"YOU THINK IT SHAMEFUL."
The tidings of what had taken place first reached Lady Laura Kennedy
from her brother on his return to Portman Square after the scene in
the police court. The object of his visit to Finn's lodgings has
been explained, but the nature of Lady Laura's vehemence in urging
upon her brother the performance of a very disagreeable task has not
been sufficiently described. No brother would willingly go on such a
mission from a married sister to a man who had been publicly named
as that sister's lover;--and no brother could be less likely to do
so than Lord Chiltern. But Lady Laura had been very stout in her
arguments, and very strong-willed in her purpose. The income arising
from this money,--which had been absolutely her own,--would again be
exclusively her own should the claim to it on behalf of her husband's
estate be abandoned. Surely she might do what she liked with her own.
If her brother would not assist her in making this arrangement, it
must be done by other means. She was quite willing that it should
appear to come to Mr. Finn from her father and not from herself. Did
her brother think any ill of her? Did he believe in the calumnies of
the newspapers? Did he or his wife for a moment conceive that she
had a lover? When he looked at her, worn out, withered, an old woman
before her time, was it possible that he should so believe? She
herself asked him these questions. Lord Chiltern of course declared
that he had no suspicion of the kind. "No;--indeed," said Lady Laura.
"I defy any one to suspect me who knows me. And if so, why am not
I as much entitled to help a friend as you might be? You need not
even mention my name." He endeavoured to make her understand that her
name would be mentioned, and others would believe and would say evil
things. "They cannot say worse than they have said," she continued.
"And yet what harm have they done to me,--or you?" Then he demanded
why she desired to go so far out of her way with the view of spending
her money upon one who was in no way connected with her. "Because
I like him better than any one else," she answered, boldly. "There
is very little left for which I care at all;--but I do care for his
prosperity. He was once in love with me and told me so,--but I had
chosen to give my hand to Mr. Kennedy. He is not in love with me
now,--nor I with him; but I choose to regard him as my friend." He
assured her over and over again that Phineas Finn would certainly
refuse to touch her money;--but this she declined to believe. At any
rate the trial might be made. He would not refuse money left to him
by will, and why should he not now enjoy that which was intended for
him? Then she explained how certain it was that he must speedily
vanish out of the world altogether, unless some assurance of an
income were made to him. So Lord Chiltern went on his mission, hardly
meaning to make the offer, and confident that it would be refused
if made. We know the nature of the new trouble in which he found
Phineas Finn enveloped. It was such that Lord Chiltern did not open
his mouth about money, and now, having witnessed the scene at the
police-office, he had come back to tell his tale to his sister. She
was sitting with his wife when he entered the room.
"Have you heard anything?" he asked at once.
"Heard what?" said his wife.
"Then you have not heard it. A man has been murdered."
"What man?" said Lady Laura, jumping suddenly from her seat. "Not
Robert!" Lord Chiltern shook his head. "You do not mean that Mr. Finn
has been--killed!" Again he shook his head; and then she sat down as
though the asking of the two questions had exhausted her.
"Speak, Oswald," said his wife. "Why do you not tell us? Is it one
whom we knew?"
"I think that Laura used to know him. Mr. Bonteen was murdered last
night in the streets."
"Mr. Bonteen! The man who was Mr. Finn's enemy," said Lady Chiltern.
"Mr. Bonteen!" said Lady Laura, as though the murder of twenty Mr.
Bonteens were nothing to her.
"Yes;--the man whom you talk of as Finn's enemy. It would be better
if there were no such talk."
"And who killed him?" said Lady Laura, again getting up and coming
close to her brother.
"Who was it, Oswald?" asked his wife; and she also was now too deeply
interested to keep her seat.
"They have arrested two men," said Lord Chiltern;--"that Jew who
married Lady Eustace, and--" But there he paused. He had determined
beforehand that he would tell his sister the double arrest that the
doubt this implied might lessen the weight of the blow; but now he
found it almost impossible to mention the name.
"Who is the other, Oswald?" said his wife.
"Not Phineas," screamed Lady Laura.
"Yes, indeed; they have arrested him, and I have just come from
the court." He had no time to go on, for his sister was crouching
prostrate on the floor before him. She had not fainted. Women do
not faint under such shocks. But in her agony she had crouched down
rather than fallen, as though it were vain to attempt to stand
upright with so crushing a weight of sorrow on her back. She uttered
one loud shriek, and then covering her face with her hands burst out
into a wail of sobs. Lady Chiltern and her brother both tried to
raise her, but she would not be lifted. "Why will you not hear me
through, Laura?" said he.
"You do not think he did it?" said his wife.
"I'm sure he did not," replied Lord Chiltern.
The poor woman, half-lying, half-seated, on the floor, still hiding
her face with her hands, still bursting with half suppressed sobs,
heard and understood both the question and the answer. But the fact
was not altered to her,--nor the condition of the man she loved.
