No one who knew Geoffrey Ludlow would have recognised him in the round-shouldered man with the prone head, the earth-seeking eyes, the hands plunged deeply in his pockets, plodding home on that day on which he had determined that Margaret should give him an explanation of her conduct towards him. Although Geoff had never been a roisterer, had never enlisted in that army of artists whose members hear "the chimes o'midnight," had always been considered more or less slow and steady, and was looked upon as one of the most respectable representatives of the community, yet his happy disposition had rendered him a general favourite even amongst those ribalds, and his equable temper and kindly geniality were proverbial among all the brethren of the brush. Ah, that equable temper, that kindly geniality,--where were they now? Those expanded nostrils, those closed lips, spoke of very different feelings; that long steady stride was very different from the joyous step which had provoked the cynicism of the City-bound clerks; that puckered brow, those haggard cheeks, could not be recognised as the facial presentments of the Geoffrey Ludlow of a few short months since.
In good sooth he was very much altered. The mental worrying so long striven against in silence had begun to tell upon his appearance; the big broad shoulders had become rounded; the gait had lost its springy elasticity, the face was lined, and the dark-brown hair round the temples and the long full beard were dashed with streaks of silver. These changes troubled him but little. Never, save perhaps during the brief period of his courtship of Margaret, had he given the smallest thought to his personal appearance; yellow soap and cold water had been his cosmetics, and his greatest sacrifice to vanity had been to place himself at rare intervals under the hairdresser's scissors. But there were other changes to which, try as he might, he could not blind himself. He knew that the very source and fount of his delight was troubled, if not sullied; he knew that all his happiness, so long wished for, so lately attained, was trembling in the balance; he felt that indefinable, indescribable sensation of something impending, something which would shatter his roof-tree and break up that home so recently established. As he plunged onward through the seething streets, looking neither to the right nor to the left, he thought vaguely of the events of the last few months of his life--thought of them, regarding them as a dream. How long was it since he was so happy at home with his old mother and with Til? when the monthly meeting of the Titians caused his greatest excitement, and when his hopes of fame were yet visionary and indistinct? How long was it since he had metherthat fearful night, and had drunk of the beauty and the witchery which had had such results? He was a man now before the world with a name which people knew and respected, with a wife whose beauty people admired; but, ah! where was the quietude, the calm unpretending happiness of those old days?
What could it mean? Had she a wish ungratified? He taxed his mind to run through all the expressions of her idle fancy, but could think of none with which he had not complied. Was she ill? He had made that excuse for her before her baby was born; but now, not merely the medical testimony, but his own anxious scrutiny told him that she was in the finest possible health. There was an odd something about her sometimes which he could not make out--an odd way of listening vacantly, and not replying to direct questions, which he had noticed lately, and only lately; but that might be a part of her idiosyncrasy. Her appetite too was scarcely as good as it used to be; but in all other respects she seemed perfectly well. There might have been some difficulty with his mother and sister, he had at first imagined; but the old lady had been wonderfully complaisant; and Til and Margaret, when they met, seemed to get on excellently together. To be sure his mother had assumed the reins of government during Margaret's confinement, and held them until the last moment compatible with decency; but herrégimehad been over long since; and Margaret was the last person to struggle for power so long as all trouble was taken off her hands. Had the neighbours slighted her, she might have had some cause for complaint; but the neighbours were every thing that was polite, and indeed at the time of her illness had shown her attention meriting a warmer term. What could it mean? Was there-- No; he crushed out the idea as soon as it arose in his mind. There could not be any question about--any one else--preying on her spirits? The man, her destroyer--who had abandoned and deserted her--was far away; and she was much too practical a woman not to estimate all his conduct at its proper worth. No amount of girlish romance could survive the cruel schooling which his villany had subjected her to; and there was no one else whom she had seen who could have had any influence over her. Besides, at the first, when he had made his humble proffer of love, she had only to have told him that it could not be, and he would have taken care that her future was provided for--if not as it had been, at all events far beyond the reach of want. O, no, that could not be.
So argued Geoff with himself--brave, honest, simple old Geoff, with the heart of a man and the guilelessness of a child. So he argued, determining at the same time that he would pluck out the heart of the mystery at once, whatever might be at its root; any thing would be better than this suspense preying on him daily, preventing him from doing his work, and rendering him moody and miserable.
But before he reached his home his resolution failed, and his heart sunk within him. What if Margaret were silent and preoccupied? what if the occasional gloom upon her face became more and more permanent? Had not her life been full of sorrow? and was it wonderful that the remembrance of it from time to time came over her? She had fearlessly confided her whole story to him; she had given him time to reflect on it before committing himself to her; and would it be generous, would it be even just, to call her to account now for freaks of behaviour engendered doubtless in the memory of that bygone time? After all, what was the accusation against her? None. Had there been the smallest trace of levity in her conduct, how many eyebrows were there ready to be lifted--how many shoulders waiting to be shrugged! But there was nothing of the kind; all that could be said about her was that,--all that could be said about her--now he thought it over, nothing was said about her; all that was hinted was that her manner was cold and impassable; that she took no interest in what was going on around her, and that therefore there must be something wrong. There is always something to be complained of. If her manner had been light and easy, they would have called her a flirt, and pitied him for having married a woman so utterly ill-suited to his staid habits. He knew so little of her when he married her, that he ran every kind of risk as to what she might really prove to be; and on reflection he thought he had been exceedingly lucky. She might have been giddy, vulgar, loud, presuming, extravagant; whereas she was simply reserved and undemonstrative,--nothing more. He had been a fool in thinking of her as he had done during the last few weeks; he had,--without her intending it doubtless, for she was an excellent woman,--he had taken his tone in this matter from his mother, with whom Margaret was evidently no favourite, and--there, never mind--it was at an end now. She was his own darling wife, his lovely companion, merely to sit and look at whom was rapturous delight to a man of his keen appreciation of the beauty of form and colour; and as to her coldness and reserve, it was but a temporary mannerism, which would soon pass away.
