Part 14 (1/2)
”It will be very difficult to give her any advice.”
”You may take it if you will that the fault is all mine. I would provide for her as I should be bound to do if by my own cruelty or my own misconduct I had driven her from me!” He had no idea as he said this that by his own cruelty and his own misconduct he was driving her from him.
”My conviction is that she will take nothing,” said Mr. Gray.
”In a matter of business she must take it. The money must be paid to her, let her do what she will with it. Even though it should be thrown into the sea, I must pay it.”
”I think you will find that she has a will of her own.”
”And she will find that I have,” said Mr. Western with a frown.
It was exactly on this point that the husband and wife were being separated. He had thought that she had calculated that when once they were married she had carried her purpose in spite of his will. But he would let her understand that it was not so. She had so far succeeded that she was ent.i.tled to bear his name, but she had not mastered him in the matter, and should not do so.
”It is a thousand pities, Mr. Western, you will allow me to say so, but it is a thousand pities. A most handsome lady:--with a fine lady-like air! One in a thousand!”
Mr. Western could not endure to hear the catalogue of his wife's charms set forth to him. He did not want to be told by his lawyer that she was ”handsome” and ”one in a thousand”! In that respect their quarrel made no difference. No gentleman wishes another to a.s.sure him that his wife is one in a thousand. An old mother might say so, or an old aunt; hardly any one less near and less intimate could be allowed to do so. Mr. Western was aware that no man in the ordinary course of events would be less likely to offend in that way than Mr. Gray. But in this case Mr. Gray should not, he thought, have done it. He had come to Mr. Gray about money and not about his wife's beauty. ”I hardly think we need discuss that,” he said, still with a heavy frown on his brow. ”Perhaps you will think over what I have said to you, and name a sum to-morrow.”
”At the risk of making you angry I have to speak,” continued Mr.
Gray. ”I knew your father, and have known you all your life. If this is to make her miserable, and if, as I gather, she has committed no great fault, will it not be--wicked?” Mr. Gray sat silent for a few moments, looking him in the face. ”Have you consulted your own conscience, and what it will say to you after a time? She has given all that she has to you, though there has not been a s.h.i.+lling,--and no money can repay her. One fault is not pardonable,--one only fault.”
”No, no. I do not accuse her.”
”Nor dream that she is guilty,--if I understand the matter rightly.”
”No, I do not. But I do not come here to be interrogated about her after this fas.h.i.+on,--nor to be told that I am wicked. For what sins I commit I must be myself responsible. I am unable,--at any rate unwilling,--to tell you the circ.u.mstances, and must leave you to draw your own conclusions. If you will think over the matter, and will name a sum, I shall be obliged to you.” Then he was about to leave the chamber, but Mr. Gray interposed himself between his client and the door.
”Pray excuse me, Mr. Western. I know that you are angry, but pray excuse me. I should ill do my duty to an old client whom I respect did I not dare, as being older than he is, to give the advice which as a bystander I think that he requires.” Mr. Western stood perfectly silent before him, but clearly showing his wrath by the frown upon his brow. ”I venture to say that you are taking upon yourself as a husband to do that which the world will not pardon.”
”I care nothing for the world.”
”Pardon me. You will care for it when you come to consider that its decision has been just. When you have to reflect that you have ruined for ever the happiness of a woman whom you have sworn to love and protect, and that you have cast her from you for some reason which you cannot declare and which is not held to justify such usage, then you will regard what the world says. You will regard it because your own conscience will say the same. If I mistake not you still love her.”
”I am not here to discuss such points,” said Mr. Western angrily.
”Think of the severity of the punishment which you are inflicting upon one whom you love; and of the effect it must have on her feelings. I tell you that you have no right to do this,--unless she has been guilty as you confess she has not.” Then he seated himself in his arm-chair, and Mr. Western left the chamber without saying another word.
