Helen Manningtree and Mrs. Chisholm pursued their customary mode of life at Knockholt Park after, as before, the departure of Sir Laurence. Helen missed the grave and courteous gentleman whom she had learned to like so much, and her at first distant association with whom had grown into intimacy and confidence. Sir Laurence was a most agreeable companion; well-informed; and entirely without any sort of pretension. He had seen a great deal of the world--in the geographical sense of the term, as well as in every other; and his anecdotes of travel and descriptions of foreign lands had unflagging interest for Helen, whose experience had indeed been narrow, but whose reading had been various and extensive. In the thoughtful mood into which Alsager had fallen--in the serious frame of mind which had become almost habitual with him now--he would probably have been voted a bore by "society," supposing that he had placed himself within reach of its suffrages; but Helen knew nothing of the tastes and fashions of the great world, and to her Laurence was all that was most companionable and pleasant. He was not indeed so gifted, so cultivated a creature as Cuthbert Farleigh; but then,--who was? who could be expected to be? And Helen, whose circle of acquaintance included a dozen unmarried men at the most, believed with perfect good faith that she had exercised the soundest judgment and discretion in her selection of the Reverend Cuthbert, from "all the world," as the individual to whom alone she could render unqualified respect and intrust the happiness of her future life. That resolution, before mentioned, by which the curate had bound himself, to himself, to wait until he should be a bishop, or for the occurrence of any other equally improbable event, was rather in the way of Helen's happiness, either present or future; but she was not much disquieted by the delay. Cuthbert had seen no symptoms of an alarming nature to indicate any "intentions" on Colonel Alsager's part prior to Sir Peregrine's death, and he was ignorant of the existence of the old Baronet's letter, in which he had urged a marriage with Helen upon Sir Laurence. He had begun to think, within a very few days of Colonel Alsager's arrival at Knockholt, that he had been foolishly apprehensive in the first instance. Was it at all likely that, at Colonel Alsager's age, and in his position, with his opportunities of seeing, and recommending himself to, the fairest and most fascinating women in the world, he should be entirely heart-free and ready to fix his affections upon his father's ward? Of course Cuthbert was quite aware that Laurence Alsager could never by any possibility have met any one half so worthy of admiration and of love as Helen Manningtree; but he was a young man of candid mind, and ready to acknowledge that a man might be preoccupied to the extent of being unable to recognize the unapproachable excellence of Helen without being guilty of absolute stupidity or unpardonable bad taste. So, on the whole, these young people were tolerably comfortable in their minds, and felt an equable though unexpressed confidence in their mutual affection and in the future. The circumstance of Sir Peregrine Alsager's will making no mention of Helen--in fact, having been made before she became his ward, and during Lady Alsager's lifetime--had taken them both by surprise, and affected them differently. Helen had always known that her own very moderate income--which Sir Peregrine had always supplemented by a liberal allowance--was all that she actually possessed, or had any positive right to expect. But she had never entertained any doubt that her guardian intended to leave her a handsome provision, and she experienced a considerable shock when she learned that he had not done so. She could not understand it, and she was still more puzzled and surprised when Sir Laurence told her that he found himself a very much richer man than he had ever expected to be. Helen had too much good sense, and even in her secluded, life had learned to estimate facts and to eschew sentimental fallacies; so she did not affect to be indifferent on the subject, or to think that it was quite as well to be poor as to be rich, to be dependent as to be independent; but she did think and feel with very consoling sincerity that Cuthbert would have no more scruples about asking her to share his lot when her own had ceased to be of a nature to contrast with it. So she accepted her altered position cheerfully, and asked Sir Laurence what he would advise her to do, with a true-hearted freedom from anger or jealousy which elevated her to a great height in the mind of the new Baronet. Sir Laurence made her an evasive answer, and begged her to defer any decision on the subject until his return to Knockholt. He was going away, first to town, and then abroad, he told her, most probably; and she and Mrs. Chisholm must remain and take charge there for him. He would keep up the establishment just as it had been, with the exception of the stable department. Helen acquiesced with great readiness. She was too completely a lady to feel any awkwardness in such an arrangement, and she knew well that Laurence's interests would be best served by her accepting his offer.
"I will stay here then," she said, "and go on just as usual. I don't know whether you are aware that I was Sir Peregrine's almoner. Am I to be yours? The farm-bailiffs, the keepers, and all the rest of your people, are my excellent good friends. I shall get on capitally with them, and go my old rounds in the village, and so forth. But I want to know what I am to do about the charities, the schools, and the promiscuous applications to the 'great house.'"
"I would give you unlimited credit with Todd, Helen, for all your requirements in that way, but that I fear you would be too conscientious to make sufficient use of it. But stay; the best plan will be to arrange it with Farleigh. Yes; I'll speak to him, and tell Todd he is to give him anything he asks for. I daresay he won't mind a little additional trouble in the cause of his poor people; and you can do the visiting and all that as usual, and report to him."
Sir Laurence looked at Helen as he made this remarkably convenient proposition for rendering the intercourse between the Park and the Rectory (for Cuthbert lived at the rector's house; that is to say, in a corner of it) more frequent than it was at present. Helen grew extremely red, and then turned the conversation.
"So, I suppose," said she to Mrs. Chisholm, after Sir Laurence had taken his leave, and the two women were talking over his visit and all the late events,--"so I suppose we shall live here until Sir Laurence is married; and then, when he brings a handsome, dashing, fashionable Lady Alsager down here, you and I, dear old woman, will go and live in the village; perhaps that pretty little house with the roses and the little white fountain, just big enough for the two ducks that are always swimming in it, may be vacant then; and I daresay Laurence would give it to us rent-free, and we should be very snug there; but we would not have ducks, except for dinner; and Lady Alsager would have us up to tea, I daresay, when there were no fine people at the Park. What do you say to all this, Mrs. Chisholm? doesn't it sound pleasant? What a cosy little place it is! don't you think so?"
"My dear Helen, how you do run on?" said the calmer Mrs. Chisholm; "you are quite in spirits to-day."
She was; for in her sketch of the rural abode with the roses there had been an unmentioned element. Helen thought the house would be quite the thing for a curate. Helen was always thinking about a curate; and in that respect there was considerable sympathy between her and her companion, for Mrs. Chisholm was almost always thinking of a curate too. Helen's curate was living; Mrs. Chisholm's was dead. The girl's heart was in a dream of the future; the woman's, in the memory of the sacred past.
Cuthbert Farleigh had received the intelligence of Sir Peregrine Alsager's unaccountable conduct towards Helen Manningtree with mingled feelings. He was by no means a commonplace young man, though not the light of learning and the mirror of chivalry which Helen believed him. Her over-estimate of him did him no harm, for he entertained a tolerably correct opinion of himself; and if the future were destined to unite them, it would probably not militate against her own happiness either. The mistake she made was in degree, not in kind,--a distinction which makes all possible difference. A sensible and dutiful woman may find out that her husband is not possessed of the qualities with which she has believed her lover to be endowed, to the extent with which she accredited him, and her love and esteem may not suffer by the discovery. She would probably recognize that if she had over-rated him (and what a dreadful woman she would be if she had not!) on some points, she had also failed to discover his merits on others, until the intimacy of domestic life had restored the balance of judgment. The mistake, which lays a woman's life waste in its rectification, is that which endows a man with qualities which he does not possess at all,--the mistake which leads to the conviction that the man she has married is not the man she loved, and burdens her with an actual duty and a lost ideal. If Helen Manningtree were ever to marry Cuthbert Farleigh, she would incur no such danger; she would have to pay no such price for the indulgence of undisciplined imagination. He was a good and a clever man, and was as highly and wholly disinterested as it is possible for a human being to be, to whom the consideration of meat, drink, clothing, and house-rent is one of rational importance.
