'I DID NOT LOVE HIM'
'When a man begins to do wrong, he cannot answer for himself how
far he may be carried on. He does not see beforehand; he cannot
know where he will find himself after the sin is committed. One
false step forces him to another.'--NEWMAN.
'An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that if you would
succeed you must not be too good.'--EMERSON.
Audrey found Michael strangely uncommunicative that evening; he hardly
responded to her expressions of pleasure at seeing him again, and all
her questions were answered as briefly as possible. His manner was as
kind as ever; indeed, he spoke to her with more than his usual
gentleness; but during dinner he seemed to find conversation difficult,
and all her little jokes fell flat. She wanted to know how many pretty
things he had bought, and if he had put down his name for the proof
engraving of a certain picture he had longed to possess.
'Twenty guineas is nothing to you now, Michael,' she observed playfully.
'No, I forgot all about the picture,' he returned, starting up from his
chair; 'but I have brought you a present.'
And the next moment he put in her hand a little case. When Audrey opened
it, there was a small cross studded with diamonds of great beauty and
lustre, and the whole effect was so sparkling and dainty that Audrey
quite flushed with surprise and pleasure.
'Oh, mother, look how beautiful! But, Michael, how dare you waste your
money on me; this must have cost a fortune!' And then she added a little
thoughtfully, 'I am afraid Cyril will be sorry when he sees this; he is
always lamenting that he cannot give me things.'
'I chose a bracelet for Geraldine,' he returned carelessly, as though
buying diamonds were an everyday business with him. 'Would you like to
see it?' and he showed her the contents of the other case. 'I have a
small offering for my godson in the shape of the inevitable mug, and I
mean to give this to Leonard's mamma.'
'It is very handsome; mother thinks so: don't you, mother? and Gage is
devoted to bracelets; but I like mine ever so much better; it is the
very perfection of a cross, and I shall value it, ah, so dearly,
Michael!' and Audrey held out her hand as she spoke.
Michael pressed it silently. It was little wonder, he thought, that
Audrey liked her gift better than Geraldine's; it had cost at least
three times as much; in fact, its value had been so great that he had
written the cheque with some slight feeling of shame and compunction.
'There is no harm, after all, and she is so fond of diamonds,' he
assured himself, as he put the little case in his pocket; 'she will not
know what it cost me, and he will never be able to buy ornaments for
her--I may as well give myself this pleasure;' and just for the moment
it did please him to see her delight over the ornament.
'It is not so much the diamonds that please me, as Michael's kindness
and generosity,' she said to Cyril the next day. 'He has bought nothing
for himself, and yet he has been in town a whole month; he only thought
of us.'
And Cyril observed quietly, as he closed the case, that it was certainly
very kind of Captain Burnett; but a close observer would have said that
Michael's generosity had not quite pleased him.
'I suppose you will wear this to-night at the Charringtons'?' he asked
presently.
'Yes; and those lovely flowers you have brought me,' she added, with one
of her charming smiles; and somehow the cloud passed in a moment from
the young man's brow.
What did it matter, after all, that he could not give her diamonds? Had
he not given himself to her, and did they not belong to each other for
time and for eternity? And as he thought this he took her in his arms
with a loving speech.
'You are sweet as the very sweetest of my flowers,' he said, holding her
close to him. 'You are the very dearest thing in the world to me,
Audrey; and sometimes, when I think of the future, I am almost beside
myself with happiness.'
When the little excitement of the diamonds was over, Michael relapsed
again into gravity, and he was still grave when he went up to Hillside
the next day. A wakeful night's reflection had brought him no comfort;
he felt as though a gulf were opening before him and those whom he
loved, and that he dared not, for very dread and giddiness, look into
it.
When they returned from church, and were about to sit down to the
sumptuous luncheon, he took Geraldine aside and presented his offerings.
To his surprise, she was quite overcome, and would have called her
husband to share her pleasure; but he begged her to say nothing just
then.
'Audrey has a present, too, but she took it far more calmly,' he said,
in a rallying tone. But as he spoke he wondered at his cousin's beauty.
Her complexion had always been very transparent, but now excitement had
added a soft bloom. Was it motherhood, he asked himself, that deepened
the expression of her eyes and lent her that new gentleness? 'I never
saw you look better, Gage,' he said, in quite an admiring voice; but
Geraldine was as unconscious as ever.
