THE DESERTED HUSBAND.
Phineas Finn had been in the gallery of the House throughout the
debate, and was greatly grieved at Mr. Daubeny's success, though
he himself had so strongly advocated the disestablishment of the
Church in canvassing the electors of Tankerville. No doubt he had
advocated the cause,--but he had done so as an advanced member of the
Liberal party, and he regarded the proposition when coming from Mr.
Daubeny as a horrible and abnormal birth. He, however, was only a
looker-on,--could be no more than a looker-on for the existing short
session. It had already been decided that the judge who was to try
the case at Tankerville should visit that town early in January; and
should it be decided on a scrutiny that the seat belonged to our
hero, then he would enter upon his privilege in the following Session
without any further trouble to himself at Tankerville. Should this
not be the case,--then the abyss of absolute vacuity would be open
before him. He would have to make some disposition of himself, but he
would be absolutely without an idea as to the how or where. He was in
possession of funds to support himself for a year or two; but after
that, and even during that time, all would be dark. If he should get
his seat, then again the power of making an effort would at last be
within his hands.
He had made up his mind to spend the Christmas with Lord Brentford
and Lady Laura Kennedy at Dresden, and had already fixed the day of
his arrival there. But this had been postponed by another invitation
which had surprised him much, but which it had been impossible for
him not to accept. It had come as follows:--
November 9th, Loughlinter.
DEAR SIR,
I am informed by letter from Dresden that you are in
London on your way to that city with the view of spending
some days with the Earl of Brentford. You will, of course,
be once more thrown into the society of my wife, Lady
Laura Kennedy.
I have never understood, and certainly have never
sanctioned, that breach of my wife's marriage vow which
has led to her withdrawal from my roof. I never bade her
go, and I have bidden her return. Whatever may be her
feelings, or mine, her duty demands her presence here,
and my duty calls upon me to receive her. This I am and
always have been ready to do. Were the laws of Europe
sufficiently explicit and intelligible I should force her
to return to my house,--because she sins while she remains
away, and I should sin were I to omit to use any means
which the law might place in my hands for the due control
of my own wife. I am very explicit to you although we
have of late been strangers, because in former days you
were closely acquainted with the condition of my family
affairs.
Since my wife left me I have had no means of communicating
with her by the assistance of any common friend. Having
heard that you are about to visit her at Dresden I feel a
great desire to see you that I may be enabled to send by
you a personal message. My health, which is now feeble,
and the altered habits of my life render it almost
impossible that I should proceed to London with this
object, and I therefore ask it of your Christian charity
that you should visit me here at Loughlinter. You, as a
Roman Catholic, cannot but hold the bond of matrimony
to be irrefragable. You cannot, at least, think that it
should be set aside at the caprice of an excitable woman
who is not able and never has been able to assign any
reason for leaving the protection of her husband.
I shall have much to say to you, and I trust you will
come. I will not ask you to prolong your visit, as I have
nothing to offer you in the way of amusement. My mother is
with me; but otherwise I am alone. Since my wife left me I
have not thought it even decent to entertain guests or to
enjoy society. I have lived a widowed life. I cannot even
offer you shooting, as I have no keepers on the mountains.
There are fish in the river doubtless, for the gifts of
God are given let men be ever so unworthy; but this, I
believe, is not the month for fishermen. I ask you to come
to me, not as a pleasure, but as a Christian duty.
Yours truly,
ROBERT KENNEDY.
Phineas Finn, Esq.
As soon as he had read the letter Phineas felt that he had no
alternative but to go. The visit would be very disagreeable, but it
must be made. So he sent a line to Robert Kennedy naming a day; and
wrote another to Lady Laura postponing his time at Dresden by a week,
and explaining the cause of its postponement. As soon as the debate
on the Address was over he started for Loughlinter.
A thousand memories crowded on his brain as he made the journey.