He regarded his position with respect to Helen as very much improved by the fact that Sir Peregrine Alsager had not left her the fortune, which the gossips of the neighbourhood had taken for granted, and even announced "on authority." On the other hand, he grieved that she should be deprived of the luxurious home and the opulent manner of life to which she had been so long habituated; and as he was not at all a conceited man,--albeit flattered and exalted by all the ladies in the parish, which is ordinarily the bane of curates,--it did occur to him that perhaps Helen might have been better and happier if Sir Peregrine had left her the fortune, and he had adhered to his resolution of leaving her to its enjoyment, unwooed by him. Such a supposition was not likely to last long; its cold chill would pass off in the sunshine of free and acknowledged love. Free and acknowledged love? Yes, the curate was going to tell Helen, as soon as he should have learned the particulars of her position, that she had not erred in believing that he loved her, aid to ask her to take all the risks and all the cares of a life which could never have any brilliancy or any luxury to offer her, for the sole consideration of sharing them with him. He had not the smallest doubt of his success. Helen's nature was too true, and too well known to him, to render a misgiving possible; still the near approach of the assurance of his hope made him grave and solemn. The orphan-girl loved and trusted him; without him she was alone--alone in a world which is not very easily gotten through with the best of help and companionship. The sense of a great responsibility rested upon him, and his heart was lifted up in no merely conventional or professional prayer. So Cuthbert made up his mind, and felt very quiet and solemn about it. That mood would pass away; it would be succeeded by the dazzling delight, the splendid triumph, the fertile fancy, and superhuman hope and exultation of love, as it ought to be; but it is a good omen for any woman whose lover addresses himself to his wooing in such a temper.
Thus it fell out that Helen and Cuthbert, standing together by a window which opened on the broad stone terrace, and watching poor Sir Peregrine's peacocks, as they marched up and down outside, talked of a future which was to be common to them both, and was to date from the expiration of the year of mourning for Sir Peregrine Alsager. Helen had told Cuthbert how she had sketched such a charming picture for Mrs. Chisholm, of the house with the roses; and they had talked a good deal of the nonsense incidental to their position, and which is so much pleasanter than sense,--about whether she had thought of him; and if she had, why she had?--for there is a subtle resemblance to Jack Bunsby's monologue in the dialogues of lovers;--and then the conversation drifted away to Sir Laurence Alsager.
"We must tell him, my own Helen," said the curate; "he has been very kind to you, and I daresay will be very much disgusted at your making so poor a marriage."
The girl looked reproachfully at him, but smiled in a moment, and said, "Go on, Cuthbert; you are not worth contradicting, you know."
"No, but--" said Cuthbert, remonstrating, "you must let me set the world's view before you. No doubt Sir Laurence will think you very foolish; but he will always be our friend,--I feel sure of that,--though I know he is so different, and lives in so different a world, under so different a system. Sometimes, Helen, I have had an idea that he found out my secret; though I never could see an inch farther into his life and his heart than it was his good pleasure I should look. Yes, my darling, he must know all about us, and soon; for you must remember that it may make a difference in all his plans and arrangements, if he finds you are not to remain here after next spring."
"I hardly think it will do that," said Helen; "I fancy he will establish Mrs. Chisholm hereen permanence; that is to say, until he marries."
"Is he likely to marry? Have you heard anything of that sort?"
"O no! he has never talked of any girls to me. He has never said anything the least like intending to marry. The only woman he ever speaks of--and he does talk of her, and sometimes hears from her--is Lady Mitford; you remember, you told me about her marriage,--the daughter of Mr. Stanfield, your old tutor, you know."
"Of course, I remember. How strangely things come about! it really seems as if there were only two sets of people in the world; for one never meets any one with whom one has not some link of communication! And Georgie Stanfield is Laurence Alsager's female crony and correspondent! How and where is she?"
"In town, I believe; but I don't know much about her. He used to speak of her vaguely, in talking to me of the great world and its hollowness, as of one whom he greatly liked and esteemed, and who was unfortunately circumstanced. He said he would have asked Lady Mitford down here in the autumn, if he could have asked her without her husband; but that, of course, was impossible, and he could not invite Sir Charles Mitford. I believe they are very unhappy. Think of that, Cuthbert,--a husband and wife unhappy! a splendid home, with rank and wealth, and misery!" The girl lifted solemn eyes full of wonder and compassion to her lover's face. "Sir Laurence wished that I could know her, for her sake, he kindly said."
"I wish you could, Helen; you would comfort her and do her good: and yet I would not have you saddened, my child, and made wise in the possibilities of life, as you must be if you had the confidence of an unhappy wife. You are better without it, darling--far better without it."
Then the curate remembered the alarm he had felt when Colonel Alsager made his appearance at Knockholt Park; and he confessed it to Helen, who laughed at him, and pretended to scold him, but who was not a little pleased all the time.
"You stupid Cuthbert!" said the young lady, to whom the curate had ceased to be an object of awe since their engagement; "it never came into Laurence's head to wish to marry me; and I am certain it never crossed any human being's imagination but your own that such a thing could ever happen."
The Reverend Cuthbert was reluctantly obliged to break off the conversation at this point, and go about his parish business. So he took leave of Helen, enjoining her to write to Sir Laurence that very day, and to make him acquainted with their engagement,--as Mrs. Chisholm, who had just entered the room, and to whom he referred the matter, gave it as her decided opinion that the communication should be made by Helen.
The post was not a subject of such overwhelming importance at Knockholt Park, its punctuality was not so earnestly discussed, nor was there as much excitement on its arrival, as at the generality of country-houses. Mrs. Chisholm had very few correspondents; Helen had only two, exclusive of Sir Laurence; and no letters were "due" at this particular time: hence it happened that the ladies often left the breakfast-table before the arrival of the letter-bag, and that its contents awaited their attention undisturbed through more hours of the day than most people would believe possible. Mrs. Chisholm never read the newspapers until the evening, and Helen never read them at all, being content with Cuthbert's version of public affairs. On this particular morning, however, Helen thought proper to remain in the breakfast-room until the post should arrive. The truth was she shrank from the task of writing to Sir Laurence, and she knew she ought to set about it at once; so she lingered and fidgeted about the breakfast-room long after Mrs. Chisholm had betaken herself to her daily confabulation with the housekeeper. Thus she was alone when the letter-bag was brought in, and she turned over its contents, expecting to find them of the usual uninteresting nature. There were several letters for Sir Laurence "to be forwarded," a number of circulars, a few letters for some of the servants, the customary newspapers, and lastly--a missive for Helen herself. It was a large letter in a blue envelope, and directed in a lawyer-like hand Helen opened it, feeling a little frightened, and found that the cover enclosed a packet addressed to her, in the hand of Sir Laurence Alsager, and marked "Private."
"What on earth can Laurence be writing to me about that requires such precaution?" thought Helen anxiously; and then she rang the bell, handed over the other letters to the footman for proper distribution, and retired to her own room, where she read the following:
"Dover.
"My Dear Helen,--I am devoting the last evening which I shall pass in England for an indefinite period, to writing to you a letter, which I shall take the precaution of sending so that its existence may be known to none but you, at the present time. A certain portion of its contents must necessarily be communicated to others; but you will use your discretion, upon which in this, and all other things, I rely with absolute confidence.
