John Caldigate Part 41

he said.

'Oh yes; I do not go home till to-morrow.' Then she parted from him, and spent the next hour or two up-stairs with her baby.

'May I come in?' said the mother, knocking at the door.

'Oh yes, mamma. Don't you think baby is very like his father?'

'I dare say. I do not know that I am good at tracing likenesses. He certainly is like you.'

'So much more like his father!' said Hester.

After that there was a pause, and then the mother commenced her task in her most serious voice. 'Hester, my child, you can understand that a duty may become so imperious that it must be performed.'

'Yes,' said Hester, pressing her lips close together 'I can understand that.' There might be a duty very necessary for her to perform, though in the performance of it she should be driven to quarrel absolutely with her own mother.

'So it is with me. Whom do you think I love best in all the world?'

'Papa.'

'I do love your father dearly, and I endeavour, by G.o.d's grace, to do my duty by him, though, I fear, it is done imperfectly. But, my child, our hearts, I think, yearn more to those who are younger than ourselves than to our elders. We love best those whom we have cherished and protected, and whom we may perhaps still cherish and protect. When I try to tear my heart away from the things of this vile world, it clings to you--to you--to you!'

Of course this could not be borne without an embrace 'Oh, mamma!' Hester exclaimed, throwing herself on her knees before her mother's lap.

'If you suffer, must not I suffer? If you rejoice, would I not fain rejoice with you if I could? Did I not bring you into the world, my only one, and nursed you, and prayed for you, and watched you with all a mother's care as you grew up among the troubles of the world? Have you not known that my heart has been too soft towards you even for the due performance of my duties?'

'You have always been good to me, mamma.'

'And am I altered now? Do you think that a mother's heart can be changed to her only child?'

'No, mamma.'

'No, Hester. That, I think, is impossible. Though for the last twelve months I have not seen you day by day,--though I have not prepared the food which you eat and the clothes which you wear, as I used to do,--you have been as constantly in my mind. You are still my child, my only child.'

'Mamma, I know you love me.'

'I so love you as to know that I sin in so loving aught that is human.

And so loving you, must I not do my duty by you? When love and duty both compel me to speak, how shall I be silent?'

'You have said it, mamma,' said Hester, slowly drawing herself up from off the ground.

'And is saying it once enough, when, as I think, the very soul, the immortal soul, of her who is of all the dearest to me depends on what I may say;--may be saved, or, oh, perhaps lost for ever by the manner in which I may say it! How am I not to speak when such thoughts as these are heavy within me?'

'What is it you would say?' This Hester asked with a low hoa.r.s.e voice and a stern look, as though she could not resist her mother's prayer for the privilege of speaking; but at the same time was resolutely prepared not to be turned a hair's-breadth by anything that might be said.

'Not a word about him.'

'No, mamma; no. Unless you can tell me that you will love him as your son-in-law.'

'Not a word about him,' she repeated, in a harsher voice. She felt that that promise should have been enough, and that in the present circ.u.mstances she should not have been invited to love the man she hated. 'Your father and I wish you for the next few months to come and live with us.'

'It is quite impossible,' said Hester, standing very upright, with a face altogether unlike that she had worn when kneeling at her mother's knees.

'You should listen to me.'

'Yes, I will listen.'

'There will be a trial.'

'Undoubtedly. John, at least, seems to think so. It is possible that these wicked people may give it up, or that they may have no money to go on; but I suppose there will be a trial.'

'The woman has bound herself to prosecute him.'

'Because she wants to get money. But we need not discuss that, mamma.

John thinks that there will be a trial.'

'Till that is over, will you not be better away from him? How will it be with you if it should be decided that he is not your husband?' Here Hester of course prepared herself for interruption, but her mother prayed for permission to continue.

'Listen to me for one moment, Hester.'

'Very well, mamma. Go on.'

'How would it be with you in that case? You must be separated then. As that is possible, is it not right that you should obey the ordinances of G.o.d and man, and keep yourself apart till they who are in authority shall have spoken?'

