Mrs. Linley’s application for a Divorce was heard in the first division of the Court of Session at Edinburgh, the Lord President being the judge.
To the disappointment of the large audience assembled, no defense was attempted on the part of the husband — a wise decision, seeing that the evidence of the wife and her witnesses was beyond dispute. But one exciting incident occurred toward the close of the proceedings. Sudden illness made Mrs. Linley’s removal necessary, at the moment of all others most interesting to herself — the moment before the judge’s decision was announced.
But, as the event proved, the poor lady’s withdrawal was the most fortunate circumstance that could have occurred, in her own interests. After condemning the husband’s conduct with unsparing severity, the Lord President surprised most of the persons present by speaking of the wife in these terms:
“Grievously as Mrs. Linley has been injured, the evidence shows that she was herself by no means free from blame. She has been guilty, to say the least of it, of acts of indiscretion. When the criminal attachment which had grown up between Mr. Herbert Linley and Miss Westerfield had been confessed to her, she appears to have most unreasonably overrated whatever merit there might have been in their resistance to the final temptation. She was indeed so impulsively ready to forgive (without waiting to see if the event justified the exercise of mercy) that she owns to having given her hand to Miss Westerfield, at parting, not half an hour after that young person’s shameless forgetfulness of the claims of modesty, duty and gratitude had been first communicated to her. To say that this was the act of an inconsiderate woman, culpably indiscreet and, I had almost added, culpably indelicate, is only to say what she has deserved. On the next occasion to which I feel bound to advert, her conduct was even more deserving of censure. She herself appears to have placed the temptation under which he fell in her husband’s way, and so (in some degree at least) to have provoked the catastrophe which has brought her before this court. I allude, it is needless to say, to her having invited the governess — then out of harm’s way; then employed elsewhere — to return to her house, and to risk (what actually occurred) a meeting with Mr. Herbert Linley when no third person happened to be present. I know that the maternal motive which animated Mrs. Linley is considered, by many persons, to excuse and even to justify that most regrettable act; and I have myself allowed (I fear weakly allowed) more than due weight to this consideration in pronouncing for the Divorce. Let me express the earnest hope that Mrs. Linley will take warning by what has happened; and, if she finds herself hereafter placed in other circumstances of difficulty, let me advise her to exercise more control over impulses which one might expect perhaps to find in a young girl, but which are neither natural nor excusable in a woman of her age.”
His lordship then decreed the Divorce in the customary form, giving the custody of the child to the mother.
As fast as a hired carriage could take him, Mr. Sarrazin drove from the court to Mrs. Linley’s lodgings, to tell her that the one great object of securing her right to her child had been achieved.
At the door he was met by Mrs. Presty. She was accompanied by a stranger, whose medical services had been required. Interested professionally in hearing the result of the trial, this gentleman volunteered to communicate the good news to his patient. He had been waiting to administer a composing draught, until the suspense from which Mrs. Linley was suffering might be relieved, and a reasonable hope be entertained that the medicine would produce the right effect. With that explanation he left the room.
While the doctor was speaking, Mrs. Presty was drawing her own conclusions from a close scrutiny of Mr. Sarrazin’s face.
“I am going to make a disagreeable remark,” she announced. “You look ten years older, sir, than you did when you left us this morning to go to the Court. Do me a favor — come to the sideboard.” The lawyer having obeyed, she poured out a glass of wine. “There is the remedy,” she resumed, “when something has happened to worry you.”
“‘Worry’ isn’t the right word,” Mr. Sarrazin declared. “I’m furious! It’s a most improper thing for a person in my position to say of a person in the Lord President’s position; but I do say it — he ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“After giving us our Divorce!” Mrs. Presty exclaimed. “What has he done?”
Mr. Sarrazin repeated what the judge had said of Mrs. Linley. “In my opinion,” he added, “such language as that is an insult to your daughter.”
“And yet,” Mrs. Presty repeated, “he has given us our Divorce.” She returned to the sideboard, poured out a second dose of the remedy against worry, and took it herself. “What sort of character does the Lord President bear?” she asked when she had emptied her glass.
This seemed to be an extraordinary question to put, under the circumstances. Mr. Sarrazin answered it, however, to the best of his ability. “An excellent character,” he said —“that’s the unaccountable part of it. I hear that he is one of the most careful and considerate men who ever sat on the bench. Excuse me, Mrs. Presty, I didn’t intend to produce that impression on you.”
“What impression, Mr. Sarrazin?”
“You look as if you thought there was some excuse for the judge.”
“That’s exactly what I do think.”
“You find an excuse for him?”
“I do.”
“What is it, ma’am?”
“Constitutional infirmity, sir.”
“May I ask of what nature?”
“You may. Gout.”
Mr. Sarrazin thought he understood her at last. “You know the Lord President,” he said.
Mrs. Presty denied it positively. “No, Mr. Sarrazin, I don’t get at it in that way. I merely consult my experience of another official person of high rank, and apply it to the Lord President. You know that my first husband was a Cabinet Minister?”
“I have heard you say so, Mrs. Presty, on more than one occasion.”
“Very well. You may also have heard that the late Mr. Norman was a remarkably well-bred man. In and out of the House of Commons, courteous almost to a fault. One day I happened to interrupt him when he was absorbed over an Act of Parliament. Before I could apologize — I tell you this in the strictest confidence — he threw the Act of Parliament at my head. Ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have thrown it back again. Knowing his constitution, I decided on waiting a day or two. On the second day, my anticipations were realized. Mr. Norman’s great toe was as big as my fist and as red as a lobster; he apologized for the Act of Parliament with tears in his eyes. Suppressed gout in Mr. Norman’s temper; suppressed gout in the Lord President’s temper. He will have a toe; and, if I can prevail upon my daughter to call upon him, I have not the least doubt he will apologize to her with tears in his eyes.”
This interesting experiment was never destined to be tried. Right or wrong, Mrs. Presty’s theory remained the only explanation of the judge’s severity. Mr. Sarrazin attempted to change the subject. Mrs. Presty had not quite done with it yet. “There is one more thing I want to say,” she proceeded. “Will his lordship’s remarks appear in the newspapers?”
“Not a doubt of it.”
“In that case I will take care (for my daughter’s sake) that no newspapers enter the house to-morrow. As for visitors, we needn’t be afraid of them. Catherine is not likely to be able to leave her room; the worry of this miserable business has quite broken her down.”
The doctor returned at that moment.
Without taking the old lady’s gloomy view of his patient, he admitted that she was in a low nervous condition, and he had reason to suppose, judging by her reply to a question which he had ventured to put, that she had associations with Scotland which made a visit to that country far from agreeable to her. His advice was that she should leave Edinburgh as soon as possible, and go South. If the change of climate led to no improvement, she would at least be in a position to consult the best physicians in London. In a day or two more it would be safe to remove her — provided she was not permitted to exhaust her strength by taking long railway journeys.
Having given his advice, the doctor took leave. Soon after he had gone, Kitty made her appearance, charged with a message from Mrs. Linley’s room.
“Hasn’t the physic sent your mother to sleep yet?” Mrs. Presty inquired.
Kitty shook her head. “Mamma wants to go away tomorrow, and no physic will make her sleep till she has seen you, and settled about it. That’s what she told me to say. If I behaved in that way about my physic, I should catch it.”
Mrs. Presty left the room; watched by her granddaughter with an appearance of anxiety which it was not easy to understand.
“What’s the matter?” Mr. Sarrazin asked. “You look very serious to-day.”
Kitty held up a warning hand. “Grandmamma sometimes listens at doors,” she whispered; “I don’t want her to hear me.” She waited a little longer, and then approached Mr. Sarrazin, frowning mysteriously. “Take me up on your knee,” she said. “There’s something wrong going on in this house.”
Mr. Sarrazin took her on his knee, and rashly asked what had gone wrong. Kitty’s reply puzzled him.
“I go to mamma’s room every morning when I wake,” the child began. “I get into her bed, and I give her a kiss, and I say ‘Good-morning’— and sometimes, if she isn’t in a hurry to get up, I stop in her bed, and go to sleep again. Mamma thought I was asleep this morning. I wasn’t asleep — I was only quiet. I don’t know why I was quiet.”
Mr. Sarrazin’s kindness still encouraged her. “Well,” he said, “and what happened after that?”
“Grandmamma came in. She told mamma to keep up her spirits. She says, ‘It will all be over in a few hours more.’ She says, ‘What a burden it will be off your mind!’ She says, ‘Is that child asleep?’ And mamma says, ‘Yes.’ And grandmamma took one of mamma’s towels. And I thought she was going to wash herself. What would you have thought?”
Mr. Sarrazin began to doubt whether he would do well to discuss Mrs. Presty’s object in taking the towel. He only said, “Go on.”
“Grandmamma dipped it into the water-jug,” Kitty continued, with a grave face; “but she didn’t wash herself. She went to one of mamma’s boxes. Though she’s so old, she’s awfully strong, I can tell you. She rubbed off the luggage-label in no time. Mamma says, ‘What are you doing that for?’ And grandmamma says — this is the dreadful thing that I want you to explain; oh, I can remember it all; it’s like learning lessons, only much nicer — grandmamma says, ‘Before the day’s over, the name on your boxes will be your name no longer.’”
Mr. Sarrazin now became aware of the labyrinth into which his young friend had innocently led him. The Divorce, and the wife’s inevitable return (when the husband was no longer the husband) to her maiden name — these were the subjects on which Kitty’s desire for enlightenment applied to the wisest person within her reach, her mother’s legal adviser.
Mr. Sarrazin tried to put her off his knee. She held him round the neck. He thought of the railway as a promising excuse, and told her he must go back to London. She held him a little tighter. “I really can’t wait, my dear;” he got up as he said it. Kitty hung on to him with her legs as well as her arms, and finding the position uncomfortable, lost her temper. “Mamma’s going to have a new name,” she shouted, as if the lawyer had suddenly become deaf. “Grandmamma says she must be Mrs. Norman. And I must be Miss Norman. I won’t! Where’s papa? I want to write to him; I know he won’t allow it. Do you hear? Where’s papa?”
She fastened her little hands on Mr. Sarrazin’s coat collar and tried to shake him, in a fury of resolution to know what it all meant. At that critical moment Mrs. Presty opened the door, and stood petrified on the threshold.
“Hanging on to Mr. Sarrazin with her arms and her legs!” exclaimed the old lady. “You little wretch, which are you, a monkey or a child?”
The lawyer gently deposited Kitty on the floor.
“Mind this, Samuel,” she whispered, as he set her down on her feet, “I won’t be Miss Norman.”
Mrs. Presty pointed sternly at the open door. “You were screaming just now, when quiet in the house is of the utmost importance to your mother. If I hear you again, bread and water and no doll for the rest of the week.”
Kitty retired in disgrace, and Mrs. Presty sharpened her tongue on Mr. Sarrazin next. “I’m astonished, sir, at your allowing that impudent grandchild of mine to take such liberties with you. Who would suppose that you were a married man, with children of your own?”
