GODFREY AND LETTY.
It was a sad, gloomy, kindless November night, when Godfrey arrived in
London. The wind was cold, the pavements were cold, the houses seemed
to be not only cold but feeling it. The very dust that blow in his face
was cold. Now cold is a powerful ally of the commonplace, and
imagination therefore was not very busy in the bosom of Godfrey Wardour
as he went to find Letty Helmer, which was just as well, in the
circumstances. He was cool to the very heart when he walked up to the
door indicated by Mary, and rung the bell: Mrs. Helmer was at home:
would he walk up stairs?
It was not a house of ceremonies; he was shown up and up and into the
room where she sat, without a word carried before to prepare her for
his visit. It was so dark that he could see nothing but the figure of
one at work by a table, on which stood a single candle. There was but a
spark of fire in the dreary grate, and Letty was colder than any one
could know, for she was at the moment making down the last woolly
garment she had, in the vain hope of warming her baby.
She looked up. She had thought it was the landlady, and had waited for
her to speak. She gazed for a moment in bewilderment, saw who it was,
and jumped up half frightened, half ready to go wild with joy. All the
memories of Godfrey rushed in a confused heap upon her, and overwhelmed
her. She ran to him, and the same moment was in his arms, with her head
on his shoulder, weeping tears of such gladness as she had not known
since the first week of her marriage.
Neither spoke for some time; Letty could not because she was crying,
and Godfrey would not because he did not want to cry. Those few moments
were pure, simple happiness to both of them; to Letty, because she had
loved him from childhood, and hoped that all was to be as of old
between them; to Godfrey, because, for the moment, he had forgotten
himself, and had neither thought of injury nor hope of love,
remembering only the old days and the Letty that used to be. It may
seem strange that, having never once embraced her all the time they
lived together, he should do so now; but Letty's love would any time
have responded to the least show of affection, and when, at the sight
of his face, into which memory had called up all his tenderness, she
rushed into his arms, how could he help kissing her? The pity was that
he had not kissed her long before. Or was it a pity? I think not.
But the embrace could not be a long one. Godfrey was the first to relax
its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly
she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her
gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery
horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her.
Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone
tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a
spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, she caught his
troubled gaze.
"I am not ill, Cousin Godfrey," she said. "Do not look at me so, or I
shall cry again. You know you never liked to see me cry."
"My poor girl!" said Godfrey, in a voice which, if he had not kept it
lower than natural, would have broken, "you are suffering."
"Oh, no, I'm not," replied Letty, with a pitiful effort at the
cheerful; "I am only so glad to see you again, Cousin Godfrey."
She sat on the edge of the sofa, and had put her open hands, palm to
palm, between her knees, in a childish way, looking like one chidden,
who did not deserve it, but was ready to endure. For a moment Godfrey
sat gazing at her, with troubled heart and troubled looks, then between
his teeth muttered, "Damn the rascal!"
Letty sat straight up, and turned upon him eyes of appeal, scared, yet
ready to defend. Her hands were now clinched, one on each side of her;
she was poking the little fists into the squab of the sofa.
"Cousin Godfrey!" she cried, "if you mean Tom, you must not, you must
not. I will go away if you speak a word against him. I will; I will.--I
_must,_ you know!"
Godfrey made no reply--neither apologized nor sought to cover.
"Why, child!" he said at last, "you are half starved!"
The pity and tenderness of both word and tone were too much for her.
She had not been at all pitying herself, but such an utterance from the
man she loved like an elder brother so wrought upon her enfeebled
condition that she broke into a cry. She strove to suppress her
emotion; she fought with it; in her agony she would have rushed from
the room, had not Godfrey caught her, drawn her down beside him, and
kept her there. "You shall not leave me!" he said, in that voice Letty
had always been used to obey. "Who has a right to know how things go
with you, if I have not? Come, you must tell me all about it."
"I have nothing to tell, Cousin Godfrey," she replied with some
calmness, for Godfrey's decision had enabled her to conquer herself,
"except that baby is ill, and looks as if he would never get better,
and it is like to break my heart. Oh, he is such a darling, Cousin
Godfrey!"
"Let me see him," said Godfrey, in his heart detesting the child--the
visible sign that another was nearer to Letty than he.
She jumped up, almost ran into the next room, and, coming back with her
little one, laid him in Godfrey's arms. The moment he felt the weight
of the little, sad-looking, sleeping thing, he grew human toward him,
and saw in him Letty and not Tom.
"Good God! the child is starving, too," he exclaimed.
"Oh, no, Cousin Godfrey!" cried Letty; "he is not starving. He had a
fresh-laid egg for breakfast this morning, and some arrowroot for
dinner, and some bread and milk for tea--"
"London milk!" said Godfrey.