So argued Geoffrey Ludlow with himself,--brave, honest, simple old Geoff, with the heart of a man, and the guilelessness of a child.
So happy was he under the influence of his last thought, that he longed to take Margaret to his heart at once, and without delay to make trial of his scheme for dissipating her gloom; but when he reached home, the servant told him that her mistress had gone out very soon after he himself had left that morning, and had not yet returned. So he went through into the studio, intending to work at his picture; but when he got there he sunk down into a chair, staring vacantly at the lay-figure, arranged as usual in a preposterous attitude, and thinking about Margaret. Rousing himself, he found his palette, and commenced to set it; but while in the midst of this task, he suddenly fell a-thinking again, and stood there mooning, until the hope of doing any work was past, and the evening shadows were falling on the landscape. Then he put up his palette and his brushes, and went into the dining-room. He walked to the window, but had scarcely reached it, when he saw a cab drive up. The man opened the door, and Margaret descended, said a few hasty words to the driver, who touched his hat and fastened on his horse's nosebag, and approached the house with rapid steps.
From his position in the window, he had noticed a strange light in her eyes which he had never before seen there, a bright hectic flush on her cheek, a tight compression of her lips. When she entered the room he saw that in his first hasty glance he had not been deceived; that the whole expression of her face had changed from its usual state of statuesque repose, and was now stern, hard, and defiant.
He was standing in the shadow of the window-curtain, and she did not see him at first; but throwing her parasol on the table, commenced pacing the room. The lamp was as yet unlit, and the flickering firelight--now glowing a deep dull red, now leaping into yellow flame--gave an additional weirdness to the set intensity of her beautiful face. Gazing at her mechanically walking to and fro, her head supported by one hand, her eyes gleaming, her hair pushed back off her face, Geoffrey again felt that indescribable sinking at his heart; and there was something of terror in the tone in which, stepping forward, he uttered her name--"Margaret!"
In an instant she stopped in her walk, and turning towards the place whence the voice came, said, "You there, Geoffrey?"
"Yes, darling,--who else? I was standing at the window when the cab drove up, and saw you get out. By the way, you've not sent away the cab, love; is he paid?"
"No, not yet,--he will--let him stay a little."
"Well, but why keep him up here, my child, where there is no chance of his getting a return-fare? Better pay him and let him go. I'll go and pay him!" and he was leaving the room.
"Let him stay, please," said Margaret in her coldest tones; and Geoffrey turned back at once. But as he turned he saw a thrill run through her, and marked the manner in which she steadied her hand on the mantelpiece on which she was leaning. In an instant he was by her side.
"You are ill, my darling?" he exclaimed. "You have done too much again, and are over-fatigued----"
"I am perfectly well," she said; "it was nothing--or whatever it was, it has passed. I did not know you had returned. I was going to write to you."
"To write to me!" said Geoff in a hollow voice,--"to write to me!"
"To write to you. I had something to tell you--and--and I did not know whether I should ever see you again!"
For an instant the table against which Geoffrey Ludlow stood seemed to spin away under his touch, and the whole room reeled. A deadly faintness crept over him, but he shook it off with one great effort, and said in a very low tone, "I scarcely understand you--please explain."
She must have had the nature of a fiend to look upon that large-souled loving fellow, stricken down by her words as by a sudden blow, and with his heart all bleeding, waiting to hear the rest of her sentence. She had the nature of a fiend, for through her set teeth she said calmly and deliberately:
"I say I did not know whether I should ever see you again. That cab is detained by me to take me away from this house, to which I ought never to have come--which I shall never enter again."
Geoff had sunk into a chair, and clutching the corner of the table with both hands, was looking up at her with a helpless gaze.
"You don't speak!" she continued; "and I can understand why you are silent. This decision has come upon you unexpectedly, and you can scarcely realise its meaning or its origin. I am prepared to explain both to you. I had intended doing so in a letter, which I should have left behind me; but since you are here, it is better that I should speak."
The table was laid for dinner, and there was a small decanter of sherry close by Geoff's hand. He filled a glass from it and drank it eagerly. Apparently involuntarily, Margaret extended her hand towards the decanter; but she instantly withdrew it, and resumed:
"You know well, Geoffrey Ludlow, that when you asked me to become your wife, I declined to give you any answer until you had heard the story of my former life. When I noticed your growing interest in me--and I noticed it from its very first germ--I determined that before you pledged yourself to me--for my wits had been sharpened in the school of adversity, and I read plainly enough that love from such a man as you had but one meaning and one result,--I determined that before you pledged yourself to me you should learn as much as it was necessary for you to know of my previous history. Although my early life had been spent in places far away from London, and among persons whom it was almost certain I should never see again, it was, I thought, due to you to explain all to you, lest the gossiping fools of the world might some day vex your generous heart with stories of your wife's previous career, which she had kept from you. Do you follow me?"
Geoffrey bowed his head, but did not speak.
"In that story I told you plainly that I had been deceived by a man under promise of marriage; that I had lived with him as his wife for many months; that he had basely deserted me and left me to starve,--left me to die--as I should have died had you not rescued me. You follow me still?"