"You must not let this preamble alarm you; there is nothing to occasion you any trouble or sorrow in what I am about to say to you. It will be a long story, and, I daresay, a clumsily--told one, for I am eminently unready with my pen; but it will interest you, Helen, for my sake and for your own. When I tell you that this story is not a new one,-that it does not include anything that has occurred after I left Knockholt, though I am indirectly impelled to write it to you by circumstances which have happened since then,--you will wonder why I did not tell it to you in person, during the period when our companionship was so close and easy,--so delightful to me, and I am quite sure I may add, so pleasant to you. I could not tell you then, because I was not sufficiently sure of myself. I had an experiment to try--an experience to undergo--before I could be certain, even in the limited sense of human security, of my own future; and until these were over and done with, all was vague for me. They are over and done with now: and I am going to tell you all about yourself, and a good deal about myself.
"You know that among the sorrows of my life there is one which must be life-long. It is the remembrance of my conduct to my father, and of the long tacit estrangement which preceded our last meeting, and which, but for a providential interposition, might never have been even so far atoned for and mitigated as it was before his death. It would be difficult to account for this estrangement; it is impossible to excuse it; there never was any reproach on either side,--indeed there could not have been on mine, for the fault was all my own,--and there never was any explanation. My father doubtless believed, as he was justified in believing, that any wish of his would have little weight with me;--he seldom expressed one; and I am convinced that one thing on which he had set his heart very strongly, one paramount desire, he cautiously abstained from expressing, that he might, by keeping me ignorant of it during his lifetime, give it the additional chance of realization which it might derive from the sanctity of a posthumous appeal to the feelings of an undutiful and careless son, when those feelings should be intensified by unavailing regret. I did learn, dear Helen, after the barrier of eternal silence had been placed between my father and me, that he had cherished one paramount desire, and that he had resorted to such an expedient in order to induce me to respect and to fulfil it.
"My amazement and discomfiture when I found that my father's will was of so far distant a date that it made no mention of you were great. I could not understand why he had not supplemented the will which existed by another, in which you would be amply provided for, and his wishes concerning your future fully explained. My long and wilful absence from my father had prevented my having any real acquaintance with you. To me you were merely a name, seldom heard, hardly remembered. Had I not gone to Knockholt when I did, you would have remained so; and there was no one else who could be supposed to take an obligatory interest in you. How came it, I thought, that my father had taken no precaution against such a contingency--which, in fact, had so nearly been a reality? You will say he trusted to the honour and the gentlemanly feeling of his son; and so I read the riddle also; but reflection showed me that I was wrong. A more strictly just man never lived than my father; and he must have been strictly unjust had he allowed the future fortunes of a young girl whom he had reared and educated--who had been to him as a daughter for years--to depend upon the caprice or the generosity of a man to whom she was an utter stranger, and between whom and herself the tie of blood was of the slightest description. Nor was delicacy less characteristic of my father than justice. (Ah, Helen, how keenly I can see all these things now that he is gone!) He would have shrunk as sensitively as you would from anything that would have obliged you and me to meet for the first time in the characters of pensioned and pensioner. I knew all this; and I was utterly confounded at the absence of any later will. I had the most complete and diligent search made; but in vain. There was no will, Helen, but there was a letter. In the drawer of the desk which my father always used, there was a letter. How do you think it was addressed? Not to 'my son'--not to 'Colonel Alsager;' but to 'Sir Laurence Alsager, Bart.'! It was a painful letter--painful and precious; painful because a tone of sadness, of disappointment, of content in feeling that the writer had nearly reached his term of life, pervaded it; precious because it was full of pardon and peace, of the fulness of love for his only son. I cannot let you see the letter,--it is too sacred for any eyes but those for which it was intended; but I can tell you some of its contents, and I can make you understand its tone. As a mother speaks to her son going forth into the arena of life, the night before their parting, in the dark, on her knees, by his bedside, with her head upon his pillow; as she speaks of the time to come, when she will watch and wait for him, of the time that is past, whose memories are so precious, which she bids him remember and be brave and true; as she makes light of all his faults and shortcomings,--so did my dear old father--my father who had grown gray and old; alone, when I might have been with him, and was not--write to me. God bless him, and God forgive me! He never reproached me, living; what punishment he has inflicted upon me, dead! The letter was long; and it varied, I think, through every key in which human tenderness can be sung. But enough of this.
"A portion of the contents concerned you nearly, my dear Helen. I can repeat them to you briefly. I knew, and you know, that your father and my father--very distant relatives--had been playmates in boyhood, and attached friends in manhood. We knew that your father died on his voyage home from India, and just after he had consigned you and your black nurse to the care of the captain of the ship, to be sent, on landing, to Knockholt Park. I believe you have your father's letter to my father, in which he solemnly, but fearlessly, entreats his protection for the orphan child, whose credentials it is to form. He had left your mother and her baby in an alien grave at Barrackpore, and I suppose he had not the strength to live for you only, 'little Nelly,' as they called you then. At all events, he died; and I knew in a vague kind of way about that, and my father's care of you, and how you grew up with him, and made his home cheerful and happy, which his only son left carelessly, and forsook for long. The letter recapitulated all this, and told me besides, that your mother had been my father's first love. Perhaps she was also his only love--God knows. He was a good husband to my mother during their brief married life, I am sure; for I remember her well; and she was always smiling and happy. But the girl he loved had preferred Robert Manningtree with nothing but his commission, to Peregrine Alsager with a large estate and a baronetcy for his fortunate future. My father,preux chevalierthat he was, did not forget to tell me that she never repented or had reason to regret that preference. Thus, Helen, you were a legacy to him, bequeathed not alone by friendship, but by love. As such he accepted you; as such he prized you, calm and undemonstrative as he was; as such it was the cherished purpose of his life to intrust you to me--not that I was to be your guardian in his place, but that I was to be your husband. He thought well of me, in spite of all, you see; he did not despair of his ungracious son, or he never would have dreamed of conferring so great a privilege on me, of suffering you to incur so great a risk. He had had this darling project so strongly in his mind, and yet had been so convinced that any betrayal of it to me would only prevent my seeking you, that my persistent neglect of the old home had a double bitterness for him; and at length, two years ago, hearing a rumour that I was about to marry one of the beauties of the season, he relinquished it, and determined to make a will, bequeathing to you the larger portion of his unentailed property. The rumour was true as to my intentions, but false as to my success. The lady in question jilted me for a richer marriage, thank God! I don't say this from pique, but from conviction; for I have seen her and her husband, and I have seen her since her husband's death. She did not hold her perjured state long; nor did she win the prize for which she jilted me. I am a much richer man than her husband ever was, and he has left her comparatively poor. In a storm of rage and disgust I left England, without going to Knockholt--without having seen you since your childhood--without bidding my father farewell. This grieved him much: but I was free; I was not married. I was labouring under angry and bitter feelings towards all womankind. I should come home again, my father thought, still unmarried, and his hope would be fulfilled. He did not make the will. I remained away much longer than he supposed I should have done, and not nearly so long as in my anger and mortification I had determined to remain. You know the rest, dear Helen--you know that I lingered and dallied with time and duty, and did not go to Knockholt until it was all but too late. A little while before he met with the accident, my father had written a letter somewhat similar in purport; but he had not seen me then, and I suppose it was not warmly affectionate enough for the old man's liking, and he wrote that which I now mention at many, and, I fear, painful, intervals of his brief convalescence. It was finished just a week before he died.
