She locked the door of her bedchamber, and threw off her walking-dress;
light as it was, she felt as if it would stifle her. Even the ribbon
round her neck was more than she could endure and breathe freely. Her
overburdened heart found no relief in tears. In the solitude of her room
she thought of the future. The dreary foreboding of what it might be,
filled her with a superstitious dread from which she recoiled. One of
the windows was open already; she threw up the other to get more air. In
the cooler atmosphere her memory recovered itself; she recollected the
newspaper, that Herbert had taken from her. Instantly she rang for the
maid. “Ask the first waiter you see downstairs for today’s newspaper;
any one will do, so long as I don’t wait for it.” The report of the
Divorce--she was in a frenzy of impatience to read what _he_ had
read--the report of the Divorce.
When her wish had been gratified, when she had read it from beginning to
end, one vivid impression only was left on her mind. She could think of
nothing but what the judge had said, in speaking of Mrs. Linley.
A cruel reproof, and worse than cruel, a public reproof, administered
to the generous friend, the true wife, the devoted mother--and for
what? For having been too ready to forgive the wretch who had taken
her husband from her, and had repaid a hundred acts of kindness by
unpardonable ingratitude.
She fell on her knees; she tried wildly to pray for inspiration that
should tell her what to do. “Oh, God, how can I give that woman back the
happiness of which I have robbed her!”
The composing influence of prayer on a troubled mind was something that
she had heard of. It was not something that she experienced now. An
overpowering impatience to make the speediest and completest atonement
possessed her. Must she wait till Herbert Linley no longer concealed
that he was weary of her, and cast her off? No! It should be her own act
that parted them, and that did it at once. She threw open the door, and
hurried half-way down the stairs before she remembered the one terrible
obstacle in her way--the Divorce.
Slowly and sadly she submitted, and went back to her room.
There was no disguising it; the two who had once been husband and wife
were parted irrevocably--by the wife’s own act. Let him repent ever so
sincerely, let him be ever so ready to return, would the woman whose
faith Herbert Linley had betrayed take him back? The Divorce, the
merciless Divorce, answered:--No!
She paused, thinking of the marriage that was now a marriage no more.
The toilet-table was close to her; she looked absently at her haggard
face in the glass. What a lost wretch she saw! The generous impulses
which other women were free to feel were forbidden luxuries to her. She
was ashamed of her wickedness; she was eager to sacrifice herself, for
the good of the once-dear friend whom she had wronged. Useless longings!
Too late! too late!
She regretted it bitterly. Why?
Comparing Mrs. Linley’s prospects with hers, was there anything to
justify regret for the divorced wife? She had her sweet little child to
make her happy; she had a fortune of her own to lift her above sordid
cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be admired. While she
held her place in the world as high as ever, what was the prospect
before Sydney Westerfield? The miserable sinner would end as she had
deserved to end. Absolutely dependent on a man who was at that moment
perhaps lamenting the wife whom he had deserted and lost, how long would
it be before she found herself an outcast, without a friend to help
her--with a reputation hopelessly lost--face to face with the temptation
to drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned
themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future before them
was rest in death?
If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never again have
seen her a living creature. But she was too young to follow any train of
repellent thought persistently to its end. The man she had guiltily (and
yet how naturally) loved was lord and master in her heart, doubt him as
she might. Even in his absence he pleaded with her to have some faith in
him still.
She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her, when she had
returned that morning from her walk. He had been kind and considerate;
he had listened to her little story of the relics of her father, found
in the garret, as if her interests were his interests. There had been
nothing to disappoint her, nothing to complain of, until she had rashly
attempted to discover whether he was free to make her his wife. She had
only herself to blame if he was cold and distant when she had alluded
to that delicate subject, on the day when he first knew that the Divorce
had been granted and his child had been taken from him. And yet, he
might have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than
looking into the street--as if he had forgotten her in the interest of
watching the strangers passing by! Perhaps he was not thinking of the
strangers; perhaps his mind was dwelling fondly and regretfully on his
wife?
Instinctively, she felt that her thoughts were leading her back again to
a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness recoiled. Was there
nothing she could find to do which would offer some other subject to
occupy her mind than herself and her future?
Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her father’s
letters placed on the table by her bedside.
The first three letters that she examined, after untying the packet,
were briefly written, and were signed by names unknown to her. They all
related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised bets which were certain
to make the fortunes of the clever gamblers on the turf who laid them.
Absolute indifference on the part of the winners to the ruin of the
losers, who were not in the secret, was the one feeling in common, which
her father’s correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw
the letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning.
The next letter which she picked out from the little heap was of some
length, and was written in a clear and steady hand. By comparison with
the blotted scrawls which she had just burned, it looked like the letter
of a gentleman. She turned to the signature. The strange surname struck
her; it was “Bennydeck.”
