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withdrawn himself decorously to his London lodgings and his club, and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.
“Fairfield,” said Aubrey, “you could do me a great service if you would.
Colonel Kingsward has just told me that he can’t send out a royal
commission to examine my friends on this subject. You see him sometimes,
I suppose. I know you belong to one of his clubs. Still more, he’s at
his office all the morning, and you know him well enough to look in upon
him there.”
“Well?” said Fairfield, dubiously.
“Couldn’t you stretch a point for my sake, and go--and tell him the real
state of affairs in respect to Miss Lance, and how untrue it is, how
ridiculously untrue, that she was kept at Forest-leigh by any will of
mine? Why, it was a thing, as you have just said, that all the county
knew! An infatuation--and nothing less than the bane of my whole
married life.”
“Yes, I know--everybody thought so,” Mr. Fairfield said. That new
idea--was it perhaps germinating faintly in his mind?--no one had
thought of any other explanation, but yet----”
“If you were only to say so--only as much as that--that all my friends
recognised the state of the case.”
“I could say that,” said Fairfield, with hesitation. “Don’t think me
unfriendly, Aubrey, but it’s a little awkward for a man to interfere in
another man’s affairs, and it’s not only your affairs that I know so
well, but you see Kingsward’s too----”
“I am aware of that, Fairfield; still, to break off what I believe in my
heart would be for his daughter’s happiness too----”
“To be sure there’s the young lady to be taken into consideration,” said
Fairfield, dubiously.
It will be as well to carry this incident to its completion at once. Mr.
Fairfield at the last allowed himself to be convinced, and he went that
afternoon to the club, to which he still belonged by some early
military experiences, and where Colonel Kingsward was one of those who
ruled supreme. He knew exactly when to find him at the club, where he
strolled in after leaving his office, to refresh himself with a cup of
tea, or something else in its place. The intercessor went up to the
table at which the Colonel sat with the evening paper, and conversed for
a little on the topics of the day. After these had been run over, and
the prospects of war slightly discussed--for Colonel Kingsward had not
much respect for Mr. Fairfield’s opinion on that subject--the latter
gentleman said abruptly--
“I say, Kingsward, I am very sorry to hear there is some hitch in the
marriage which I was so glad to hear of last week.”
“Ah, oh! So Leigh has been with you, I presume?” the Colonel replied.
“Yes; and, upon my life, Colonel, there is not a word of truth in any
talk you may have heard about that Miss Lance----. We all know quite
well the whole business. You should hear Mary on the subject. Of course,
he can’t say to you, poor fellow, that his first wife was a little
queer, and that that woman made her her slave.”
“No; it wasn’t to be expected that he would tell me that.”
“But it’s true. She got completely the upper hand of that poor little
thing. The husband had no influence. I believe he hated her--like the
devil.”
“You think so,” said the Colonel, with a strange smile, “yet it is a
curious thing that he endured her all the same, and also that a wife
should insist so in keeping another woman in her husband’s constant
company--and an attractive woman, as I hear.”
“Oh! a devil of a woman,” cried Fairfield. “I was telling Aubrey I
should no more have ventured to expose myself to her blandishments----.
One of those sort of women, you know, that you cannot abide, yet who can
turn you round their little finger.”
“And what did he say to that?” the Colonel asked, still with that smile.
“Oh, he said she never had any charm for him--and I believe it--for what
with poor little Mrs. Leigh’s whims and vagaries, and the other’s
flatteries and adulation and complete empire over her, his life was
made a burden to him. You should hear Mary on that subject--none of the
ladies could keep their patience.”
“Yet it appears Mr. Aubrey Leigh kept his---- until he got tired,” said
the Colonel. “Believe me, Fairfield, when there is such an unnatural
situation as that, there must be more in it than meets the eye.”
Fairfield, a good, steady soul, who generally had his ideas suggested to
him, went away very serious from that interview. It was very strange
indeed that a woman should prefer her friend to her husband, and make
things wretched for him in order to keep her comfortable--it was very
curious that with a woman so much superior to Amy in the house, a woman
of the kind that turn men’s heads, that mild Aubrey Leigh, who was not
distinguished for force of character, should have never sought a
moment’s relief with her from poor Mrs. Leigh’s querulousness. Fairfield
accelerated his departure by an hour or two in order not to meet Aubrey
again before he had poured those strange doubts and suggestions into his
own Mary’s ears.