He Knew He Was Right Part 136

"Your own will come next, my dear," said Miss Stanbury.

"I think not," said Priscilla. "It is quite as likely to be yours, aunt." This, Miss Stanbury thought, was almost an insult, and she said nothing more on the occasion.

Then came Hugh and the bridegroom. The bridegroom, as a matter of course, was not accommodated in the house, but he was allowed to come there for his tea. He and Hugh had come together; and for Hugh a bed-room had been provided. His aunt had not seen him since he had been turned out of the house, because of his bad practices, and Dorothy had antic.i.p.ated the meeting between them with alarm. It was, however, much more pleasant than had been that between the ladies.

"Hugh," she said stiffly, "I am glad to see you on such an occasion as this."

"Aunt," he said, "I am glad of any occasion that can get me an entrance once more into the dear old house. I am so pleased to see you." She allowed her hand to remain in his a few moments, and murmured something which was intended to signify her satisfaction.

"I must tell you that I am going to be married myself, to one of the dearest, sweetest, and loveliest girls that ever were seen, and you must congratulate me."

"I do, I do; and I hope you may be happy."

"We mean to try to be; and some day you must let me bring her to you, and shew her. I shall not be satisfied, if you do not know my wife."

She told Martha afterwards that she hoped that Mr. Hugh had sown his wild oats, and that matrimony would sober him. When, however, Martha remarked that she believed Mr. Hugh to be as hardworking a young man as any in London, Miss Stanbury shook her head sorrowfully. Things were being very much changed with her; but not even yet was she to be brought to approve of work done on behalf of a penny newspaper.

On the following morning, at ten o'clock, there was a procession from Miss Stanbury's house into the Cathedral, which was made entirely on foot;--indeed, no a.s.sistance could have been given by any carriage, for there is a back entrance to the Cathedral, near to the Lady Chapel, exactly opposite Miss Stanbury's house. There were many of the inhabitants of the Close there, to see the procession, and the cathedral bells rang out their peals very merrily. Brooke, the bridegroom, gave his arm to Miss Stanbury, which was, no doubt, very improper,--as he should have appeared in the church as coming from quite some different part of the world. Then came the bride, hanging on her brother, then two bridesmaids,--friends of Dorothy's, living in the town; and, lastly, Priscilla with her mother, for nothing would induce Priscilla to take the part of a bridesmaid. "You might as well ask an owl to sing to you," she said. "And then all the frippery would be thrown away upon me." But she stood close to Dorothy, and when the ceremony had been performed, was the first, after Brooke, to kiss her.

Everybody acknowledged that the bride was a winsome bride. Mrs.

MacHugh was at the breakfast, and declared afterwards that Dorothy Burgess,--as she then was pleased to call her,--was a girl very hard to be understood. "She came here," said Mrs. MacHugh, "two years ago, a plain, silent, shy, dowdy young woman, and we all said that Miss Stanbury would be tired of her in a week. There has never come a time in which there was any visible difference in her, and now she is one of our city beauties, with plenty to say to everybody, with a fortune in one pocket and her aunt in the other, and everybody is saying what a fortunate fellow Brooke Burgess is to get her. In a year or two she'll be at the top of everything in the city, and will make her way in the county too."

The compiler of this history begs to add his opinion to that of "everybody," as quoted above by Mrs. MacHugh. He thinks that Brooke Burgess was a very fortunate fellow to get his wife.

CHAPTER XCVIII.

ACQUITTED.

During this time, while Hugh was sitting with his love under the oak trees at Monkhams, and Dorothy was being converted into Mrs. Brooke Burgess in Exeter Cathedral, Mrs. Trevelyan was living with her husband in the cottage at Twickenham. Her life was dreary enough, and there was but very little of hope in it to make its dreariness supportable. As often happens in periods of sickness, the single friend who could now be of service to the one or to the other was the doctor. He came daily to them, and with that quick growth of confidence which medical kindness always inspires, Trevelyan told to this gentleman all the history of his married life,--and all that Trevelyan told to him he repeated to Trevelyan's wife. It may therefore be understood that Trevelyan, between them, was treated like a child.

Dr. Nevill had soon been able to tell Mrs. Trevelyan that her husband's health had been so shattered as to make it improbable that he should ever again be strong either in body or in mind. He would not admit, even when treating his patient like a child, that he had ever been mad, and spoke of Sir Marmaduke's threat as unfortunate.