"You will have read all this with emotion, Helen; and I daresay at this point your feelings will be very painful. Mine are little less so, and the task of fully explaining them to you is delicate and difficult. The truthfulness, the candour of your nature will come to my assistance when you read, as their remembrance aids me while I write. My first impulse on reading my father's letter was to exult in the thought that there was anything possible to me by which his wishes could be respected. My second--and it came speedily--was to feel that the marriage he desired between us never could take place. Are you reassured, Helen? Have you been frightened at the image your fancy has created, of a debt of gratitude to be discharged to Sir Peregrine at the cost of your own happiness, or disavowed at the cost of seeming cold, ungrateful, and undutiful? Have you had a vision of me in the character of an importunate suitor, half imploring a concession, half pressing a right, and wholly distasteful to you? If you have, dismiss it, for it is only a vision, and never will be realized to distress you. Why do I say this? Because I know that not only do you not love me, but that you do love Cuthbert Farleigh. Forgive the plainness and directness with which I allude to a fact yet perhaps unavowed to him, but perfectly well known by and acknowledged to yourself. No betrothal could make you more truly his than you have been by the tacit promise of your own heart--I know not for how long, but before I came to Knockholt Park, I am sure. If I had not seen the man, I should equally have discerned the fact, for I am observant; and though I have, I hope, outlived the first exuberance of masculine conceit, I did not err in imputing the tranquil, ladylike indifference with which you received me to a preoccupied mind, rather than to an absence of interest or curiosity about the almost unknown son of your guardian. Life at Knockholt Park has little variety or excitement to offer; and the advent of a Guardsman, a demi-semi-cousin, and an heir-apparent, would have made a little more impression, would it not, had not the Church secured its proper precedence of the Army? I perceived the state of things with satisfaction; for I liked you very much from the first, and I thought Cuthbert a very good fellow; just the man to hold your respect all his life long and to make you happy. In my reflections on your share, then, in the impossibility of the fulfilment of my father's request, I experienced little pain. My own was not so easily disposed of after his death as during his life. I was destined to frustrate his wishes. Had you and I met, as we ought to have done, long before; had I had the good fortune to have seen you and learned to contrast you with the meretricious and heartless of your sex, who had frittered away my heart and soured my temper, perhaps, Helen, I might have won you, and the old man might have been made happy.
"We met under circumstances which made any such destiny for us impossible, for reasons which equally affected both. My preoccupation was of a different sort from yours; it had neither present happiness nor future hope in it,--it had much of the elements of doubt and fear; but it was powerful, far more powerful than I then thought, and powerful it will always be. All this is enigmatical to you, dear Helen, and it must remain so. I would not have said anything about it, but that I owed it to you, to the friendship which I trust will never know a chill, to prevent your supposing that your share in the frustration of my father's wishes is disproportionate to mine. I would not have you think--as without this explanation you might justly think--that I magnanimously renounce my claims, my pretensions to your love in favour of the actual possessor. No, Helen; for us both our meeting was too late. We were not to love each other; I was not to be suffered to win the heart of a true and priceless woman, such as you are, when I had not a heart to give her in exchange. But though we were not to love each other, we were destined to be friends--friends in the fullest and firmest sense; and believe me, friendship between a man and woman, with its keen sympathy, its unrestrained, confidence, and its perfect toleration, is a tie as valuable as it is rare.
"Now I have told you almost all I have to tell about my father's letter. I suppose we shall both feel, and continue always to feel, that there was something hard, something almost cruel in the fate which marked him out for disappointment, and you and me for its ministers. But this must be; and we must leave it so, and turn to the present and vital interests of our lives. We shall think of him and mourn for him none the less that we will speak of this no more.
"Strong as was my father's desire for our marriage, dear Helen, and his persuasion that it would come to pass, in his abstraction and his want of observation he failed to take Farleigh into account; or perhaps, like all old people, he did not realize the fact that the child, the girl, had grown into a woman. He did not quite forget to provide for the contingency of its non-fulfilment. 'If, for any reason, it may not be. Lance,' he wrote--'if Florence Hillyard's child is not to be the mistress of the home which might have been her mother's, see that she has a dowry befitting my daughter and your sister.' No sentence in his letter touched me more with its simple trust than did that.
"I have seen very clearly into the state of your feelings, as I am sure you allow, and I don't think I have blundered about that of Farleigh's. He has not told you in formal words the fact patent to every one's observation, that he entirely reciprocates your devotion (don't be vexed, Helen; one may pet a curate, you know), because he's poor, and you were likely to be rich. He believes, as every one believes, that you are as poor as himself; a belief, by the way, which does not say much for the general estimate ofmycharacter--but that does not matter; and in that faith he will not hesitate any longer. Will you be discreet, and say nothing at all of my intention of carrying out this privately-expressed wish of my father? Will you prove your possession of the qualities I give you credit for, by leaving Cuthbert in the belief that he will have in you a portionless bride, save for your dowry of beauty and worth? I really almost think you will, Helen; especially as, though you do not need any further confirmation of Farleigh's nobility of mind than the silence he has hitherto kept, and the alacrity with which he will now doubtless break it, it will be well for Mrs. Chisholm and for myself, your only friends, to know how amply he fulfils our expectations. I almost think you will; but I intend to make assurance doubly sure by not giving you the slightest satisfaction on the subject of my intentions. When your marriage is near, you shall learn how I mean to fulfil my father's last injunction, but not till then; and if you tell Farleigh anything about it until I give you leave, I vow I won't give you a shilling.
"You see I have written myself into good spirits, dear Helen; the thought of you cheers me almost as your kindly presence would do. What more have I to say? Not much more of myself, or of yourself, save that the dearest and warmest wish I entertain is for your welfare.
"I shall send from my first halting-place on the Continent full instructions to Todd, in case my absence should be much prolonged. I cannot speak with any certainty of its duration; it does not depend on my own inclination.
"And now, in conclusion, I am going to ask you to do something for me, which I shall take as the truest proof that the friendship I prize and rely upon is really mine. I am sure you have not forgotten the friend I mentioned to you--Lady Mitford. I have seen her in town, and found her in much grief and perplexity. The cause of her sorrow is not one on which I can venture to enter to you; but it is deep-seated, incurable. I am much distressed for her, and can in no way defend or comfort her. She was an only child, motherless, and brought up in seclusion by her father,--an exemplary country clergyman, but a man whose knowledge of the world was quite theoretical and elementary, and who could not have trained her so that she would know how to encounter such trials as hers; he probably did not know that such could exist. As I told you at Knockholt, she has no female friend; unfortunately she has female enemies--one in particular. My great wish is to procure her the one, and defend her from the other. I may fail in the latter object; but you, Helen, can aid me, if you will, to fulfil the former. I have spoken to her about you, and have assured her that she might trust in your kindliness, though your inexperience is far greater than her own. I cannot bring you together now--there is no time or opportunity; but I want you to promise me that, if at any time during my absence from England Lady Mitford asks you to come to her, you will go promptly, and will be to her all that is in you to be to one unjustly oppressed, cruelly betrayed, and sorely afflicted. Will you do this for me, Helen? and will you give me an assurance that I may rely upon you to do it (this is the only portion of my letter which you need reply to, if you have any feeling that you would rather not) before next Wednesday, and addressed to me at the Hotel Meurice, Paris?--Always affectionately yours,
"Laurance Alsager."