She could not see his face now,--it was buried in his hands; but there was a motion of his head, and she proceeded:
"That man betrayed me when I trusted him, used me while I amused him, deserted me when I palled upon him. He ruined, you restored me; he left me to die, you brought me back to life; he strove to drag me to perdition, you to raise me to repute. I respected, I honoured you; but I loved him! yes, from first to last I loved him; infatuated, mad as I knew it to be, I loved him throughout! Had I died in those streets from which you rescued me, I should have found strength to bless him with my last breath. When I recovered consciousness, my first unspoken thought was of him. It was that I would live, that I would make every exertion to hold on to life, that I might have the chance of seeing him again. Then dimly, and as in a dream, I saw you and heard your voice, and knew that you were to be a portion of my fate. Ever since, the image of that man has been always present before me; his soft words of love have been always ringing in my ears; his gracious presence has been always at my side. I have striven and striven against the infatuation. Before Heaven I swear to you that I have prayed night after night that I might not be led into that awful temptation of retrospect which beset me; that I might be strengthened to love you as you should be loved, to do my duty towards you as it should be done. All in vain, all in vain! That one fatal passion has sapped my being, and rendered me utterly incapable of any other love in any other shape. I know what you have done for me--more than that, I know what you have suffered for me. You have said nothing; but do you think I have not seen how my weariness, my coldness, the impossibility of my taking interest in all the little schemes you have laid for my diversion, have irked and pained you? Do you think I do not know what it is for a full heart to beat itself into quiet against a stone? I know it all; and if I could have spared you one pang, I swear I would have done so. But I loved this man; ah, how I loved him! He was but a memory to me then; but that memory was far, far dearer than all reality! He is more than a memory to me now; for he lives, and he is in London and I have seen him!"
Out Of Geoffrey Ludlow's hands came, raised up suddenly, a dead white face with puckered lips, knit brows, and odd red streaks and indentations round the eyes.
"Yes, Geoffrey Ludlow," she continued, not heeding the apparition, "I have seen him,--now, within this hour,--seen him, bright, well, and handsome--O, so handsome!--as when I saw him first; and that has determined me. While I thought of him as perhaps dead; while I knew him to be thousands of miles away, I could bear to sit here, to drone out the dull monotonous life, striving to condone the vagrancy of my thoughts by the propriety of my conduct,--heart-sick, weary, and remorseful. Yes, remorseful, so far as you are concerned; for you are a true and noble man, Geoffrey. But now that he is here, close to me, I could not rest another hour,--I must go to him at once. Do you hear, Geoffrey,--at once?"
He tried to speak, but his lips were parched and dry, and he only made an inarticulate sound. There was no mistaking the flash of his eyes, however. In them Margaret had never seen such baleful light; so that she was scarcely astonished when, his voice returning, he hissed out "I know him!"
"You know him?"
"Yes; just come back from Australia--Lord Caterham's brother! I had a letter from Lord Caterham to-day,--his brother--Lionel Brakespere!"
"Well," she exclaimed, "what then? Suppose it be Lionel Brakespere, what then, I ask--what then?"
"Then!" said Geoffrey, poising his big sinewy arm--"then, let him look to himself; for, by the Lord, I'll kill him!"
"What!" and in an instant she had left her position against the mantelpiece, and was leaning over the table at the corner where he sat, her face close to his, her eyes on his eyes, her hot breath on his cheeks--"You dare to talk of killing him, of doing him the slightest injury! You dare to lift your hand against my Lionel! Look here, Geoffrey Ludlow: you have been good and kind and generous to me,--have loved me, in your fashion--deeply, I know; and I would let us part friends; but I swear that if you attempt to wreak your vengeance on Lionel Brakespere, who has done you no harm--how has he injured you?--I will be revenged on you in a manner of which you little dream, but which shall break your heart and spirit, and humble your pride to the dust. Think of all this, Geoffrey Ludlow--think of it. Do nothing rashly, take no step that will madden me, and drive me to do something that will prevent your ever thinking of me with regret, when I am far away."
There was a softness in her voice which touched a chord in Geoffrey Ludlow's breast. The fire faded out of his eyes; his hands, which had been tight-clenched, relaxed, and spread out before him in entreaty; he looked up at Margaret through blinding tears, and in a broken voice said,
"When you are far away! O, my darling, my darling, you are not going to leave me? It cannot be,--it is some horrible dream. To leave me, who live but for you, whose existence is bound up in yours! It cannot be. What have I done?--what can you charge me with? Want of affection, of devotion to you? O God, it is hard that I should have to suffer in this way! But you won't go, Margaret darling? Tell me that--only tell me that."
She shrank farther away from him, and seemed for a moment to cower before the vehemence and anguish of his appeal; but the next her face darkened and hardened, and as she answered him, the passion in her voice was dashed with a tone of contempt.
"Yes, I will leave you," she said,--"of course I will leave you. Do you not hear me? Do you not understand me? I have seen him, I tell you, and every thing which is not him has faded out of my life. What should I do here, or any where, where he is not? The mere idea is absurd. I have only half lived since I lost him, and I could not live at all now that I have seen him again. Stay here! not leaveyou!stayhere!" She looked round the room with a glance of aversion and avoidance, and went on with increasing rapidity: "You have never understood me. How should you? But the time has come now when you must try to understand me, for your own sake; for mine it does no matter--nothing matters now."
She was standing within arm's-length of him, and her face was turned full upon him: but she did not seem to see him. She went on as though reckoning with herself, and Geoffrey gazed upon her in stupefied amazement; his momentary rage quenched in the bewilderment of his anguish.
"I don't deny your goodness--I don't dispute it--I don't think about it at all; it is all done with, all past and gone; and I have no thought for it or you, beyond these moments in which I am speaking to you for the last time. I have suffered in this house torments which your slow nature could neither suffer nor comprehend--torments wholly impossible to endure longer. I have raged and rebelled against the dainty life of dulness and dawdling, the narrow hopes and the tame pleasures which have sufficed for you. I must have so raged and rebelled under any circumstances; but I might have gone on conquering the revolts, if I had not seen him. Now, I tell you, it is no longer possible, and I break with it at once and for ever. Let me go quietly, and in such peace as may be possible: for go I must and I will. You could as soon hold a hurricane by force or a wave of the sea by entreaty."
