Part 47 (2/2)
Juliet was silent. She dared hardly think, lest the gnome should see her very thoughts in their own darkness. Yet she yielded to one more urgent question that kept pus.h.i.+ng to get out. She tried to say the words without thinking of the thing, lest he should thereby learn it.
”I suppose then you have your own theory as to my reasons for seeking shelter with Miss Drake for a while?” she said--and the moment she said it, felt as if some demon had betrayed her, and used her organs to utter the words.
”If I have, ma'am,” answered Polwarth, ”it is for myself alone. I know the sacredness of married life too well to speculate irreverently on its affairs. I believe that many an awful crisis of human history is there pa.s.sed--such, I presume, as G.o.d only sees and understands. The more carefully such are kept from the common eye and the common judgment, the better, I think.”
If Juliet left him with yet a little added fear, it was also with growing confidence, and some comfort, which the feeble presence of an infant humility served to enlarge.
Polwarth had not given much thought to the question of the cause of their separation. That was not of his business. What he could not well avoid seeing was, that it could hardly have taken place since their marriage. He had at once, as a matter of course, concluded that it lay with the husband, but from what he had since learned of Juliet's character, he knew she had not the strength either of moral opinion or of will to separate, for any reason past and gone, from the husband she loved so pa.s.sionately; and there he stopped, refusing to think further.
For he found himself on the verge of thinking what, in his boundless respect for women, he shrank with deepest repugnance from entertaining even as a transient flash of conjecture.
One trifle I will here mention, as admitting laterally a single ray of light upon Polwarth's character. Juliet had come to feel some desire to be useful in the house beyond her own room, and descrying not only dust, but what she judged disorder in her _landlord's_ little library--for such she chose to consider him--which, to her astonishment in such a mere cottage, consisted of many more books than her husband's, and ten times as many readable ones, she offered to dust and rearrange them properly: Polwarth instantly accepted her offer, with thanks--which were solely for the kindness of the intent, he could not possibly be grateful for the intended result--and left his books at her mercy. I do not know another man who, loving his books like Polwarth, would have done so.
Every book had its own place. He could--I speak advisedly--have laid his hand on any book of at least three hundred of them, in the dark. While he used them with perfect freedom, and cared comparatively little about their covers, he handled them with a delicacy that looked almost like respect. He had seen ladies handle books, he said, laughing, to Wingfold, in a fas.h.i.+on that would have made him afraid to trust them with a child. It was a year after Juliet left the house before he got them by degrees muddled into order again; for it was only as he used them that he would alter their places, putting each, when he had done with it for the moment, as near where it had been before as he could; thus, in time, out of a neat chaos, restoring a useful work-a-day world.
Dorothy's thoughts were in the meantime much occupied for Juliet. Now that she was so sadly free, she could do more for her. She must occupy her old quarters as soon as possible after the workmen had finished. She thought at first of giving out that a friend in poor health was coming to visit her, but she soon saw that would either involve lying or lead to suspicion, and perhaps discovery, and resolved to keep her presence in the house concealed from the outer world as before. But what was she to do with respect to Lisbeth? Could she trust her with the secret? She certainly could not trust Amanda. She would ask Helen to take the latter for a while, and do her best to secure the silence of the former.
She so represented the matter to Lisbeth as to rouse her heart in regard to it even more than her wonder. But her injunctions to secrecy were so earnest, that the old woman was offended. She was no slip of a girl, she said, who did not know how to hold her tongue. She had had secrets to keep before now, she said; and in proof of her perfect trustworthiness, was proceeding to tell some of them, when she read her folly in Dorothy's fixed regard, and ceased.
”Lisbeth,” said her mistress, ”you have been a friend for sixteen years, and I love you; but if I find that you have given the smallest hint even that there is a secret in the house, I solemnly vow you shall not be another night in it yourself, and I shall ever after think of you as a wretched creature who periled the life of a poor, unhappy lady rather than take the trouble to rule her own tongue.”
Lisbeth trembled, and did hold her tongue, in spite of the temptation to feel herself for just one instant the most important person in Glaston.
As the time went on, Juliet became more fretful, and more confiding.
