The Claverings Part 11

"I have to thank you for what you did for me," continued she. "You ran away from me in such a hurry on that night that I was unable to speak to you. But to tell the truth, Harry, I was in no mood then to speak to any one. Of course you thought that I treated you ill."

"Oh, no," said he.

"Of course you did. If I thought you did not, I should be angry with you now. But had it been to save my life I could not have helped it. Why did not Sir Hugh Clavering come to meet me? Why did not my sister's husband come to me?" To this question Harry could make no answer. He was still standing with his hat in his hand, and now turned his face away from her and shook his head.

"Sit down, Harry," said she, "and let me talk to you like a friend--unless you are in a hurry to go away."

"Oh, no," said he, seating himself.

"Or unless you, too, are afraid of me."

"Afraid of you, Lady Ongar?"

"Yes, afraid; but I don't mean you. I don't believe that you are coward enough to desert a woman who was once your friend because misfortune has overtaken her, and calumny has been at work with her name."

"I hope not," said he.

"No, Harry; I do not think it of you. But if Sir Hugh be not a coward, why did he not come and meet me? Why has he left me to stand alone, now that he could be of service to me? I knew that money was his G.o.d, but I have never asked him for a s.h.i.+lling, and should not have done so now.

Oh, Harry, how wicked you were about that check? Do you remember?"

"Yes; I remember."

"So shall I; always, always. If I had taken that money how often should I have heard of it since?"

"Heard of it?" he asked. "Do you mean from me?"

"Yes; how often from you? Would you have dunned me, and told me of it once a week? Upon my word, Harry, I was told of it more nearly every day. Is it not wonderful that men should be so mean?"

It was clear to him now that she was talking of her husband who was dead, and on that subject he felt himself at present unable to speak a word. He little dreamed at that moment how openly she would soon speak to him of Lord Ongar and of Lord Ongar's faults?

"Oh, how I have wished that I had taken your money! But never mind about that now, Harry. Wretched as such taunts were, they soon became a small thing. But it has been cowardly in your cousin, Hugh; has it not? If I had not lived with him as one of his family, it would not have mattered.

People would not have expected it. It was as though my own brother had cast me forth."

"Lady Clavering has been with you; has she not?"

"Once, for half an hour. She came up for one day, and came here by herself; cowering as though she were afraid of me. Poor Hermy! She has not a good time of it either. You lords of creation lead your slaves sad lives when it pleases you to change your billing and cooing for matter-of-fact masterdom and rule. I don't blame Hermy. I suppose she did all she could, and I did not utter one word of reproach of her. Nor should I to him. Indeed, if he came now the servant would deny me to him. He has insulted me, and I shall remember the insult."

Harry Clavering did not clearly understand what it was that Lady Ongar had desired of her brother-in-law--what aid she had required; nor did he know whether it would be fitting for him to offer to act in Sir Hugh's place. Anything that he could do, he felt himself at that moment willing to do, even though the necessary service should demand some sacrifice greater than prudence could approve. "If I had thought that anything was wanted, I should have come to you sooner," said he.

"Everything is wanted, Harry. Everything is wanted--except that check for six hundred pounds which you sent me so treacherously. Did you ever think what might have happened if a certain person had heard of that?

All the world would have declared that you had done it for your own private purposes--all the world, except one."

Harry, as he heard this, felt that he was blus.h.i.+ng. Did Lady Ongar know of his engagement with Florence Burton? Lady Clavering knew it, and might probably have told the tidings; but then, again, she might not have told them. Harry at this moment wished that he knew how it was. All that Lady Ongar said to him would come with so different a meaning according as he did or did not know that fact. But he had no mind to tell her of the fact himself. He declared to himself that he hoped she knew it, as it would serve to make them both more comfortable together; but he did not think it would do for him to bring forward the subject, neck and heels as it were. The proper thing would be that she should congratulate him, but this she did not do. "I certainly meant no ill,"

he said, in answer to the last words she had spoken.

"You have never meant ill to me, Harry; though you know you have abused me dreadfully before now. I daresay you forget the hard names you have called me. You men do forget such things."

"I remember calling you one name."

"Do not repeat it now, if you please. If I deserved it, it would shame me; and if I did not, it should shame you."

"No; I will not repeat it."

"Does it not seem odd, Harry, that you and I should be sitting, talking together in this way?" She was leaning now toward him, across the table, and one hand was raised to her forehead while her eyes were fixed intently upon his. The att.i.tude was one which he felt to express extreme intimacy. She would not have sat in that way, pressing back her hair from her brow, with all the appearance of widowhood banished from her face, in the presence of any but a dear and close friend. He did not think of this, but he felt that it was so, almost by instinct. "I have such a tale to tell you," she said; "such a tale!"