“That’s just the reason, my dear madam,” Mr. Sarrazin smartly replied. “I romp with my own children — why not with Kitty? Can I do anything for you in London?” he went on, getting a little nearer to the door; “I leave Edinburgh by the next train. And I promise you,” he added, with the spirit of mischief twinkling in his eyes, “this shall be my last confidential interview with your grandchild. When she wants to ask any more questions, I transfer her to you.”
Mrs. Presty looked after the retreating lawyer thoroughly mystified. What “confidential interview”? What “questions”? After some consideration, her experience of her granddaughter suggested that a little exercise of mercy might be attended with the right result. She looked at a cake on the sideboard. “I have only to forgive Kitty,” she decided, “and the child will talk about it of her own accord.”
Of the friends and neighbors who had associated with Herbert Linley, in bygone days, not more than two or three kept up their intimacy with him at the later time of his disgrace. Those few, it is needless to say, were men.
One of the faithful companions, who had not shrunk from him yet, had just left the London hotel at which Linley had taken rooms for Sydney Westerfield and himself — in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert. This old friend had been shocked by the change for the worse which he had perceived in the fugitive master of Mount Morven. Linley’s stout figure of former times had fallen away, as if he had suffered under long illness; his healthy color had faded; he made an effort to assume the hearty manner that had once been natural to him which was simply pitiable to see. “After sacrificing all that makes life truly decent and truly enjoyable for a woman, he has got nothing, not even false happiness, in return!” With that dreary conclusion the retiring visitor descended the hotel steps, and went his way along the street.
Linley returned to the newspaper which he had been reading when his friend was shown into the room.
Line by line he followed the progress of the law report, which informed its thousands of readers that his wife had divorced him, and had taken lawful possession of his child. Word by word, he dwelt with morbid attention on the terms of crushing severity in which the Lord President had spoken of Sydney Westerfield and of himself. Sentence by sentence he read the reproof inflicted on the unhappy woman whom he had vowed to love and cherish. And then — even then — urged by his own self-tormenting suspicion, he looked for more. On the opposite page there was a leading article, presenting comments on the trial, written in the tone of lofty and virtuous regret; taking the wife’s side against the judge, but declaring, at the same time, that no condemnation of the conduct of the husband and the governess could be too merciless, and no misery that might overtake them in the future more than they had deserved.
He threw the newspaper on the table at his side, and thought over what he had read.
If he had done nothing else, he had drained the bitter cup to the dregs. When he looked back, he saw nothing but the life that he had wasted. When his thoughts turned to the future, they confronted a prospect empty of all promise to a man still in the prime of life. Wife and child were as completely lost to him as if they had been dead — and it was the wife’s doing. Had he any right to complain? Not the shadow of a right. As the newspapers said, he had deserved it.
The clock roused him, striking the hour.
He rose hurriedly, and advanced toward the window. As he crossed the room, he passed by a mirror. His own sullen despair looked at him in the reflection of his face. “She will be back directly,” he remembered; “she mustn’t see me like this!” He went on to the window to divert his mind (and so to clear his face) by watching the stream of life flowing by in the busy street. Artificial cheerfulness, assumed love in Sydney’s presence — that was what his life had come to already.
If he had known that she had gone out, seeking a temporary separation, with his fear of self-betrayal — if he had suspected that she, too, had thoughts which must be concealed: sad forebodings of losing her hold on his heart, terrifying suspicions that he was already comparing her, to her own disadvantage, with the wife whom he had deserted — if he had made these discoveries, what would the end have been? But she had, thus far, escaped the danger of exciting his distrust. That she loved him, he knew. That she had begun to doubt his attachment to her he would not have believed, if his oldest friend had declared it on the best evidence. She had said to him, that morning, at breakfast: “There was a good woman who used to let lodgings here in London, and who was very kind to me when I was a child;” and she had asked leave to go to the house, and inquire if that friendly landlady was still living — with nothing visibly constrained in her smile, and with no faltering tone in her voice. It was not until she was out in the street that the tell-tale tears came into her eyes, and the bitter sigh broke from her, and mingled its little unheard misery with the grand rise and fall of the tumult of London life. While he was still at the window, he saw her crossing the street on her way back to him. She came into the room with her complexion heightened by exercise; she kissed him, and said with her pretty smile: “Have you been lonely without me?” Who would have supposed that the torment of distrust, and the dread of desertion, were busy at this woman’s heart?
He placed a chair for her, and seating himself by her side asked if she felt tired. Every attention that she could wish for from the man whom she loved, offered with every appearance of sincerity on the surface! She met him halfway, and answered as if her mind was quite at ease.
“No, dear, I’m not tired — but I’m glad to get back.”
“Did you find your old landlady still alive?”
“Yes. But oh, so altered, poor thing! The struggle for life must have been a hard one, since I last saw her.”
“She didn’t recognize you, of course?”
“Oh! no. She looked at me and my dress in great surprise and said her lodgings were hardly fit for a young lady like me. It was too sad. I said I had known her lodgings well, many years ago — and, with that to prepare her, I told her who I was. Ah, it was a melancholy meeting for both of us. She burst out crying when I kissed her; and I had to tell her that my mother was dead, and my brother lost to me in spite of every effort to find him. I asked to go into the kitchen, thinking the change would be a relief to both of us. The kitchen used to be a paradise to me in those old days; it was so warm to a half-starved child — and I always got something to eat when I was there. You have no idea, Herbert, how poor and how empty the place looked to me now. I was glad to get out of it, and go upstairs. There was a lumber-room at the top of the house; I used to play in it, all by myself. More changes met me the moment I opened the door.”
“Changes for the better?”
“My dear, it couldn’t have changed for the worse! My dirty old play-room was cleaned and repaired; the lumber taken away, and a nice little bed in one corner. Some clerk in the City had taken the room — I shouldn’t have known it again. But there was another surprise waiting for me; a happy surprise this time. In cleaning out the garret, what do you think the landlady found? Try to guess.”
Anything to please her! Anything to make her think that he was as fond of her as ever! “Was it something you had left behind you,” he said, “at the time when you lodged there.”
“Yes! you are right at the first guess — a little memorial of my father. Only some torn crumpled leaves from a book of children’s songs that he used to teach me to sing; and a small packet of his letters, which my mother may have thrown aside and forgotten. See! I have brought them back with me; I mean to look over the letters at once — but this doesn’t interest you?”
“Indeed it does.”
He made that considerate reply mechanically, as if thinking of something else. She was afraid to tell him plainly that she saw this; but she could venture to say that he was not looking well. “I have noticed it for some time past,” she confessed. “You have been accustomed to live in the country; I am afraid London doesn’t agree with you.”
He admitted that she might be right; still speaking absently, still thinking of the Divorce. She laid the packet of letters and the poor relics of the old song-book on the table, and bent over him. Tenderly, and a little timidly, she put her arm around his neck. “Let us try some purer air,” she suggested; “the seaside might do you good. Don’t you think so?”
“I daresay, my dear. Where shall we go?”
“Oh, I leave that to you.”
“No, Sydney. It was I who proposed coming to London. You shall decide this time.”
She submitted, and promised to think of it. Leaving him, with the first expression of trouble that had shown itself in her face, she took up the songs and put them into the pocket of her dress. On the point of removing the letters next, she noticed the newspaper on the table. “Anything interesting to-day?” she asked — and drew the newspaper toward her to look at it. He took it from her suddenly, almost roughly. The next moment he apologized for his rudeness. “There is nothing worth reading in the paper,” he said, after begging her pardon. “You don’t care about politics, do you?”
Instead of answering, she looked at him attentively.
The heightened color which told of recent exercise, healthily enjoyed, faded from her face. She was silent; she was pale. A little confused, he smiled uneasily. “Surely,” he resumed, trying to speak gayly, “I haven’t offended you?”
“There is something in the newspaper,” she said, “which you don’t want me to read.”
He denied it — but he still kept the newspaper in his own possession. Her voice sank low; her face turned paler still.
“Is it all over?” she asked. “And is it put in the newspaper?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the Divorce.”
He went back again to the window and looked out. It was the easiest excuse that he could devise for keeping his face turned away from her. She followed him.
“I don’t want to read it, Herbert. I only ask you to tell me if you are a free man again.”
Quiet as it was, her tone left him no alternative but to treat her brutally or to reply. Still looking out at the street, he said “Yes.”
“Free to marry, if you like?” she persisted.
He said “Yes” once more — and kept his face steadily turned away from her. She waited a while. He neither moved nor spoke.
Surviving the slow death little by little of all her other illusions, one last hope had lingered in her heart. It was killed by that cruel look, fixed on the view of the street.
“I’ll try to think of a place that we can go to at the seaside.” Having said those words she slowly moved away to the door, and turned back, remembering the packet of letters. She took it up, paused, and looked toward the window. The streets still interested him. She left the room.
She locked the door of her bedchamber, and threw off her walking-dress; light as it was, she felt as if it would stifle her. Even the ribbon round her neck was more than she could endure and breathe freely. Her overburdened heart found no relief in tears. In the solitude of her room she thought of the future. The dreary foreboding of what it might be, filled her with a superstitious dread from which she recoiled. One of the windows was open already; she threw up the other to get more air. In the cooler atmosphere her memory recovered itself; she recollected the newspaper, that Herbert had taken from her. Instantly she rang for the maid. “Ask the first waiter you see downstairs for today’s newspaper; any one will do, so long as I don’t wait for it.” The report of the Divorce — she was in a frenzy of impatience to read what he had read — the report of the Divorce.
When her wish had been gratified, when she had read it from beginning to end, one vivid impression only was left on her mind. She could think of nothing but what the judge had said, in speaking of Mrs. Linley.
A cruel reproof, and worse than cruel, a public reproof, administered to the generous friend, the true wife, the devoted mother — and for what? For having been too ready to forgive the wretch who had taken her husband from her, and had repaid a hundred acts of kindness by unpardonable ingratitude.
She fell on her knees; she tried wildly to pray for inspiration that should tell her what to do. “Oh, God, how can I give that woman back the happiness of which I have robbed her!”
The composing influence of prayer on a troubled mind was something that she had heard of. It was not something that she experienced now. An overpowering impatience to make the speediest and completest atonement possessed her. Must she wait till Herbert Linley no longer concealed that he was weary of her, and cast her off? No! It should be her own act that parted them, and that did it at once. She threw open the door, and hurried half-way down the stairs before she remembered the one terrible obstacle in her way — the Divorce.
Slowly and sadly she submitted, and went back to her room.
There was no disguising it; the two who had once been husband and wife were parted irrevocably — by the wife’s own act. Let him repent ever so sincerely, let him be ever so ready to return, would the woman whose faith Herbert Linley had betrayed take him back? The Divorce, the merciless Divorce, answered:— No!
She paused, thinking of the marriage that was now a marriage no more. The toilet-table was close to her; she looked absently at her haggard face in the glass. What a lost wretch she saw! The generous impulses which other women were free to feel were forbidden luxuries to her. She was ashamed of her wickedness; she was eager to sacrifice herself, for the good of the once-dear friend whom she had wronged. Useless longings! Too late! too late!
She regretted it bitterly. Why?