Geoffrey Ludlow covered his face with his hands, and groaned. Once again she looked at him--this time as if she saw him--and went on:
"Let me speak to you, while I can, of yourself--while I can, I say, for his face is rising between me and all the world beside, and I can hardly force myself to remember any thing, to calculate any thing, to realise any thing which is not him. You ask me not to leave you; you would have me stay! Are you mad, Geoffrey Ludlow? Have you lived among your canvases and your colours until you have ceased to understand what men and women are, and to see facts? Do you know that I love him, though he left me to what you saved me from, so that all that you have done for me and given me has been burdensome and hateful to me, because these things had no connection with him, but marked the interval in which he was lost to me? Do you know that I love him so, that I have sickened and pined in this house, even as I sickened and pined for hunger in the streets you took me from, for the most careless word he ever spoke and the coldest look he ever gave me? Do you know the agonised longing which has been mine, the frantic weariness, the unspeakable loathing of every thing that set my life apart from the time when my life was his? No, you don't know these things! Again I say, how should you? Well, I tell them to you now, and I ask you, are you mad that you say, 'Don't leave me'? Would you have me stay withyouto think ofhimall the weary hours of the day, all the wakeful hours of the night? Would you have me stay with you to feel, and make you know that I feel, the tie between us an intolerable and hideous bondage, and that with every pang of love for him came a throb of loathing for you? No, no! you are nothing to me now,--nothing, nothing! My thoughts hurry away from you while I speak; but if any thing so preposterous as my staying with you could be possible, you would be the most hateful object on this earth to me."
"My God!" gasped Geoffrey. That was all The utter, unspeakable horror with which her words, poured out in a hard ringing voice, which never faltered, filled him overpowered all remonstrance. A strange feeling, which was akin to fear of this beautiful unmasked demon, came over him. It was Margaret, his wife, who spoke thus! The knowledge and its fullest agony were in his heart; and yet a sense of utter strangeness and impossibility were there too. The whirl within him was not to be correctly termed thought; but there was in it something of the past, a puzzled remembrance of her strange quietude, her listlessness, her acquiescent, graceful, wearied, compliant ways; and this was she,--this woman whose eyes burned with flames of passion and desperate purpose--on those ordinarily pale cheeks two spots of crimson glowed,--whose lithe frame trembled with the intense fervour of the love which she was declaring for another man! Yes, this was she! It seemed impossible; but it was true.
"I waste words," she said; "I am talking of things beside the question, and I don't want to lie to you. Why should I? There has been nothing in my life worth having but him, nothing bearable since I lost him, and there is nothing else since I have found him again. I say, I must leave you for your sake, and it is true; but I would leave you just the same if it was not true. There is nothing henceforth in my life but him."
She moved towards the door as she spoke, and the action seemed to rouse Geoffrey from the stupefaction which had fallen upon him. She had her hand upon the door-handle though, before he spoke.
"You are surely mad!" he said "I think so.--I hope so; but even mad women remember that they are mothers. Have you forgotten your child, that you rave thus of leaving your home?"
She took her hand from the door and leaned back against it--her head held up, and her eyes turned upon him, the dark eyebrows shadowing them with a stern frown.
"I am not mad," she said; "but I don't wonder you think me so. Continue to think so, if you needs must remember me at all. Love is madness to such as you; but it is life, and sense, and wisdom, and wealth to such as I and the man I love. At all events it is all the sanity I ask for or want. As for the child--" she paused for one moment, and waved her hand impatiently.
"Yes," repeated Geoffrey hoarsely,--"the child!"
"I will tell you then, Geoffrey Ludlow," she said, in a more deliberate tone than she had yet commanded,--"I care nothing for the child! Ay, look at me with abhorrence now; so much the better foryou, and not a jot the worse for me. What is your abhorrence to me?--what was your love? There are women to whom their children are all in all. I am not of their number; I never could have been. They are not women who love as I love. Where a child has power to sway and fill a woman's heart, to shake her resolution, and determine her life, love is not supreme. There is a proper and virtuous resemblance to it, no doubt, but not love--no, no, not love. I tell you I care nothing for the child. Geoffrey Ludlow, if I had loved you, I should have cared for him almost as little; if the man I love had been his father, I should have cared for him no more, if I know any thing of myself. The child does not need me. I suppose I am not without the brute instinct which would lead me to shelter and feed and clothe him, if he did; but what has he ever needed from me? If I could say without a lie that any thought of him weighs with me--but I cannot--I would say to you, for the child's sake, if for no other reason, I must go. The child is the last and feeblest argument you can use with me--with whom indeed there are none strong or availing."
She turned abruptly, and once more laid her hand upon the door-handle. Her last words had roused Geoffrey from the inaction caused by his amazement. As she coldly and deliberately avowed her indifference to the child, furious anger once more awoke within him. He strode hastily towards her and sternly grasped her by the left arm. She made a momentary effort to shake off his hold; but he held her firmly at arm's-length from him, and said through his closed teeth:
"You are a base and unnatural woman--more base and unnatural than I believed any woman could be. As for me, I can keep silence on your conduct to myself; perhaps I deserved it, seeing where and how I found you." She started and winced. "As for the child, he is better motherless than with such a mother; but I took you from shame and sin, when I found you in the street, and married you; and you shall not return to them if any effort of mine can prevent it. You have no feeling, you have no conscience, you have no pride; you glory in a passion for a man who flung you away to starve! Woman, have you no sense of decency left, that you can talk of resuming your life of infamy and shame?"
