world is full of light and peace; Fresh as the breath of violets new-born Comes the sweet thought to hearts that cannot part, "After the night of weeping breaks the morn, "Sweetheart, sweetheart."

SURELY no one would ever believe that this song was written by a Londoner, and yet I, who wrote it, am a Londoner in heart and soul. But I was born far away in the country, and all the familiar sights and sounds of old days lend themselves to my rhymes, so that I oftener sing of fields, and birds, and flowers, than of those things which are always before my eyes. Moreover, as all authors know, it is sometimes easier to write of the unseen than of the seen, and these home fields of mine have borrowed much of their beauty from the glamour of distance.

It is because this tale is called "Louie's Married Life," that I shall give you my songs. They were all written for Ronald to sing to the accompaniment of his guitar; and if it had not been for Ronald, I hardly think that they would ever have been written at all. For if I had married somebody else (as I nearly did, once upon a time), this little flame of song which is in me would have been extinguished altogether, and I should have become the dullest woman in the world. These songs are a part of my life as a wife.

I daresay, however, that many people have wasted a great deal of pity on the wife of Ronald Hepburne; and if they do not openly point at the lines on my forehead and the crow's feet at the corners of my eyes, they convey by looks and tones their deep distress on seeing my altered appearance. I admit that they have every possible right to indulge in polite lamentations. Never having been a buxom woman, I had not much flesh to lose; and nursing through long days, and watching through longer nights, have left upon me certain traces which are not likely to be effaced, even in this present time of peace.

When I wrote the foregoing little song, it was early in an April morning; the only sunbeams that I could see were shining on brick walls, blackened with smoke; and the only sky that I could see was a patch of pale blue above the chimney-tops. But, as I lifted my head from my pillow, a feeling of unutterable gratitude thrilled me through and through: it was the last night that we should ever spend in that dreary London room, and Ronald had been sleeping soundly and long. Weeping may endure for a night (and with me it had endured for many nights), but joy cometh in the morning.

I thought of all the other watchers in the crowded houses around me, of mothers counting the hours by the beds of sick children, of wives who had agonised as I had done and prayed as I had prayed; and then, as I looked at Ronald's face, in the dim dawn, I began to recall the note of an early bird in my old country home—and so the song was made.

We had only been married six months when Ronald was stricken with fever. First a slight cold, a few days of languor and depression, and then, before I had had time to realise the danger, he was face to face with death. So the battle for life was fought and won in the dark chamber of a London lodging, and on that April morning I was tasting the first sweets of the great deliverance.

But when with a great effort he rose from the bed whereon he had lain for weeks, I almost feared that the conflict was about to begin again. He had never answered to the popular notion of a fine, handsome man (and I must needs say here that I have no fancy for burly men), yet I had not thought it possible that he could become so fragile, so spectre-like, as he now appeared. Mine is, I suppose, a transparent character, for Ronald always reads my thoughts at a glance; and as his eyes met mine, he gave me a reassuring smile.

"Never fear, Louie," he said, cheerfully. "I shall grow more substantial by-and-by." And then, touching my thin arm, he added, with a sadder look, "I am afraid, poor child, that you have thrown your own strength away in trying to save mine."

"I'm very strong," I answered, buttoning his great-coat with vigorous fingers. "The cab will be here in a minute, and we have no time to spend in bemoaning our leanness. Are you not very glad, Ronald, to leave this dismal old sick room fer ever and ever?"

But, even while I spoke, there flitted across my brain a faint foreshadowing of a time when the memory of that dim little room would become painfully dear. The feeling passed as quickly as it came, and I drew the folds of Ronald's wrapper over his mouth to guard him from the chilly wind of spring. Then the cab came up to the door, and we stood at the window to watch the disposal of our luggage on the roof.

"The guitar will go inside," said I to the servant.

So the guitar was carried out in its case and deposited on the front seat, and Ronald followed, so slowly and feebly that my heart ached to see him. I was the last to get in; and so we turned our backs upon that dreary house where we had suffered the sharpest sorrow that we had ever yet known.

The drive to our new abode was not a long one; and as it was fated that we were to meet with a disaster, it was well that it did not come upon us until we were very near our home. As we turned sharply out of Welbeck Street another cab came smashing into ours, and we were overturned in a moment. Assistance was soon forthcoming; the two drivers exchanged compliments after the manner of their kind; ready helpers collected our boxes, and placed us, quite unharmed, in another vehicle; in short, it was one of those "marvellous escapes" of which one hears so much, and there was only one thing belonging to us which was much the worse for the accident.

And that one thing was Ronald's guitar.

Until I was fairly inside our new rooms, I did not realise that the poor guitar was completely done for, and then I confess I shed some very bitter tears. Our new landlady (who had been a dear old nurse of mine) was much amazed and scandalised by my excessive grief, and instantly fell to reproving me as she had done in the days of my childhood.

"I'm astonished at you, Miss Louie," said she, forgetting my matronly dignity. "If your husband's bones had been smashed, you couldn't have made a greater fuss, and all about a musical instrument of no account whatever! A pianner, now, would be worth crying over, but there never was much noise to be got out of that poor silly stringed thing."

I am quick of temper, and I felt very much inclined to slap nurse at that moment.

"Go away," I said, crying anew. "You never can understand how dear that guitar is to me. I first f-f-fell in love with Ronald when he was playing upon it."

"What a fool I be!" soliloquised nurse, smiling. "I might have known as much. Why, I remember that I took a fancy to my old man when he was blowing his flute; and yet most folks say that a flute's dreadfully disfiguring to the countenance."

After that I kissed nurse, and she went off cheerfully to prepare our seven o'clock dinner, while I took my way to our little sitting-room. Finding Ronald lying tranquilly on an old-fashioned sofa, and looking a trifle more like his old self, my spirits rose again, and I began to feel myself a happy woman.

Most Londoners are well enough acquainted with Chapel Place—that convenient little alley which runs from Oxford Street into Henrietta Street, Cavendish Square—and it was in Chapel Place that we, a lonely pair of lovebirds, had now found a settled nest. Our rooms were on the ground-floor, and we looked out upon the grey stone wall of the great post-office, and were thankful for any "small mercies" vouchsafed us by stray sunbeams.

And yet, from that very first afternoon in nurse's house, I felt that here was to be the truest and happiest home that I had ever known. I watched the pigeons fluttering softly about the east gable of St. Peter's Church, and saw the faint crescent of the new moon rise above the house-roofs, and show its pale golden outline against a background of misty lilac sky. And Ronald, languid but content, studied my brightened face, and lazily whispered that I was once more like the girl he had wooed two years ago.

When I read a novel, I always make a point of skipping the explanations, and now that I am writing a story I shall endeavour to explain as little as I can, and to leave as much as possible to the instincts of my intelligent readers. It is necessary, however, that I should briefly state how I came to know Ronald Hepburn, and who and what my husband was.

First of all, let me say that he was a soldier, sprung from a long line of soldiers who had fought and served in India. In India he was born, and when I met him, he had just been invalided home and had left the service. You have only to stroll into the neighbourhood of the best clubs and you will see dozens of men exactly like him any day. He was not in any way remarkable, and he had never been handsome, but he possessed a certain indolent grace of manner and bearing—a certain air of high breeding and perfect repose, which are attractions in the eyes of some women. After saying all this, I have merely to add that I like high breeding and repose, and it was therefore not surprising, perhaps, if Ronald Hepburne succeeded, pretty easily, in fascinating me.