A FOOLISH TRIUMPH.
I should have now laid claim to my property, but for Mary. To turn Sir
Geoffrey with his mother and sister out of it, would have caused me
little compunction, for they would still be rich enough; I confess
indeed it would have given me satisfaction. Nor could I say what real
hurt of any kind it would occasion to Mary; and if I were writing for
the public, instead of my one reader, I know how foolishly incredible
it must appear that for her sake I should forego such claims. She
would, however, I trust, have been able to believe it without the
proofs which I intend to give her. The fact was simply this: I could
not, even for my own sake, bear the thought of taking, in any manner or
degree, a position if but apparently antagonistic to her. My enemy was
her husband: he should reap the advantage of being her husband; for her
sake he should for the present retain what was mine. So long as there
should be no reason to fear his adopting a different policy from his
father’s in respect of his tenants, I felt myself at liberty to leave
things as they were; for Sir Giles had been a good landlord, and I knew
the son was regarded with favour in the county. Were he to turn out
unjust or oppressive, however, then duty on my part would come in. But
I must also remind my reader that I had no love for affairs; that I had
an income perfectly sufficient for my wants; that, both from my habits
of thought and from my sufferings, my regard was upon life itself--was
indeed so far from being confined to this chrysalid beginning thereof,
that I had lost all interest in this world save as the porch to the
house of life. And, should I ever meet her again, in any possible
future of being, how much rather would I not stand before her as one
who had been even Quixotic for her sake--as one who for a
hair’s-breadth of her interest had felt the sacrifice of a fortune a
merely natural movement of his life! She would then know not merely
that I was true to her, but that I had been true in what I professed to
believe when I sought her favour. And if it had been a pleasure to
me--call it a weakness, and I will not oppose the impeachment;--call it
self-pity, and I will confess to that as having a share in it;--but, if
it had been a shadowy pleasure to me to fancy I suffered for her sake,
my present resolution, while it did not add the weight of a feather to
my suffering, did yet give me a similar vague satisfaction.
I must also confess to a certain satisfaction in feeling that I had
power over my enemy--power of making him feel my power--power of
vindicating my character against him as well, seeing one who could thus
abstain from asserting his own rights could hardly have been one to
invade the rights of another; but the enjoyment of this consciousness
appeared to depend on my silence. If I broke that, the strength would
depart from me; but while I held my peace, I held my foe in an
invisible mesh. I half deluded myself into fancying that, while I kept
my power over him unexercised, I retained a sort of pledge for his
conduct to Mary, of which I was more than doubtful; for a man with such
antecedents as his, a man who had been capable of behaving as he had
behaved to Charley, was less than likely to be true to his wife: he was
less than likely to treat the sister as a lady, who to the brother had
been a traitorous seducer.
I have now to confess a fault as well as an imprudence--punished, I
believe, in the results.
The behaviour of Mr. Coningham still rankled a little in my bosom. From
Geoffrey I had never looked for anything but evil; of Mr Coningham I
had expected differently, and I began to meditate the revenge of
holding him up to himself: I would punish him in a manner which, with
his confidence in his business faculty, he must feel: I would simply
show him how the precipitation of selfish disappointment had led him
astray, and frustrated his designs. For if he had given even a decent
attention to the matter, he would have found in the forgery itself
hints sufficient to suggest the desirableness of further investigation.
I had not, however, concluded upon anything, when one day I
accidentally met him, and we had a little talk about business, for he
continued to look after the rent of my field. He informed me that Sir
Geoffrey Brotherton had been doing all he could to get even temporary
possession of the park, as we called it; and, although I said nothing
of it to Mr Coningham, my suspicion is that, had he succeeded, he
would, at the risk of a law-suit, in which he would certainly have been
cast, have ploughed it up. He told me, also, that Clara was in poor
health; she who had looked as if no blight could ever touch her had
broken down utterly. The shadow of her sorrow was plain enough on the
face of her father, and his confident manner had a little yielded,
although he was the old man still. His father had died a little before
Sir Giles. The new baronet had not offered him the succession.
I asked him to go with me yet once more to Umberden Church--for I
wanted to show him something he had over-looked in the register--not, I
said, that it would be of the slightest furtherance to his former
hopes. He agreed at once, already a little ashamed, perhaps, of the way
in which he had abandoned me. Before we parted we made an appointment
to meet at the church.
We went at once to the vestry. I took down the volume, and laid it
before him. He opened it, with a curious look at me first. But the
moment he lifted the cover, its condition at once attracted and as
instantly riveted his attention. He gave me one glance more, in which
questions and remarks and exclamations numberless lay in embryo; then
turning to the book, was presently absorbed, first in reading the
genuine entry, next in comparing it with the forged one.
‘Right, after all!’ he exclaimed at length.
‘In what?’ I asked.’ In dropping me without a word, as if I had been an
impostor? In forgetting that you yourself had raised in me the hopes
whose discomfiture you took as a personal injury?’