Various circumstances had in his early life,--in that period of his
life which had lately seemed to be cut off from the remainder of his
days by so clear a line,--thrown him into close connection with this
man, and with the man's wife. He had first gone to Loughlinter, not
as Lady Laura's guest,--for Lady Laura had not then been married, or
even engaged to be married,--but on her persuasion rather than on
that of Mr. Kennedy. When there he had asked Lady Laura to be his own
wife, and she had then told him that she was to become the wife of
the owner of that domain. He remembered the blow as though it had
been struck but yesterday, and yet the pain of the blow had not been
long enduring. But though then rejected he had always been the chosen
friend of the woman,--a friend chosen after an especial fashion. When
he had loved another woman this friend had resented his defection
with all a woman's jealousy. He had saved the husband's life, and had
then become also the husband's friend, after that cold fashion which
an obligation will create. Then the husband had been jealous, and
dissension had come, and the ill-matched pair had been divided, with
absolute ruin to both of them, as far as the material comforts and
well-being of life were concerned. Then he, too, had been ejected,
as it were, out of the world, and it had seemed to him as though
Laura Standish and Robert Kennedy had been the inhabitants of another
hemisphere. Now he was about to see them both again, both separately;
and to become the medium of some communication between them. He knew,
or thought that he knew, that no communication could avail anything.
It was dark night when he was driven up to the door of Loughlinter
House in a fly from the town of Callender. When he first made the
journey, now some six or seven years since, he had done so with Mr.
Ratler, and he remembered well that circumstance. He remembered also
that on his arrival Lady Laura had scolded him for having travelled
in such company. She had desired him to seek other friends,--friends
higher in general estimation, and nobler in purpose. He had done so,
partly at her instance, and with success. But Mr. Ratler was now
somebody in the world, and he was nobody. And he remembered also how
on that occasion he had been troubled in his mind in regard to a
servant, not as yet knowing whether the usages of the world did or
did not require that he should go so accompanied. He had taken the
man, and had been thoroughly ashamed of himself for doing so. He had
no servant now, no grandly developed luggage, no gun, no elaborate
dress for the mountains. On that former occasion his heart had been
very full when he reached Loughlinter, and his heart was full now.
Then he had resolved to say a few words to Lady Laura, and he had
hardly known how best to say them. Now he would be called upon to
say a few to Lady Laura's husband, and the task would be almost as
difficult.
The door was opened for him by an old servant in black, who proposed
at once to show him to his room. He looked round the vast hall,
which, when he had before known it, was ever filled with signs of
life, and felt at once that it was empty and deserted. It struck him
as intolerably cold, and he saw that the huge fireplace was without a
spark of fire. Dinner, the servant said, was prepared for half-past
seven. Would Mr. Finn wish to dress? Of course he wished to dress.
And as it was already past seven he hurried up stairs to his room.
Here again everything was cold and wretched. There was no fire, and
the man had left him with a single candle. There were candlesticks on
the dressing-table, but they were empty. The man had suggested hot
water, but the hot water did not come. In his poorest days he had
never known discomfort such as this, and yet Mr. Kennedy was one of
the richest commoners of Great Britain.
But he dressed, and made his way down stairs, not knowing where
he should find his host or his host's mother. He recognised the
different doors and knew the rooms within them, but they seemed
inhospitably closed against him, and he went and stood in the cold
hall. But the man was watching for him, and led him into a small
parlour. Then it was explained to him that Mr. Kennedy's state of
health did not admit of late dinners. He was to dine alone, and Mr.
Kennedy would receive him after dinner. In a moment his cheeks became
red, and a flash of wrath crossed his heart. Was he to be treated
in this way by a man on whose behalf,--with no thought of his own
comfort or pleasure,--he had made this long and abominable journey?
Might it not be well for him to leave the house without seeing Mr.
Kennedy at all? Then he remembered that he had heard it whispered
that the man had become bewildered in his mind. He relented,
therefore, and condescended to eat his dinner.