'There are no such ordinances.'

'There are indeed. If you were to ask all your friends, all the married women in Cambridgeshire, what would they say? Would they not all tell you that no woman should live with a man while there is a shadow of doubt? And as to the law of G.o.d, you know G.o.d's law, and can only defend yourself by your own certainty as to a matter respecting which all others are uncertain. You think yourself certain because such certainty is a way to yourself out of your present misery.'

'It is for my child,' she shouted; 'and for him.'

'As for your babe, your darling babe, whether he be yours in joy of heart or in agony of spirit, he is still yours. No one will rob you of him. If it be as we fear, would not I help you to love him, help you to care for him, help you to pray for him? If it were so, would I desert him or you because in your innocence you had been betrayed into misfortune? Do I not feel for your child? But when he grows up and is a man, and will have learned the facts of his early years, let him be able to tell himself that his mother though unfortunate was pure.'

'I am pure,' she said.

'My child, my own one, can I, your mother, think aught else of you? Do I not know your heart? Do not I know the very thoughts within you?'

'I am pure. He has become my husband, and nothing can divide us. I never gave a thought to another man. I never had the faintest liking, as do other girls. When he came and told me that he had seen me and loved me, and would take me for his wife, I felt at once that I was all his,--his to do as he liked with me, his to nourish him, his to worship him, his to obey him, his to love him let father or mother or all the world say what they would to the contrary. Then we were married. Till he was my own, I never even pressed my lips upon his. But I became his wife by a bond that nothing shall break. You tell me of G.o.d's law. By G.o.d's law I am his wife, let the people say what they will. I have but two to think of.'

'Yourself and him?' asked her mother.

'I have three to think of,--G.o.d, and him, and my child; and may G.o.d be good to me and them, as in this matter I will put myself away from myself altogether. It is for me to obey him, and I will submit myself to none other. If he bids me go, I will go; if he bids me stay here, I will stay. I have become his so entirely, that no judges--no judges can divide us. Judges! I know but one Judge, and He is there; and He has said that those whom He has joined together, man shall not put asunder.

Pure! pure! No one should praise herself, but as a woman I do know that I am pure.'

Then the mother's heart yearned greatly towards her daughter; and yet she was no whit changed. She knew nothing of phrases of logic, but she felt that Hester had begged the whole question. Those whom G.o.d had joined together! True, true! If only one could know whether in this or the other case G.o.d had joined the couple. As Hester argued the matter, no woman should be taken from the man she had married, though he might have a dozen other wives all living. And she spoke of purity as though it were a virtue which could be created and consecrated simply by the action of her own heart, as though nothing outside,--no ceremony, no ordinance,--could affect it. The same argument would enable her to live with John Caldigate after he should come out of prison, even though, as would then be the case, another woman would have the legal right of calling herself Mrs. John Caldigate! On the previous day she had declared that if she could not be his wife, she would be his mistress.

The mother knew what she meant,--that, let people call her by what name they might, she would still be her husband's wife in the eye of G.o.d.

But she would not be so. And then she would not be pure. And, to Mrs.

Bolton, the worst of it was that this cloudiness had come upon her daughter,--this incapacity to reason it out,--because the love of a human being had become so strong within her bosom as to have superseded and choked the love of heavenly things. But how should she explain all this? 'I am not asking you to drop his name.'

'Drop his name! I will never drop it. I cannot drop it. It is mine. I could not make myself anything but Mrs. John Caldigate if I would. And he,' she said, taking the baby up from its cradle and pressing it to her bosom, 'he shall be Daniel Caldigate to the day of his death. Do you think that I will take a step that shall look like robbing my child of his honest name,--that will seem to imply a doubt that he is not his own father's honest boy,--that he is not a fitting heir to the property which his forefathers have owned so long? Never! They may call me what name they will, but I will call myself John Caldigate's wife as long as I have a voice to make myself heard.'