Comparing Mrs. Linley’s prospects with hers, was there anything to justify regret for the divorced wife? She had her sweet little child to make her happy; she had a fortune of her own to lift her above sordid cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be admired. While she held her place in the world as high as ever, what was the prospect before Sydney Westerfield? The miserable sinner would end as she had deserved to end. Absolutely dependent on a man who was at that moment perhaps lamenting the wife whom he had deserted and lost, how long would it be before she found herself an outcast, without a friend to help her — with a reputation hopelessly lost — face to face with the temptation to drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future before them was rest in death?
If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never again have seen her a living creature. But she was too young to follow any train of repellent thought persistently to its end. The man she had guiltily (and yet how naturally) loved was lord and master in her heart, doubt him as she might. Even in his absence he pleaded with her to have some faith in him still.
She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her, when she had returned that morning from her walk. He had been kind and considerate; he had listened to her little story of the relics of her father, found in the garret, as if her interests were his interests. There had been nothing to disappoint her, nothing to complain of, until she had rashly attempted to discover whether he was free to make her his wife. She had only herself to blame if he was cold and distant when she had alluded to that delicate subject, on the day when he first knew that the Divorce had been granted and his child had been taken from him. And yet, he might have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than looking into the street — as if he had forgotten her in the interest of watching the strangers passing by! Perhaps he was not thinking of the strangers; perhaps his mind was dwelling fondly and regretfully on his wife?
Instinctively, she felt that her thoughts were leading her back again to a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness recoiled. Was there nothing she could find to do which would offer some other subject to occupy her mind than herself and her future?
Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her father’s letters placed on the table by her bedside.
The first three letters that she examined, after untying the packet, were briefly written, and were signed by names unknown to her. They all related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised bets which were certain to make the fortunes of the clever gamblers on the turf who laid them. Absolute indifference on the part of the winners to the ruin of the losers, who were not in the secret, was the one feeling in common, which her father’s correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw the letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning.
The next letter which she picked out from the little heap was of some length, and was written in a clear and steady hand. By comparison with the blotted scrawls which she had just burned, it looked like the letter of a gentleman. She turned to the signature. The strange surname struck her; it was “Bennydeck.”
Not a common name, and not a name which seemed to be altogether unknown to her. Had she heard her father mention it at home in the time of her early childhood? There were no associations with it that she could now call to mind.
She read the letter. It addressed her father familiarly as “My dear Roderick,” and it proceeded in these words:—
“The delay in the sailing of your ship offers me an opportunity of writing to you again. My last letter told you of my father’s death. I was then quite unprepared for an event which has happened, since that affliction befell me. Prepare yourself to be surprised. Our old moated house at Sandyseal, in which we have spent so many happy holidays when we were schoolfellows, is sold.
“You will be almost as sorry as I was to hear this; and you will be quite as surprised as I was, when I tell you that Sandyseal Place has become a Priory of English Nuns, of the order of St. Benedict.
“I think I see you look up from my letter, with your big black eyes staring straight before you, and say and swear that this must be one of my mystifications. Unfortunately (for I am fond of the old house in which I was born) it is only too true. The instructions in my father’s will, under which Sandyseal has been sold, are peremptory. They are the result of a promise made, many years since, to his wife.
“You and I were both very young when my poor mother died; but I think you must remember that she, like the rest of her family, was a Roman Catholic.
“Having reminded you of this, I may next tell you that Sandyseal Place was my mother’s property. It formed part of her marriage portion, and it was settled on my father if she died before him, and if she left no female child to survive her. I am her only child. My father was therefore dealing with his own property when he ordered the house to be sold. His will leaves the purchase money to me. I would rather have kept the house.
“But why did my mother make him promise to sell the place at his death?
“A letter, attached to my father’s will, answers this question, and tells a very sad story. In deference to my mother’s wishes it was kept strictly a secret from me while my father lived.
“There was a younger sister of my mother’s who was the beauty of the family; loved and admired by everybody who was acquainted with her. It is needless to make this long letter longer by dwelling on the girl’s miserable story. You have heard it of other girls, over and over again. She loved and trusted; she was deceived and deserted. Alone and friendless in a foreign country; her fair fame blemished; her hope in the future utterly destroyed, she attempted to drown herself. This took place in France. The best of good women — a Sister of Charity — happened to be near enough to the river to rescue her. She was sheltered; she was pitied; she was encouraged to return to her family. The poor deserted creature absolutely refused; she could never forget that she had disgraced them. The good Sister of Charity won her confidence. A retreat which would hide her from the world, and devote her to religion for the rest of her days, was the one end to her wasted life that she longed for. That end was attained in a Priory of Benedictine Nuns, established in France. There she found protection and peace — there she passed the remaining years of her life among devoted Sister-friends — and there she died a quiet and even a happy death.
“You will now understand how my mother’s grateful remembrance associated her with the interests of more than one community of Nuns; and you will not need to be told what she had in mind when she obtained my father’s promise at the time of her last illness.
“He at once proposed to bequeath the house as a free gift to the Benedictines. My mother thanked him and refused. She was thinking of me. ‘If our son fails to inherit the house from his father,’ she said, ‘it is only right that he should have the value of the house in money. Let it be sold.’
“So here I am — rich already — with this additional sum of money in my banker’s care.
“My idea is to invest it in the Funds, and to let it thrive at interest, until I grow older, and retire perhaps from service in the Navy. The later years of my life may well be devoted to the founding of a charitable institution, which I myself can establish and direct. If I die first — oh, there is a chance of it! We may have a naval war, perhaps, or I may turn out one of those incorrigible madmen who risk their lives in Arctic exploration. In case of the worst, therefore, I shall leave the interests of my contemplated Home in your honest and capable hands. For the present good-by, and a prosperous voyage outward bound.”
So the letter ended.
Sydney dwelt with reluctant attention on the latter half of it. The story of the unhappy favorite of the family had its own melancholy and sinister interest for her. She felt the foreboding that it might, in some of its circumstances, be her story too — without the peaceful end. Into what community of merciful women could she be received, in her sorest need? What religious consolations would encourage her penitence? What prayers, what hopes, would reconcile her, on her death-bed, to the common doom?
She sighed as she folded up Captain Bennydeck’s letter and put it in her bosom, to be read again. “If my lot had fallen among good people,” she thought, “perhaps I might have belonged to the Church which took care of that poor girl.”
Her mind was still pursuing its own sad course of inquiry; she was wondering in what part of England Sandyseal might be; she was asking herself if the Nuns at the old moated house ever opened their doors to women, whose one claim on their common Christianity was the claim to be pitied — when she heard Linley’s footsteps approaching the door.
His tone was kind; his manner was gentle; his tender interest in her seemed to have revived. Her long absence had alarmed him; he feared she might be ill. “I was only thinking,” she said. He smiled, and sat down by her, and asked if she had been thinking of the place that they should go to when they left London.
The one hotel in Sandyseal was full, from the topmost story to the ground floor; and by far the larger half of the landlord’s guests were invalids sent to him by the doctors.
To persons of excitable temperament, in search of amusement, the place offered no attractions. Situated at the innermost end of a dull little bay, Sandyseal — so far as any view of the shipping in the Channel was concerned — might have been built on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Vessels of any importance kept well out of the way of treacherous shoals and currents lurking at the entrance of the bay. The anchorage ground was good; but the depth of water was suited to small vessels only — to shabby old fishing-smacks which seldom paid their expenses, and to dirty little coasters carrying coals and potatoes. At the back of the hotel, two slovenly rows of cottages took their crooked course inland. Sailing masters of yachts, off duty, sat and yawned at the windows; lazy fishermen looked wearily at the weather over their garden gates; and superfluous coastguards gathered together in a wooden observatory, and leveled useless telescopes at an empty sea. The flat open country, with its few dwarf trees and its mangy hedges, lay prostrate under the sky in all the desolation of solitary space, and left the famous restorative air free to build up dilapidated nerves, without an object to hinder its passage at any point of the compass. The lonely drab-colored road that led to the nearest town offered to visitors, taking airings, a view of a low brown object in the distance, said to be the convent in which the Nuns lived, secluded from mortal eyes. At one side of the hotel, the windows looked on a little wooden pier, sadly in want of repair. On the other side, a walled inclosure accommodated yachts of light tonnage, stripped of their rigging, and sitting solitary on a bank of mud until their owners wanted them. In this neighborhood there was a small outlying colony of shops: one that sold fruit and fish; one that dealt in groceries and tobacco; one shut up, with a bill in the window inviting a tenant; and one, behind the Methodist Chapel, answering the double purpose of a post-office and a storehouse for ropes and coals. Beyond these objects there was nothing (and this was the great charm of the place) to distract the attention of invalids, following the doctor’s directions, and from morning to night taking care of their health.
The time was evening; the scene was one of the private sitting-rooms in the hotel; and the purpose in view was a little tea-party.
Rich Mrs. Romsey, connected with commerce as wife of the chief partner in the firm of Romsey & Renshaw, was staying at the hotel in the interests of her three children. They were of delicate constitution; their complete recovery, after severe illness which had passed from one to the other, was less speedy than had been anticipated; and the doctor had declared that the nervous system was, in each case, more or less in need of repair. To arrive at this conclusion, and to recommend a visit to Sandyseal, were events which followed each other (medically speaking) as a matter of course.
The health of the children had greatly improved; the famous air had agreed with them, and the discovery of new playfellows had agreed with them. They had made acquaintance with Lady Myrie’s well-bred boys, and with Mrs. Norman’s charming little Kitty. The most cordial good-feeling had established itself among the mothers. Owing a return for hospitalities received from Lady Myrie and Mrs. Norman, Mrs. Romsey had invited the two ladies to drink tea with her in honor of an interesting domestic event. Her husband, absent on the Continent for some time past, on business connected with his firm, had returned to England, and had that evening joined his wife and children at Sandyseal.
Lady Myrie had arrived, and Mr. Romsey had been presented to her. Mrs. Norman, expected to follow, was represented by a courteous note of apology. She was not well that evening, and she begged to be excused.
“This is a great disappointment,” Mrs. Romsey said to her husband. “You would have been charmed with Mrs. Norman — highly-bred, accomplished, a perfect lady. And she leaves us to-morrow. The departure will not be an early one; and I shall find an opportunity, my dear, of introducing you to my friend and her sweet little Kitty.”
Mr. Romsey looked interested for a moment, when he first heard Mrs. Norman’s name. After that, he slowly stirred his tea, and seemed to be thinking, instead of listening to his wife.
“Have you made the lady’s acquaintance here?” he inquired.
“Yes — and I hope I have made a friend for life,” Mrs. Romsey said with enthusiasm.
“And so do I,” Lady Myrie added.
Mr. Romsey went on with his inquiries.
“Is she a handsome woman?”
Both the ladies answered the question together. Lady Myrie described Mrs. Norman, in one dreadful word, as “Classical.” By comparison with this, Mrs. Romsey’s reply was intelligible. “Not even illness can spoil her beauty!”
“Including the headache she has got to-night?” Mr. Romsey suggested.
“Don’t be ill-natured, dear! Mrs. Norman is here by the advice of one of the first physicians in London; she has suffered under serious troubles, poor thing.”
Mr. Romsey persisted in being ill-natured. “Connected with her husband?” he asked.