"But what could papa have done?" asked the wife.

"It is often, no doubt, difficult to know what to do; but threats are seldom of avail to bring a man back to reason. Your father was angry with him, and yet declared that he was mad. That in itself was hardly rational. One does not become angry with a madman."

One does not become angry with a madman; but while a man has power in his hands over others, and when he misuses that power grossly and cruelly, who is there that will not be angry? The misery of the insane more thoroughly excites our pity than any other suffering to which humanity is subject; but it is necessary that the madness should be acknowledged to be madness before the pity can be felt. One can forgive, or, at any rate, make excuses for any injury when it is done; but it is almost beyond human nature to forgive an injury when it is a-doing, let the condition of the doer be what it may. Emily Trevelyan at this time suffered infinitely. She was still willing to yield in all things possible, because her husband was ill,--because perhaps he was dying; but she could no longer satisfy herself with thinking that all that she admitted,--all that she was still ready to admit,--had been conceded in order that her concessions might tend to soften the afflictions of one whose reason was gone. Dr. Nevill said that her husband was not mad;--and indeed Trevelyan seemed now to be so clear in his mind that she could not doubt what the doctor said to her. She could not think that he was mad,--and yet he spoke of the last two years as though he had suffered from her almost all that a husband could suffer from a wife's misconduct. She was in doubt about his health. "He may recover," the doctor said; "but he is so weak that the slightest additional ailment would take him off." At this time Trevelyan could not raise himself from his bed, and was carried, like a child, from one room to another. He could eat nothing solid, and believed himself to be dying. In spite of his weakness,--and of his savage memories in regard to the past,--he treated his wife on all ordinary subjects with consideration. He spoke much of his money, telling her that he had not altered, and would not alter, the will that he had made immediately on his marriage. Under that will all his property would be hers for her life, and would go to their child when she was dead. To her this will was more than just,--it was generous in the confidence which it placed in her; and he told his lawyer, in her presence, that, to the best of his judgment, he need not change it. But still there pa.s.sed hardly a day in which he did not make some allusion to the great wrong which he had endured, throwing in her teeth the confessions which she had made,--and almost accusing her of that which she certainly never had confessed, even when, in the extremity of her misery at Casalunga, she had thought that it little mattered what she said, so that for the moment he might be appeased.

If he died, was he to die in this belief? If he lived, was he to live in this belief? And if he did so believe, was it possible that he should still trust her with his money and with his child?

"Emily," he said one day, "it has been a terrible tragedy, has it not?" She did not answer his question, sitting silent as it was her custom to do when he addressed her after such fas.h.i.+on as this. At such times she would not answer him; but she knew that he would press her for an answer. "I blame him more than I do you," continued Trevelyan,--"infinitely more. He was a serpent intending to sting me from the first,--not knowing perhaps how deep the sting would go."

There was no question in this, and the a.s.sertion was one which had been made so often that she could let it pa.s.s. "You are young, Emily, and it may be that you will marry again."

"Never," she said, with a shudder. It seemed to her then that marriage was so fearful a thing that certainly she could never venture upon it again.

"All I ask of you is, that should you do so, you will be more careful of your husband's honour."

"Louis," she said, getting up and standing close to him, "tell me what it is that you mean." It was now his turn to remain silent, and hers to demand an answer. "I have borne much," she continued, "because I would not vex you in your illness."

"You have borne much?"

"Indeed and indeed, yes. What woman has ever borne more!"

"And I?" said he.

"Dear Louis, let us understand each other at last. Of what do you accuse me? Let us, at any rate, know each other's thoughts on this matter, of which each of us is ever thinking."

"I make no new accusation."

"I must protest then against your using words which seem to convey accusation. Since marriages were first known upon earth, no woman has ever been truer to her husband than I have been to you."

"Were you lying to me then at Casalunga when you acknowledged that you had been false to your duties?"

"If I acknowledged that, I did lie. I never said that; but yet I did lie,--believing it to be best for you that I should do so. For your honour's sake, for the child's sake, weak as you are, Louis, I must protest that it was so. I have never injured you by deed or thought."

"And yet you have lied to me! Is a lie no injury;--and such a lie!

Emily, why did you lie to me? You will tell me to-morrow that you never lied, and never owned that you had lied."

Though it should kill him, she must tell him the truth now. "You were very ill at Casalunga," she said, after a pause.

