He Knew He Was Right Part 97

[Ill.u.s.tration: "You haven't forgotten Mamma?"]

She,--Lady Rowley,--could see that he was frightfully altered in appearance, even since the day on which she had so lately met him in the City. His cheeks were thin and haggard, and his eyes were deep and very bright,--and he moved them quickly from side to side, as though ever suspecting something. He seemed to be smaller in stature,--withered, as it were, as though he had melted away. And though he stood looking upon his wife and child, he was not for a moment still. He would change the posture of his hands and arms, moving them quickly with little surrept.i.tious jerks, and would shuffle his feet upon the floor, almost without altering his position. His clothes hung about him, and his linen was soiled and worn. Lady Rowley noticed this especially, as he had been a man peculiarly given to neatness of apparel. He was the first to speak.

"You have come down here in a cab?" said he.

"Yes,--in a cab, from London," said Lady Rowley.

"Of course you will go back in it? You cannot stay here. There is no accommodation. It is a wretched place, but it suits the boy. As for me, all places are now alike."

"Louis," said his wife, springing up from her knees, coming to him, and taking his right hand between both her own, "you will let me take him with me. I know you will let me take him with me."

"I cannot do that, Emily; it would be wrong."

"Wrong to restore a child to his mother? Oh, Louis, think of it. What must my life be without him,--or you?"

"Don't talk of me. It is too late for that."

"Not if you will be reasonable, Louis, and listen to me. Oh, heavens, how ill you are!" As she said this she drew nearer to him, so that her face was almost close to his. "Louis, come back; come back, and let it all be forgotten. It shall be a dream, a horrid dream, and n.o.body shall speak of it." He left his hand within hers and stood looking into her face. He was well aware that his life since he had left her had been one long hour of misery. There had been to him no alleviation, no comfort, no consolation. He had not a friend left to him. Even his satellite, the policeman, was becoming weary of him and manifestly suspicious. The woman with whom he was now lodging, and whose resources were infinitely benefited by his payments to her, had already thrown out hints that she was afraid of him. And as he looked at his wife, he knew that he loved her. Everything for him now was hot and dry and poor and bitter. How sweet would it be again to sit with her soft hand in his, to feel her cool brow against his own, to have the comfort of her care, and to hear the music of loving words!

The companionship of his wife had once been to him everything in the world; but now, for many months past, he had known no companion. She bade him come to her, and look upon all this trouble as a dream not to be mentioned. Could it be possible that it should be so, and that they might yet be happy together,--perhaps in some distant country, where the story of all their misery might not be known? He felt all this truly and with a keen accuracy. If he were mad, he was not all mad. "I will tell you of nothing that is past," said she, hanging to him, and coming still nearer to him, and embracing his arm.

Could she have condescended to ask him not to tell her of the past;--had it occurred to her so to word her request,--she might perhaps have prevailed. But who can say how long the tenderness of his heart would have saved him from further outbreak;--and whether such prevailing on her part would have been of permanent service? As it was, her words wounded him in that spot of his inner self which was most sensitive,--on that spot from whence had come all his fury.

A black cloud came upon his brow, and he made an effort to withdraw himself from her grasp. It was necessary to him that she should in some fashion own that he had been right, and now she was promising him that she would not tell him of his fault! He could not thus swallow down all the convictions by which he had fortified himself to bear the misfortunes which he had endured. Had he not quarrelled with every friend he possessed on this score; and should he now stultify himself in all those quarrels by admitting that he had been cruel, unjust, and needlessly jealous? And did not truth demand of him that he should cling to his old a.s.surances? Had she not been disobedient, ill-conditioned, and rebellious? Had she not received the man, both him personally and his letters, after he had explained to her that his honour demanded that it should not be so? How could he come into such terms as those now proposed to him, simply because he longed to enjoy the rich sweetness of her soft hand, to feel the fragrance of her breath, and to quench the heat of his forehead in the cool atmosphere of her beauty? "Why have you driven me to this by your intercourse with that man?" he said. "Why, why, why did you do it?"

She was still clinging to him. "Louis," she said, "I am your wife."

"Yes; you are my wife."

"And will you still believe such evil of me without any cause?"

"There has been cause,--horrible cause. You must repent,--repent,--repent."

"Heaven help me," said the woman, falling back from him, and returning to the boy who was now seated in Lady Rowley's lap. "Mamma, do you speak to him. What can I say? Would he think better of me were I to own myself to have been guilty, when there has been no guilt, no slightest fault? Does he wish me to purchase my child by saying that I am not fit to be his mother?"

"Louis," said Lady Rowley, "if any man was ever wrong, mad, madly mistaken, you are so now."

"Have you come out here to accuse me again, as you did before in London?" he asked. "Is that the way in which you and she intend to let the past be, as she says, like a dream? She tells me that I am ill. It is true. I am ill,--and she is killing me, killing me, by her obstinacy."

"What would you have me do?" said the wife, again rising from her child.

"Acknowledge your transgressions, and say that you will amend your conduct for the future."

"Mamma, mamma,--what shall I say to him?"

"Who can speak to a man that is beside himself?" replied Lady Rowley.

"I am not so beside myself as yet, Lady Rowley, but that I know how to guard my own honour and to protect my own child. I have told you, Emily, the terms on which you can come back to me. You had better now return to your mother's house; and if you wish again to have a house of your own, and your husband, and your boy, you know by what means you may acquire them. For another week I shall remain here;--after that I shall remove far from hence."

"And where will you go, Louis?"

"As yet I know not. To Italy I think,--or perhaps to America. It matters little where for me."

"And will Louey be taken with you?"

