“I have come direct from Cologne,” Aubrey said.
“Ah, yes. I believe my wife says so in her letter.”
“You have news from them to-day? I hope that Mrs. Kingsward is better.”
“My wife never at any time speaks much of her health. She was a little fatigued and remained another day to rest.”
“She is very delicate, sir,” said Aubrey. He did not know why, unless it was reluctance to begin what he had to say.
“I am perfectly acquainted with Mrs. Kingsward’s condition,” said the Colonel, in a tone which was not encouraging. He added, “I don’t suppose you took the trouble to come here, Mr. Leigh, in order to speak to me about my wife’s health.”
“No. It is true. I ought not to waste the time you have accorded me. I do not need to tell you, Colonel Kingsward, what I have come about.”
“I think you do,” said the Colonel, calmly. “My letter to my wife, which I believe she communicated to you, conveyed all I had to say on the matter. It was not written without reflection, nor without every possible effort to arrive at the truth. Consequently, I have no desire to re-open the subject. It is in my mind concluded and put aside.”
“But you will hear me?” said Aubrey. “You have heard one statement, surely you will hear the other. No man is condemned unheard. I have come here to throw myself upon your mercy – to tell you my story. However prejudiced you may be against me – ”
“A moment, Mr. Leigh. I have no prejudice against you. I am not the judge of your conduct. I claim the right to decide for my daughter – that is all. I have no prejudice or feeling against you.”
“Colonel Kingsward,” cried Aubrey, “for God’s sake listen! Hear what I have to say!”
The Colonel looked at him again. Perhaps it was the passion of earnestness in the young man’s face that touched him. Perhaps he felt that it was unwise to leave it to be said that he had not heard both sides. The end was that he waved his hand and said:
“My time is not my own. I have no right to spend it on merely private interests; but if you will make your story as short as possible I will hear what you have to say.”
CHAPTER IX
The story which Aubrey Leigh had to tell was indeed made as short as possible. To describe the most painful crisis in your life, the moment which you yourself shudder to look back at, which awakens in you that fury of self-surprise, horror and wonder which a sudden departure from all the habits of your life brings after it when it is guilt, is not an easy thing; but it supplies terse expressions and rapidity of narration. There is no desire to dwell upon the details, and to tell a story so deeply affecting one’s self to a politely unsympathetic listener who does not affect to be much interested or at all moved by the subtle self-defence which runs through every such statement, is still more conducive to brevity. Aubrey laid bare the tempest that had swept over him with a breathless voice and broken words. He could not preserve his equanimity, or look as if it were an easy thing for him to do. He made the most hurried description of the visitor who had taken possession of his house, saying not a word beyond the bare fact. It had been deeply embarrassing that she should be there, though at first in the melancholy of his widowerhood he had not thought of it, or cared who was in the house. Afterwards he was prevented from doing anything to disturb her by his promise to his dying wife. Then had come the anxiety about the baby, the wavering of that little life in which the forlorn young father had come to take a little pleasure. She had been very kind to the child, watching over it, and when the little thing died, when the misery of the fresh desolation, and the pity of it, and the overwhelming oppression of the sad house had quite overcome the spirit of its young master, then she had thrown herself upon him, with all the signs of a sudden passion of sympathy and tenderness. Had any confessor skilled in the accounts of human suffering heard Aubrey’s broken tale he could have found nothing but truth in it, and would have recognised the subtle sequence of events which had led to that downfall. But Colonel Kingsward, though not unlearned in men, listened like a man of wood, playing with the large paper-knife, and never looking towards the penitent, who told his story with such a strain of the labouring breast and agonised spirit. Had a young officer in whom he had no particular interest thus explained and accounted for some dereliction of duty he might have understood or sympathised. But he had no wish to understand Aubrey; his only desire was to brush him off as quickly as possible, to be done with his ridiculous story, to hear of him no more. He might be as little guilty as he described himself. What then? Aubrey’s character was nothing to Colonel Kingsward, except as it affected his daughter. He had cut him off from all connection with his daughter, and it was now quite immaterial to him whether the man was a weak fool or a deceiver. Probably from as much as he heard while thus listening as little as he could, Leigh was in the former class, and certainly he did not intend to take a weak fool, who had shown himself to be at the mercy of any designing woman, into his family as the husband of Bee. Give him the benefit of the doubt, and allow that it had happened so, that the woman was much more to blame than the man, and what then? A sturdy sinner on the whole was not less but more easily pardoned than a weak fool.