Lady Myrie entered a protest. She was a widow; and it was notorious among her friends that the death of her husband had been the happiest event in her married life. But she understood her duty to herself as a respectable woman.
“I think, Mr. Romsey, you might have spared that cruel allusion,” she said with dignity.
Mr. Romsey apologized. He had his reasons for wishing to know something more about Mrs. Norman; he proposed to withdraw his last remark, and to put his inquiries under another form. Might he ask his wife if anybody had seen Mr. Norman?
“No.”
“Or heard of him?”
Mrs. Romsey answered in the negative once more, and added a question on her own account. What did all this mean?
“It means,” Lady Myrie interposed, “what we poor women are all exposed to — scandal.” She had not yet forgiven Mr. Romsey’s allusion, and she looked at him pointedly as she spoke. There are some impenetrable men on whom looks produce no impression. Mr. Romsey was one of them. He turned to his wife, and said, quietly: “What I mean is, that I know more of Mrs. Norman than you do. I have heard of her — never mind how or where. She is a lady who has been celebrated in the newspapers. Don’t be alarmed. She is no less a person than the divorced Mrs. Linley.”
The two ladies looked at each other in blank dismay. Restrained by a sense of conjugal duty, Mrs. Romsey only indulged in an exclamation. Lady Myrie, independent of restraint, expressed her opinion, and said: “Quite impossible!”
“The Mrs. Norman whom I mean,” Mr. Romsey went on, “has, as I have been told, a mother living. The old lady has been twice married. Her name is Mrs. Presty.”
This settled the question. Mrs. Presty was established, in her own proper person, with her daughter and grandchild at the hotel. Lady Myrie yielded to the force of evidence; she lifted her hands in horror: “This is too dreadful!”
Mrs. Romsey took a more compassionate view of the disclosure. “Surely the poor lady is to be pitied?” she gently suggested.
Lady Myrie looked at her friend in astonishment. “My dear, you must have forgotten what the judge said about her. Surely you read the report of the case in the newspapers?”
“No; I heard of the trial, and that’s all. What did the judge say?”
“Say?” Lady Myrie repeated. “What did he not say! His lordship declared that he had a great mind not to grant the Divorce at all. He spoke of this dreadful woman who has deceived us in the severest terms; he said she had behaved in a most improper manner. She had encouraged the abominable governess; and if her husband had yielded to temptation, it was her fault. And more besides, that I don’t remember.”
Mr. Romsey’s wife appealed to him in despair. “What am I to do?” she asked, helplessly.
“Do nothing,” was the wise reply. “Didn’t you say she was going away to-morrow?”
“That’s the worst of it!” Mrs. Romsey declared. “Her little girl Kitty gives a farewell dinner to-morrow to our children; and I’ve promised to take them to say good-by.”
Lady Myrie pronounced sentence without hesitation. “Of course your girls mustn’t go. Daughters! Think of their reputations when they grow up!”
“Are you in the same scrape with my wife?” Mr. Romsey asked.
Lady Myrie corrected his language. “I have been deceived in the same way,” she said. “Though my children are boys (which perhaps makes a difference) I feel it is my duty as a mother not to let them get into bad company. I do nothing myself in an underhand way. No excuses! I shall send a note and tell Mrs. Norman why she doesn’t see my boys to-morrow.”
“Isn’t that a little hard on her?” said merciful Mrs. Romsey.
Mr. Romsey agreed with his wife, on grounds of expediency. “Never make a row if you can help it,” was the peaceable principle to which this gentleman committed himself. “Send word that the children have caught colds, and get over it in that way.”
Mrs. Romsey looked gratefully at her admirable husband. “Just the thing!” she said, with an air of relief.
Lady Myrie’s sense of duty expressed itself, with the strictest adherence to the laws of courtesy. She rose, smiled resignedly, and said, “Good-night.”
Almost at the same moment, innocent little Kitty astonished her mother and her grandmother by appearing before them in her night-gown, after she had been put to bed nearly two hours since.
“What will this child do next?” Mrs. Presty exclaimed.
Kitty told the truth. “I can’t go to sleep, grandmamma.”
“Why not, my darling?” her mother asked.
“I’m so excited, mamma.”
“About what, Kitty?”
“About my dinner-party to-morrow. Oh,” said the child, clasping her hands earnestly as she thought of her playfellows, “I do so hope it will go off well!”
Belonging to the generation which has lived to see the Age of Hurry, and has no sympathy with it, Mrs. Presty entered the sitting-room at the hotel, two hours before the time that had been fixed for leaving Sandyseal, with her mind at ease on the subject of her luggage. “My boxes are locked, strapped and labeled; I hate being hurried. What’s that you’re reading?” she asked, discovering a book on her daughter’s lap, and a hasty action on her daughter’s part, which looked like trying to hide it.
Mrs. Norman made the most common, and — where the object is to baffle curiosity — the most useless of prevaricating replies. When her mother asked her what she was reading she answered: “Nothing.”
“Nothing!” Mrs. Presty repeated with an ironical assumption of interest. “The work of all others, Catherine, that I most want to read.” She snatched up the book; opened it at the first page, and discovered an inscription in faded ink which roused her indignation. “To dear Catherine, from Herbert, on the anniversary of our marriage.” What unintended mockery in those words, read by the later light of the Divorce! “Well, this is mean,” said Mrs. Presty. “Keeping that wretch’s present, after the public exposure which he has forced on you. Oh, Catherine!”
Catherine was not quite so patient with her mother as usual. “Keeping my best remembrance of the happy time of my life,” she answered.
“Misplaced sentiment,” Mrs. Presty declared; “I shall put the book out of the way. Your brain is softening, my dear, under the influence of this stupefying place.”
Catherine asserted her own opinion against her mother’s opinion, for the second time. “I have recovered my health at Sandyseal,” she said. “I like the place, and I am sorry to leave it.”
“Give me the shop windows, the streets, the life, the racket, and the smoke of London,” cried Mrs. Presty. “Thank Heaven, these rooms are let over our heads, and out we must go, whether we like it or not.”
This expression of gratitude was followed by a knock at the door, and by a voice outside asking leave to come in, which was, beyond all doubt, the voice of Randal Linley. With Catherine’s book still in her possession, Mrs. Presty opened the table-drawer, threw it in, and closed the drawer with a bang. Discovering the two ladies, Randal stopped in the doorway, and stared at them in astonishment.
“Didn’t you expect to see us?” Mrs. Presty inquired.
“I heard you were here, from our friend Sarrazin,” Randal said; “but I expected to see Captain Bennydeck. Have I mistaken the number? Surely these are his rooms?”
Catherine attempted to explain. “They were Captain Bennydeck’s rooms,” she began; “but he was so kind, although we are perfect strangers to him —”
Mrs. Presty interposed. “My dear Catherine, you have not had my advantages; you have not been taught to make a complicated statement in few words. Permit me to seize the points (in the late Mr. Presty’s style) and to put them in the strongest light. This place, Randal, is always full; and we didn’t write long enough beforehand to secure rooms. Captain Bennydeck happened to be downstairs when he heard that we were obliged to go away, and that one of us was a lady in delicate health. This sweetest of men sent us word that we were welcome to take his rooms, and that he would sleep on board his yacht. Conduct worthy of Sir Charles Grandison himself. When I went downstairs to thank him, he was gone — and here we have been for nearly three weeks; sometimes seeing the Captain’s yacht, but, to our great surprise, never seeing the Captain himself.”
“There’s nothing to be surprised at, Mrs. Presty. Captain Bennydeck likes doing kind things, and hates being thanked for it. I expected him to meet me here to-day.”
Catherine went to the window. “He is coming to meet you,” she said. “There is his yacht in the bay.”
“And in a dead calm,” Randal added, joining her. “The vessel will not get here, before I am obliged to go away again.”
Catherine looked at him timidly. “Do I drive you away?” she asked, in tones that faltered a little.
Randal wondered what she could possibly be thinking of and acknowledged it in so many words.
“She is thinking of the Divorce,” Mrs. Presty explained. “You have heard of it, of course; and perhaps you take your brother’s part?”
“I do nothing of the sort, ma’am. My brother has been in the wrong from first to last.” He turned to Catherine. “I will stay with you as long as I can, with the greatest pleasure,” he said earnestly and kindly. “The truth is, I am on my way to visit some friends; and if Captain Bennydeck had got here in time to see me, I must have gone away to the junction to catch the next train westward, just as I am going now. I had only two words to say to the Captain about a person in whom he is interested — and I can say them in this way.” He wrote in pencil on one of his visiting cards, and laid it on the table. “I shall be back in London, in a week,” he resumed, “and you will tell me at what address I can find you. In the meanwhile, I miss Kitty. Where is she?”
Kitty was sent for. She entered the room looking unusually quiet and subdued — but, discovering Randal, became herself again in a moment, and jumped on his knee.
“Oh, Uncle Randal, I’m so glad to see you!” She checked herself, and looked at her mother. “May I call him Uncle Randal?” she asked. “Or has he changed his name, too?”
Mrs. Presty shook a warning forefinger at her granddaughter, and reminded Kitty that she had been told not to talk about names. Randal saw the child’s look of bewilderment, and felt for her. “She may talk as she pleases to me,” he said “but not to strangers. She understands that, I am sure.”
Kitty laid her cheek fondly against her uncle’s cheek. “Everything is changed,” she whispered. “We travel about; papa has left us, and Syd has left us, and we have got a new name. We are Norman now. I wish I was grown up, and old enough to understand it.”
Randal tried to reconcile her to her own happy ignorance. “You have got your dear good mother,” he said, “and you have got me, and you have got your toys —”
“And some nice boys and girls to play with,” cried Kitty, eagerly following the new suggestion. “They are all coming here directly to dine with me. You will stay and have dinner too, won’t you?”
Randal promised to dine with Kitty when they met in London. Before he left the room he pointed to his card on the table. “Let my friend see that message,” he said, as he went out.
The moment the door had closed on him, Mrs. Presty startled her daughter by taking up the card and looking at what Randal had written on it. “It isn’t a letter, Catherine; and you know how superior I am to common prejudices.” With that defense of her proceeding, she coolly read the message:
“I am sorry to say that I can tell you nothing more of your old friend’s daughter as yet. I can only repeat that she neither needs nor deserves the help that you kindly offer to her.”
Mrs. Presty laid the card down again and owned that she wished Randal had been a little more explicit. “Who can it be?” she wondered. “Another young hussy gone wrong?”
Kitty turned to her mother with a look of alarm. “What’s a hussy?” she asked. “Does grandmamma mean me?” The great hotel clock in the hall struck two, and the child’s anxieties took a new direction. “Isn’t it time my little friends came to see me?” she said.
It was half an hour past the time. Catherine proposed to send to Lady Myrie and Mrs. Romsey, and inquire if anything had happened to cause the delay. As she told Kitty to ring the bell, the waiter came in with two letters, addressed to Mrs. Norman.
Mrs. Presty had her own ideas, and drew her own conclusions. She watched Catherine attentively. Even Kitty observed that her mother’s face grew paler and paler as she read the letters. “You look as if you were frightened, mamma.” There was no reply. Kitty began to feel so uneasy on the subject of her dinner and her guests, that she actually ventured on putting a question to her grandmother.