The husband and wife formed a group which would have been awful to look upon, had there been any one to witness that terrible interview, as they stood confronting one another, while Geoffrey spoke. As his words came slowly forth, a storm of passion shook Margaret's frame. Every gleam of colour forsook her face; she was transformed into a fixed image of unspeakable wrath. A moment she stood silent, breathing quickly, her white lips dry and parted. Then, as a faint movement, something like a ghastly smile, crept over her face, she said:
"You are mistaken, Geoffrey Ludlow; I leave my life of infamy and shame in leavingyou!"
"In leaving me! Again you are mad!"
"Again I speak the words of sanity and truth. If what I am going to tell you fills you with horror, I would have spared you; you have yourself to thank. I intended to have spared you this final blow,--I intended to have left you in happy ignorance of the fact--which you blindly urge me to declare by your taunts. What did I say at the commencement of this interview? That I wanted us to part friends. But you will not have that. You reproach me with ingratitude; you taunt me with being an unnatural mother; finally, you fling at me my life of infamy and shame; I repeat that no infamy, no shame could attach to me until I became--your mistress!"
The bolt had shot home at last. Geoffrey leapt to his feet, and stood erect before her; but his strength must have failed him in that instant; for he could only gasp, "My mistress!"
"Your mistress. That is all I have been to you, so help me Heaven!"
"My wife! my own--married--lawful wife!"
"No, Geoffrey Ludlow, no! In that wretched lodging to which you had me conveyed, and where you pleaded your love, I told you--the truth indeed, but not the whole truth. Had you known me better then,--had you known me as you--as you know me now, you might have guessed that I was not one of those trusting creatures who are betrayed and ruined by fair words and beaming glances, come they from ever so handsome a man. One fact I concealed from you, thinking, as my Lionel had deserted me, and would probably never be seen again, that its revelation would prevent me from accepting the position which you were about to offer me; but the day that I fled from my home at Tenby I was married to Lionel Brakespere; and at this moment I am his wife, not merely in the sight of God, but by the laws of man!"
For some instants he did not speak, he did not move from the chair into which he had again fallen heavily during her speech: he sat gazing at her, his breathing thickened, impeded, gasping. At length he said:
"You're--you're speaking truth?"
"I am speaking gospel-truth, Geoffrey Ludlow. You brought it upon yourself: I would have saved you from the knowledge of it if I could, but you brought it upon yourself."
"Yes--as you say--on myself;" still sitting gazing vacantly before him, muttering to himself rather than addressing her. Suddenly, with a wild shriek, "The child! O God, the child!"
"For the child's sake, no less than for your own, you will hold your tongue on this matter," said Margaret, in her calm, cold, never-varying tone. "In this instance at least you will have sense enough to perceive the course you ought to take. What I have told you is known to none but you and me, and one other--who can be left with me to deal with. Let it be your care that the secret remains with us."
"But the child is a----"
"Silence, man!" she exclaimed, seizing his arm,--"silence now,--for a few moments at all events. When I am gone, proclaim your child's illegitimacy and your own position if you will, but wait till then. Now I can remain here no longer. Such things as I absolutely require I will send for. Goodbye, Geoffrey Ludlow."
She gathered her shawl around her, and moved towards the door. In an instant his lethargy left him; he sprang up, rushed before her, and stood erect and defiant.
"You don't leave me in this way, Margaret. You shall not leave me thus. I swear you shall not pass!"
She looked at him for a moment with a half-compassionate, half-interested face. This assumption of spirit and authority she had never seen in him before, and it pleased her momentarily. Then she said quietly:
"O yes, I shall. I am sure, Mr. Ludlow, you will not prevent my going to my husband!"
When the servant, after waiting more than an hour for dinner to be rung for, came into the room to see what was the cause of the protracted delay, she found her master prostrate on the hearth-rug, tossing and raving incoherently. The frightened girl summoned assistance; and when Dr. Brandram arrived, he announced Mr. Ludlow to be in the incipient stage of a very sharp attack of brain-fever.
It was one of those cheerless days not unfrequent at the end of September, which first tell us that such fine weather as we have had has taken its departure, and that the long dreary winter is close at hand. The air was moist and "muggy;" there was no freshening wind to blow away the heavy dun clouds which lay banked up thick, and had seemed almost motionless for days; there was a dead faint depression over all things, which weighed heavily on the spirits, impeded the respiration, and relaxed the muscles. It was weather which dashed and cowed even the lightest-hearted, and caused the careworn and the broken to think self-destruction less extraordinary than they had hitherto considered it.
About noon a man was looking out of one of the upper-windows of Long's Hotel on the dreary desert of Bond Street. He was a tall man; who with straight-cut features, shapely beard, curling light hair, and clear complexion, would have been generally considered more than good-looking, notwithstanding that his eyes were comparatively small and his mouth was decidedly sensual. That he was a man of breeding and society one could have told in an instant--could have told it by the colour and shape of his hands, by his bearing, by the very manner in which he, leaving the window from time to time, lounged round the room, his hands plunged in his pockets or pulling at his tawny beard. You could have told it despite of his dress, the like of which had surely never been seen before on any visitor to that select hostelry; for he wore a thick jacket and trousers of blue pilot-cloth, a blue flannel-shirt, with a red-silk handkerchief knotted round the collar, and ankle jack-boots. When he jumped out of the cab at the door on the previous day, he had on a round tarpaulin-hat, and carried over his arm an enormous pea-jacket with horn buttons; and as he brought no luggage with him save a small valise, and had altogether the appearance of the bold smugglers who surreptitiously vend cigars and silk-handkerchiefs, the hall-porter at first refused him admittance; and it was not until the proprietor had been summoned, and after a close scrutiny and a whispered name had recognised his old customer, that the strange-looking visitor was ushered upstairs. He would have a private room, he said; and he did not want it known that he was back just yet--did Jubber understand? If any body called, that was another matter: he expected his mother and one or two others; but he did not want it put in the papers, or any thing of that kind. Jubber did understand, and left Captain Lionel Brakespere to himself.