Sir Laurence Alsager's angry mood was of short duration. The day after that interview in which he had spoke words that he had never intended to speak, and heard words which he had never thought to hear, he felt that a great change had fallen upon him. This woman who had rejected his love, not because she did not reciprocate it, but because it was unlawful; this woman who had had the strongest and subtlest temptation which can assail the human heart set before her--the temptation at once of consolation and of retaliation, of revenge upon the husband who had deceived and the enemy who had injured her, and who had met it with utterly disarming rectitude; this woman to whom duty was dearer than love,--she had changed the face of the world and the meaning of life for him. He had many times believed a lie, and not seldom had he worshipped a sham; but he has detected the one and exposed the other, and gone on his way not much the worse for the delusion, and a good deal wiser for the experience. Life had, however, never brought him anything like this before, and he knew it never would again. He should never love, he could never love, any other woman than this peerless one who could never be his, from whom her own mandate--he knew its power and unchangeableness--had severed him, whom he must leave in the grasp of sorrow and perplexity. He mused long and painfully over the interview of the preceding day, and he asked himself how it was that, dear as she had been to him, early as he had ceased to struggle against her influence, he had never understood the strength, the dignity, the perfect rectitude of her character before. It never occurred to Sir Laurence that he had not looked for these qualities; that he had never studied her disposition but in the most superficial way; that his love for her was founded upon no fine theory whatsoever; that it had sprung up partly in admiration of her exceeding beauty, partly in chivalrous compassion for her disastrous situation, and found its remaining constituent in a hearty contempt and abhorrence of Sir Charles Mitford. In short, Sir Laurence did not understand that he had done just as other people do,--fallen in love with a woman first, and found out what sort of woman she really was afterwards.
Sir Laurence's reverie had lasted a long time before the consideration of his own immediate movements occupied any place in it. When it did so, he formed his resolution with his accustomed promptitude. He had told them at Knockholt that he might perhaps go abroad; and now abroad he would go. He must leave London; he could not bear to witness the progress of this drama, in which he had so vital an interest, only as an ordinary spectator. He was parted from her; she was right--there could be no pretext of friendship in their case. Even if he could have obscured her clear perception and misguided her judgment; even if he could have persuaded her to receive him once more on the footing of a friend, he would have disdained to avail himself of such a subterfuge. The surest test a man can apply to the worth and sincerity of his love is to ask himself whether he would deceive its object in order to win her; if he can honestly say no, he is a true lover and a gentleman. Sir Laurence asked himself such a question, and was answered, no. He could not stand the Club-talk; he could not meet those men to whom she furnished matter for conversation,--not insolent indeed, so far as she was concerned, but intolerable in its easy,insouciant, flippant slang and indolent speculation in the ears of the man who loved her. He could not stop it; if he remained in town he must endure it, or forsake the society of all his customary associates, which was not to be thought of. Such a course of proceeding as that, in addition to depriving him of resources and leaving him nothing to do, would give rise to no end of talk and all kinds of surmises. If he started off suddenly, nobody knowing why, and went nobody knew where, it would be all right,--it would be only "Alsager's queer way;" but if he stayed in town and saw no one, or changed his set, then, indeed, that would be quite another matter. One's own set has toleration for one's queer ways, to which they are accustomed, but they decidedly object to any but habitual "queerness;" they will not bear with new developments, with running off the rails.
Yes, he would go; and the sooner the better. There was nothing to detain him now. He would have liked to see Miss Gillespie perhaps: but, after all, what good could it do? Her connection with the Hammonds, and through them with the Mitfords, had long been at an end; her mysterious note had warned him that her power was over; so that what could she do? and what had he to say to her? Persons of her sort were never safe to talk to, and were so full of caprice that she might either resent his visit or ignore the subject of Lady Mitford altogether; if she had ever had any interest in her, and it had been genuine, it was not likely she retained it now. No; he would not linger for the purpose of seeing her,--he would go at once. Whither? To Paris first, of course; and then he would consider. Was he always to be a wanderer? he thought; was he never to realize any of the good resolves, to put in practice any of the views, he had been indulging in lately? Was Knockholt to remain masterless, because he could not settle down to the interests and the occupations which sufficed for other and better men?--men who had not been exempted from the common lot either;--men, to many of whom their heart's desire had not been granted. Could he not now do as his father had done? No, not yet; the restlessness of mental trouble was upon him; the pain of unaccustomed moral processes; the shivering chill of the dawn of a new kind of light and a new system of thought. No doubt this would not be always so; after a time he could find rest and tranquillity in the duties and enjoyments of a country baronet's existence. Was this what she meant? Was this strength to do, and fidelity in adhering to duty, the noble law by which she ruled her life? Were they to bring him to the happiness which seemed so distant, so impossible? Were not the words upon the ring her message, her counsel, her command? Ah, well, if so, he might--he would try to follow them some day; but for the present he must get away. Like every wounded animal, he must seek refuge in flight, he must get him to the covert.
Sir Laurence Alsager did not remember, amid all his musings, that he was alone in the enjoyment of this resource; thatsheremained where her feet trod on thorns, and heart fed on bitterness--remained in the straight path of her duty, strong and faithful.
Yes, he would go at once,--that evening. He gave his servant the necessary orders, and then applied himself to writing letters on matters of business. While thus engaged a note was brought to him, and he was informed that the bearer awaited the answer. The note was enclosed in an oblong envelope, bordered with black about an inch deep, so that room was barely left for the address. He knew the handwriting well; he had been accustomed to see it in combination with every kind of coquetry in stationery; and he smiled grimly as he noted the mingled hypocrisy and coquetry of this very pretty and impressive affliction in black and white.
"What the devil is she at now?" thought Sir Laurence, as he broke the accurately-impressed seal. He had not had any communication with Mrs. Hammond since he left Redmoor in the spring; he had heard not quite all perhaps, but enough about her to make him shrink from any further acquaintance with her, as much from disgust of herself as from indignation on Lady Mitford's account; and he gave her too much credit for a sufficiently accurate knowledge of the machinery of London society, and the unfailing circulation of scandal, to entertain any doubt that she was well aware that he must inevitably hear, and had by this time heard, the stories that were rife about her. He was not in the least aware to how great an extent she had been actuated by torturing jealousy of him, though, as he had told Lady Mitford, he knew one of her motives was revenge; but he was prepared to give Laura Hammond credit for any amount of spite of which human nature is capable; still, what purpose could she have to serve by opening any communication with him? He read the note as he asked himself the question. It was dated from the house in Portman Square, and contained only a few lines. Mrs. Hammond had heard of Sir Laurence Alsager's arrival in town, and was particularly desirous of seeing him. She begged he would send her a line to say whether he could conveniently call upon her the same evening; she said evening, as no doubt his mornings were fully occupied with the business entailed by his acquisition of rank and fortune, on which she begged to offer her congratulations; and she equally, of course, did not go out anywhere, or receive (ordinary) visitors. She hoped Sir Laurence Alsager would comply with her request, as she wished to speak to him concerning a person in whom he was interested, and whom his acquiescence would materially benefit (underlined); and she remained his most faithfully.
"A snare and a bait," said Laurence, as he stood with the note in his hand, uncertain what reply he should make. His first impulse was to write that he was leaving London that afternoon; but he hesitated to do that, as it occurred to him she would be surprised at the abruptness of such a step, and setting her serpentine sagacity to work, might arrive at guessing something at least proximate to the truth. Curiosity; a strong conviction that Laura would not venture to tamper with his patience too far, and would not have dared to take this step without some motive; a vivid recollection of the interview which had taken place between them before the memorable visit to Redmoor, of his threat, and Laura's evident appreciation of its sincerity; finally, an irresistible longing to hear what Laura might have to say about Lady Mitford, and a vague dread that a refusal might in some indescribable way injure her,--decided him.