She had not yet begun to think whether it were possible that he
should have been guilty of such a crime. She had heard none of the
circumstances, and knew nothing of the manner of the man's death. It
might be that Phineas had killed the man, bringing himself within the
reach of the law, and that yet he should have done nothing to merit
her reproaches;--hardly even her reprobation! Hitherto she felt only
the sorrow, the annihilation of the blow;--but not the shame with
which it would overwhelm the man for whom she so much coveted the
good opinion of the world.
"You hear what he says, Laura."
"They are determined to destroy him," she sobbed out, through her
tears.
"They are not determined to destroy him at all," said Lord Chiltern.
"It will have to go by evidence. You had better sit up and let me
tell you all. I will tell you nothing till you are seated again. You
disgrace yourself by sprawling there."
"Do not be hard to her, Oswald."
"I am disgraced," said Lady Laura, slowly rising and placing herself
again on the sofa. "If there is anything more to tell, you can tell
it. I do not care what happens to me now, or who knows it. They
cannot make my life worse than it is."
Then he told all the story,--of the quarrel, and the position of the
streets, of the coat, and the bludgeon, and the three blows, each on
the head, by which the man had been killed. And he told them also how
the Jew was said never to have been out of his bed, and how the Jew's
coat was not the coat Lord Fawn had seen, and how no stain of blood
had been found about the raiment of either of the men. "It was the
Jew who did it, Oswald, surely," said Lady Chiltern.
"It was not Phineas Finn who did it," he replied.
"And they will let him go again?"
"They will let him go when they find out the truth, I suppose. But
those fellows blunder so, I would never trust them. He will get some
sharp lawyer to look into it; and then perhaps everything will come
out. I shall go and see him to-morrow. But there is nothing further
to be done."
"And I must see him," said Lady Laura slowly.
Lady Chiltern looked at her husband, and his face became redder than
usual with an angry flush. When his sister had pressed him to take
her message about the money, he had assured her that he suspected her
of no evil. Nor had he ever thought evil of her. Since her marriage
with Mr. Kennedy, he had seen but little of her or of her ways of
life. When she had separated herself from her husband he had approved
of the separation, and had even offered to assist her should she
be in difficulty. While she had been living a sad lonely life at
Dresden, he had simply pitied her, declaring to himself and his wife
that her lot in life had been very hard. When these calumnies about
her and Phineas Finn had reached his ears,--or his eyes,--as such
calumnies always will reach the ears and eyes of those whom they
are most capable of hurting, he had simply felt a desire to crush
some Quintus Slide, or the like, into powder for the offence. He had
received Phineas in his own house with all his old friendship. He had
even this morning been with the accused man as almost his closest
friend. But, nevertheless, there was creeping into his heart a sense
of the shame with which he would be afflicted, should the world
really be taught to believe that the man had been his sister's lover.
Lady Laura's distress on the present occasion was such as a wife
might show, or a girl weeping for her lover, or a mother for her son,
or a sister for a brother; but was extravagant and exaggerated in
regard to such friendship as might be presumed to exist between the
wife of Mr. Robert Kennedy and the member for Tankerville. He could
see that his wife felt this as he did, and he thought it necessary
to say something at once, that might force his sister to moderate at
any rate her language, if not her feelings. Two expressions of face
were natural to him; one eloquent of good humour, in which the reader
of countenances would find some promise of coming frolic;--and
the other, replete with anger, sometimes to the extent almost of
savagery. All those who were dependent on him were wont to watch
his face with care and sometimes with fear. When he was angry it
would almost seem that he was about to use personal violence on the
object of his wrath. At the present moment he was rather grieved than
enraged; but there came over his face that look of wrath with which
all who knew him were so well acquainted. "You cannot see him," he
said.
"Why not I, as well as you?"
"If you do not understand, I cannot tell you. But you must not see
him;--and you shall not."
"Who will hinder me?"
"If you put me to it, I will see that you are hindered. What is the
man to you that you should run the risk of evil tongues, for the sake
of visiting him in gaol? You cannot save his life,--though it may be
that you might endanger it."
"Oswald," she said very slowly, "I do not know that I am in any way
under your charge, or bound to submit to your orders."
"You are my sister."
"And I have loved you as a sister. How should it be possible that my
seeing him should endanger his life?"
"It will make people think that the things are true which have been
said."
"And will they hang him because I love him? I do love him. Violet
knows how well I have always loved him." Lord Chiltern turned his
angry face upon his wife. Lady Chiltern put her arm round her
sister-in-law's waist, and whispered some words into her ear. "What
is that to me?" continued the half-frantic woman. "I do love him. I
have always loved him. I shall love him to the end. He is all my life
to me."
"Shame should prevent your telling it," said Lord Chiltern.