Captain Lionel Brakespere, just at that time, could have had no worse company. He had been bored to death by the terrible monotony of a long sea-voyage, and had found on landing in England that his boredom was by no means at an end. He had heard from his mother that "that awkward business had all been squared," as he phrased it; and that it was desirable he should return home at once, where there was a chance of a marriage by which "a big something was to be pulled off," as he phrased it again. So he had come back, and there he was at Long's; but as yet he was by no means happy. He was doubtful as to his position in society, as to how much of his escapade was known, as to whether he would be all right with his former set, or whether he would get the cold shoulder, and perhaps be cut. He could only learn this by seeing Algy Barford, or some other fellow of theclique; and every fellow was of course out of town at that infernal time of year. He must wait, at all events, until he had seen his mother, to whom he had sent word of his arrival. He might be able to learn something of all this from her. Meantime he had taken a private room; not that there was much chance of his meeting any one in the coffee-room, but some fellow might perhaps stop there for the night on his way through town; and he had sent for the tailor, and the hair-cutter fellow, and that sort of thing, and was going to be made like a Christian again--not like the cad he'd looked like in that infernal place out there.
He lounged round the room, and pulled his beard and yawned as he looked out of the window; pulling himself together afterwards by stretching out his hands and arms, and shrugging his shoulders and shaking himself, as if endeavouring to shake off depression. Hewasdepressed; there was no doubt about it. Out there it was well enough. He had been out there just long enough to have begun to settle down into his new life, to have forgotten old ties and old feelings; but here every thing jarred upon him. He was back in England certainly, but back in England in a condition which he had never known before. In the old days, at this time of year, he would have been staying down at some country-house, or away in some fellow's yacht, enjoying himself to the utmost; thoroughly appreciated and highly thought of,--a king among men and a favourite among women. Now he was cooped up in this deserted beastly place, which every one decent had fled from, not daring even to go out and see whether some old comrade, haply retained in town by duty, were not to be picked up, from whom he could learn the news, with whom he might have a game of billiards, or something to get through the infernally dragging wearisome time. He expected his mother. She was his truest and stanchest friend, after all, and had behaved splendidly to him all through this terrible business. It was better that she should come down there, and let him know exactly how the land lay. He would have gone home, but he did not know what sort of a reception he might have met with from the governor; and from all he could make out from his mother's letters, it was very likely that Caterham might cut up rough, and say or do something confoundedly unpleasant. It was an infernal shame of Caterham, and just like his straightlaced nonsense--that it was. Was not he the eldest son, and what did he want more? It was all deuced well for him to preach and moralise, and all that sort of thing; but his position had kept him out of temptation, else he might not be any better than other poor beggars, who had fallen through and come to grief.
So he reasoned with himself as he lounged round and round the room; and at last began to consider that he was a remarkably ill-used person. He began to hate the room and its furniture, altered the position of the light and elegant little couch, flung himself into the arm-chair, drumming his heels upon the floor, and rose from itleaving the chintz covering all tumbled, and the antimacassar all awry, drummed upon the window, stared at the prints already inspected--the "Hero and his Horse," which led him into reminiscences of seeing the old Duke with his white duck trousers and his white cravat, with the silver buckle gleaming at the back of his bowed head, at Eton on Montem days--glanced with stupid wonderment at Ward's "Dr. Johnson reading the Manuscript of theVicar of Wakefield," which conveyed to him no idea whatsoever--looked at a proof of "Hogarth painting the Muse of Comedy," and wondered "who was the old cock with the fat legs, drawing." He watched the few people passing through the streets, the very few hansom-cabs with drivers listlessly creeping up and down, as though conscious that the chances of their being hired were dismally remote, the occasional four-wheelers with perambulators and sand-spades on the top, and bronzed children leaning out of the windows, talking of the brief holiday over and the work-a-day life about to recommence--he watched all this, and, watching, worked himself up to such a pitch of desperation that he had almost determined to brave all chances of recognition, and sally forth into the streets, when the door opened and a waiter entering, told him that a lady was waiting to speak with him.
His mother had come at last, then? Let her be shown up directly.
Of all things Lionel Brakespere abhorred a "scene;" and this was likely to be an uncommonly unpleasant meeting. The Mater was full of feeling and that sort of thing, and would probably fling herself into his arms as soon as the waiter was gone, and cry, and sob, and all that sort of thing, and moan over him--make a fellow look so confoundedly foolish and absurd, by Jove! Must get that over as soon as possible--all the hugging and that--and then find out how matters really stood. So he took up his position close to the door; and as the footsteps approached, was a little astonished to hear his heart thumping so loudly.
The door opened, and passing the bowing waiter, who closed it behind her, a lady entered. Though her veil was down, Lionel saw instantly that it was not his mother. A taller, younger woman, with step graceful though hurried, an eager air, a strange nervous manner. As the door closed, she threw up her veil and stood revealed--Margaret!
He fell back a pace or two, and the blood rushed to his heart, leaving his face as pale as hers. Then, recovering himself, he caught hold of the table, and glaring at her, said hoarsely, "You here!"
There was something in his tone which jarred upon her instantly. She made a step forward, and held out her hand appealingly--"Lionel," she said, quite softly, "Lionel, you know me?"
"Know you?" he repeated. "O yes--I--I have that honour. I know you fast enough--though what you do here Idon'tknow. What do you do here?"
"I came to see you."