“This is all very well, Mr. Leigh,” Colonel Kingsward said, “and I am sorry that you have thought it necessary to enter into these painful details. They may be quite true. I will not offend you by doubting that you believe them to be quite true. But how, then, do you account for the letter which my wife, I believe, showed you, and which came direct from the lady’s own hand to mine?”
“The letter was a letter which I wrote to my wife two years ago. There had been discussions between us on this very subject. I promised, on condition that Miss Lance should leave us, to make such arrangements for her comfort as were possible to me – to settle a yearly income on her, enough to live on.”
“Was that arrangement ever carried out?”
“No; my wife became ill immediately after. I found her on my return in Miss Lance’s arms, imploring that so long as she lived her friend should not be taken from her. What could I do? And that prayer was changed on my poor Amy’s deathbed to another – that I would never send Miss Lance away; that she should always have a home at Forest-leigh and watch over the child.”
“I don’t wish to arouse any such painful recollections – especially as they can be of no advantage to anyone – but how does this letter come to have the date of last Christmas, more than a year after Mrs. Leigh’s death?”
“How can I tell that, sir? How can I tell how the devilish web was woven at all? The note had no date, I suppose, and the person who could use it for this purpose would not hesitate at such a trifle as to add a date.”
“Mr. Leigh, I repeat the whole matter is too painful to be treated by me. But how is it, if you regarded this lady with those sentiments, that you should have in a moment changed them, and, to put the mildest interpretation upon your proceedings, thus put yourself in her power?”
The young man’s flushed and anxious face grew deadly pale. He turned his eyes from the inquisitor to the high blank light pouring in from the large window. “God knows,” he said, “that is what I cannot explain – or rather, I should say, the devil knows!” he cried with vehemence. “I was entirely off my guard – thinking, heaven knows, of nothing less.”
“The devil is a safe sort of agency to put the blame on. We cannot in ordinary affairs accept him as the scapegoat, Mr. Leigh – excuse me for saying so. I will not refuse to say that I allow there may be excuses for you, with a woman much alive to her own interests and ready for any venture. You did write to her, however, on the day you left?”
“I wrote to her, telling her the arrangement I had proposed to my wife, in the very letter which she has sent to you – that I would carry it out at once, and that I hoped she would perceive, as I did, that it was impossible we should remain under the same roof, or, indeed, meet again.”
“That was on what date?”
“The evening before my child’s funeral. Next day, as soon as it was over, I left the house, and have never set foot in it again.”
“Yet this lady, to whom you had, you say, sent such a letter, was at the funeral, and stood at the child’s grave leaning on your arm.”
“More than that,” cried Aubrey, with a gasp of his labouring breath, “she came up to me as I stood there and put her arm, as if to support me, within mine.”
The Colonel could not restrain an exclamation. “By Jove,” he said, “she is a strong-minded woman, if that is true. Do you mean to say that this was after she had your letter?”
“I suppose so. I sent it to her in the morning. I was anxious to avoid any scene.”
“And then, on your way to London, on that day, you went to your solicitors, and gave instructions in respect to Miss Lance’s annuity – which you say now had been determined on long before?”
“It was determined on long before.”
“But never mentioned to any one until that time.”
“I beg your pardon; on the day on which I wrote that letter to my wife I went direct to my lawyer and talked the matter over freely with Mr. Morell, who had known me all my life, and knew all the circumstances – and approved my resolution, as the best of two evils, he said.”
“This is the most favourable thing I have heard, Mr. Leigh. He will, of course, be able to back you up in what you say?”
“Mr. Morell!” Aubrey sprang to his feet with a start of dismay. “I think,” he cried, “all the powers of hell must be against me. Mr. Morell is dead.”
They looked at each other for a moment in silence. A half smile came upon the Colonel’s face, though even he was a little overawed by the despair in the countenance of the young man.