"But not so ill as I am now. I could breathe that air. I could live there. Had I remained I should have been well now,--but what of that?"

"Louis, you were dying there. Pray, pray listen to me. We thought that you were dying; and we knew also that you would be taken from that house."

"That was my affair. Do you mean that I could not keep a house over my head?" At this moment he was half lying, half sitting, in a large easy chair in the little drawing-room of their cottage, to which he had been carried from the adjoining bed-room. When not excited, he would sit for hours without moving, gazing through the open window, sometimes with some pretext of a book lying within the reach of his hand; but almost without strength to lift it, and certainly without power to read it. But now he had worked himself up to so much energy that he almost raised himself up in his chair, as he turned towards his wife. "Had I not the world before me, to choose a house in?"

"They would have put you somewhere, and I could not have reached you."

"In a madhouse, you mean. Yes;--if you had told them."

"Will you listen, dear Louis? We knew that it was our duty to bring you home; and as you would not let me come to you, and serve you, and a.s.sist you to come here where you are safe,--unless I owned that you had been right, I said that you had been right."

"And it was a lie,--you say now?"

"All that is nothing. I cannot go through it; nor should you. There is the only question. You do not think that I have been--? I need not say the thing. You do not think that?" As she asked the question, she knelt beside him, and took his hand in hers, and kissed it. "Say that you do not think that, and I will never trouble you further about the past."

"Yes;--that is it. You will never trouble me!" She glanced up into his face and saw there the old look which he used to wear when he was at Willesden and at Casalunga; and there had come again the old tone in which he had spoken to her in the bitterness of his wrath:--the look and the tone, which had made her sure that he was a madman. "The craft and subtlety of women pa.s.ses everything!" he said. "And so at last I am to tell you that from the beginning it has been my doing. I will never say so, though I should die in refusing to do it."

After that there was no possibility of further conversation, for there came upon him a fit of coughing, and then he swooned; and in half-an-hour he was in bed, and Dr. Nevill was by his side. "You must not speak to him at all on this matter," said the doctor. "But if he speaks to me?" she asked. "Let it pa.s.s," said the doctor. "Let the subject be got rid of with as much ease as you can. He is very ill now, and even this might have killed him." Nevertheless, though this seemed to be stern, Dr. Nevill was very kind to her, declaring that the hallucination in her husband's mind did not really consist of a belief in her infidelity, but arose from an obstinate determination to yield nothing. "He does not believe it; but he feels that were he to say as much, his hands would be weakened and yours strengthened."

"Can he then be in his sane mind?"

"In one sense all misconduct is proof of insanity," said the doctor.

"In his case the weakness of the mind has been consequent upon the weakness of the body."

Three days after that Nora visited Twickenham from Monkhams in obedience to a telegram from her sister. "Louis," she said, "had become so much weaker, that she hardly dared to be alone with him.

Would Nora come to her?" Nora came of course, and Hugh met her at the station, and brought her with him to the cottage. He asked whether he might see Trevelyan, but was told that it would be better that he should not. He had been almost continually silent since the last dispute which he had with his wife; but he had given little signs that he was always thinking of the manner in which he had been brought home by her from Italy, and of the story she had told him of her mode of inducing him to come. Hugh Stanbury had been her partner in that struggle, and would probably be received, if not with sullen silence, then with some attempt at rebuke. But Hugh did see Dr. Nevill, and learned from him that it was hardly possible that Trevelyan should live many hours. "He has worn himself out," said the doctor, "and there is nothing left in him by which he can lay hold of life again." Of Nora her brother-in-law took but little notice, and never again referred in her hearing to the great trouble of his life.

He said to her a word or two about Monkhams, and asked a question now and again as to Lord Peterborough,--whom, however, he always called Mr. Glasc.o.c.k; but Hugh Stanbury's name was never mentioned by him.

There was a feeling in his mind that at the very last he had been duped in being brought to England, and that Stanbury had a.s.sisted in the deception. To his wife he would whisper little petulant regrets for the loss of the comforts of Casalunga, and would speak of the air of Italy and of Italian skies and of the Italian sun, as though he had enjoyed at his Sienese villa all the luxuries which climate can give, and would have enjoyed them still had he been allowed to remain there. To all this she would say nothing. She knew now that he was failing quickly, and there was only one subject on which she either feared or hoped to hear him speak. Before he left her for ever and ever would he tell her that he had not doubted her faith?