'I am very well,' she returned, smiling, 'only not quite as strong as
usual. It is such a pity that Percival would not allow me to invite you
to dinner, because he says that I ought to be quiet this evening. He and
mother make such a fuss over me. Percival means to take baby and me for
a change during the Easter holidays. That will be nice, will it not? I
think we shall go to Bournemouth.'
'Very nice,' he returned absently.
'I wish Audrey would go too, but I am afraid she will not leave Cyril;
he is not going away this vacation. That is the worst of a sister being
engaged, she is not half so useful.'
'I think Audrey would go with you if you asked her; she is very
unselfish.'
'Yes; but she has to think about someone else now, and I do not wish to
be hard on Cyril. He is very nice, and we all like him.'
'I am very glad to hear that, Gage.'
'Yes; we must just make the best of it. Of course, Percival and I will
always consider she is throwing herself away; but that cannot be helped
now. By the bye, Michael, this is the first time I have seen you since
you came into your fortune. I have never been able to tell you how
delighted we both were to hear of it.'
'Well, it was a pretty good haul.'
'Yes; but no one will do more with it. But you must not buy any more
diamonds;' and then she smiled on him. And just then Master Leonard made
his appearance in his long lace robe, and, as Geraldine moved to take
her boy in her arms, there was no further conversation between them.
They left soon after luncheon. Mr. Bryce had to take an early afternoon
train, and Dr. Ross accompanied him to the station. Audrey drove home
with her mother; they expected Michael to follow them, but he had other
business on hand. There was his interview with Mrs. Blake, and on
leaving Hillside he went straight to the Gray Cottage.
Mollie met him at the door. She looked disturbed and anxious.
'Yes; you are to go up to the drawing-room, Captain Burnett,' she said,
when he asked if Mrs. Blake were at home. 'Mamma is there. I heard her
tell Biddy so. Do you know'--puckering up her face as though she were
ready to cry--'mamma will not speak to any of us--not even to Cyril! She
says she is ill, and that only Biddy understands her. It is so odd that
she is able to see a visitor.'
'What makes you think she is ill, Mollie?'
'Oh, because she looked so dreadful when she came home last night; she
could hardly walk upstairs, and Cyril was not there to help her. He was
quite frightened when I told him, and went to her room at once; but her
door was locked, and she said her head ached so that she could not talk.
Biddy was with her then; we could hear her voice distinctly, and mamma
seemed moaning so.'
'Has she seen your brother this morning?'
'Yes, just for a minute; but the room was darkened, and he could not see
her properly. She told him that the pain had got on the nerves, and that
she really could not bear us near her. But she would not let him send
for a doctor, and Biddy seemed to agree with her.'
'Perhaps she will be better to-morrow,' he suggested; and then he left
Mollie and went upstairs. 'Poor little girl!' he said to himself; 'I
wonder what she would say if she knew her father were living!'
And then he tapped at the drawing-room door. He was not quite sure
whether anyone bade him enter. Mrs. Blake was sitting in a chair drawn
close to the fire; her back was towards him. She did not move or turn
her head as he walked towards her, and when he put out his hand to her
she took no notice of it.
'You have come,' she said, in a quick, hard voice. And then she turned
away from him and looked into the fire.
'Yes, I have come,' he replied quietly, as he sat down on the oak settle
that was drawn up near her chair. 'I am sorry to see you look so ill,
Mrs. Blake.'
He might well say so. She had aged ten years since the previous night.
Her face was quite drawn and haggard--he had never before noticed that
there were threads of gray in her dark hair--she had always looked so
marvellously young; but now he could see the lines and the crows'-feet;
and as his sharp eyes detected all this he felt very sorry for her.
'Ill; of course I'm ill,' she answered irritably. 'All night long I have
been wishing I were dead. I said yesterday that I would rather kill
myself than tell you my story; but to-day I have thought better of it.'
'I am glad of that.'
'Of course I am not a fool, and I know I am in your power--yours and
that man's.' And here she shivered.
'Will you tell me this one thing first? Is he--is Matthew O'Brien your
husband?'
'Yes; I suppose so. I was certainly married to him once.'
'Then, why, in the name of heaven, Mrs. Blake, do you allow people to
consider you a widow?'
'Because I am a widow,' she returned harshly. 'Because I have unmarried
myself and given up my husband. Because I refused to have anything more
to do with him--he brought me disgrace, and I hated him for it.'