A very poor dinner it was. There was a morsel of flabby white fish,
as to the nature of which Phineas was altogether in doubt, a beef
steak as to the nature of which he was not at all in doubt, and a
little crumpled-up tart which he thought the driver of the fly must
have brought with him from the pastry-cook's at Callender. There was
some very hot sherry, but not much of it. And there was a bottle of
claret, as to which Phineas, who was not usually particular in the
matter of wine, persisted in declining to have anything to do with
it after the first attempt. The gloomy old servant, who stuck to him
during the repast, persisted in offering it, as though the credit
of the hospitality of Loughlinter depended on it. There are so many
men by whom the tenuis ratio saporum has not been achieved, that the
Caleb Balderstones of those houses in which plenty does not flow
are almost justified in hoping that goblets of Gladstone may pass
current. Phineas Finn was not a martyr to eating or drinking. He
played with his fish without thinking much about it. He worked
manfully at the steak. He gave another crumple to the tart, and left
it without a pang. But when the old man urged him, for the third
time, to take that pernicious draught with his cheese, he angrily
demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and
on his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white spirit,
which he called usquebaugh. Phineas, happy to get a little whisky,
said nothing more about the beer, and so the dinner was over.
He rose so suddenly from his chair that the man did not dare to ask
him whether he would not sit over his wine. A suggestion that way was
indeed made, would he "visit the laird out o' hand, or would he bide
awee?" Phineas decided on visiting the laird out of hand, and was
at once led across the hall, down a back passage which he had never
before traversed, and introduced to the chamber which had ever been
known as the "laird's ain room." Here Robert Kennedy rose to receive
him.
Phineas knew the man's age well. He was still under fifty, but he
looked as though he were seventy. He had always been thin, but he was
thinner now than ever. He was very grey, and stooped so much, that
though he came forward a step or two to greet his guest, it seemed
as though he had not taken the trouble to raise himself to his
proper height. "You find me a much altered man," he said. The change
had been so great that it was impossible to deny it, and Phineas
muttered something of regret that his host's health should be so
bad. "It is trouble of the mind,--not of the body, Mr. Finn. It is
her doing,--her doing. Life is not to me a light thing, nor are
the obligations of life light. When I married a wife, she became
bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Can I lose my bones and
my flesh,--knowing that they are not with God but still subject
elsewhere to the snares of the devil, and live as though I were a
sound man? Had she died I could have borne it. I hope they have made
you comfortable, Mr. Finn?"
"Oh, yes," said Phineas.
"Not that Loughlinter can be comfortable now to any one. How can a
man, whose wife has deserted him, entertain his guests? I am ashamed
even to look a friend in the face, Mr. Finn." As he said this he
stretched forth his open hand as though to hide his countenance, and
Phineas hardly knew whether the absurdity of the movement or the
tragedy of the feeling struck him the more forcibly. "What did I do
that she should leave me? Did I strike her? Was I faithless? Had she
not the half of all that was mine? Did I frighten her by hard words,
or exact hard tasks? Did I not commune with her, telling her all my
most inward purposes? In things of this world, and of that better
world that is coming, was she not all in all to me? Did I not make
her my very wife? Mr. Finn, do you know what made her go away?" He
had asked perhaps a dozen questions. As to the eleven which came
first it was evident that no answer was required; and they had been
put with that pathetic dignity with which it is so easy to invest
the interrogatory form of address. But to the last question it was
intended that Phineas should give an answer, as Phineas presumed
at once; and then it was asked with a wink of the eye, a low eager
voice, and a sly twist of the face that were frightfully ludicrous.
"I suppose you do know," said Mr. Kennedy, again working his eye,
and thrusting his chin forward.
[Illustration: The Laird of Loughlinter.]
"I imagine that she was not happy."