"I feel no shame. There is no disgrace in love. I did disgrace
myself when I gave the hand for which he asked to another man,
because,--because--" But she was too noble to tell her brother even
then that at the moment of her life to which she was alluding she had
married the rich man, rejecting the poor man's hand, because she had
given up all her fortune to the payment of her brother's debts. And
he, though he had well known what he had owed to her, and had never
been easy till he had paid the debt, remembered nothing of all this
now. No lending and paying back of money could alter the nature
either of his feelings or his duty in such an emergency as this.
"And, mind you," she continued, turning to her sister-in-law, "there
is no place for the shame of which he is thinking," and she pointed
her finger out at her brother. "I love him,--as a mother might love
her child, I fancy; but he has no love for me; none;--none. When I am
with him, I am only a trouble to him. He comes to me, because he is
good; but he would sooner be with you. He did love me once;--but then
I could not afford to be so loved."
"You can do no good by seeing him," said her brother.
"But I will see him. You need not scowl at me as though you wished
to strike me. I have gone through that which makes me different from
other women, and I care not what they say of me. Violet understands
it all;--but you understand nothing."
"Be calm, Laura," said her sister-in-law, "and Oswald will do all
that can be done."
"But they will hang him."
"Nonsense!" said her brother. "He has not been as yet committed for
his trial. Heaven knows how much has to be done. It is as likely as
not that in three days' time he will be out at large, and all the
world will be running after him just because he has been in Newgate."
"But who will look after him?"
"He has plenty of friends. I will see that he is not left without
everything that he wants."
"But he will want money."
"He has plenty of money for that. Do you take it quietly, and not
make a fool of yourself. If the worst comes to the worst--"
"Oh, heavens!"
"Listen to me, if you can listen. Should the worst come to the worst,
which I believe to be altogether impossible,--mind, I think it next
to impossible, for I have never for a moment believed him to be
guilty,--we will,--visit him,--together. Good-bye now. I am going
to see that friend of his, Mr. Low." So saying Lord Chiltern went,
leaving the two women together.
"Why should he be so savage with me?" said Lady Laura.
"He does not mean to be savage."
"Does he speak to you like that? What right has he to tell me of
shame? Has my life been so bad, and his so good? Do you think it
shameful that I should love this man?" She sat looking into her
friend's face, but her friend for a while hesitated to answer. "You
shall tell me, Violet. We have known each other so well that I can
bear to be told by you. Do not you love him?"
"I love him!--certainly not."
"But you did."
"Not as you mean. Who can define love, and say what it is? There are
so many kinds of love. We say that we love the Queen."
"Psha!"
"And we are to love all our neighbours. But as men and women talk of
love, I never at any moment of my life loved any man but my husband.
Mr. Finn was a great favourite with me,--always."
"Indeed he was."
"As any other man might be,--or any woman. He is so still, and with
all my heart I hope that this may be untrue."
"It is false as the Devil. It must be false. Can you think of the
man,--his sweetness, the gentle nature of him, his open, free speech,
and courage, and believe that he would go behind his enemy and knock
his brains out in the dark? I can conceive it of myself, that I
should do it, much easier than of him."
"Oswald says it is false."
"But he says it as partly believing that it is true. If it be true I
will hang myself. There will be nothing left among men or women fit
to live for. You think it shameful that I should love him."
"I have not said so."
"But you do."
"I think there is cause for shame in your confessing it."
"I do confess it."
"You ask me, and press me, and because we have loved one another so
well I must answer you. If a woman,--a married woman,--be oppressed
by such a feeling, she should lay it down at the bottom of her heart,
out of sight, never mentioning it, even to herself."
"You talk of the heart as though we could control it."
"The heart will follow the thoughts, and they may be controlled. I
am not passionate, perhaps, as you are, and I think I can control
my heart. But my fortune has been kind to me, and I have never been
tempted. Laura, do not think I am preaching to you."
"Oh no;--but your husband; think of him, and think of mine! You have
babies."
"May God make me thankful. I have every good thing on earth that God
can give."
"And what have I? To see that man prosper in life, who they tell me
is a murderer; that man who is now in a felon's gaol,--whom they
will hang for ought we know,--to see him go forward and justify
my thoughts of him! that yesterday was all I had. To-day I have
nothing,--except the shame with which you and Oswald say that I have
covered myself."
"Laura, I have never said so."
"I saw it in your eye when he accused me. And I know that it is
shameful. I do know that I am covered with shame. But I can bear my
own disgrace better than his danger." After a long pause,--a silence
of probably some fifteen minutes,--she spoke again. "If Robert should
die,--what would happen then?"
"It would be--a release, I suppose," said Lady Chiltern in a voice so
low, that it was almost a whisper.
"A release indeed;--and I would become that man's wife the next day,
at the foot of the gallows;--if he would have me. But he would not
have me."