“I don’t know that it matters very much,” he said, “for, after all, Mr. Leigh, your anxiety to get rid of your wife’s companion might have two interpretations. You might have been sincerely desirous to free yourself from a temptation towards another woman, which would have given Mrs. Leigh pain. A man does not sacrifice two hundred a year without a strong motive. And subsequent events make this a far more likely reason than the desire to get rid of an unwelcome inmate.”
“I cannot tell whether my motive was likely or not. I tell you, sir, what it was.”
“Ah, yes – but unfortunately without any corroboration – and the story is very different from the other side. It appears from that that you wished to establish relationship during your poor wife’s life, and that it was the lady who was moved by pity for you in a moment of weakness – which is much more according to the rule in such matters.”
“It is a lie!” Aubrey cried. “Colonel Kingsward, you are a man – and an honourable man. Can you imagine another man, with the same principles as yourself, guilty of such villainy as that? Can you believe – ”
“Mr. Leigh,” said the other, “it is unnecessary to ask me what I can believe; nor can I argue, from what I would do, as to what you would do. That may be of good Christianity, you know, but it is not tenable in life. Many men are capable enough of what I say; and, indeed, I do you the credit to believe that you were willing to keep the temptation at a distance – to make a sacrifice in order to ease the mind of your wife. I show a great deal of faith in you when I say that. Another man might say that Mrs. Leigh had exacted it from you as a thing necessary to her peace.”
Aubrey Leigh rose up again, and began to pace the room from one side to the other. He could not keep still in his intolerable impatience and scorn of the net which was tightening about his feet. Anger rose up like a whirlwind in his mind; but to indulge it was to lose for ever the cause which, indeed, was already lost. When he had gained control over himself and his voice, he said, “We had neighbours; we had friends; our life was not lived in a corner unknown to the world. There is my mother; ask them – they all know – .”
“Does anyone outside know what goes on between a husband and wife?” said Colonel Kingsward. “Such discussions do not go on before witnesses. If poor Mrs. Leigh – ”
“Sir,” cried Aubrey, stung beyond hearing, “I will not permit any man to pity my wife.”
“It was beyond my province I allow, but one uses the word for those who die young. I don’t know why, for if all is true that we profess to believe they certainly have the best of it. Well, if Mrs. Leigh, to speak by the book, had any such burden on her mind, and really felt her happiness to depend on the banishment of that dangerous companion, it is not likely that she would speak of it either to your neighbours or to your mother.”
“Why not? My mother was of that mind, though not for that villainous reason; my mother knew, everybody knew – everybody agreed with me in wishing her gone. I appeal to all who knew us, Colonel Kingsward! There is not a friend I have who did not compassionate me for Amy’s insensate affection. God forgive me that I should say a word against my poor little girl, but it was an infatuation – as all her friends knew.”
“Don’t you think we are now getting into the region of the extravagant?” Colonel Kingsward said. “I cannot send out a royal commission to take the evidence of your friends.”
Aubrey had to pause again to master himself. If this man, with his contemptuous accents, his cool disdain, were not Bee’s father! – but he was so, and, therefore, must not be defied. He answered after a time in a subdued voice. “Will you allow me – to send one or two of them to tell you what they know. There is Fairfield, with whom you are acquainted already, there is Lord Langtry, there is Vavasour, who was with us constantly – ”
“To none of these gentlemen, I presume, would Mrs. Leigh be likely to unfold her most intimate sentiments.”
“Two of them have wives,” said Aubrey, determined to hold fast, “whom she saw familiarly daily – country neighbours.”
“I must repeat, Mr. Leigh, I cannot send out a royal commission to take the evidence of your friends.”
“Do you mean that you will not hear any evidence, Colonel Kingsward? – that I am condemned already? – that it does not matter what I have in my favour?”