"Devilish polite, I'm sure. But--now you have seen me--" he hesitated and smiled. Not a pleasant smile by any means: one of those smiles in which the teeth are never shown. A very grim smile, which slightly wrinkled the lips, but left the eyes hard and defiant; a smile which Margaret knew of old, the sight of which recalled the commencement of scenes of violent passion and bitter upbraiding in the old times; a smile at sight of which Margaret's heart sank within her, only leaving her strength enough to say: "Well!"
"Well!" he repeated--"having seen me--having fulfilled the intention of your visit--had you not better--go?"
"Go!" she exclaimed--"leave you at once, without a look, without a word! Go! after all the long weary waiting, this hungering to see and speak with you to pillow my head on your breast, and twine my arms round you as I used to do in the dear old days! Go! in the moment when I am repaid for O such misery as you, Lionel, I am sure, cannot imagine I have endured--the misery of absence from you; the misery of not knowing how or where you were--whether even you were dead or alive; misery made all the keener by recollection of joy which I had known and shared with you. Go! Lionel, dearest Lionel, you cannot mean it! Don't try me now, Lionel; the delight at seeing you again has made me weak and faint. I am not so strong as I used to be. Lionel, dearest, don't try me too much."
Never had she looked more beautiful than now. Her arms were stretched out in entreaty, the rich tones of her voice were broken, tears stood in her deep-violet eyes, and the dead-gold hair was pushed off the dead-white brow. Her whole frame quivered with emotion--emotion which she made no attempt to conceal.
Lionel Brakespere had seated himself on the corner of the table, and was looking at her with curiosity. He comprehended the beauty of the picture before him, but he regarded it as a picture. On most other men in his position such an appeal from such a woman would have caused at least a temporary rekindling of the old passion; on him it had not the slightest effect, beyond giving him a kind of idea that the situation was somewhat ridiculous and slightly annoying. After a minute's interval he said, with his hands in his pockets, and his legs swinging to and fro:
"It's deuced kind of you to say such civil things about me, and I appreciate them--appreciate them, I assure you. But, you see the fact of the matter is, that I'm expecting my mother every minute, and if she were to find you here, I should be rather awkwardly situated."
"O," cried Margaret, "you don't think I would compromise you, Lionel? You know me too well for that. You know too well how I always submitted to be kept in the background--only too happy to live on your smiles, to know that you were feted and made much of."
"O, yes," said Lionel, simply; "you were always a deuced sensible little woman."
"And I sha'n't be in the way, and I sha'n't bore you. They need know nothing of my existence, if you don't wish it, any more than they used. And we shall lead again the dear old life--eh, Lionel?"
"Eh!" repeated he in rather a high key,--"the dear old life!"
"Ah, how happy I was!" said Margaret. "You, whose intervening time has been passed in action, can scarcely imagine how I have looked back on those days,--how eagerly I have longed for the time to come when I might have them again."
"Gad!" said he, "I don't exactly know about my time being passed in action. It's been horribly ghastly and melancholy, and deuced unpleasant, if you mean that."
"Then we will both console ourselves for it now, Lionel, We will forget all the misery we have suffered, and--"
"Y-es!" said he, interrupting her, swinging his leg a little more slowly, and looking quietly up into her face; "I don't exactly follow you in all this."
"You don't follow me?"
"N-no! I scarcely think we can be on the same tack, somehow."
"In what way?"
"In all this about leading again the old life, and living the days over again, and consoling ourselves, and that kind of thing."
"You don't understand it?"
"Well, I don't know about understanding it. All I mean to say is, I'm not going to have it."
But for something in his tone, Margaret might not have entirely comprehended what he sought to convey in his words, so enraptured was she at seeing him again. But in his voice, in his look, there was a bravado that was unmistakable. She clasped her hands together in front of her; and her voice was very low and tremulous, as she said,
"Lionel, what do you mean?"
"What do I mean? Well, it's a devilish awkward thing to say--I can't conceive how it came about--all through your coming here, and that sort of thing; but it appears to me that, as I said before, you're on the wrong tack. You don't seem to see the position."
"I don't indeed. For God's sake speak out!"
"There, you see!--that's just it; like all women, taking the thing so much in earnest, and--"
"So much in earnest? Is what would influence one's whole life a thing to be lightly discussed or laughed over? Is--"
"There you are again! That's exactly what I complain of. What have I to do with influencing your life?"
"All--every thing!"
"I did not know it, then, by Jove,--that's all Ive got to say. You're best out of it, let me tell you. My influence is a deuced bad one, at least for myself."
Once again the tone, reckless and defiant, struck harshly on her ear. He continued, "I was saying you did not seem to see the position. You and I were very good friends once upon a time, and got on very well together; but that would never do now."
She turned faint, sick, and closed her eyes; but remained silent.
"Wouldn't do a bit," he continued. "You know Ive been a tremendous cropper--must have thought deuced badly of me for cutting off in that way; but it was my only chance, by Jove; and now Ive come back to try and make all square. But I must keep deuced quiet and mind my p's and q's, or I shall go to grief again, like a bird."
She waited for a moment, and then she said faintly and slowly, "I understand you thoroughly now. You mean that it would be better for us to remain apart for some time yet?"
"For some time?--yes. Confound it all, Margaret!--you won't take a hint, and you make a fellow speak out and seem cruel and unkind, and all that kind of thing, that he does not want to. Look here. You ought never to have come here at all. It's impossible we can ever meet again."
She started convulsively; but even then she seemed unable to grasp the truth. Her earnestness brought the colour flying to her cheeks as she said hurriedly, "Why impossible, Lionel,--why impossible? If you are in trouble, who has such a right to be near you as I? If you want assistance and solace, who should give it you before me? That is the mistake you made, Lionel. When you were in your last trouble you should have confided in me: my woman's wit might have helped you through it; or at the worst, my woman's love would have consoled you in it."