“Will they be long, do you think, before they come?” she asked.
The old lady’s worldly wisdom had passed, by this time from a state of suspicion to a state of certainty. “My child,” she answered, “they won’t come at all.”
Kitty ran to her mother, eager to inquire if what Mrs. Presty had told her could possibly be true. Before a word had passed her lips, she shrank back, too frightened to speak.
Never, in her little experience, had she been startled by such a look in her mother’s face as the look that confronted her now. For the first time Catherine saw her child trembling at the sight of her. Before that discovery, the emotions that shook her under the insult which she had received lost their hold. She caught Kitty up in her arms. “My darling, my angel, it isn’t you I am thinking of. I love you!— I love you! In the whole world there isn’t such a good child, such a sweet, lovable, pretty child as you are. Oh, how disappointed she looks — she’s crying. Don’t break my heart!— don’t cry!” Kitty held up her head, and cleared her eyes with a dash of her hand. “I won’t cry, mamma.” And child as she was, she was as good as her word. Her mother looked at her and burst into tears.
Perversely reluctant, the better nature that was in Mrs. Presty rose to the surface, forced to show itself. “Cry, Catherine,” she said kindly; “it will do you good. Leave the child to me.”
With a gentleness that astonished Kitty, she led her little granddaughter to the window, and pointed to the public walk in front of the house. “I know what will comfort you,” the wise old woman began; “look out of the window.” Kitty obeyed.
“I don’t see my little friends coming,” she said. Mrs. Presty still pointed to some object on the public walk. “That’s better than nothing, isn’t it?” she persisted. “Come with me to the maid; she shall go with you, and take care of you.” Kitty whispered, “May I give mamma a kiss first?” Sensible Mrs. Presty delayed the kiss for a while. “Wait till you come back, and then you can tell your mamma what a treat you have had.” Arrived at the door on their way out, Kitty whispered again: “I want to say something”—“Well, what is it?”—“Will you tell the donkey-boy to make him gallop?”—“I’ll tell the boy he shall have sixpence if you are satisfied; and you will see what he does then.” Kitty looked up earnestly in her grandmother’s face. “What a pity it is you are not always like what you are now!” she said. Mrs. Presty actually blushed.
For some time, Catherine and her mother had been left together undisturbed.
Mrs. Presty had read (and destroyed) the letters of Lady Myrie and Mrs. Romsey, with the most unfeigned contempt for the writers — had repeated what the judge had really said, as distinguished from Lady Myrie’s malicious version of it — and had expressed her intention of giving Catherine a word of advice, when she was sufficiently composed to profit by it. “You have recovered your good looks, after that fit of crying,” Mrs. Presty admitted, “but not your good spirits. What is worrying you now?”
“I can’t help thinking of poor Kitty.”
“My dear, the child wants nobody’s pity. She’s blowing away all her troubles by a ride in the fresh air, on the favorite donkey that she feeds every morning. Yes, yes, you needn’t tell me you are in a false position; and nobody can deny that it’s shameful to make the child feel it. Now listen to me. Properly understood, those two spiteful women have done you a kindness. They have as good as told you how to protect yourself in the time to come. Deceive the vile world, Catherine, as it deserves to be deceived. Shelter yourself behind a respectable character that will spare you these insults in the future.” In the energy of her conviction, Mrs. Presty struck her fist on the table, and finished in three audacious words: “Be a Widow!”
It was plainly said — and yet Catherine seemed to be at a loss to understand what her mother meant.
“Don’t doubt about it,” Mrs. Presty went on; “do it. Think of Kitty if you won’t think of yourself. In a few years more she will be a young lady. She may have an offer of marriage which may be everything we desire. Suppose her sweetheart’s family is a religious family; and suppose your Divorce, and the judge’s remarks on it, are discovered. What will happen then?”
“Is it possible that you are in earnest?” Catherine asked. “Have you seriously thought of the advice that you are giving me? Setting aside the deceit, you know as well as I do that Kitty would ask questions. Do you think I can tell my child that her father is dead? A lie — and such a dreadful lie as that?”
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Presty..
“Nonsense?” Catherine repeated indignantly.
“Rank nonsense,” her mother persisted. “Hasn’t your situation forced you to lie already? When the child asks why her father and her governess have left us, haven’t you been obliged to invent excuses which are lies? If the man who was once your husband isn’t as good as dead to you, I should like to know what your Divorce means! My poor dear, do you think you can go on as you are going on now? How many thousands of people have read the newspaper account of the trial? How many hundreds of people — interested in a handsome woman like you — will wonder why they never see Mr. Norman? What? You will go abroad again? Go where you may, you will attract attention; you will make an enemy of every ugly woman who looks at you. Strain at a gnat, Catherine, and swallow a camel. It’s only a question of time. Sooner or later you will be a Widow. Here’s the waiter again. What does the man want now?”
The waiter answered by announcing:
“Captain Bennydeck.”
Catherine’s mother was nearer to the door than Catherine; she attracted the Captain’s attention first. He addressed his apologies to her. “Pray excuse me for disturbing you —”
Mrs. Presty had an eye for a handsome man, irrespective of what his age might be. In the language of the conjurors a “magic change” appeared in her; she became brightly agreeable in a moment.
“Oh, Captain Bennydeck, you mustn’t make excuses for coming into your own room!”
Captain Bennydeck went on with his excuses, nevertheless. “The landlady tells me that I have unluckily missed seeing Mr. Randal Linley, and that he has left a message for me. I shouldn’t otherwise have ventured —”
Mrs. Presty stopped him once more. The Captain’s claim to the Captain’s rooms was the principle on which she took her stand. She revived the irresistible smiles which had conquered Mr. Norman and Mr. Presty. “No ceremony, I beg and pray! You are at home here — take the easy-chair!”
Catherine advanced a few steps; it was time to stop her mother, if the thing could be done. She felt just embarrassment enough to heighten her color, and to show her beauty to the greatest advantage. It literally staggered the Captain, the moment he looked at her. His customary composure, as a well-bred man, deserted him; he bowed confusedly; he had not a word to say. Mrs. Presty seized her opportunity, and introduced them to each other. “My daughter Mrs. Norman — Captain Bennydeck.” Compassionating him under the impression that he was a shy man, Catherine tried to set him at his ease. “I am indeed glad to have an opportunity of thanking you,” she said, inviting him by a gesture to be seated. “In this delightful air, I have recovered my health, and I owe it to your kindness.”
The Captain regained his self-possession. Expressions of gratitude had been addressed to him which, in his modest estimate of himself, he could not feel that he had deserved.
“You little know,” he replied, “under what interested motives I have acted. When I established myself in this hotel, I was fairly driven out of my yacht by a guest who went sailing with me.”
Mrs. Presty became deeply interested. “Dear me, what did he do?”
Captain Bennydeck answered gravely: “He snored.”
Catherine was amused; Mrs. Presty burst out laughing; the Captain’s dry humor asserted itself as quaintly as ever. “This is no laughing matter,” he resumed, looking at Catherine. “My vessel is a small one. For two nights the awful music of my friend’s nose kept me sleepless. When I woke him, and said, ‘Don’t snore,’ he apologized in the sweetest manner, and began again. On the third day I anchored in the bay here, determined to get a night’s rest on shore. A dispute about the price of these rooms offered them to me. I sent a note of apology on board — and slept peacefully. The next morning, my sailing master informed me that there had been what he called ‘a little swell in the night.’ He reported the sounds made by my friend on this occasion to have been the awful sounds of seasickness. ‘The gentleman left the yacht, sir, the first thing this morning,’ he said; ‘and he’s gone home by railway.’ On the day when you happened to arrive, my cabin was my own again; and I can honestly thank you for relieving me of my rooms. Do you make a long stay, Mrs. Norman?”
Catherine answered that they were going to London by the next train. Seeing Randal’s card still unnoticed on the table, she handed it to the Captain.
“Is Mr. Linley an old friend of yours?” he asked, as he took the card.
Mrs. Presty hastened to answer in the affirmative for her daughter. It was plain that Randal had discreetly abstained from mentioning his true connection with them. Would he preserve the same silence if the Captain spoke of his visit to Mrs. Norman, when he and his friend met next? Mrs. Presty’s mind might have been at ease on that subject, if she had known how to appreciate Randal’s character and Randal’s motives. The same keen sense of the family disgrace, which had led him to conceal from Captain Bennydeck his brother’s illicit relations with Sydney Westerfield, had compelled him to keep secret his former association, as brother-in-law, with the divorced wife. Her change of name had hitherto protected her from discovery by the Captain, and would in all probability continue to protect her in the future. The good Bennydeck had been enjoying himself at sea when the Divorce was granted, and when the newspapers reported the proceedings. He rarely went to his club, and he never associated with persons of either sex to whom gossip and scandal are as the breath of their lives. Ignorant of these circumstances, and remembering what had happened on that day, Mrs. Presty looked at him with some anxiety on her daughter’s account, while he was reading the message on Randal’s card. There was little to see. His fine face expressed a quiet sorrow, and he sighed as he put the card back in his pocket.
An interval of silence followed. Captain Bennydeck was thinking over the message which he had just read. Catherine and her mother were looking at him with the same interest, inspired by very different motives. The interview so pleasantly begun was in some danger of lapsing into formality and embarrassment, when a new personage appeared on the scene.
Kitty had returned in triumph from her ride. “Mamma! the donkey did more than gallop — he kicked, and I fell off. Oh, I’m not hurt!” cried the child, seeing the alarm in her mother’s face. “Tumbling off is such a funny sensation. It isn’t as if you fell on the ground; it’s as if the ground came up to you and said — Bump!” She had got as far as that, when the progress of her narrative was suspended by the discovery of a strange gentleman in the room.
The smile that brightened the captain’s face, when Kitty opened the door, answered for him as a man who loved children. “Your little girl, Mrs. Norman?” he said.
“Yes.”
(A common question and a common reply. Nothing worth noticing, in either the one or the other, at the time — and yet they proved to be important enough to turn Catherine’s life into a new course.)
In the meanwhile, Kitty had been whispering to her mother. She wanted to know the strange gentleman’s name. The Captain heard her. “My name is Bennydeck,” he said; “will you come to me?”
Kitty had heard the name mentioned in connection with a yacht. Like all children, she knew a friend the moment she looked at him. “I’ve seen your pretty boat, sir,” she said, crossing the room to Captain Bennydeck. “Is it very nice when you go sailing?”
“If you were not going back to London, my dear, I should ask your mamma to let me take you sailing with me. Perhaps we shall have another opportunity.”
The Captain’s answer delighted Kitty. “Oh, yes, tomorrow or next day!” she suggested. “Do you know where to find me in London? Mamma, where do I live, when I am in London?” Before her mother could answer, she hit on a new idea. “Don’t tell me; I’ll find it for myself. It’s on grandmamma’s boxes, and they’re in the passage.”
Captain Bennydeck’s eyes followed her, as she left the room, with an expression of interest which more than confirmed the favorable impression that he had already produced on Catherine. She was on the point of asking if he was married, and had children of his own, when Kitty came back, and declared the right address to be Buck’s Hotel, Sydenham. “Mamma puts things down for fear of forgetting them,” she added. “Will you put down Buck?”