"Certainly he will go with me. To strive to bring him up so that he may be a happier man than his father is all that there is now left for me in life." Mrs. Trevelyan had now got the boy in her arms, and her mother was seated by her on the sofa. Trevelyan was standing away from them, but so near the door that no sudden motion on their part would enable them to escape with the boy without his interposition.

It now again occurred to the mother to carry off her prize in opposition to her husband;--but she had no scheme to that effect laid with her mother, and she could not reconcile herself to the idea of a contest with him in which personal violence would be necessary.

The woman of the house had, indeed, seemed to sympathise with her, but she could not dare in such a matter to trust to a.s.sistance from a stranger. "I do not wish to be uncourteous," said Trevelyan, "but if you have no a.s.surance to give me, you had better--leave me."

Then there came to be a bargaining about time, and the poor woman begged almost on her knees that she might be allowed to take her child up-stairs and be with him alone for a few minutes. It seemed to her that she had not seen her boy till she had had him to herself, in absolute privacy, till she had kissed his limbs, and had her hand upon his smooth back, and seen that he was white and clean and bright as he had ever been. And the bargain was made. She was asked to pledge her word that she would not take him out of the house,--and she pledged her word, feeling that there was no strength in her for that action which she had meditated. He, knowing that he might still guard the pa.s.sage at the bottom of the stairs, allowed her to go with the boy to his bedroom, while he remained below with Lady Rowley. A quarter of an hour was allowed to her, and she humbly promised that she would return when that time was expired.

Trevelyan held the door open for her as she went, and kept it open during her absence. There was hardly a word said between him and Lady Rowley, but he paced from the pa.s.sage into the room and from the room into the pa.s.sage with his hands behind his back. "It is cruel," he said once. "It is very cruel."

"It is you that are cruel," said Lady Rowley.

"Of course;--of course. That is natural from you. I expect that from you." To this she made no answer, and he did not open his lips again.

After a while Mrs. Trevelyan called to her mother, and Lady Rowley was allowed to go up-stairs. The quarter of an hour was of course greatly stretched, and all the time Trevelyan continued to pace in and out of the room. He was patient, for he did not summon them; but went on pacing backwards and forwards, looking now and again to see that the cab was at its place,--that no deceit was being attempted, no second act of kidnapping being perpetrated. At last the two ladies came down the stairs, and the boy was with them,--and the woman of the house.

"Louis," said the wife, going quickly up to her husband, "I will do anything, if you will give me my child."

"What will you do?"

"Anything;--say what you want. He is all the world to me, and I cannot live if he be taken from me."

"Acknowledge that you have been wrong."

"But how;--in what words;--how am I to speak it?"

"Say that you have sinned;--and that you will sin no more."

"Sinned, Louis;--as the woman did,--in the Scripture? Would you have me say that?"

"He cannot think that it is so," said Lady Rowley.

But Trevelyan had not understood her. "Lady Rowley, I should have fancied that my thoughts at any rate were my own. But this is useless now. The child cannot go with you to-day, nor can you remain here. Go home and think of what I have said. If then you will do as I would have you, you shall return."

With many embraces, with promises of motherly love, and with prayers for love in return, the poor woman did at last leave the house, and return to the cab. As she went there was a doubt on her own mind whether she should ask to kiss her husband; but he made no sign, and she at last pa.s.sed out without any mark of tenderness. He stood by the cab as they entered it, and closed the door upon them, and then went slowly back to his room. "My poor bairn," he said to the boy; "my poor bairn."

"Why for mamma go?" sobbed the child.

"Mamma goes--; oh, heaven and earth, why should she go? She goes because her spirit is obstinate, and she will not bend. She is stiff-necked, and will not submit herself. But Louey must love mamma always;--and mamma some day will come back to him, and be good to him."

"Mamma is good,--always," said the child. Trevelyan had intended on this very afternoon to have gone up to town,--to transact business with Bozzle; for he still believed, though the aspect of the man was bitter to him as wormwood, that Bozzle was necessary to him in all his business. And he still made appointments with the man, sometimes at Stony Walk, in the Borough, and sometimes at the tavern in Poulter's Court, even though Bozzle not unfrequently neglected to attend the summons of his employer. And he would go to his banker's and draw out money, and then walk about the crowded lanes of the City, and afterwards return to his desolate lodgings at Willesden, thinking that he had been transacting business,--and that this business was exacted from him by the unfortunate position of his affairs. But now he gave up his journey. His retreat had been discovered; and there came upon him at once a fear that if he left the house his child would be taken. His landlady told him on this very day that the boy ought to be sent to his mother, and had made him understand that it would not suit her to find a home any longer for one who was so singular in his proceedings. He believed that his child would be given up at once, if he were not there to guard it.

He stayed at home, therefore, turning in his mind many schemes. He had told his wife that he should go either to Italy or to America at once; but in doing so he had had no formed plan in his head. He had simply imagined at the moment that such a threat would bring her to submission. But now it became a question whether he would do better than go to America. He suggested to himself that he should go to Canada, and fix himself with his boy on some remote farm,--far away from any city; and would then invite his wife to join him if she would. She was too obstinate, as he told himself, ever to yield, unless she should be absolutely softened and brought down to the ground by the loss of her child. What would do this so effectually as the interposition of the broad ocean between him and her? He sat thinking of this for the rest of the day, and Louey was left to the charge of the mistress of River's Cottage.

"Do you think he believes it, mamma?" Mrs. Trevelyan said to her mother when they had already made nearly half their journey home in the cab. There had been nothing spoken hitherto between them, except some half-formed words of affection intended for consolation to the young mother in her great affliction.

"He does not know what he believes, dearest."