She was never cross with Ruth--why, she could not have told; and when she had been cross to Dorothy, she was sorry for it. She never said she was sorry, but she tried to make up for it. Her husband had not taught her the virtue, both for relief and purification, that lies in the _acknowledgment_ of wrong. To take up blame that is our own, is to wither the very root of it.
Juliet was pleased at the near prospect of the change, for she had naturally dreaded being ill in the limited accommodation of the lodge.
She formally thanked the two crushed and rumpled little angels, begged them to visit her often, and proceeded to make her very small preparations with a fitful cheerfulness. Something might come of the change, she flattered herself. She had always indulged a vague fancy that Dorothy was devising help for her; and it was in part the disappointment of nothing having yet justified the expectation, that had spoiled her behavior to her. But for a long time Dorothy had been talking of Paul in a different tone, and that very morning had spoken of him even with some admiration: it might be a prelude to something! Most likely Dorothy knew more than she chose to say! She dared ask no question for the dread of finding herself mistaken. She preferred the ignorance that left room for hope. But she did not like all Dorothy said in his praise; for her tone, if not her words, seemed to imply some kind of change in him. He might have his faults, she said to herself, like other men, but she had not yet discovered them; and any change would, in her eyes, be for the worse. Would she ever see her own old Paul again?
One day as Faber was riding at a good round trot along one of the back streets of Glaston, approaching his own house, he saw Amanda, who still took every opportunity of darting out at an open door, running to him with outstretched arms, right in the face of Niger, just as if she expected the horse to stop and take her up. Unable to trust him so well as his dear old Ruber, he dismounted, and taking her in his arms, led Niger to his stable. He learned from her that she was staying with the Wingfolds, and took her home, after which his visits to the rectory were frequent.
The Wingfolds could not fail to remark the tenderness with which he regarded the child. Indeed it soon became clear that it was for her sake he came to them. The change that had begun in him, the loss of his self-regard following on the loss of Juliet, had left a great gap in his conscious being: into that gap had instantly begun to shoot the all-clothing greenery of natural affection. His devotion to her did not at first cause them any wonderment. Every body loved the little Amanda, they saw in him only another of the child's conquests, and rejoiced in the good the love might do him. Even when they saw him looking fixedly at her with eyes over clear, they set it down to the frustrated affection of the lonely, wifeless, childless man. But by degrees they did come to wonder a little: his love seemed to grow almost a pa.s.sion.
Strange thoughts began to move in their minds, looking from the one to the other of this love and the late tragedy.
”I wish,” said the curate one morning, as they sat at breakfast, ”if only for Faber's sake, that something definite was known about poor Juliet. There are rumors in the town, roving like poisonous fogs. Some profess to believe he has murdered her, getting rid of her body utterly, then spreading the report that she had run away. Others say she is mad, and he has her in the house, but stupefied with drugs to keep her quiet.
Drew told me he had even heard it darkly hinted that he was making experiments upon her, to discover the nature of life. It is dreadful to think what a man is exposed to from evil imaginations groping after theory. I dare hardly think what might happen should these fancies get rooted among the people. Many of them are capable of brutality. For my part, I don't believe the poor woman is dead yet.”
Helen replied she did not believe that, in her sound mind, Juliet would have had the resolution to kill herself; but who could tell what state of mind she was in at the time? There was always something mysterious about her--something that seemed to want explanation.
Between them it was concluded that, the next time Faber came, Wingfold should be plain with him. He therefore told him that if he could cast any light on his wife's disappearance, it was most desirable he should do so; for reports were abroad greatly to his disadvantage. Faber answered, with a sickly smile of something like contempt, that they had had a quarrel the night before, for which he was to blame; that he had left her, and the next morning she was gone, leaving every thing, even to her wedding-ring, behind her, except the clothes she wore; that he had done all he could to find her, but had been utterly foiled. More he could not say.
The next afternoon, he sought an interview with the curate in his study, and told him every thing he had told Mr. Drake. The story seemed to explain a good deal more than it did, leaving the curate with the conviction that the disclosure of this former relation had caused the quarrel between him and his wife, and more doubtful than ever as to Juliet's having committed suicide.
CHAPTER LI.
THE NEW OLD HOUSE.
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