Part 21 (1/2)
”I had heard it, and she knew that I had heard it.”
”Why did you not tell me, then?”
”Do you suppose that I wished to interfere between you and your wife? Of course I told her that you ought to know. Of course I told her that you ought to have known it already. But she excused herself,--with great sorrow. Things had presented themselves in such a way that the desired opportunity of telling you had never come.”
He shook his head. ”I tell you that it was so, and you are bound to believe it of one of whom in all other respects you had thought well;--of one who loved you with the fondest devotion. Instead of that there came this man with his insidious falsehoods, with his implied lies; this man, of whom you have always thought so badly;--and him you believed instead! I tell you that you can justify yourself before no human being. You were not ent.i.tled to repudiate your wife for such offence as she had committed, you are not ent.i.tled even had there been no mutual affection to bind you together. How much less so in your present condition,--and in hers. People will only excuse you by saying that you were mad. And now in order to put yourself right, you expect that she shall come forward, and own herself to have been the cause of this misfortune. I tell you that she will not do it. I would not even ask her to do it;--not for her sake, nor for your own.”
”I am then to go,” said he, ”and grovel in the dust before her feet.”
”There need be no grovelling. There need be no confessions.”
”How then?”
”Go to Exeter, and simply take her. Disregard what all the world may say, for the sake of her happiness and for your own. She will make no stipulation. She will simply throw herself into your arms with unaffected love. Do not let her have to undergo the suffering of bringing forth your child without the comfort of knowing that you are near to her.” Then she left him to think in solitude over the words she had spoken to him.
He did think of them. But he found it to be impossible to put absolute faith in them. It was not that he thought that his sister was deceiving him, that he distrusted her who had taken this long journey at great personal trouble altogether on his behalf; but that he could not bring himself to believe that he himself had been so cruel as to reject his young wife without adequate cause. It had gradually come across his mind that he had been most cruel, most unjust,--if he had done so; and to this judgment, pa.s.sed by himself on himself, he would not submit. In concealing her engagement she had been very wrong, but it must be that she had concealed more than her engagement. And to have been engaged to such a man added much to the fault in his estimation. He would not acknowledge that she had been deceived as to the man's character and had set herself right before it was too late. Why had the man come to his house and asked for him,--after what had pa.s.sed between them,--if not in compliance with some understanding between him and her? But yet he would take her back if she would confess her fault and beg his pardon,--for then he would be saved the disgrace of having to acknowledge that he had been in fault from the first.
His sister left him alone without saying a word on the subject for twenty-four hours, and then again attacked him. ”George,” she said, ”I must go back to-morrow. I have left my children all alone and cannot stay longer away from them.”
”Must you go to-morrow?” he asked.
”Indeed, yes. Had not the matter been one of almost more than life and death I should not have come. Am I to return and feel that my journey has been for nothing?”
”What would you have me do?”
”Return with me, and go at once to Exeter.”
He almost tore his hair in his agony as he walked about the room before he replied to her. But she remained silent, watching him. ”You must leave me here till I think about it.”
”Then I might as well not have come at all,” she said.
He moved about the room in an agony of spirit. He knew it to be essential to his future happiness in life that he should be the master in his own house. And he felt that he could not be so unless he should be known to have been right in this terrible misfortune with which their married life had been commenced. There was no obliterating it, no forgetting it, no ignoring it. He had in his pa.s.sion sent her away from him, and, pa.s.sionately, she had withdrawn.
Let them not say a word about it, there would still have been this terrible event in both their memories. And for himself he knew that unless it could be settled from the first that he had acted with justice, his life would be intolerable to him. He was a man, and it behoved him to have been just. She was a woman, and the feeling of having had to be forgiven would not be so severe with her. She, when taken a second time into grace and pardoned, might still rejoice and be happy. But for himself, he reminded himself over and over again that he was a man, and a.s.sured himself that he could never lift up his head were he by his silence to admit that he had been in the wrong.
But still his mind was changed,--was altogether changed by the coming of his sister. Till she had come all had been a blank with him, in which no light had been possible. He could see no life before him but one in which he should be constantly condemned by his fellow-men because of his cruelty to his young wife. Men would not stop to ask whether he had been right or wrong, but would declare him at any rate to have been stern and cruel. And then he had been torn to the heart by his memory of those pa.s.sages of love which had been so sweet to him. He had married her to be the joy of his life, and she had become so to his entire satisfaction when in his pa.s.sion he had sent her away. He already knew that he had made a great mistake. Angry as he had been, he should not have thus sought to avenge himself. He should have known himself better than to think that because she had been in fault he could therefore live without her. He had owned to himself when his sister had come to him that he must use her services in getting his wife once again. Was she not the one human being that suited him at all points? But still,--but still his honour must be saved. If she in truth desired to come back to him, she would not hesitate to own that she had been in fault.
”What am I to say to her? What message will you send to her? You will hardly let me go back without some word.” This was said to him by his sister as he walked about the room in his misery. What message could he send? He desired to return himself, and was willing to do so at a moment's notice if only he could be a.s.sured that if he did so she would as a wife do her duty by owning that she had been in the wrong.
How should he live with a wife who would always be a.s.serting to herself, and able to a.s.sert to him, that in this extremity of their trouble he had been the cause of it;--not that she would so a.s.sert it aloud, but that the power of doing so would be always present to her and to him? And yet he was resolved to return, and if he allowed his sister to go back without him never would there come so fair an opportunity again. ”I have done my duty by you,” said his sister.
”Yes, yes. I need hardly tell you that I am grateful to you.”
”And now do your duty by her.”
”If she will write to me one line to beg me to come I will do so.”
”You have absolutely driven her away from you, and left her abruptly, so that she should have no opportunity of imploring you to spare her.
And now you expect that she should do so?”
”Yes;--if she were wrong. By your own showing she was the first to sin against me.”