He wrote a short formal note, to the effect that Sir Laurence Alsager would have the honour of calling upon Mrs. Hammond at eight o'clock that evening, despatched it, and then returned to his letters.
Sir Laurence did not dine at the Club that day; he was in no mood to meet the men whom he must have met, and who would have made him pay the price of his popularity by inopportunely insisting on his society. He dined at a private hotel, and eight o'clock found him at the door of Mrs. Hammond's house.
He was shown into an inner drawing-room, which was brilliantly lighted, and where he was left alone for a few minutes. Then Mrs. Hammond appeared, and came towards him holding out her hand.
"I cannot congratulate you on your appearance, Sir Laurence," she said, as she seated herself in a low deep chair and looked up at him. The look was a peculiar one; intent observation and some anxiety were blended in its expression. He had taken a seat at her invitation, and was quite grave and self-possessed, while he preserved with exactness the manner of a man who was there in obedience to a summons, not of his own wish or act, and who was waiting to learn the motive which had dictated it.
Laura Hammond looked handsomer than he had ever seen her, as she sat in the lighted room in her deep mourning dress, whose sombre hue and rich material toned down the sensuous style of her beauty, and lent it that last best touch of refinement in which alone it had been wanting. Sir Laurence Alsager observed this increased beauty, but merely with an artistic sense of its attraction. To him Laura Hammond could never be aught but despicable and repulsive; and he was just then in the mood in which a man believes that only one woman in the world is really beautiful. She had conformed to custom in her dress so far as the weeds went, but she did not wear a widow's cap. Nothing would have induced her to disfigure herself by such a detestable invention; and though she knew she should be talked about, she considered that a minor evil. Her fine silky chestnut-hair, preserved from contact with the hideous cap, was banded smoothly on her forehead, and gathered into an unadorned knot at the back of her head, showing the profile and the delicate little ears to perfection. More beautiful than ever she undoubtedly was; but yet, as Laurence looked at her with close attention, he noticed that she had grown suddenly older in appearance. Even supposing all her former light and dashing manner to be resumed, the sombre dress to be laid aside, and the brilliant toilette in which Laura had been unrivalled among English women to have taken its place, a change had come over her. A line above the brow,--a horizontal line, not the sharp perpendicular mark that intellectual toil sets; a tighter closing of the lips, too seldom closed before; a little, a very little, less elasticity in the muscles which produced and banished the ever-flitting smile,--these were faint, but certain, indications.
"I have not been ill, Mrs. Hammond," replied Sir Laurence gravely; "but I have had a good deal of trouble lately, and that does not improve one's looks. But," he went on, "you wished to see me; may I inquire why? I am leaving town shortly; and--"
He paused; his natural courtesy arrested him. He could not tell Mrs. Hammond so plainly that he was anxious to get away from her as soon as possible. She saw it though, and she reddened with sudden anger, which in an instant she brought under control.
"You are amazingly business-like, Sir Laurence! The influence of your late onerous experiences in the character ofGentilhomme Campaynard, no doubt. By the way, how do you like it all?"
"All? I hardly catch your meaning. Since my father's death I have been, as you suppose, very much occupied, and I cannot say I like the details of a transfer of property and responsibility much."
"Ah, but the property itself, I meant,--the title and the fortune, the 'county-magnate' business, and the ward;--above all, the ward."
She spoke in a playful tone; but she watched him closely, and Sir Laurence saw it.
"She had heard something about Helen, and she is on a false scent," he thought. "Perhaps it is just as well to let her deceive herself."
So he replied, still gravely, still unwarmed by her manner, which was half caressing and half contemptuous:
"They are all good things in their way, Mrs. Hammond; and if their way be not yet mine, mine will be theirs some day, I hope."
"Ah, then, it's true!" she exclaimed. "You are really going to marry and settle; you are going to assume the semi-sporting, semi-bucolic, but entirely domestic character, which is so very charming, and which will suit you so perfectly; and henceforth the all-conquering Colonel will be sought for in vain under so admirable a travesty!"
Still he was grave and immovable. Herpersiflagehad no more power to charm, her ridicule to annoy, than her beauty had power to please him. It was all silly chatter; and he wondered at himself as he remembered the time when he preferred the nonsense, occasionally adulterated by slang and invariably spiced with spite, which she had talked then and always, to any words of wit or wisdom. She still watched him, under cover of her light manner, narrowly.
"You know as well as I do what is the ordinary amount of truth in public rumour, Mrs. Hammond. But you must excuse me for again reminding you that I am here at your request, and that you summoned me hither with some purpose. It was not to talk ofmyaffairs and prospects, I presume."
He spoke the last words in a harsh and angry voice involuntarily. Anger against her, and something very like hatred of her, were strong within him, and grew stronger rapidly. He looked at her careless face; he marked her sensuoussoignéebeauty; and he remembered the fair woman whom he had seen struck down by her merciless hand in the dawn of her innocent happiness, in the pride of her hope and love. He would make her say her say, and leave her, or he would leave her with it unsaid; he was sorry he had come. What could this woman do but harm to any one; to him, and tohermost of all?
"No, Colonel Alsager,--I beg your pardon, Sir Laurence,--Icannot always remember how times are changed, you see,--it wasnot. It was for a purpose which you may think a little less welcome, and perhaps even more trifling; it was to talk to you--of myself."
"Of yourself, Mrs. Hammond! What can you have to say of yourself that I ought to hear, or you to speak?"
"Much," she said vehemently; and in a moment her manner changed. He had a perfectly distinct recollection of her on the last two occasions when he and she had spoken together, especially on the last, when she openly defied him; when she had declared that she still loved him; when she had furnished him with the clue to her conduct which he had unravelled for Lady Mitford's enlightenment; when she had said, "I will break her heart, and then I will spoil her name."
Had she done so? had this woman fulfilled her threat? Very nearly; she had almost broken Georgie's heart, and she would certainly ruin her reputation if he--Laurence Alsager--did not resolutely withdraw, and deprive her of any pretext for slander. And so it had come to this: the woman he had undertaken to defend, for whose sake he had foregone so much pleasure and neglected so much duty, could be saved only by his absence! He knew that Laura was "talked of," and therefore persons unskilled in the science of society might suppose that she could not do much harm by talking of another woman; but Alsager was an adept, and he knew that a stone will bruise and maim, and even kill, if well-aimed and sufficiently heavy, though the hand that throws it be ever so much stained with sin. He feared--he feared exceedingly for the woman he loved, and whom this she-devil hated. He noted the change in Laura's manner before she spoke, and he feared still more.
"I have much to say, and Iwillsay it," she went on vehemently; "and you shall listen to me! What! am I to have won at last, and at the end of such deception and slavery, the reward I have done all and suffered all for, and then am I to keep a decorous silence, and see it all made waste and worthless? Don't look at me in that grave, polite, criticising way, Laurence, or you will drive me mad!"
Something of menace and something of appeal in her manner, a startling energy in her gesture, and the hoarse intensity of her voice, threw Alsager off his guard; this was so totally new to him. He had seen her in many moods, but never in one like this. Tenderness, coquetry, a mock gust of passion, all the tricks of fence of the most finished flirt he had seen her play, and he had found them out--perhaps she had never really deceived even when she had most completely fascinated him; but he had never seen her thus, he thought, and he was right. She was in earnest; he was about to understand her fully now. She had risen impetuously from her seat, and approached him, and he had risen also; so they stood confronting each other. There was nothing artificial in the expressive grace of her attitude; her figure was perfect, and she was graceful always--never more so than now, when she was carried away into a forgetfulness of her own beauty, which, if it had been habitual, would have made Laura Hammond irresistible. Her eyes flashed, and her smooth brow reddened; but her beauty gained by every subtle change of expression, as she poured out a torrent of impetuous words.