The Captain took out his pocketbook, and appealed pleasantly to Mrs. Norman. “May I follow your example?” he asked. Catherine not only humored the little joke, but, gratefully remembering his kindness, said: “Don’t forget, when you are in London, that Kitty’s invitation is my invitation, too.” At the same moment, punctual Mrs. Presty looked at her watch, and reminded her daughter that railways were not in the habit of allowing passengers to keep them waiting. Catherine rose, and gave her hand to the Captain at parting. Kitty improved on her mother’s form of farewell; she gave him a kiss and whispered a little reminder of her own: “There’s a river in London — don’t forget your boat.”
Captain Bennydeck opened the door for them, secretly wishing that he could follow Mrs. Norman to the station and travel by the same train.
Mrs. Presty made no attempt to remind him that she was still in the room. Where her family interests were concerned, the old lady was capable (on very slight encouragement) of looking a long way into the future. She was looking into the future now. The Captain’s social position was all that could be desired; he was evidently in easy pecuniary circumstances; he admired Catherine and Catherine’s child. If he only proved to be a single man, Mrs. Presty’s prophetic soul, without waiting an instant to reflect, perceived a dazzling future. Captain Bennydeck approached to take leave. “Not just yet,” pleaded the most agreeable of women; “my luggage was ready two hours ago. Sit down again for a few minutes. You seem to like my little granddaughter.”
“If I had such a child as that,” the Captain answered, “I believe I should be the happiest man living.”
“Ah, my dear sir, all isn’t gold that glitters,” Mrs. Presty remarked. “That proverb must have been originally intended to apply to children. May I presume to make you the subject of a guess? I fancy you are not a married man.”
The Captain looked a little surprised. “You are quite right,” he said; “I have never been married.”
At a later period, Mrs. Presty owned that she felt an inclination to reward him for confessing himself to be a bachelor, by a kiss. He innocently checked that impulse by putting a question. “Had you any particular reason,” he asked, “for guessing that I was a single man?”
Mrs. Presty modestly acknowledged that she had only her own experience to help her. “You wouldn’t be quite so fond of other people’s children,” she said, “if you were a married man. Ah, your time will come yet — I mean your wife will come.”
He answered this sadly. “My time has gone by. I have never had the opportunities that have been granted to some favored men.” He thought of the favored man who had married Mrs. Norman. Was her husband worthy of his happiness? “Is Mr. Norman with you at this place?” the Captain asked.
Serious issues depended on the manner in which this question was answered. For one moment, and for one moment only, Mrs. Presty hesitated. Then (in her daughter’s interest, of course) she put Catherine in the position of a widow, in the least blamable of all possible ways, by honestly owning the truth.
“There is no Mr. Norman,” she said.
“Your daughter is a widow!” cried the Captain, perfectly unable to control his delight at that discovery.
“What else should she be?” Mrs. Presty replied, facetiously.
What else, indeed! If “no Mr. Norman” meant (as it must surely mean) that Mr. Norman was dead, and if the beautiful mother of Kitty was an honest woman, her social position was beyond a doubt. Captain Bennydeck felt a little ashamed of his own impetuosity. Before he had made up his mind what to say next, the unlucky waiter (doomed to be a cause of disturbance on that day) appeared again.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said; “the lady and gentleman who have taken these rooms have just arrived.”
Mrs. Presty got up in a hurry, and cordially shook hands with the Captain. Looking round, she took up the railway guide and her knitting left on the table. Was there anything else left about? There was nothing to be seen. Mrs. Presty crossed the passage to her daughter’s bedroom, to hurry the packing. Captain Bennydeck went downstairs, on his way back to the yacht.
In the hall of the hotel he passed the lady and gentleman — and, of course, noticed the lady. She was little and dark and would have been pretty, if she had not looked ill and out of spirits. What would he have said, what would he have done, if he had known that those two strangers were Randal Linley’s brother and Roderick Westerfield’s daughter?
The stealthy influence of distrust fastens its hold on the mind by slow degrees. Little by little it reaches its fatal end, and disguises delusion successfully under the garb of truth.
Day after day, the false conviction grew on Sydney’s mind that Herbert Linley was comparing the life he led now with the happier life which he remembered at Mount Morven. Day after day, her unreasoning fear contemplated the time when Herbert Linley would leave her friendless, in the world that had no place in it for women like herself. Delusion — fatal delusion that looked like truth! Morally weak as he might be, the man whom she feared to trust had not yet entirely lost the sense which birth and breeding had firmly fastened in him — the sense of honor. Acting under that influence, he was (if the expression may be permitted) consistent even in inconsistency. With equal sincerity of feeling, he reproached himself for his infidelity toward the woman whom he had deserted, and devoted himself to his duty toward the woman whom he had misled. In Sydney’s presence — suffer as he might under the struggle to maintain his resolution when he was alone — he kept his intercourse with her studiously gentle in manner, and considerate in language; his conduct offered assurances for the future which she could only see through the falsifying medium of her own distrust.
In the delusion that now possessed her she read, over and over again, the letter which Captain Bennydeck had addressed to her father; she saw, more and more clearly, the circumstances which associated her situation with the situation of the poor girl who had closed her wasted life among the nuns in a French convent.
Two results followed on this state of things.
When Herbert asked to what part of England they should go, on leaving London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had heard of, and felt some curiosity to see. The same day — bent on pleasing her, careless where he lived now, at home or abroad — he wrote to engage rooms at the hotel.
A time followed, during which they were obliged to wait until rooms were free. In this interval, brooding over the melancholy absence of a friend or relative in whom she could confide, her morbid dread of the future decided her on completing the parallel between herself and that other lost creature of whom she had read. Sydney opened communication anonymously with the Benedictine community at Sandyseal.
She addressed the Mother Superior; telling the truth about herself with but one concealment, the concealment of names. She revealed her isolated position among her fellow-creatures; she declared her fervent desire to repent of her wickedness, and to lead a religious life; she acknowledged her misfortune in having been brought up by persons careless of religion, and she confessed to having attended a Protestant place of worship, as a mere matter of form connected with the duties of a teacher at a school. “The religion of any Christian woman who will help me to be more like herself,” she wrote, “is the religion to which I am willing and eager to belong. If I come to you in my distress, will you receive me?” To that simple appeal, she added a request that an answer might be addressed to “S.W., Post-office, Sandyseal.”
When Captain Bennydeck and Sydney Westerfield passed each other as strangers, in the hall of the hotel, that letter had been posted in London a week since.
The servant showed “Mr. and Mrs. Herbert” into their sitting-room, and begged that they would be so good as to wait for a few minutes, while the other rooms were being prepared for them.
Sydney seated herself in silence. She was thinking of her letter, and wondering whether a reply was waiting for her at the post-office.
Moving toward the window to look at the view, Herbert paused to examine some prints hanging on the walls, which were superior as works of art to the customary decorations of a room at a hotel. If he had gone straight to the window he might have seen his divorced wife, his child, and his wife’s mother, getting into the carriage which took them to the railway station.
“Come, Sydney,” he said, “and look at the sea.”
She joined him wearily, with a faint smile. It was a calm, sunny day. Bathing machines were on the beach; children were playing here and there; and white sails of pleasure boats were visible in the offing. The dullness of Sandyseal wore a quiet homely aspect which was pleasant to the eyes of strangers. Sydney said, absently, “I think I shall like the place.” And Herbert added: “Let us hope that the air will make you feel stronger.” He meant it and said it kindly — but, instead of looking at her while he spoke, he continued to look at the view. A woman sure of her position would not have allowed this trifling circumstance, even if she had observed it, to disturb her. Sydney thought of the day in London when he had persisted in looking out at the street, and returned in silence to her chair.
Had he been so unfortunate as to offend her? And in what way? As that doubt occurred to Herbert his mind turned to Catherine. She never took offense at trifles; a word of kindness from him, no matter how unimportant it might be, always claimed affectionate acknowledgment in the days when he was living with his wife. In another moment he had dismissed that remembrance, and could trust himself to return to Sydney.
“If you find that Sandyseal confirms your first impression,” he said, “let me know it in time, so that I may make arrangements for a longer stay. I have only taken the rooms here for a fortnight.”
“Thank you, Herbert; I think a fortnight will be long enough.”
“Long enough for you?” he asked.
Her morbid sensitiveness mistook him again; she fancied there was an undernote of irony in his tone.
“Long enough for both of us,” she replied.
He drew a chair to her side. “Do you take it for granted,” he said, smiling, “that I shall get tired of the place first?”
She shrank, poor creature, even from his smile. There was, as she thought, something contemptuous in the good-humor of it.
“We have been to many places,” she reminded him, “and we have got tired of them together.”
“Is that my fault?”
“I didn’t say it was.”
He got up and approached the bell. “I think the journey has a little over-tired you,” he resumed. “Would you like to go to your room?”
“I will go to my room, if you wish it.”
He waited a little, and answered her as quietly as ever. “What I really wish,” he said, “is that we had consulted a doctor while we were in London. You seem to be very easily irritated of late. I observe a change in you, which I willingly attribute to the state of your health —”
She interrupted him. “What change do you mean?”
“It’s quite possible I may be mistaken, Sydney. But I have more than once, as I think, seen something in your manner which suggests that you distrust me.”
“I distrust the evil life we are leading,” she burst out, “and I see the end of it coming. Oh, I don’t blame you! You are kind and considerate, you do your best to hide it; but you have lived long enough with me to regret the woman whom you have lost. You begin to feel the sacrifice you have made — and no wonder. Say the word, Herbert, and I release you.”
“I will never say the word!”
She hesitated — first inclined, then afraid, to believe him. “I have grace enough left in me,” she went on, “to feel the bitterest repentance for the wrong that I have done to Mrs. Linley. When it ends, as it must end, in our parting, will you ask your wife —?”
Even his patience began to fail him; he refused — firmly, not angrily — to hear more. “She is no longer my wife,” he said.
Sydney’s bitterness and Sydney’s penitence were mingled, as opposite emotions only can be mingled in a woman’s breast. “Will you ask your wife to forgive you?” she persisted.
“After we have been divorced at her petition?” He pointed to the window as he said it. “Look at the sea. If I was drowning out yonder, I might as well ask the sea to forgive me.”
He produced no effect on her. She ignored the Divorce; her passionate remorse asserted itself as obstinately as ever. “Mrs. Linley is a good woman,” she insisted; “Mrs. Linley is a Christian woman.”
“I have lost all claim on her — even the claim to remember her virtues,” he answered, sternly. “No more of it, Sydney! I am sorry I have disappointed you; I am sorry if you are weary of me.”
At those last words her manner changed. “Wound me as cruelly as you please,” she said, humbly. “I will try to bear it.”
“I wouldn’t wound you for the world! Why do you persist in distressing me? Why do you feel suspicion of me which I have not deserved?” He stopped, and held out his hand. “Don’t let us quarrel, Sydney. Which will you do? Keep your bad opinion of me, or give me a fair trial?”
She loved him dearly; she was so young — and the young are so ready to hope! Still, she struggled against herself. “Herbert! is it your pity for me that is speaking now?”