"Happy? What right had she to expect to be happy? Are we to believe
that we should be happy here? Are we not told that we are to look
for happiness there, and to hope for none below?" As he said this he
stretched his left hand to the ceiling. "But why shouldn't she have
been happy? What did she want? Did she ever say anything against me,
Mr. Finn?"
"Nothing but this,--that your temper and hers were incompatible."
"I thought at one time that you advised her to go away?"
"Never!"
"She told you about it?"
"Not, if I remember, till she had made up her mind, and her father
had consented to receive her. I had known, of course, that things
were unpleasant."
"How were they unpleasant? Why were they unpleasant? She wouldn't let
you come and dine with me in London. I never knew why that was. When
she did what was wrong, of course I had to tell her. Who else should
tell her but her husband? If you had been her husband, and I only
an acquaintance, then I might have said what I pleased. They rebel
against the yoke because it is a yoke. And yet they accept the yoke,
knowing it to be a yoke. It comes of the devil. You think a priest
can put everything right."
"No, I don't," said Phineas.
"Nothing can put you right but the fear of God; and when a woman
is too proud to ask for that, evils like these are sure to come.
She would not go to church on Sunday afternoon, but had meetings of
Belial at her father's house instead." Phineas well remembered those
meetings of Belial, in which he with others had been wont to discuss
the political prospects of the day. "When she persisted in breaking
the Lord's commandment, and defiling the Lord's day, I knew well what
would come of it."
"I am not sure, Mr. Kennedy, that a husband is justified in demanding
that a wife shall think just as he thinks on matters of religion. If
he is particular about it, he should find all that out before."
"Particular! God's word is to be obeyed, I suppose?"
"But people doubt about God's word."
"Then people will be damned," said Mr. Kennedy, rising from his
chair. "And they will be damned."
"A woman doesn't like to be told so."
"I never told her so. I never said anything of the kind. I never
spoke a hard word to her in my life. If her head did but ache, I hung
over her with the tenderest solicitude. I refused her nothing. When
I found that she was impatient I chose the shortest sermon for our
Sunday evening's worship, to the great discomfort of my mother."
Phineas wondered whether this assertion as to the discomfort of old
Mrs. Kennedy could possibly be true. Could it be that any human being
really preferred a long sermon to a short one,--except the being who
preached it or read it aloud? "There was nothing that I did not do
for her. I suppose you really do know why she went away, Mr. Finn?"
"I know nothing more than I have said."
"I did think once that she was--"
"There was nothing more than I have said," asserted Phineas sternly,
fearing that the poor insane man was about to make some suggestion
that would be terribly painful. "She felt that she did not make you
happy."
"I did not want her to make me happy. I do not expect to be made
happy. I wanted her to do her duty. You were in love with her once,
Mr. Finn?"
"Yes, I was. I was in love with Lady Laura Standish."
"Ah! Yes. There was no harm in that, of course; only when any thing
of that kind happens, people had better keep out of each other's way
afterwards. Not that I was ever jealous, you know."
"I should hope not."
"But I don't see why you should go all the way to Dresden to pay her
a visit. What good can that do? I think you had much better stay
where you are, Mr. Finn; I do indeed. It isn't a decent thing for a
young unmarried man to go half across Europe to see a lady who is
separated from her husband, and who was once in love with him;--I
mean he was once in love with her. It's a very wicked thing, Mr.
Finn, and I have to beg that you will not do it."
Phineas felt that he had been grossly taken in. He had been asked to
come to Loughlinter in order that he might take a message from the
husband to the wife, and now the husband made use of his compliance
to forbid the visit on some grotesque score of jealousy. He knew that
the man was mad, and that therefore he ought not to be angry; but the
man was not too mad to require a rational answer, and had some method
in his madness. "Lady Laura Kennedy is living with her father," said
Phineas.
"Pshaw;--dotard!"
"Lady Laura Kennedy is living with her father," repeated Phineas;
"and I am going to the house of the Earl of Brentford."
"Who was it wrote and asked you?"