‘My dear sir!’ he stammered in an expostulatory tone, ‘you must make
allowance. It was a tremendous disappointment to me.’
‘I cannot say I felt it quite so much myself, but at least you owed me
an apology for having misled me.’
‘I had _not_ misled you,’ he retorted angrily, pointing to the
register.--‘There!’
‘You left _me_ to find that out, though. _You_ took no further pains in
the matter.’
‘How _did_ you find it out?’ he asked, clutching at a change in the
tone of the conversation.
I said nothing of my dream, but I told him everything else concerning
the discovery. When I had finished--
‘It’s all plain sailing now,’ he cried. ‘There is not an obstacle in
the way. I will set the thing in motion the instant I get home.--It
will be a victory worth achieving,’ he added, rubbing his hands.
‘Mr Coningham, I have not the slightest intention of moving in the
matter,’ I said.
His face fell.
‘You do not mean--when you hold them in your very hands--to throw away
every advantage of birth and fortune, and be a nobody in the world?’
‘Infinite advantages of the kind you mean, Mr Coningham, could make me
not one whit more than I am; they _might_ make me less.’
‘Come, come,’ he expostulated; ‘you must not allow disappointment to
upset your judgment of things.’
‘My judgment of things lies deeper than any disappointment I have yet
had,’ I replied. ‘My uncle’s teaching has at last begun to bear fruit
in me.’
‘Your uncle was a fool!’ he exclaimed.
‘But for my uncle’s sake, I would knock you down for daring to couple
such a word with _him_.’
He turned on me with a sneer. His eyes had receded in his head, and in
his rage he grinned. The old ape-face, which had lurked in my memory
ever since the time I first saw him, came out so plainly that I
started: the child had read his face aright! the following judgment of
the man had been wrong! the child’s fear had not imprinted a false
eidolon upon the growing brain.
‘What right had, you,’ he said, ‘to bring me all this way for such
tomfoolery?’
‘I told you it would not further your wishes.--But who brought me here
for nothing first?’ I added, most foolishly.
‘I was myself deceived. I did not intend to deceive you.’
‘I know that. God forbid I should be unjust to you! But you have proved
to me that your friendship was all a pretence; that your private ends
were all your object. When you discovered that I could not serve those,
you dropped me like a bit of glass you had taken for a diamond. Have
you any right to grumble if I give you the discipline of a passing
shame?’
‘Mr Cumbermede,’ he said, through his teeth, ‘you will repent this.’
I gave him no answer, and he left the church in haste. Having replaced
the register, I was following at my leisure, when I heard sounds that
made me hurry to the door. Lilith was plunging and rearing and pulling
at the bridle which I had thrown over one of the spiked bars of the
gate. Another moment and she must have broken loose, or dragged the
gate upon her--more likely the latter, for the bridle was a new one
with broad reins--when some frightful injury would in all probability
have been the consequence to herself. But a word from me quieted her,
and she stood till I came up. Every inch of her was trembling. I
suspected at once, and in a moment discovered plainly that Mr Coningham
had struck her with his whip: there was a big weal on the fine skin of
her hip and across, her croup. She shrunk like a hurt child when my
hand approached the injured part, but moved neither hoof nor head.
Having patted and petted and consoled her a little, I mounted and rode
after Mr Coningham. Nor was it difficult to overtake him, for he was
going a foot-pace. He was stooping in his saddle, and when I drew near,
I saw that he was looking very pale. I did not, however, suspect that
he was in pain.
‘It was a cowardly thing to strike the poor dumb animal,’ I cried.
‘You would have struck her yourself,’ he answered with a curse,’ if she
had broken your leg.’
I rode nearer. I knew well enough that she would not have kicked him if
he had not struck her first; and I could see that his leg was not
broken; but evidently he was in great suffering.
‘I am very sorry,’ I said. Can I help you?’
‘Go to the devil!’ he groaned.
I am ashamed to say the answer made me so angry that I spoke the truth.
‘Don’t suppose you deceive me,’ I said. ‘I know well enough my mare did
not kick you before you struck her. Then she lashed out, of course.’
I waited for no reply, but turned and rode back to the church, the door
of which, in my haste, I had left open. I locked it, replaced the key,
and then rode quietly home.
But as I went, I began to feel that I had done wrong. No doubt, Mr
Coningham deserved it, but the law was not in my hands. No man has a
right to _punish_ another. Vengeance belongs to a higher region, and
the vengeance of God is a very different thing from the vengeance of
man. However it may be softened with the name of retribution, revenge
runs into all our notions of justice; and until we love purely, so it
must ever be.
All I had gained was self-rebuke, and another enemy. Having reached
home, I read the Manual of Epictetus right through before I laid it
down, and, if it did not teach me to love my enemies, it taught me at
least to be ashamed of myself. Then I wrote to Mr Coningham, saying I
was sorry I had spoken to him as I did, and begging him to let by-gones
be by-gones; assuring him that, if ever I moved in the matter of our
difference, he should be the first to whom I applied for assistance.
He returned me no answer.