He left her in despair. “It’s useless!” he said, sadly. “Nothing will conquer your inveterate distrust.”
She followed him. With a faint cry of entreaty she made him turn to her, and held him in a trembling embrace, and rested her head on his bosom. “Forgive me — be patient with me — love me.” That was all she could say.
He attempted to calm her agitation by speaking lightly. “At last, Sydney, we are friends again!” he said.
Friends? All the woman in her recoiled from that insufficient word. “Are we Lovers?” she whispered.
“Yes!”
With that assurance her anxious heart was content. She smiled; she looked out at the sea with a new appreciation of the view. “The air of this place will do me good now,” she said. “Are my eyes red, Herbert? Let me go and bathe them, and make myself fit to be seen.”
She rang the bell. The chambermaid answered it, ready to show the other rooms. She turned round at the door.
“Let’s try to make our sitting-room look like home,” she suggested. “How dismal, how dreadfully like a thing that doesn’t belong to us, that empty table looks! Put some of your books and my keepsakes on it, while I am away. I’ll bring my work with me when I come back.”
He had left his travelers’ bag on a chair, when he first came in. Now that he was alone, and under no restraint, he sighed as he unlocked the bag. “Home?” he repeated; “we have no home. Poor girl! poor unhappy girl! Let me help her to deceive herself.”
He opened the bag. The little fragile presents, which she called her “keepsakes,” had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney. It had been broken at the stem and could be easily mended so as to keep the accident concealed. Consulting the waiter, Herbert discovered that the fracture could be repaired at the nearest town, and that the place would be within reach when he went out for a walk. In fear of another disaster, if he put it back in the bag, he opened a drawer in the table, and laid the two fragments carefully inside, at the further end. In doing this, his hand touched something that had been already placed in the drawer. He drew it out, and found that it was a book — the same book that Mrs. Presty (surely the evil genius of the family again!) had hidden from Randal’s notice, and had forgotten when she left the hotel.
Herbert instantly recognized the gilding on the cover, imitated from a design invented by himself. He remembered the inscription, and yet he read it again:
“To dear Catherine, from Herbert, on the anniversary of our marriage.”
The book dropped from his hand on the table, as if it had been a new discovery, torturing him with a new pain.
His wife (he persisted in thinking of her as his wife) must have occupied the room — might perhaps have been the person whom he had succeeded, as a guest at the hotel. Did she still value his present to her, in remembrance of old times? No! She valued it so little that she had evidently forgotten it. Perhaps her maid might have included it among the small articles of luggage when they left home, or dear little Kitty might have put it into one of her mother’s trunks. In any case, there it was now, abandoned in the drawer of a table at a hotel.
“Oh,” he thought bitterly, “if I could only feel as coldly toward Catherine as she feels toward me!” His resolution had resisted much; but this final trial of his self-control was more than he could sustain. He dropped into a chair — his pride of manhood recoiled from the contemptible weakness of crying — he tried to remember that she had divorced him, and taken his child from him. In vain! in vain! He burst into tears.
With a heart lightened by reconciliation (not the first reconciliation unhappily), with hopes revived, and sweet content restored, Sydney’s serenity of mind was not quite unruffled. Her thoughts were not dwelling on the evil life which she had honestly deplored, or on the wronged wife to whom she had been eager to make atonement. Where is the woman whose sorrows are not thrown into the shade by the bright renewal of love? The one anxiety that troubled Sydney was caused by remembrance of the letter which she had sent to the convent at Sandyseal.
As her better mind now viewed it, she had doubly injured Herbert — first in distrusting him; then by appealing from him to the compassion of strangers.
If the reply for which she had rashly asked was waiting for her at that moment — if the mercy of the Mother Superior was ready to comfort and guide her — what return could she make? how could she excuse herself from accepting what was offered in kindly reply to her own petition? She had placed herself, for all she knew to the contrary, between two alternatives of ingratitude equally unendurable, equally degrading. To feel this was to feel the suspense which, to persons of excitable temperament, is of all trials the hardest to bear. The chambermaid was still in her room — Sydney asked if the post-office was near to the hotel.
The woman smiled. “Everything is near us, ma’am, in this little place. Can we send to the post-office for you?”
Sydney wrote her initials. “Ask, if you please, for a letter addressed in that way.” She handed the memorandum to the chambermaid. “Corresponding with her lover under her husband’s nose!” That was how the chambermaid explained it below stairs, when the porter remarked that initials looked mysterious.
The Mother Superior had replied. Sydney trembled as she opened the letter. It began kindly.
“I believe you, my child, and I am anxious to help you. But I cannot correspond with an unknown person. If you decide to reveal yourself, it is only right to add that I have shown your letter to the Reverend Father who, in temporal as in spiritual things, is our counselor and guide. To him I must refer you, in the first instance. His wisdom will decide the serious question of receiving you into our Holy Church, and will discover, in due time, if you have a true vocation to a religious life. With the Father’s sanction, you may be sure of my affectionate desire to serve you.”
Sydney put the letter back in the envelope, feeling gratefully toward the Mother Superior, but determined by the conditions imposed on her to make no further advance toward the Benedictine community.
Even if her motive in writing to the convent had remained unchallenged, the allusions to the priest would still have decided her on taking this step. The bare idea of opening her inmost heart, and telling her saddest secrets, to a man, and that man a stranger, was too repellent to be entertained for a moment. In a few lines of reply, gratefully and respectfully written, she thanked the Mother Superior, and withdrew from the correspondence.
The letter having been closed, and posted in the hotel box, she returned to the sitting-room free from the one doubt that had troubled her; eager to show Herbert how truly she believed in him, how hopefully she looked to the future.
With a happy smile on her lips she opened the door. She was on the point of asking him playfully if he had felt surprised at her long absence — when the sight that met her eyes turned her cold with terror in an instant.
His arms were stretched out on the table; his head was laid on them, despair confessed itself in his attitude; grief spoke in the deep sobbing breaths that shook him. Love and compassion restored Sydney’s courage; she advanced to raise him in her arms — and stopped once more. The book on the table caught her eye. He was still unconscious of her presence; she ventured to open it. She read the inscription — looked at him — looked back at the writing — and knew the truth at last.
The rigor of the torture that she suffered paralyzed all outward expression of pain. Quietly she put the book back on the table. Quietly she touched him, and called him by his name.
He started and looked up; he made an attempt to speak to her in his customary tone. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said.
She pointed to the book, without the slightest change in her face or her manner.
“I have read the inscription to your wife,” she answered; “I have seen you while you thought you were alone; the mercy which has so long kept the truth from me is mercy wasted now. Your bonds are broken, Herbert. You are a free man.”
He affected not to have understood her. She let him try to persuade her of it, and made no reply. He declared, honestly declared, that what she had said distressed him. She listened in submissive silence. He took her hand, and kissed it. She let him kiss it, and let him drop it at her side. She frightened him; he began to fear for her reason. There was silence — long, horrid, hopeless silence.
She had left the door of the room open. One of the servants of the hotel appeared outside in the passage. He spoke to some person behind him. “Perhaps the book has been left in here,” he suggested. A gentle voice answered: “I hope the lady and gentleman will excuse me, if I ask leave to look for my book.” She stepped into the room to make her apologies.
Herbert Linley and Sydney Westerfield looked at the woman whom they had outraged. The woman whom they had outraged paused, and looked back at them.
The hotel servant was surprised at their not speaking to each other. He was a stupid man; he thought the gentlefolks were strangely unlike gentlefolks in general; they seemed not to know what to say. Herbert happened to be standing nearest to him; he felt that it would be civil to the gentleman to offer a word of explanation.
“The lady had these rooms, sir. She has come back from the station to look for a book that has been left behind.”
Herbert signed to him to go. As the man turned to obey, he drew back. Sydney had moved to the door before him, to leave the room. Herbert refused to permit it. “Stay here,” he said to her gently; “this room is yours.”
Sydney hesitated. Herbert addressed her again. He pointed to his divorced wife. “You see how that lady is looking at you,” he said; “I beg that you will not submit to insult from anybody.”
Sydney obeyed him: she returned to the room.
Catherine’s voice was heard for the first time. She addressed herself to Sydney with a quiet dignity — far removed from anger, further removed still from contempt.
“You were about to leave the room,” she said. “I notice — as an act of justice to you— that my presence arouses some sense of shame.”
Herbert turned to Sydney; trying to recover herself, she stood near the table. “Give me the book,” he said; “the sooner this comes to an end the better for her, the better for us.” Sydney gave him the book. With a visible effort, he matched Catherine’s self-control; after all, she had remembered his gift! He offered the book to her.
She still kept her eyes fixed on Sydney — still spoke to Sydney.
“Tell him,” she said, “that I refuse to receive the book.”
Sydney attempted to obey. At the first words she uttered, Herbert checked her once more.
“I have begged you already not to submit to insult.” He turned to Catherine. “The book is yours, madam. Why do you refuse to take it?”
She looked at him for the first time. A proud sense of wrong flashed at him its keenly felt indignation in her first glance. “Your hands and her hands have touched it,” she answered. “I leave it to you and to her.”
Those words stung him. “Contempt,” he said, “is bitter indeed on your lips.”
“Do you presume to resent my contempt?”
“I forbid you to insult Miss Westerfield.” With that reply, he turned to Sydney. “You shall not suffer while I can prevent it,” he said tenderly, and approached to put his arm round her. She looked at Catherine, and drew back from his embrace, gently repelling him by a gesture.
Catherine felt and respected the true delicacy, the true penitence, expressed in that action. She advanced to Sydney. “Miss Westerfield,” she said, “I will take the book — from you.”
Sydney gave back the book without a word; in her position silence was the truest gratitude. Quietly and firmly Catherine removed the blank leaf on which Herbert had written, and laid it before him on the table. “I return your inscription. It means nothing now.” Those words were steadily pronounced; not the slightest appearance of temper accompanied them. She moved slowly to the door and looked back at Sydney. “Make some allowance for what I have suffered,” she said gently. “If I have wounded you, I regret it.” The faint sound of her dress on the carpet was heard in the perfect stillness, and lost again. They saw her no more.
Herbert approached Sydney. It was a moment when he was bound to assure her of his sympathy. He felt for her. In his inmost heart he felt for her. As he drew nearer, he saw tears in her eyes; but they seemed to have risen without her knowledge. Hardly conscious of his presence, she stood before him — lost in thought.
He endeavored to rouse her. “Did I protect you from insult?” he asked.
She said absently: “Yes!”
“Will you do as I do, dear? Will you try to forget?”
She said: “I will try to atone,” and moved toward the door of her room. The reply surprised him; but it was no time then to ask for an explanation.
“Would you like to lie down, Sydney, and rest?”
“Yes.”
She took his arm. He led her to the door of her room. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked.
“Nothing, thank you.”
She closed the door — and abruptly opened it again. “One thing more,” she said. “Kiss me.”
He kissed her tenderly. Returning to the sitting-room, he looked back across the passage. Her door was shut.
His head was heavy; his mind felt confused. He threw himself on the sofa — utterly exhausted by the ordeal through which he had passed. In grief, in fear, in pain, the time still comes when Nature claims her rights. The wretched worn-out man fell into a restless sleep. He was awakened by the waiter, laying the cloth for dinner. “It’s just ready, sir,” the servant announced; “shall I knock at the lady’s door?”