"Did you think I had forgotten our last meeting and our last parting? Did you think I had forgotten the words you spoke then, and those with which I answered them? Did you think the past was all blotted out, and those three horrid years were gone like an ugly dream; those years during which you banished yourself for love of me,--yes, Sir Laurence Alsager, for me,--you cannot deny it, you can't takethatfrom me, you can't transfer that jewel tohercrown of triumph,--ay, start and stare; I know it all, you see,--and then came back to torture me by indifference, by neglect, by preference of another--andwhatanother! my God! that made it a thousand times worse--before my face! What do you take me for that you think I would endure this, and when the time came for speech keep silence!"
She was trembling violently now; but as he looked at her, with all the amazement he felt in his face, she put a strong control on herself and stood quite firmly.
"For God's sake, what do you mean?" stammered Sir Laurence. "What are you talking about? What is it that you must say? What is it that I have done?"
"You ask me what I mean; you--you--did I not tell you then--when you pleaded to me for the woman who had rivalled me with you--that I loved you? Did I not tell you then, I say, and did you not know it?"
"You did tell me that you loved me then, Mrs. Hammond, and I did not believe you. You had told me the same thing before, you know, many a time, and you married Mr. Hammond. You married him because he was very rich,--perhaps you might have hesitated had he not also been old and silly; but he was, and your calculations have succeeded;--you are rich and free. Once before, when we talked upon this subject, I said we would not go into it any more. To you it cannot beprofitable" (he laid an emphasis upon the word), "and to me it is very painful. 'That time is dead and buried,' and so let it be. I cannot conceive why you have revived its memory; but, whatever your purpose, it can have no success dependent on me. I have no bitter memory of it now; indeed, for some time I have had no memory of it at all. I know it is hard for a woman to believe that a wound inflicted by her can ever heal, and I daresay men show the scars sometimes, and flatter the harmless vanity of theirci-devantconquerors. But I am not a man of that stamp, Mrs. Hammond; I have good healing flesh, I suppose, as the surgeons and the nurses say; at all events, I have no scars to show."
He made a step in advance, as if to take his hat from a small table; and she saw that he intended to leave her.
"No," she exclaimed; "you shall not go! I am utterly resolved to speak with you; and you must hear me. I will be as cold and as calm as you are; but you must hear me, if not for my sake or your own, for Lady Mitford's!"
She motioned him to his seat, and smiled--a little momentary smile and full of bitterness. He sat down again, and she stood by the mantelpiece, on which she laid her hand, and for a moment rested her head upon the palm. Something forlorn in the attitude caught Alsager's attention; then he knew that she was acting, and acting well. Fury, perhaps ferocity, might be natural to Laura Hammond under certain circumstances; but forlornness never. When she next spoke it was in a softer tone, and she kept her face towards him in profile. It was her best look, as he remembered, and as she remembered also; for though she was not acting now in all she said--though she was more real throughout the whole of their interview than she had ever been before, nothing, except indeed it might have been severe bodily pain, could have reduced Laura to perfect reality.
"I believe," she said, "the best way I can make you understand why I sent for you, and what I want to say to you, is to tell you the truth about those three years."
"As you please," he answered; "I cannot conceive how their history can concern me, except that portion of it which I have witnessed; and that has concerned, and does concern me. But I am here at your request, and I will go only at your dismissal."
"When I married, and you went away," she began, "I was not very unhappy at first; there was novelty and success, and there was luxury, which I love," she said with emphatic candour. "Mr. Hammond was not a disagreeable man, and I never suffered him to get into the habit of controlling me. He was inclined to try a little, but I soon convinced him it was useless, and, especially at his age, would make him uncomfortable. So he left off." Her voice hardened now into the clear metallic tone which Laurence remembered so well.
"By degrees, however," she continued, "everything grew irksome; and a horrid weariness and sense of degradation stole over me; not because I loved wealth and luxury any less, but because of the price I had to pay for it. And you had made it dearer to buy, for you had gone away."
"Yes," he said, "I had gone away; and you would have liked to have me stay, and be experimented on, and victimized for your delight,--I can understand that; but I should have fancied, Mrs. Hammond, you knew me too well to suppose you could have played such a game as that with me."
"I would not have played any game with you," she said--not angrily, rather sadly. "How unjust you are! how unjust men always are! they--"
He interrupted her. "Pray do not indulge me--with that senseless complaint which women who, like you, are the bane and the torment of men who loved them with an honest, and the utter ruin of men who loved them with a dishonest love, make of their victims. I have long ceased to be yours, Mrs. Hammond; but I am not unjust. I say again, you would have made me ridiculous as readily as you had made me wretched. I don't deny it, you see. I am much astonished, and rather ashamed, when forced to remember it; but I am not weak enough to deny a weakness. To be so would argue that it is not entirely corrected."
He was provoking her to anger, but not altogether unintentionally; his best means of coming at her real purpose would be by throwing her off her guard.
"I say again," she repeated, "you are unjust; I wouldnothave played any such game. I would have become used to my position in time; I would have seen you in the world; I would have seen you gradually forgetting me. It would not have been our angry parting, and a dead dull blank,--time to feel to the utmost all the horrors of a marriage without love. No woman, I believe, would sell herself, at least in marriage, which must last, if she could estimate them aright. And then such a meeting as ours! Do you remember it, Laurence?" She stole a very affectionate look at him here.
"Yes, I remember it," he said shortly.
"A horrid interview we had then, full of sneers and bitterness on your side, and not in the least real on mine."
"Is this a pleasanter one, Mrs. Hammond?" said Sir Laurence, who perceived that her levity was coming up again, and desired to suppress it. "I cannot perceive the utility of this retrospect."
"I daresay not," she answered coolly; "but I do." The pretty air of command was entirely lost on Alsager. She saw that it was, and ground her teeth,--a pleasant symptom of passion which she never could suppress. "By the time we met again," she continued, "I was sick and weary--not only of the price I had to pay for the wealth I had bought, but of the wealth itself. Of course I never changed my opinion of the value of money. I don't mean that; but I did not get as much out of the wealth I had purchased as I might have done. I was very much admired, and quite the fashion, but somehow I tired of it all; and then--then, Laurence, I found out why. I found out that I really had more heart than I believed, and that it was in your keeping."
"Pshaw!" he said, angrily and impatiently; "pray don't talk like this. You are drawing on your imagination very largely, and also on my vanity. The latter is quite useless, I assure you."
"Think what you like, say what you will,--I loved you. I knew it by the listlessness that was always upon me; I knew it better by the disappearance of that listlessness when they said you were coming home; and I knew it best of all when--when do you think, Sir Laurence Alsager?"
"I really could not presume to guess when you made such a discovery, Mrs. Hammond."
"Indeed! I will tell you, then. I learned it best of all when the first pang of jealousy I had ever felt in my life seized me. I had often heard your name coupled with that of some woman of fashion. I had heard a multitude of speculations about your affairs of the heart; but I never feared them--I never believed in them; I never knew that I had so vital an interest in them until your own look, your own manner, your own indecision of purpose about the visit to Redmoor, betrayed you to me, and told me who was my rival."