Colonel Kingsward rose to dismiss his suitor. “I have already said, Mr. Leigh, that I am not your judge. I have no right to condemn you. Your account may be all true; your earnestness and air of sincerity, I allow, in a case in which I was not personally involved, would go far to making me believe it was true. But what then? The matter is this: Will I allow my daughter to marry a man of whom such a question has been raised? I say no: and there I am within my clear rights. You may be able to clear yourself, making out the lady to be a sort of demon in human shape. My friend, who saw her, said she was a very attractive woman. But really this is not the question. I am not a censor of public morals, and on the whole it is a matter of indifference to me whether you are guiltless or not. The sole thing is that I will not permit my daughter to put her foot where such a scandal has been. I have nothing to do with you but everything with her. And I think now that all has been said.”
“That is, you will not hear anything more?”
“Well – if you like to put it so – I prefer not to hear any more.”
“Not if Bee’s happiness should be involved?”
“My daughter’s happiness, I hope, does not depend upon a man whom she has known only for a month. She may think so now. But she will soon know better. That is a question into which I decline to enter with you.”
“Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love,” said Aubrey, with a coarse laugh. He turned as if to go away. “But you do not mean that this is final, Colonel Kingsward – not final? Not for ever? Never to be revised or reconsidered – even if I were as bad as you think me?”
“How needless is all this! I have told you your character does not concern me – and I do not say that you are bad – or think so. I am sorry for you. You have got into a rather dreadful position, Mr. Leigh, for a young man of your age.”
“And yet at my age you think I should be cut off for ever from every hope of salvation!”
“Not so; this is all extravagant – ridiculous! And if you will excuse me, I am particularly busy this morning, with a hundred things to do.”
Poor Aubrey would have killed with pleasure, knocked down and trampled upon, the immovable man of the world who thus dismissed him; but to be humble, even abject, was his only hope. “I will try, then, to find some moment of leisure another time.”
“It is unnecessary, Mr. Leigh. I shall not change my mind; surely you must see that it is better for all parties to give it up at once.”
“I shall never give it up.”
“Pooh! one nail drives out another. You don’t seem to have been a miracle of constancy in your previous relationships. Good morning. I trust to hear soon that you have made as satisfactory a settlement of other claims.”
CHAPTER X
Other claims! What other claims? Aubrey Leigh went out of the office in Pall Mall with these words circling through his mind. They seemed to have nothing to do with that which occupied him, which filled every thought. His dazed memory and imagination caught them up as he went forth in the fury of suppressed anger, and the dizzy, stifled sensation of complete failure. He had felt sure, even when he felt least sure, that when it was possible to tell his tale fully, miserable story as it was, the man to whom he humbled himself thus, not being a recluse or a mere formalist – a man of the world – would at least, to some degree, understand and perceive how little real guilt there might be even in such a fault as he had committed. It was not a story which could be repeated in a woman’s ears; but a man, who knew more or less what was in man – the momentary lapses, the sudden impulses, the aberrations of intolerable trouble, sorrow, and despair – . Aubrey did not take into account the fact that there are some men to whom such a condition as that into which he himself had fallen in the desolation of his silent house – when death came a second time within the sad year, and his young soul felt in the first sensation of despair that he could not bear it; that he was a man signalled out by fate, to whom it was vain to struggle, to whom life was a waste and heaven a mockery – was inconceivable. Colonel Kingsward was certainly not a man like that. He would have said to himself that the mother being gone it was only a blessing and advantage that the child should go too, and he would have withdrawn himself decorously to his London lodgings and his club, and his friends would all have said that it was on the whole a good thing for him, and that he was young, and his life still before him. So, indeed, they had said of Aubrey, and so poor Aubrey had proved for himself. Had there not been that terrible moment behind him, that intolerable blackness and midnight of despair, in which any hand that gripped his could lead him till the light of morning burst upon him, and showed him whither in his misery he had been led!