"Well, it is not like the milk in the dairy at Thornwick," admitted
Letty. "If he had milk like that, he would soon be well!"
But Godfrey dared not say, "Bring him to Thornwick": he knew his mother
too well for that!
"When were you anywhere in the country?" he asked. In a negative kind
of way he was still nursing the baby.
"Not since we were married," she answered, sadly. "You see, poor Tom
can't afford it."
Now Godfrey happened to have heard, "from the best authority," that
Tom's mother was far from illiberal to him.
"Mrs. Helmer allows him so much a year--does she not?" he said.
"I know he gets money from her, but it can't be much," she answered.
Godfrey's suspicions against Tom increased every moment. He must learn
the truth. He would have it, if by an even cruel experiment! He sat a
moment silent--then said, with assumed cheerfulness:
"Well, Letty, I suppose, for the sake of old times, you will give me
some dinner?"
Then, indeed, her courage gave way. She turned from him, laid her head
on the end of the sofa, and sobbed so that the room seemed to shake
with the convulsions of her grief. "Letty," said Godfrey, laying his
hand on her head, "it is no use any more trying to hide the truth. I
don't want any dinner; in fact, I dined long ago. But you would not be
open with me, and I was forced to find out for myself: you have not
enough to eat, and you know it. I will not say a word about who is to
blame--for anything I know, it may be no one--I am sure it is not you.
But this must not go on! See, I have brought you a little pocket-book.
I will call again tomorrow, and you will tell me then how you like it."
He laid the pocket-book on the table. There was ten times as much in it
as ever Letty had had at once. But she never knew what was in it. She
rose with instant resolve. All the woman in her waked at once. She felt
that a moment was come when she must be resolute, or lose her hold on
life.
"Cousin Godfrey," she said, in a tone he scarcely recognized as
hers--it frightened him as if it came from a sepulchre--"if you do not
take that purse away, I will throw it in the fire without opening it!
If my husband can not give me enough to eat, I can starve as well as
another. If you loved Tom, it would be different, but you hate him, and
I will have nothing from you. Take it away, Cousin Godfrey."
Mortified, hurt, miserable, Godfrey took the purse, and, without a
word, walked from the room. Somewhere down in his secret heart was
dawning an idea of Letty beyond anything he used to think of her, but
in the mean time he was only blindly aware that his heart had been shot
through and through. Nor was this the time for him to reflect that,
under his training, Letty, even if he had married her, would never have
grown to such dignity.
It was, indeed, only in that moment she had become capable of the
action. She had been growing as none, not Mary, still less herself,
knew, under the heavy snows of affliction, and this was her first
blossom. Not many of my readers will mistake me, I trust. Had it been
in Letty pride that refused help from such an old friend, that pride I
should count no blossom, but one of the meanest rags that ever
fluttered to scare the birds. But the dignity of her refusal was in
this--that she would accept nothing in which her husband had and could
have no human, that is, no spiritual share. She had married him because
she loved him, and she would hold by him wherever that might lead her:
not wittingly would she allow the finest edge, even of ancient
kindness, to come between her Tom and herself! To accept from her
cousin Godfrey the help her husband ought to provide her, would be to
let him, however innocently, step into his place! There was no
reasoning in her resolve: it was allied to that spiritual insight
which, in simple natures, and in proportion to their simplicity,
approaches or amounts to prophecy. As the presence of death will
sometimes change even an ordinary man to a prophet, in times of sore
need the childlike nature may well receive a vision sufficing to direct
the doubtful step. Letty felt that the taking of that money would be
the opening of a gulf to divide her and Tom for ever.
The moment Godfrey was out of the room she cast herself on the floor,
and sobbed as if her heart must break. But her sobs were tearless. And,
oh, agony of agonies! unsought came the conviction, and she could not
send it away--to this had sunk her lofty idea of her Tom!--that he
would have had her take the money! More than once or twice, in the
ill-humors that followed a forced hilarity, he had forgotten his claims
to being a gentleman so far as--not exactly to reproach her with having
brought him to poverty--but to remind her that, if she was poor, she
was no poorer than she had been when dependent on the charity of a
distant relation!
The baby began to cry. She rose and took him from the sofa where
Godfrey had laid him when he was getting out the pocket-book, held him
fast to her bosom, as if by laying their two aching lives together they
might both be healed, and, rocking him to and fro, said to herself, for
the first time, that her trouble was greater than she could bear. "O
baby! baby! baby!" she cried, and her tears streamed on the little wan
face. But, as she sat with him in her arms, the blessed sleep came, and
the storm sank to a calm.