"Your rival!" said Sir Laurence in astonishment. "Surely you did not suppose I had returned to England to be caught again inyourtoils?"
"I don't know what I thought; I don't care. I only know that when you and I parted, you loved me, and were angry with me,--it was passionate love and passionate anger,--and that when you and I met, not only had you ceased to be angry, but you were rapidly succumbing to the influence of another woman--a woman utterly different from me! Not more beautiful,--I denythat; she has not the art of being beautiful; she has only the material. A woman whom I hate; whom I should have hated and would have injured, I believe, if you had never seen her. Yes; and you actually dared to menace me on her account; you presumed to pit yourself against me as her champion. You forgot that such championship hardly serves its object, in the eyes of the world."
Sir Laurence uttered an exclamation of disgust; and was about to rise, when she stepped forward close to him, and laid her hands lightly upon his breast for an instant.
"No, no, Laurence," she said; "bear with me. I did not mean it; not quite that. Can you not understand me? Ah, my God! how pitiless men are! While they want to win us, where is the end of that toleration? We may sin as we please, provided we do not sin against them and their self-love. But when that is over, they cannot judge us harshly enough; they have even less pardon and pity for the sins into which they have driven us than for any others."
"You are talking utter nonsense, Mrs. Hammond," said Sir Laurence; "and nonsense it is painful for me to hear. Your temptations are of your own making, and your sins are of your own counselling, not mine. I would have made you my wife, but you preferred--and I thank you for the choice--another destiny. Am I to blame? You have chosen to cherish a distempered fancy which has no foundation in truth, and am I the ruthless being who has robbed you of it? You have chosen to solace the tedium of your uncongenial marriage by a proceeding as vile and unprincipled as any woman ever ventured on, to her eternal shame. Harsh words, Mrs. Hammond, but true; and now you endeavour to lend an air of melodrama to a transaction which was in reality as commonplace as it was coarse. You find it hard to put your relation with Sir Charles Mitford on a sentimental footing,--he is hardly a subject for sentiment, I think; and you have invented this tragical theory of an indirect revenge upon me. Tush! I gave you credit for more tact."
This was well and boldly said; for Sir Laurence had but one object in view,--to do the best he could for Lady Mitford in this encounter with her foe. He knew as he spoke, as he looked into the unmasked face before him--pale and deformed with jarring passions--that the motive was real, though secondary; it had indeed only come to supplement the first, which had led Laura to employ her fascinations upon Sir Charles; but it had always been stronger, and had latterly completely swallowed up the other.
"Shall I never make you understand me?" she said passionately; "will you persist in bringing things that are unreasonable to the touchstone of reason? I don't know, I don't care how absurd what I am saying may sound; it is true, true, Laurence Alsager,--as sure as death is true, or any love that ever was more bitter. Yes, it is true: now think your worst, and say your worst of me; still you must see that I am far more wretched than she is. What had I to endure? What had she? I won her husband from her. If I did, was he a prize, do you think? A selfish, sensual, brainless fool; a man without taste, or manners, or mind; a man who is a living contradiction to the theories of rage and education; a man of whom she must have sickened in a year, if she had ever gained sense enough to find him out. She is not very clever, you know, and she might have taken longer for the discovery, if the habitual society of men who are gentlemen had not enlightened her. But she had a more sure and rapid teacher, who brought her consolation too." There was a world of malevolent meaning in the tone in which she said this.
"What do you, whatcanyou mean?" he asked.
"Ah, you are getting interested now, Sir Laurence, when my discourse turns onher. Wait a little, and I will explain. I asked you what did she lose; I need not ask you what did I gain; the one includes the other."
"He was her husband," said Laurence.
"Her husband!" repeated Laura, with intense scorn. "You have caught the cant of the proprieties' school, have you? Her husband! And what were you? My lover, Laurence. Ay, you may forget, you may deny it; but you were, the day you landed in England,--I should have only needed opportunity to win you back again. Her husband!" (with a bold hard laugh)--"she might have taken mine, and welcome!"
Sir Laurence looked at her in growing disgust. Lord Dollamore was quite right; there was a strong dash of vulgarity about Laura Hammond, and it appeared whenever she lost her temper.
"Yes," she went on, more and more angrily; "think of her, and think of me. She suffered the tortures of jealousy, did she? of lawful legitimate jealousy, for which good people would give her pity, if she were not too proud to take it. She suffer! What did I suffer? I tell you, Laurence Alsager, shecould notsuffer what I suffer; it is not in her, any more than she could love as I love. She is a handsome, cold, egotistical woman, who thinks of herrights. Her husband belonged to her, and I took him, and she didn't like it. She felt it much as she would have felt my stealing her pearls or her Dresden china, I daresay; butsuffer!Why, she's what is called agoodwoman; and if I chose to break with Mitford, he would probably now return to her, for he likes her rather; and she would receive his apologies, and all would be right again. Yes, she'd stoop to this stupid meanness, because he's herhusband, you know; and matrimony is such a remarkably sacred institution, that a man may do anything he pleases. And you talk to me of a woman likehersuffering!"
Sir Laurence made no answer. He was thinking how truly, from her own debased point of view, Laura Hammond read the character of the woman she had injured so deeply.
"You don't answer. Tell me, don't you know she would be reconciled with Mitford to-morrow, if he asked her?"
"I cannot tell you, indeed," he said coldly; "you had better 'break with Mitford,' as you phrase it, and find out."
"Will you not at least acknowledge that I had to suffer? The time of my bondage was short, but she deprived my freedom of all its value. She has won you, Laurence; and what is it all to me? I don't believe, in all her well-regulated life, she ever experienced such a pang as I felt when I saw her indifferent to Mitford's brutal neglect, and to my insolence, one morning, because she had just had a letter from you; a commonplace letter enough, Sir Laurence--she told us all about it--but I can never forget or forgive the serenity of her face; it seemed as if she had been removed into a world apart from us all."
How little she dreamed--how far, in her blind furious anger and self-abandonment, she was from dreaming of the secret stealthy delight with which the listener heard her words!
"You impute to Lady Mitford your own ideas, your own indifference to right, Mrs. Hammond; she is a woman who is incapable of wronging her husband, even in thought, though that husband be no worthier than Mitford. She rules her life by principles, and in her estimate of marriage regards the obligation rather than the individual."
"Indeed! That's a very pretty sentence, Sir Laurence, and you have learned your lesson like a very docile little boy. But hadn't you better reserve it for repetition elsewhere? for really sentiments of such grandeur are quite thrown away on me."
She was exasperated to the highest pitch by his perfect coolness, and tears of rage stood in her eyes. He had preserved an imperturbable composure; neither her passion nor her sarcasm moved him. Desperately she caught at the one hope that remained. She came towards him suddenly, dropped upon her knees by his side, and hid her face, covered with her hands, on his arm, while he sat astonished and confused.
"Laurence!" she sobbed, "listen to me. Do you not know that all the wicked things I say are said because I am miserable; because the love of you and the loss of you have turned me into something that I dread to think of and to look into? Have some compassion on me! I wronged you, I know; but can you not forgive me? Do you think the prize I won brought me any peace? Be merciful to a woman's vanity and weakness. Am I the only woman who is weak and vain? You did love me once; you could love me now, if you would only put aside your pride, if you would only try to be merciful to the errors which I have so bitterly repented. Laurence, this woman, who has been the cause of all--whose wrongs are upon her own head--what can she ever be to you? You know she is, according to your own account,too goodto be tempted from her duty, while I--I am free; there is no barrier between us now--and I love you."