Satisfy other claims? The words blew like a noxious wind through his brain. He laughed to himself softly as he went along. What claims had he to satisfy? He had done all that honour and scorn could do to satisfy the harpy who had dug her claws into his life. Should he try to propitiate her with other gifts? No, no! That would be but to prolong the scandal, to give her a motive for continuance, to make it appear that he was in her power. He was in her power, alas, fatally as it proved, if it should be so that she had made an end of the happiness of his life. She had blighted the former chapter of that existence, bringing out all that was petty in the poor little bride over whom she had gained so complete an ascendancy, showing her husband Amy’s worst side, the aspect of her which he might never have known but for that fatal companion ever near. And now she had ruined him altogether – ruined him as in old stories the Pamelas of the village were ruined by a villain who took advantage of their simplicity. What lovely woman who had stooped to folly could be more ruined than this unhappy young man? He laughed to himself at this horrible travesty of that old familiar eighteenth century tale. This was the fin de siecle version of it, he supposed – the version in which it was the designing woman who seized upon the moment of weakness and the man who suffered shipwreck of everything in consequence. There was a horrible sort of ridicule in it which wrought poor Aubrey almost to madness. When the woman is the victim, however sorely she may be to blame for her own disgrace, a sort of pathos and romance is about her, and pity is winged with indignation against the man who is supposed to have taken advantage of her weakness. But when it is a man who is the victim! Then the mildest condemnation he can look for is the coarse laugh of contempt, the inextinguishable ridicule, to which even in fiction it is too great a risk to expose a hero. He was no hero – but an unhappy young man fallen into the most dreadful position in which man could be, shut out of all hope of ever recovering himself, marked by the common scorn – no ordinary sinner, a man who had profaned his own home, and all the most sacred prejudices of humanity. He had felt all that deeply when he rushed from his house, a man distraught not knowing where he went. And then morning and evening, and the dews and the calm, and the freshness and elasticity inalienable from youth had driven despair and horror away. He had felt it at last impossible that all his life – a life which he desired to live out in duty and kindness, and devotion to God and man – should be spoiled for ever by his momentary yielding to a horrible temptation. He had thought at first that he never could hold up his head again. But gradually the impression had been soothed away, and he had vainly hoped that such a thing might be left behind him and might be heard of no more.
Now he was undeceived – now he was convinced that for what a man does he must answer, not only at the bar of God, where all the secrets of the heart are revealed, but also before men. There are times in which the former judgment is more easy to think of than the latter – for God knows all, everything that is in favour of the culprit, while men only know what is against him. A man with sorrow in his heart for all his shortcomings, can endure, upon his knees, that all-embracing gaze of infinite understanding and pity. But to stand before men who misconstrue, mis-see, misapprehend, how different a thing it is – who do not know the end from the beginning, to whom the true balance and perfect poise of justice is almost impossible – who can judge only as they know, and who can know only the husk and shell of fact, the external aspect of affairs by the side which is visible to them. All these thoughts went through Aubrey’s mind as he went listlessly about those familiar streets in their autumnal quiet, no crowd about, nothing to interrupt the progress of the wayfarer. He went across the Green Park, which is brown in the decadence of summer, almost as solitary as if he had been in his own desolate glades at home. London has a soothing effect sometimes on such a still, sunny autumn day, when it seems to rest after the worry and heat and strain of all its frivolity and folly. The soft haze blurs all the outlines, makes the trees too dark and the sky too pale; yet it is sunshine and not fog which wraps the landscape, even that landscape which lies between Pall Mall and Piccadilly. It soothed our young man a little in the despair of his thoughts. Surely, surely at eight-and-twenty everything could not be over. Bee would in a year or two be the mistress of her own actions. She was not a meek girl, to be coerced by her father. She would judge for herself in such a dreadful emergency. After all that had passed, the whole facts of the case would have to be submitted to her, which was a thought that enveloped him as in flames of shame. Yet she would judge for herself, and her judgment would be more like that of heaven than like that of earth. A kind of celestial ray gleamed upon him in this thought.
And as for these other claims – well, if any claim were put forth he would not shrink – would not try to compromise, would not try to hide his shame under piles of gold. Now he had no motive for concealment, he would face it out and have the question set straight in the eye of day. To be sure, for a man to accuse a woman is against the whole conventional code of honour. To accuse all women is the commonplace of every day; but to put the blame of seduction upon one is what a man dare not do save in the solitude of his chamber – or in such a private inquisition as Aubrey had gone through that day. This is one of the proofs that there is much to be said on both sides, and that it is the unscrupulous of either side who has the most power to humble and to destroy. But the bravado did him good for the moment – let her make her claim, whatever that claim was, and he would meet it in the face of day!