She was creeping closer to him, but stopped as she saw his face darken and his arms clasp themselves across his breast.
"D--n it all!" said he petulantly; "you won't understand, I think. This sort of thing is impossible. Any sort of love, or friendship, or trust is impossible. Ive come back to set myself straight, and to pull out of all the infernal scrapes I got myself into before I left; and there's only one way to do it."
"And that is--"
"Well, if you will have it, you must. And that is--by making a good marriage."
She uttered a short sharp cry, followed by a prolonged wail, such as a stricken hare gives. Lionel Brakespere looked up at her; but his face never relaxed, and his arms still remained tightly folded across his breast. Then she spoke, very quietly and very sadly:
"By making a good marriage! Ah! then I see it all. That is why you are annoyed at my having come to you. That is why you dread the sight of me, because it reminds you that I am in the way; reminds you of the existence of the clog round your neck that prevents your taking up this position for which you long; because it reminds you that you once sacrificed self to sentiment, and permitted yourself to be guided by love instead of ambition. That is what you mean?"
His face was darker than ever as he said, "No such d--d nonsense. I don't know what you're talking about; no more do you I should think, by the way in which you are going on. Whatareyou talking about?"
He spoke very fiercely; but she was not cowed or dashed one whit. In the same quiet voice she said: "I am talking about myself--your wife!"
Lionel Brakespere sprung from the corner of the table on which he had been sitting, and stood upright, confronting her.
"O, that's it, is it?" in a hard low voice. "That's your game, eh? I thought it was coming to that. Now, look here," shaking his fist at her,--"drop that for good and all; drop it, I tell you, or it will be the worse for you. Let me hear of your saying a word about your being my wife, and, so help me God, I'll be the death of you! That's plain, isn't it? You understand that?"
She never winced; she never moved. She sat quietly under the storm of his rage; and when he had finished speaking, she said:
"You can kill me, if you like,--you very nearly did, just before you left me,--but so long as I am alive I shall be your wife!"
"Will you, by George?--not if there's law in the land, I can tell you. What have you been doing all this time? How have you been living since Ive been away? How do you come here, dressed like a swell as you are, when I left you without money? I shall want to know all that; and I'll find out, you may take your oath. There are heaps of ways of discovering those things now, and places where a fellow has only to pay for it, and he may know any thing that goes on about any body. I don't think you would particularly care to have those inquiries made aboutyou, eh?"
She was silent. He waited a minute; then, thinking from her silence that he had made a point, went on:
"You understand me at last, don't you? You see pretty plainly, I should think, that being quiet and holding your tongue is your best plan don't you? If you're wise you'll do it; and then, when I'm settled, I may make you some allowance--if you want it, that's to say,--if your friends whove been so kind to you while Ive been away don't do it. But if you open your mouth on this matter, if you once hint that you've any claim on me, or send to me, or write to me, or annoy me at all, I'll go right in at once, find out all you've been doing, and then see what they'll say to you in the Divorce Court. You hear?"
Still she sat perfectly silent. He was apparently pleased with his eloquence and its effect, for he proceeded:
"This is all your pretended love for me, is it? This is what you call gratitude to a fellow, and all that kind of thing? Turning up exactly when you're not wanted, and coolly declaring that you're going in to spoil the only game that can put me right and bring me home! And this is the woman who used to declare in the old days that she'd die for me, and all that! I declare I didn't think it of you, Madge!"
"Don't call me by that name!" she screamed, roused at last; "don't allude to the old days, in God's name, or I shall go mad! The recollection of them, the hope of their renewal, has been my consolation in all sorts of misery and pain. I thought that to hear them spoken of by you would have been sufficient recompense for all my troubles: now to hear them mentioned by your lips agonises and maddens me; I--"
"This is the old story," he interrupted; "you haven't forgotten that business, I see. This is what you used to do before, when you got into one of these states. It frightened me at first, but I got used to it; and Ive seen a great deal too much of such things to care for it now, I can tell you. If you make this row, I'll ring the bell--upon my soul I will!"
"O, Lionel, Lionel!" said Margaret, stretching out her hands in entreaty towards him--"don't speak so cruelly! You don't know all I have gone through for you--you don't know how weak and ill I am. But it is nothing to what I will do. You don't know how I love you, Lionel, my darling! how I have yearned for you; how I will worship and slave for you, so that I may only be with you. I don't want to be seen, or heard of, or known, so long as I am near you. Only try me and trust me, only let me be your own once more."
"I tell you it's impossible," said he petulantly. "Woman, can't you understand? I'm ruined, done, shut up, cornered, and the only chance of my getting through is by my marriage with some rich woman, who will give me her money in exchange for--There, d--n it all,--it's no use talking any more about it. If you can't see the position, I can't show it you any stronger; and there's an end of it. Only, look here!--keep your mouth shut, or it will be the worse for you. You understand that?--the worse for you."
"Lionel!" She sprang towards him and clasped her hands round his arm. He shook her off roughly, and moved towards the door.
"No more foolery," he said in a low deep voice. "Take my warning now, and go. In a fortnight's time you can write to me at the Club, and say whether you are prepared to accept the conditions I have named. Now, go."
He held the door open, and she passed by him and went out. She did not shrink, or faint, or fall. Somehow, she knew not how, she went down the stairs and into the street. Not until she had hailed a cab, and seated herself in it, and was being driven off, did she give way. Then she covered her face with her hands, and burst into a passionate fit of weeping, rocking herself to and fro, and exclaiming, "And it is for this that I have exiled myself from my home, and trampled upon a loving heart! O my God! my God; if I could only have loved Geoffrey Ludlow!--O, to love as I do, such a man as this!"