"The letter was from Lady Laura."
"Yes;--from my wife. What right had my wife to write to you when
she will not even answer my appeals? She is my wife;--my wife! In
the presence of God she and I have been made one, and even man's
ordinances have not dared to separate us. Mr. Finn, as the husband
of Lady Laura Kennedy, I desire that you abstain from seeking her
presence." As he said this he rose from his chair, and took the poker
in his hand. The chair in which he was sitting was placed upon the
rug, and it might be that the fire required his attention. As he
stood bending down, with the poker in his right hand, with his eye
still fixed on his guest's face, his purpose was doubtful. The motion
might be a threat, or simply have a useful domestic tendency. But
Phineas, believing that the man was mad, rose from his seat and stood
upon his guard. The point of the poker had undoubtedly been raised;
but as Phineas stretched himself to his height, it fell gradually
towards the fire, and at last was buried very gently among the coals.
But he was never convinced that Mr. Kennedy had carried out the
purpose with which he rose from his chair. "After what has passed,
you will no doubt abandon your purpose," said Mr. Kennedy.
"I shall certainly go to Dresden," said Phineas. "If you have a
message to send, I will take it."
"Then you will be accursed among adulterers," said the laird of
Loughlinter. "By such a one I will send no message. From the first
moment that I saw you I knew you for a child of Apollyon. But the sin
was my own. Why did I ask to my house an idolater, one who pretends
to believe that a crumb of bread is my God, a Papist, untrue alike
to his country and to his Saviour? When she desired it of me I knew
that I was wrong to yield. Yes;--it is you who have done it all, you,
you, you;--and if she be a castaway, the weight of her soul will be
doubly heavy on your own."
To get out of the room, and then at the earliest possible hour of the
morning out of the house, were now the objects to be attained. That
his presence had had a peculiarly evil influence on Mr. Kennedy,
Phineas could not doubt; as assuredly the unfortunate man would
not have been left with mastery over his own actions had his usual
condition been such as that which he now displayed. He had been told
that "poor Kennedy" was mad,--as we are often told of the madness
of our friends when they cease for awhile to run in the common
grooves of life. But the madman had now gone a long way out of
the grooves;--so far, that he seemed to Phineas to be decidedly
dangerous. "I think I had better wish you good night," he said.
"Look here, Mr. Finn."
"Well?"
"I hope you won't go and make more mischief."
"I shall not do that, certainly."
"You won't tell her what I have said?"
"I shall tell her nothing to make her think that your opinion of her
is less high than it ought to be."
"Good night."
"Good night," said Phineas again; and then he left the room. It was
as yet but nine o'clock, and he had no alternative but to go to bed.
He found his way back into the hall, and from thence up to his own
chamber. But there was no fire there, and the night was cold. He went
to the window, and raised it for a moment, that he might hear the
well-remembered sound of the Fall of Linter. Though the night was
dark and wintry, a dismal damp November night, he would have crept
out of the house and made his way up to the top of the brae, for
the sake of auld lang syne, had he not feared that the inhospitable
mansion would be permanently closed against him on his return. He
rang the bell once or twice, and after a while the old serving man
came to him. Could he have a cup of tea? The man shook his head, and
feared that no boiling water could be procured at that late hour of
the night. Could he have his breakfast the next morning at seven, and
a conveyance to Callender at half-past seven? When the old man again
shook his head, seeming to be dazed at the enormity of the demand,
Phineas insisted that his request should be conveyed to the master of
the house. As to the breakfast, he said he did not care about it, but
the conveyance he must have. He did, in fact, obtain both, and left
the house early on the following morning without again seeing Mr.
Kennedy, and without having spoken a single word to Mr. Kennedy's
mother. And so great was his hurry to get away from the place which
had been so disagreeable to him, and which he thought might possibly
become more so, that he did not even run across the sward that
divided the gravel sweep from the foot of the waterfall.