'But, pardon me, it is not possible--no woman can unmarry herself in
this fashion--unless you mean----'
And here he stopped, feeling it impossible to put any such question to
her. But what on earth could she mean?
'No, I have not divorced him. I suppose, in one sense, he may still be
regarded as my husband; but for fourteen years he has been dead to me,
and I have called myself a widow.'
'But you must have known it was wrong,' he returned, a little bewildered
by these extraordinary statements. If she had not looked so wan and
haggard, he would have accused her of talking wildly.
'No, Captain Burnett; I do not own it was wrong. Under some
circumstances a woman is bound to defend herself and her children--a
tigress will brave a loaded gun if her young are starving. If it were
to come over again, I would do the same. But I will acknowledge to you
that I did not love my husband.'
'No; that is evident.'
'I never loved him, though I was foolish enough to marry him. I suppose
I cared for him in a sort of way. He was handsome, and had soft,
pleasant ways with him; and I was young and giddy, and ready for any
excitement. But I had not been his wife three months before I would have
given worlds to have undone my marriage.'
'Was he a bad husband to you?'
'No. Mat was always too soft for unkindness; but he was not the man for
me. Besides, I had married him out of pique--there was someone I liked
much better. You see, I am telling you all quite frankly. I am in your
power, as I said before. If I refused to speak, you would just go to
Mat, and he would tell you everything.'
'I am very much relieved to find you so reasonable, Mrs. Blake. It is
certainly wiser and better to tell me yourself. You have my promise
that, as far as possible, I will give you my help; but at present I do
not know how this may be.'
'Yes; I will tell you my story,' she answered. But there was a
bitterness of antagonism in her tone as she said this. 'I have always
been afraid of you, Captain Burnett; I felt you disliked and mistrusted
me, and I have never been easy with you. If it were not for Kester, and
your kindness to him, I should be horribly afraid of you. But for
Kester's sake you would not be hard on his mother.'
'I would not be hard on any woman,' he answered quietly. 'It is true I
have mistrusted you. I told you so yesterday. But if you will confide in
me, you shall not repent your confidence.'
'You mean you will not be my enemy.'
'I am no woman's enemy,' he said a little proudly. 'I wish someone else
had been in my place yesterday; you can understand it is not a pleasant
business to ask these questions of a lady; but there are many interests
involved, and I am like a son to Dr. Ross. I am bound to look into this
matter more closely for his sake, and----' he paused, and, if possible,
Mrs. Blake turned a little pale.
'Let me tell you quickly,' she said. 'Perhaps, after all, you will not
blame me, and you will help me to keep it from Cyril.' And here she
looked at him imploringly, and he could see the muscles of her face
quivering. 'No, I never loved Mat. I felt it was a condescension on my
part to marry him. My people were well connected. One of my uncles was a
dean, and another was a barrister. My father was a clergyman.'
'What was his name?'
'Stephen Carrick. He was Vicar of Bardley.'
'I have heard of Dean Carrick; he wrote some book or other, and came
into some notoriety before his death. Is it possible that you are his
niece?'
'Yes. I was very proud of him, and of my other uncle; but they would
have nothing to do with me after my marriage. We were living in Ireland
then, and when Mat brought me to London I seemed to have cut myself
adrift from all my people. My father died not long afterwards, and my
mother followed him, and my two brothers were at sea. I saw the name of
Carrick in the papers one day--James Carrick--he was in the navy; so it
must have been Jem. Well, he is dead, and, as far as I know, Charlie may
be dead too.'
She spoke with a degree of hardness that astonished him, but he would
not interrupt her by a question. He saw that, for some reason of her
own, she was willing to tell her story.
'I soon found out my mistake when Mat brought me to London. From the
first we were unfortunate; we had neither of us any experience. Our
first landlady cheated us, and our lodgings were far too expensive for
our means--my money had not then come to me. At my mother's death I was
more independent.
'I might have grown fonder of Mat but for one thing. Very shortly after
our marriage--indeed, before the honeymoon was over--I discovered that
he had already stooped to deceit. He had always led me to imagine that
his people were well-to-do, and that his parentage was as respectable as
mine; indeed, I understood that his only brother was a merchant, with
considerable means at his disposal. I do not say Mat told me all this in
words, but he had a way with him of implying things.
'I was very proud--ridiculously proud, if you will--and I had a horror
of trade. You may judge, then, the shock it was to me when I found out
by the merest accident--from reading a fragment of a letter--that this
brother was a corn-chandler in a small retail way.
