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 passed 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 fashion 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 assertion was one which had
been made so often that she could let it pass. "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
assist 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 passes 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 pass," 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. Glascock; 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 assisted 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?
She had long discussions with Nora on the matter, as though all the
future of her life depended on it. It was in vain that Nora tried to
make her understand that if hereafter the spirit of her husband could
know anything of the troubles of his mortal life, could ever look
back to the things which he had done in the flesh, then would he
certainly know the truth, and all suspicion would be at an end. And
if not, if there was to be no such retrospect, what did it matter
now, for these few last hours before the coil should be shaken off,
and all doubt and all sorrow should be at an end? But the wife, who
was soon to be a widow, yearned to be acquitted in this world by him
to whom her guilt or her innocence had been matter of such vital
importance. "He has never thought it," said Nora.
"But if he would say so! If he would only look it! It will be all in
all to me as long as I live in this world." And then, though they had
determined between themselves in spoken words never to regard him
again as one who had been mad, in all their thoughts and actions
towards him they treated him as though he were less responsible than
an infant. And he was mad;--mad though every doctor in England had
called him sane. Had he not been mad he must have been a fiend,--or
he could not have tortured, as he had done, the woman to whom he owed
the closest protection which one human being can give to another.
During these last days and nights she never left him. She had done
her duty to him well, at any rate since the time when she had been
enabled to come near him in Italy. It may be that in the first days
of their quarrel, she had not been regardful, as she should have
been, of a husband's will,--that she might have escaped this tragedy
by submitting herself to the man's wishes, as she had always been
ready to submit herself to his words. Had she been able always to
keep her neck in the dust under his foot, their married life might
have been passed without outward calamity, and it is possible that
he might still have lived. But if she erred, surely she had been
scourged for her error with scorpions. As she sat at his bedside
watching him, she thought of her wasted youth, of her faded beauty,
of her shattered happiness, of her fallen hopes. She had still her
child,--but she felt towards him that she herself was so sad a
creature, so sombre, so dark, so necessarily wretched from this time
forth till the day of her death, that it would be better for the boy
that she should never be with him. There could be nothing left for
her but garments dark with woe, eyes red with weeping, hours sad from
solitude, thoughts weary with memory. And even yet,--if he would only
now say that he did not believe her to have been guilty, how great
would be the change in her future life!
Then came an evening in which he seemed to be somewhat stronger than
he had been. He had taken some refreshment that had been prepared
for him, and, stimulated by its strength, had spoken a word or two
both to Nora and to his wife. His words had been of no especial
interest,--alluding to some small detail of his own condition, such
as are generally the chosen topics of conversation with invalids.
But he had been pronounced to be better, and Nora spoke to him
cheerfully, when he was taken into the next room by the man who
was always at hand to move him. His wife followed him, and soon
afterwards returned, and bade Nora good night. She would sit by her
husband, and Nora was to go to the room below, that she might receive
her lover there. He was expected out that evening, but Mrs. Trevelyan
said that she would not see him. Hugh came and went, and Nora took
herself to her chamber. The hours of the night went on, and Mrs.
Trevelyan was still sitting by her husband's bed. It was still
September, and the weather was very warm. But the windows had been
all closed since an hour before sunset. She was sitting there
thinking, thinking, thinking. Dr. Nevill had told her that the time
now was very near. She was not thinking now how very near it might
be, but whether there might yet be time for him to say that one word
to her.
"Emily," he said, in the lowest whisper.
"Darling!" she answered, turning round and touching him with her
hand.
"My feet are cold. There are no clothes on them."
She took a thick shawl and spread it double across the bottom of
the bed, and put her hand upon his arm. Though it was clammy with
perspiration, it was chill, and she brought the warm clothes up close
round his shoulders. "I can't sleep," he said. "If I could sleep,
I shouldn't mind." Then he was silent again, and her thoughts went
harping on, still on the same subject. She told herself that if ever
that act of justice were to be done for her, it must be done that
night. After a while she turned round over him ever so gently, and
saw that his large eyes were open and fixed upon the wall.
She was kneeling now on the chair close by the bed head, and her hand
was on the rail of the bedstead supporting her. "Louis," she said,
ever so softly.
"Well."
"Can you say one word for your wife, dear, dear, dearest husband?"
"What word?"
"I have not been a harlot to you;--have I?"
"What name is that?"
"But what a thing, Louis! Kiss my hand, Louis, if you believe me."
And very gently she laid the tips of her fingers on his lips. For a
moment or two she waited, and the kiss did not come. Would he spare
her in this the last moment left to him either for justice or for
mercy? For a moment or two the bitterness of her despair was almost
unendurable. She had time to think that were she once to withdraw
her hand, she would be condemned for ever;--and that it must be
withdrawn. But at length the lips moved, and with struggling ear she
could hear the sound of the tongue within, and the verdict of the
dying man had been given in her favour. He never spoke a word more
either to annul it or to enforce it.
Some time after that she crept into Nora's room. "Nora," she said,
waking the sleeping girl, "it is all over."
"Is he--dead?"
"It is all over. Mrs. Richards is there. It is better than an hour
since now. Let me come in." She got into her sister's bed, and there
she told the tale of her tardy triumph. "He declared to me at last
that he trusted me," she said,--almost believing that real words had
come from his lips to that effect. Then she fell into a flood of
tears, and after a while she also slept.