And every Saturday night she would groan: "Another miserable week, and no tidings of my husband."
And thus the weeks slowly crept into months.
Mrs. Brudenell wrote occasionally to say that Herman was not in
Washington, and to ask if he was at Brudenell. That was all. The answer
was always, "Not yet."
Berenice could not go out among the poor, as she had designed; for in
that wilderness of hill and valley, wood and water, the roads even in
the best weather were bad enough--but in mid-winter they were nearly
impassable except by the hardiest pedestrians, the roughest horses, and
the strongest wagons. Very early in January there came a deep snow,
followed by a sharp frost, and then by a warm rain and thaw, that
converted the hills into seamed and guttered precipices; the valleys
into pools and quagmires; and the roads into ravines and rivers--quite
impracticable for ordinary passengers.
Berenice could not get out to do her deeds of charity among the
suffering poor; nor could the landed gentry of the neighborhood make
calls upon the young stranger. And thus the unloved wife had nothing to
divert her thoughts from the one all-absorbing subject of her husband's
unexplained abandonment. The fire, that was consuming her life--the fire
of "restless, unsatisfied longing"--burned fiercely in her cavernous
dark eyes and the hollow crimson cheeks, lending wildness to the beauty
of that face which it was slowly burning away.
As spring advanced the ground improved. The hills dried first. And every
day the poor young stranger would wander up the narrow footpath that led
over the summit of the hill at the back of the house and down to a stile
at a point on the turnpike that commanded a wide sweep of the road. And
there, leaning on the rotary cross, she would watch morbidly for the
form of him who never came back.
Gossip was busy with her name, asking, Who this strange wife of Mr.
Brudenell really was? Why he had abandoned her? And why Mrs. Brudenell
had left the house for good, taking her daughters with her? There were
some uneducated women among the wives and daughters of the wealthy
planters, and these wished to know, if the strange young woman was
really the wife of Herman Brudenell, why she was called Lady
Hurstmonceux? and they thought that looked very black indeed; until
they were laughed at and enlightened by their better informed friends,
who instructed them that a woman once a peeress is always by courtesy a
peeress, and retains her own title even though married to a commoner.