Other ideas came rapidly into Aubrey’s mind when he strolled listlessly into his club, and almost ran against the friend in whose house he had first met Colonel Kingsward, and through whom consequently all that had afterwards happened had come about. “Fairfield!” he cried, with a gleam of sudden hope in his eyes.
“Leigh! You here? – I thought you were philandering on the banks of – some German river or other. Well! and so I hear I have to congratulate you, my boy – and I’m sure I do so with all my heart – ”
You might have done so a week ago, and I should have responded with all mine. But you see me fallen again on darker days. Fate’s against me, it seems, in every way.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” cried his friend. “I expected to see you triumphant. What has gone wrong? Not settlements already, eh?”
“Settlements! They are free to make what settlements they like so far as I am concerned.”
“Kingsward’s a very cool hand, Aubrey. You may lose your head if you like, but he always knows what he is about. You are an excellent match – ”
“You think so,” said poor Aubrey, with a laugh. “Not badly off; a mild, domestic fellow, with no devil in me at all.
“I should not exactly say that. A man is no man without a spice of the devil. Why, what’s the matter? Now I look at you, instead of a victorious lover, you have the most miserable hang-dog – ”
“Hang-dog, that is it – a rope’s end, and all over. Hang it, no! I am not going to give in. Fairfield, I don’t want to speak disrespectfully of any woman.”
“Is it Mrs. Kingsward who is too young, herself, to think of enacting the part of mother-in-law so soon as this?”
“Mrs. Kingsward is a sort of an angel, Fairfield, if it were not old-fashioned to say so – and, alas, I fear, she will not enact any part long, which is so much the worse for me.”
“You don’t say so! That pretty creature, with all her pretty ways, and her daughter just the same age as she! Poor Kingsward. Aubrey, if a man shows a little impatience with your raptures in such circumstances, I don’t think you ought to be hard upon him.”
“I don’t believe he knows what are the circumstances, nor any of them. It is not from that cause, Fairfield. You know Miss Lance, poor Amy’s friend – ”
Once more he grew hot all over as he named her name, and turned his face from his friend’s gaze.
“Remember her! I should think so, and all you had to bear on that point, old man. We have often said, Mary and I, that if ever there was a hero – ”
“Fairfield! they have got up a tale that it was I who kept her at Forest-leigh against poor Amy’s will, and that my poor wife’s life was made miserable by my attentions to that fi – .” Fiend he would have said, but he changed it to “woman,” which meant to him at that moment the same thing.
Fairfield stared for a moment – was he taking a new idea into his commonplace mind? Then he burst into a loud laugh. “You can call the whole county to bear witness to that,” he cried. “Attentions! Well, I suppose you were civil, which was really more than anyone expected from you.”
“You know, and everybody knows, what a thorn in the flesh it was. My poor Amy! Without that, there would have been no cloud on our life, and it all arose from her best qualities, her tender heart, her faithfulness – ”
A dubious shade came over Fairfield’s face. “Yes, no doubt; and Miss Lance’s flattery and blandishments. Aubrey, I don’t mind saying it now that you are well quit of her – that was a woman to persuade a fellow into anything. I should no more have dared to keep her – especially after – in my house, and to expose myself to her wiles – ”
“They never were wiles for me,” said Aubrey, again turning his head away. It was true, true – far more true than the fatal contradiction of it, which lay upon his heart like a stone. “I never came nearer to hating any of God’s creatures than that woman. She made my life a burden to me. She took my wife from me – . She – I needn’t get dithyrambic on the subject; you all know.”
“Oh, yes, we all know; but you were too soft-hearted. You should have risked a fit of tears from poor Mrs. Leigh – excuse me for saying so now – and sent her away.”
“I tried it a dozen times. Poor Amy would have broken her heart. She threatened even to go with her. And they say women don’t make friendships with each other!”
Fairfield shrugged his shoulders a little. “I suffer myself from my wife’s friends,” he said; “there’s always some ‘dear Clara’ or other putting the table out of joint, making me search heaven and earth when there’s anybody to dinner to find an odd man. But Mary has some – ” Sense, he was going to say, but stopped short. Mrs. Fairfield was one of those who had concluded long ago that dear Amy was a little goose, taken sad advantage of by her persistent friend.