Not a common name, and not a name which seemed to be altogether unknown
to her. Had she heard her father mention it at home in the time of her
early childhood? There were no associations with it that she could now
call to mind.
She read the letter. It addressed her father familiarly as “My dear
Roderick,” and it proceeded in these words:--
“The delay in the sailing of your ship offers me an opportunity of
writing to you again. My last letter told you of my father’s death. I
was then quite unprepared for an event which has happened, since that
affliction befell me. Prepare yourself to be surprised. Our old moated
house at Sandyseal, in which we have spent so many happy holidays when
we were schoolfellows, is sold.
“You will be almost as sorry as I was to hear this; and you will be
quite as surprised as I was, when I tell you that Sandyseal Place has
become a Priory of English Nuns, of the order of St. Benedict.
“I think I see you look up from my letter, with your big black eyes
staring straight before you, and say and swear that this must be one
of my mystifications. Unfortunately (for I am fond of the old house in
which I was born) it is only too true. The instructions in my father’s
will, under which Sandyseal has been sold, are peremptory. They are the
result of a promise made, many years since, to his wife.
“You and I were both very young when my poor mother died; but I think
you must remember that she, like the rest of her family, was a Roman
Catholic.
“Having reminded you of this, I may next tell you that Sandyseal Place
was my mother’s property. It formed part of her marriage portion, and
it was settled on my father if she died before him, and if she left
no female child to survive her. I am her only child. My father was
therefore dealing with his own property when he ordered the house to be
sold. His will leaves the purchase money to me. I would rather have kept
the house.
“But why did my mother make him promise to sell the place at his death?
“A letter, attached to my father’s will, answers this question, and
tells a very sad story. In deference to my mother’s wishes it was kept
strictly a secret from me while my father lived.
“There was a younger sister of my mother’s who was the beauty of the
family; loved and admired by everybody who was acquainted with her. It
is needless to make this long letter longer by dwelling on the girl’s
miserable story. You have heard it of other girls, over and over
again. She loved and trusted; she was deceived and deserted. Alone and
friendless in a foreign country; her fair fame blemished; her hope in
the future utterly destroyed, she attempted to drown herself. This took
place in France. The best of good women--a Sister of Charity--happened
to be near enough to the river to rescue her. She was sheltered; she was
pitied; she was encouraged to return to her family. The poor deserted
creature absolutely refused; she could never forget that she had
disgraced them. The good Sister of Charity won her confidence. A retreat
which would hide her from the world, and devote her to religion for the
rest of her days, was the one end to her wasted life that she longed
for. That end was attained in a Priory of Benedictine Nuns, established
in France. There she found protection and peace--there she passed the
remaining years of her life among devoted Sister-friends--and there she
died a quiet and even a happy death.
“You will now understand how my mother’s grateful remembrance associated
her with the interests of more than one community of Nuns; and you will
not need to be told what she had in mind when she obtained my father’s
promise at the time of her last illness.
“He at once proposed to bequeath the house as a free gift to the
Benedictines. My mother thanked him and refused. She was thinking of me.
‘If our son fails to inherit the house from his father,’ she said, ‘it
is only right that he should have the value of the house in money. Let
it be sold.’
“So here I am--rich already--with this additional sum of money in my
banker’s care.
“My idea is to invest it in the Funds, and to let it thrive at interest,
until I grow older, and retire perhaps from service in the Navy.
The later years of my life may well be devoted to the founding of a
charitable institution, which I myself can establish and direct. If
I die first--oh, there is a chance of it! We may have a naval war,
perhaps, or I may turn out one of those incorrigible madmen who risk
their lives in Arctic exploration. In case of the worst, therefore, I
shall leave the interests of my contemplated Home in your honest and
capable hands. For the present good-by, and a prosperous voyage outward
bound.”
So the letter ended.
Sydney dwelt with reluctant attention on the latter half of it. The
story of the unhappy favorite of the family had its own melancholy and
sinister interest for her. She felt the foreboding that it might, in
some of its circumstances, be her story too--without the peaceful end.
Into what community of merciful women could _she_ be received, in her
sorest need? What religious consolations would encourage her penitence?
What prayers, what hopes, would reconcile her, on her death-bed, to the
common doom?
She sighed as she folded up Captain Bennydeck’s letter and put it in her
bosom, to be read again. “If my lot had fallen among good people,” she
thought, “perhaps I might have belonged to the Church which took care of
that poor girl.”
Her mind was still pursuing its own sad course of inquiry; she was
wondering in what part of England Sandyseal might be; she was asking
herself if the Nuns at the old moated house ever opened their doors to
women, whose one claim on their common Christianity was the claim to be
pitied--when she heard Linley’s footsteps approaching the door.
His tone was kind; his manner was gentle; his tender interest in her
seemed to have revived. Her long absence had alarmed him; he feared she
might be ill. “I was only thinking,” she said. He smiled, and sat down
by her, and asked if she had been thinking of the place that they should
go to when they left London.