He went out into Lincoln's Inn, and walked westward towards his Club, hardly knowing in his confusion whither he was going. At first his breast was hot with anger against Mr. Gray. The man had called him wicked and cruel, and had known nothing of the circ.u.mstances. Could it be wicked, could it be cruel for him to resent such treachery as that of which he had been the victim? All his holiest hopes had been used against him for the vilest purposes and with the most fell effect! He at any rate had been ruined for ever. And the man had told him about the world! What did he in his misery care for the world's judgment? Cecilia had married him,--and in marrying him had torn his heart asunder. This man had accused him of cruelty in leaving her.
But how could he have continued to live with her without hypocrisy?
Cruel indeed! What were her sufferings to his,--hers, who had condescended to the level of Sir Francis Geraldine, and had trafficked with such a one as that as to the affairs of their joint happiness! To such a woman it was not given to suffer. Yes; she was beautiful and she looked as a lady should look. Mr. Gray had been right enough in that. But he had not known how looks may deceive, how n.o.ble to the eye may be the face of a woman while her heart within is ign.o.ble, paltry, and mean. But as he went on with his walk by degrees he came to forget Mr. Gray, and to think of the misery which was in store for himself. And though at the moment he despised Mr. Gray, his thoughts did occupy themselves exactly with those perils of which Mr.
Gray had spoken. The woman had trusted herself to his care and had given him her beauty and her solicitude. He did in his heart believe that she loved him. He remembered the last words of her letter--”Oh, George, if you knew how I love you!” He did not doubt but that those words were true. He did not suppose that she had given her heart to Sir Francis Geraldine,--that she had truly and sincerely devoted herself to one so mean as that! Such heart as she had to give had been given to himself. But there had been traffic of marriage with this man, and even continued correspondence and an understanding as to things which had put her with all her loveliness on a level with him rather than with her existing husband. What this understanding was he did not, he said, care to inquire. It had existed and still did exist. That was enough to make him know that she was untrue to him as his wife,--untrue in spirit if not in body. But in truth he did care to know. It was, indeed, because he had not known, because he had been allowed only to guess and search and think about it, that all this misery had come. He had been kept in the dark, and to be kept in the dark was to him, of all troubles, the most grievous. When he had first received the letter from Sir Francis he had not believed it to be true;--from first to last it had been a fiction. But when once his wife had told him that the engagement had existed, he believed all. It was as though she had owned to him the circ.u.mstance of a still existing intimate friends.h.i.+p. He had been kept in the dark, but he did not know how far.
But still there loomed to him as to the future, vaguely, the idea that by the deed he was doing now, at this present moment, he was sacrificing her happiness and his own for ever,--as regarded this world. And the people would say that he had done so, the people whose voices he could not but regard. She would say so, and her mother,--and he must acknowledge it. And Lady Grant would know that it had been so, and Mr. Gray would always think so to the end. And his heart became tender even towards her. What would be her fate,--as his wife and therefore debarred from the prospects of any other future? She would live with her mother as any widow would live,--with much less of hope, with less chance of enjoying her life, than would any other widow. And when her mother should die she would be all alone. To what a punishment was he not dooming her!
If he could die himself it would be well for all parties. He had taken his great step in life and had failed. Why should he doom her, who was differently const.i.tuted, to similar failure? It had been a great mistake. He had made it and now there was no escape. But then again his pity for himself welled up in his heart. Why had he been so allured, so deceived, so cozened? He had intended to have given all good things. The very essence of his own being he had bestowed upon her,--while she, the moment that his back was turned, was corresponding with Sir Francis Geraldine! That thought he could not stand. She, in truth, had been greatly in error in her first view of the character of Sir Francis Geraldine; but it must be a question whether he was not so also. The baronet was a poor creature, but not probably so utterly vile as he thought him. As he turned it all over in his mind, while wandering to and fro, he came to the conclusion that Mr. Gray was wrong, and that it was impossible that she who had been the sharer of the thoughts of Sir Francis Geraldine, should now remain to share his.
CHAPTER XV.
ONCE MORE AT EXETER.
Three weeks had pa.s.sed and much had been done for Mrs. Western to fix her fate in life. It was now August, and she was already living at Exeter as a wife separated from her husband. Of much she had had to think and much to determine before she had found that haven of rest.