Herbert got up and went to her room.
He entered softly, fearing to disturb her if she too had slept. No sign of her was to be seen. She had evidently not rested on her bed. A morsel of paper lay on the smooth coverlet. There was only a line written on it: “You may yet be happy — and it may perhaps be my doing.”
He stood, looking at that last line of her writing, in the empty room. His despair and his submission spoke in the only words that escaped him:
“I have deserved it!”
“Mr. Herbert Linley, I ask permission to reply to your inquiries in writing, because it is quite likely that some of the opinions you will find here might offend you if I expressed them personally. I can relieve your anxiety on the subject of Miss Sydney Westerfield. But I must be allowed to do so in my own way — without any other restraints than those which I think it becoming to an honorable man to impose on himself.
“You are quite right in supposing that Miss Westerfield had heard me spoken of at Mount Morven, as the agent and legal adviser of the lady who was formerly your wife. What purpose led her to apply to me, under these circumstances, you will presently discover. As to the means by which she found her way to my office, I may remind you that any directory would give her the necessary information.
“Miss Westerfield’s object was to tell me, in the first place, that her guilty life with you was at an end. She has left your protection — not to return to it. I was sorry to see (though she tried to hide it from me) how keenly she felt the parting. You have been dearly loved by two sweet women, and they have thrown their hearts away on you — as women will.
“Having explained the circumstances so far, Miss Westerfield next mentioned the motive which had brought her to my office. She asked if I would inform her of Mrs. Norman’s address.
“This request, I confess, astonished me.
“To my mind she was, of all persons, the last who ought to contemplate communicating in any way with Mrs. Norman. I say this to you; but I refrained from saying it to her. What I did venture to do was to ask for her reasons. She answered that they were reasons which would embarrass her if she communicated them to a stranger.
“After this reply, I declined to give her the information she wanted.
“Not unprepared, as it appeared to me, for my refusal, she asked next if I was willing to tell her where she might find your brother, Mr. Randal Linley. In this case I was glad to comply with her request. She could address herself to no person worthier to advise her than your brother. In giving her his address in London, I told her that he was absent on a visit to some friends, and that he was expected to return in a week’s time.
“She thanked me, and rose to go.
“I confess I was interested in her. Perhaps I thought of the time when she might have been as dear to her father as my own daughters are to me. I asked if her parents were living: they were dead. My next question was: ‘Have you any friends in London?’ She answered: ‘I have no friends.’ It was said with a resignation so very sad in so young a creature that I was really distressed. I ran the risk of offending her — and asked if she felt any embarrassment in respect of money. She said: ‘I have some small savings from my salary when I was a governess.’ The change in her tone told me that she was alluding to the time of her residence at Mount Morven. It was impossible to look at this friendless girl, and not feel some anxiety about the lodging which she might have chosen in such a place as London. She had fortunately come to me from the railway, and had not thought yet of where she was to live. At last I was able to be of some use to her. My senior clerk took care of Miss Westerfield, and left her among respectable people, in whose house she could live cheaply and safely. Where that house is, I refuse (for her sake) to tell you. She shall not be disturbed.
“After a week had passed I received a visit from my good friend, Randal Linley.
“He had on that day seen Miss Westerfield. She had said to him what she had said to me, and had repeated the request which I thought it unwise to grant; owning to your brother, however, the motives which she had refused to confide to me. He was so strongly impressed by the sacrifice of herself which this penitent woman had made, that he was at first disposed to trust her with Mrs. Norman’s address.
“Reflection, however, convinced him that her motives, pure and disinterested as they undoubtedly were, did not justify him in letting her expose herself to the consequences which might follow the proposed interview. All that he engaged to do was to repeat to Mrs. Norman what Miss Westerfield had said, and to inform the young lady of the result.
“In the intervals of business, I had felt some uneasiness when I thought of Miss Westerfield’s prospects. Your good brother at once set all anxiety on this subject at rest.
“He proposed to place Miss Westerfield under the care of an old and dear friend of her late father — Captain Bennydeck. Her voluntary separation from you offered to your brother, and to the Captain, the opportunity for which they had both been waiting. Captain Bennydeck was then cruising at sea in his yacht. Immediately on his return, Miss Westerfield’s inclination would be consulted, and she would no doubt eagerly embrace the opportunity of being introduced to her father’s friend.
“I have now communicated all that I know, in reply to the questions which you have addressed to me. Let me earnestly advise you to make the one reparation to this poor girl which is in your power. Resign yourself to a separation which is not only for her good, but for yours.— SAMUEL SARRAZIN.”
Not having heard from Captain Bennydeck for some little time, Randal thought it desirable in Sydney’s interests to make inquiries at his club. Nothing was known of the Captain’s movements there. On the chance of getting the information that he wanted, Randal wrote to the hotel at Sandyseal.
The landlord’s reply a little surprised him.
Some days since, the yacht had again appeared in the bay. Captain Bennydeck had landed, to all appearance in fairly good health; and had left by an early train for London. The sailing-master announced that he had orders to take the vessel back to her port — with no other explanation than that the cruise was over. This alternative in the Captain’s plans (terminating the voyage a month earlier than his arrangements had contemplated) puzzled Randal. He called at his friend’s private residence, only to hear from the servants that they had seen nothing of their master. Randal waited a while in London, on the chance that Bennydeck might pay him a visit.
During this interval his patience was rewarded in an unexpected manner. He discovered the Captain’s address by means of a letter from Catherine, dated “Buck’s Hotel, Sydenham.” Having gently reproached him for not writing to her or calling on her, she invited him to dinner at the hotel. Her letter concluded in these words: “You will only meet one person besides ourselves — your friend, and (since we last met) our friend too. Captain Bennydeck has got tired of the sea. He is staying at this hotel, to try the air of Sydenham, and he finds that it agrees with him.”
These lines set Randal thinking seriously.
To represent Bennydeck as being “tired of the sea,” and as being willing to try, in place of the breezy Channel, the air of a suburb of London, was to make excuses too perfectly futile and absurd to deceive any one who knew the Captain. In spite of the appearance of innocence which pervaded Catherine’s letter, the true motive for breaking off his cruise might be found, as Randal concluded, in Catherine herself. Her residence at the sea-side, helped by the lapse of time, had restored to her personal attractions almost all they had lost under the deteriorating influences of care and grief; and her change of name must have protected her from a discovery of the Divorce which would have shocked a man so sincerely religious as Bennydeck. Had her beauty fascinated him? Was she aware of the interest that he felt in her? and was it secretly understood and returned? Randal wrote to accept the invitation; determining to present himself before the appointed hour, and to question Catherine privately, without giving her the advantage over him of preparing herself for the interview.
In the short time that passed before the day of the dinner, distressing circumstances strengthened his resolution. After months of separation, he received a visit from Herbert.
Was this man — haggard, pallid, shabby, looking at him piteously with bloodshot eyes — the handsome, pleasant, prosperous brother whom he remembered? Randal was so grieved, that he was for a moment unable to utter a word. He could only point to a seat. Herbert dropped into the chair as if he was reduced to the last extremity of fatigue. And yet he spoke roughly; he looked like an angry man brought to bay.
“I seem to frighten you,” he said.
“You distress me, Herbert, more than words can say.”
“Give me a glass of wine. I’ve been walking — I don’t know where. A long distance; I’m dead beat.”
He drank the wine greedily. Whatever reviving effect it might otherwise have produced on him, it made no change in the threatening gloom of his manner. In a man morally weak, calamity (suffered without resisting power) breaks its way through the surface which exhibits a gentleman, and shows the naked nature which claims kindred with our ancestor the savage.
“Do you feel better, Herbert?”
He put down the empty glass, taking no notice of his brother’s question. “Randal,” he said, “you know where Sydney is.”
Randal admitted it.
“Give me her address. My mind’s in such a state I can’t remember it; write it down.”
“No, Herbert.”
“You won’t write it? and you won’t give it?”
“I will do neither the one nor the other. Go back to your chair; fierce looks and clinched fists don’t frighten me. Miss Westerfield is quite right in separating herself from you. And you are quite wrong in wishing to go back to her. There are my reasons. Try to understand them. And, once again, sit down.”
He spoke sternly — with his heart aching for his brother all the time. He was right. The one way is the positive way, when a man who suffers trouble is degraded by it.
The poor wretch sank under Randal’s firm voice and steady eye.
“Don’t be hard on me,” he said. “I think a man in my situation is to be pitied — especially by his brother. I’m not like you; I’m not accustomed to live alone. I’ve been accustomed to having a kind woman to talk to me, and take care of me. You don’t know what it is to be used to seeing a pretty creature, always nicely dressed, always about the room — thinking so much of you, and so little of herself — and then to be left alone as I am left, out in the dark. I haven’t got my wife; she has thrown me over, and taken my child away from me. And, now, Sydney’s taken away from me next. I’m alone. Do you hear that? Alone! Take the poker there out of the fireplace. Give me back Sydney, or knock out my brains. I haven’t courage enough to do it for myself. Oh, why did I engage that governess! I was so happy, Randal, with Catherine and little Kitty.”
He laid his head wearily on the back of his chair. Randal offered him more wine; he refused it.
“I’m afraid,” he said. “Wine maddens me if I take too much of it. You have heard of men forgetting their sorrows in drink. I tried it yesterday; it set my brains on fire; I’m feeling that glass I took just now. No! I’m not faint. It eases my head when I rest like this. Shake hands, Randal; we have never had any unfriendly words; we mustn’t begin now. There’s something perverse about me. I didn’t know how fond I was of Sydney till I lost her; I didn’t know how fond I was of my wife till I left her.” He paused, and put his hand to his fevered head. Was his mind wandering into some other train of thought? He astonished his brother by a new entreaty — the last imaginable entreaty that Randal expected to hear. “Dear old fellow, I want you to do me a favor. Tell me where my wife is living now?”
“Surely,” Randal answered, “you know that she is no longer your wife?”
“Never mind that! I have something to say to her.”
“You can’t do it.”
“Can you do it? Will you give her a message?”
“Let me hear what it is first.”
Herbert lifted his head, and laid his hand earnestly on his brother’s arm. When he said his next words he was almost like his old self again.
“Say that I’m lonely, say that I’m dying for want of a little comfort — ask her to let me see Kitty.”
His tone touched Randal to the quick. “I feel for you, Herbert,” he said, warmly. “She shall have your message; all that I can do to persuade her shall be done.”
“As soon as possible?”
“Yes — as soon as possible.”
“And you won’t forget? No, no; of course you won’t forget.” He tried to rise, and fell back again into his chair. “Let me rest a little,” he pleaded, “if I’m not in the way. I’m not fit company for you, I know; I’ll go when you tell me.”
Randal refused to let him go at all. “You will stay here with me; and if I happen to be away, there will be somebody in the house, who is almost as fond of you as I am.” He mentioned the name of one of the old servants at Mount Morven, who had attached himself to Randal after the breakup of the family. “And now rest,” he said, “and let me put this cushion under your head.”
Herbert answered: “It’s like being at home again”— and composed himself to rest.