Why should she tell it to him? Of course he asked himself this question. Then he remembered that she had no brother--remembered also that her brother-in-law had deserted her, and he declared to himself that, if necessary, he would be her brother. "I fear that you have not been happy," said he, "since I saw you last."

"Happy!" she replied. "I have lived such a life as I did not think any man or woman could be made to live on this side the grave. I will be honest with you, Harry. Nothing but the conviction that it could not be for long has saved me from destroying myself. I knew that he must die!"

"Oh, Lady Ongar!"

"Yes, indeed; that is the name he gave me; and because I consented to take it from him, he treated me--O heavens! how am I to find words to tell you what he did, and the way in which he treated me. A woman could not tell it to a man. Harry, I have no friend that I trust but you, but to you I cannot tell it. When he found that he had been wrong in marrying me, that he did not want the thing which he had thought would suit him, that I was a drag upon him rather than a comfort--what was his mode, do you think, of ridding himself of the burden?" Clavering sat silent looking at her. Both her hands were now up to her forehead, and her large eyes were gazing at him till he found himself unable to withdraw his own for a moment from her face. "He strove to get another man to take me off his hands; and when he found he was failing--he charged me with the guilt which he himself had contrived for me."

"Lady Ongar!"

"Yes; you may well stare at me. You may well speak hoa.r.s.ely and look like that. It may be that even you will not believe me; but by the G.o.d in whom we both believe, I tell you nothing but the truth. He attempted that and he failed; and then he accused me of the crime which he could not bring me to commit."

"And what then?"

"Yes; what then? Harry, I had a thing to do, and a life to live, that would have tried the bravest; but I went through it. I stuck to him to the last! He told me before he was dying--before that last frightful illness, that I was staying with him for his money. 'For your money, my lord,' I said, 'and for my own name.' And so it was. Would it have been wise in me, after all that I had gone through, to have given up that for which I had sold myself? I had been very poor, and had been so placed that poverty, even, such poverty as mine, was a curse to me. You know what I gave up because I feared that curse. Was I to be foiled at last, because such a creature as that wanted to s.h.i.+rk out of his bargain? I knew there would be some who would say I had been false. Hugh Clavering says so now, I suppose. But they never should say I had left him to die alone in a foreign land."

"Did he ask you to leave him?"

"No; but he called me that name which no woman should hear and stay. No woman should do so unless she had a purpose such as mine. He wanted back the price he had paid, and I was determined to do nothing that should a.s.sist him in his meanness! And then, Harry, his last illness! Oh, Harry, you would pity me if you could know all!"

"It was his own intemperance!"

"Intemperance! It was brandy--sheer brandy. He brought himself to such a state that nothing but brandy would keep him alive, and in which brandy was sure to kill him--and it did kill him. Did you ever hear of the horrors of drink?"

"Yes; I have heard of such a state."

"I hope you may never live to see it. It is a sight that would stick by you for ever. But I saw it, and tended him through the whole, as though I had been his servant. I remained with him when that man who opened the door for you could no longer endure the room. I was with him when the strong woman from the hospital, though she could not understand his words, almost fainted at what she saw and heard. He was punished, Harry.

I need wish no farther vengeance on him, even for all his cruelty, his injustice, his unmanly treachery. Is it not fearful to think that any man should have the power of bringing himself to such an end as that?"

Harry was thinking rather how fearful it was that a man should have it in his power to drag any woman through such a Gehenna as that which this lord had created. He felt that had Julia Brabazon been his, as she had once promised him, he never would have allowed himself to speak a harsh word to her, to have looked at her except with loving eyes. But she had chosen to join herself to a man who had treated her with a cruelty exceeding all that his imagination could have conceived. "It is a mercy that he has gone," said he at last.

"It is a mercy for both. Perhaps you can understand now something of my married life. And through it all I had but one friend--if I may call him a friend who had come to terms with my husband, and who was to have been his agent in destroying me. But when this man understood from me that I was not what he had been taught to think me--which my husband told him I was--he relented."

"May I ask what was that man's name?"

"His name is Pateroff. He is a Pole, but he speaks English like an Englishman. In my presence he told Lord Ongar that he was false and brutal. Lord Ongar laughed, with that little, low, sneering laughter which was his nearest approach to merriment, and told Count Pateroff that that was of course his game before me. There, Harry, I will tell you nothing more of it. You will understand enough to know what I have suffered; and if you can believe that I have not sinned--"

"Oh, Lady Ongar!"

"Well, I will not doubt you again. But as far as I can learn you are nearly alone in your belief. What. Hermy thinks I cannot tell, but she will soon come to think as Hugh may bid her. And I shall not blame her.

What else can she do, poor creature?"

"I am sure she believes no ill of you."