'We had our first quarrel then. Mat was very cowed and miserable when he
saw how I took it; he wanted to coax me into forgiving his deceit.
'"I knew what a proud little creature you were, Olive," he said, trying
to extenuate his shabby conduct, "and that there was no chance of your
listening to me if you found out Tom was a tradesman. What does it
matter about the shop? Tom is as good a chap as ever breathed, and Susan
is the best-hearted woman in the world." But I would not be conciliated.
'I would not go near his people, and when he mentioned their names I
always turned a deaf ear. It is a bad thing when a woman learns to
despise her husband; but from that day I took Mat's true measure, and my
heart seemed to harden against him. Perhaps I did not go the right way
to improve him or keep him straight, but I soon found out that I dared
not rely on him.
'I think I should have left him before the year was out, only my baby
was born and took all my thoughts; and Mat was so good to me, that for
very shame I dare not hint at such a thing. But we were not happy. His
very fondness made things worse, for he was always reproaching me for my
coldness.
'"You are the worst wife that a man could have," he would say to me.
"You would not care if I were brought home dead any day, and yet if the
boy's finger aches you want to send for the doctor. If I go to the bad,
it will be your own fault, because you never have a kind look or word
for me."
'But he might as well have spoken to the wind. There was no love for Mat
in my heart, and I worshipped my boy.'
'You are speaking now of your eldest son?'
'Yes; of Cyril. He was my first-born, and I doted on him. I had two
other children before Kester came; but, happily, they died--I say
happily, for I had hard work to make ends meet with three children. I
was so wrapped up in my boy that I neglected Mat more and more; and when
he took to going out of an evening I made no complaints. We were getting
on better then, and I seldom quarrelled with him, unless he refused to
give me money for the children. Perhaps he was afraid to cross me, for
the money was generally forthcoming when I asked for it; but I never
took the trouble to find out how he procured it. And he was only too
pleased to find me good-tempered and ready to talk to him, or to bring
Cyril to play with him; for he was fond of the boy, too. Well, things
went on tolerably smoothly until Mollie was born; but she was only a few
months old when the crash came.'
She stopped, and an angry darkness came over her face.
'You need not tell me,' returned Michael, anxious to spare her as much
as possible. 'I am aware of the forgery for which your husband incurred
penal servitude for so many years.'
'You know that!' she exclaimed, with a terrified stare. 'Who could have
told you? Oh, I forgot Mat's brother at Brail! Why did I never guess
that Audrey's old friend she so often mentioned was this Tom O'Brien?
But there are other O'Briens--there was one at Richmond when we lived
there--and I thought he was still in his shop.'
'We heard all the leading facts from him; he told Audrey everything.'
'Then you shall hear my part now,' she returned, with flashing eyes.
'What do you suppose were my feelings when I heard the news that Mat was
in prison, and that my boy's father was a convicted felon? What do you
imagine were my thoughts when I sat in my lodgings, with my children
round me, knowing that this heritage of shame was on them?'
'It was very bad for you,' he whispered softly, for her tragical aspect
impressed him with a sense of grandeur. She was not good: by her own
account she had been an unloving wife; but in her way she had been
strong--only her strength had been for evil.
'Yes, it was bad. I think for days I was almost crazed by my
misfortunes; and then Mat sent for me. He was penitent, and wanted my
forgiveness, so they told me.'
'And you went?'
'Of course I went. I had a word to say to him that needed an answer, and
I was thankful for the opportunity to speak it. I dressed myself at
once, and went to the prison. Cyril cried to come with me, and slapped
me with his little hands when I refused to take him; but I only
smothered him with kisses. I remember how he struggled to get free, and
how indignant he was. "I don't love you one bit to-day, mamma! you are
not my pretty mamma at all." But I only laughed at his childish pet--my
bright, beautiful boy!--I can see him now.
'Mat looked utterly miserable; but his wretchedness did not seem to
touch me. The sin was his, and he must expiate it; it was I and my
children who were the innocent sufferers. He began cursing himself for
his mad folly, as he called it, and begged me over and over again to
forgive him. I listened to him for a few minutes, and then I looked at
him very steadily.
'"I will forgive you, Mat, and not say a hard word to you, if you will
promise me one thing."
'"And what is that?" he asked, seeming as though he dreaded my answer.
'"That you will never try to see me or my children again."'