John Caldigate Part 52

'And that n.o.body should have been got to say that they weren't man and wife.'

'I really have hardly formed an opinion,' said Mr. Seely, still whispering, 'I am inclined to think that there was probably some ceremony, and that Caldigate salved his conscience, when he married Bolton's daughter, by an idea that the ceremony wasn't valid. But they'll convict him at last. When he told me that he had been up to town and paid that money, I knew it was all up with him. How can any juryman believe that a man will pay twenty thousand pounds, which he doesn't owe, to his sworn enemy, merely on a point of conscience?'

At the same time the old banker was sitting in his room at the bank, and Robert Bolton was with him. 'There cannot be a doubt of his guilt,' said Robert Bolton.

'No, no,--not a doubt.'

'But the jury may disagree?'

'What shall we do then?' said the banker.

'There must be another trial. We must go on till we get a verdict.'

'And Hester? What can we do for Hester?'

'She is very obstinate, and I fear we have no power. Even though she is declared not to be his wife, she can choose her own place of living. If he is convicted, I think that she would come back. Of course she ought to come back.'

'Of course, of course.'

'Old Caldigate, too, is very obstinate; but it may be that we should be able to persuade him. He will know that she ought to be with her mother.'

'Her poor mother! Her poor mother! And when he comes out of prison?'

'Her very nature will have been altered by that time,' said the attorney. 'She will, I trust, have consented before that to take up her residence under your roof.'

'I shall be dead,' said the old man. 'Disgrace and years together will have killed me before that time comes.'

The Smirkies were staying at Babington, and the desire for news there was very intent. Mr. Smirkie was full of thought on the matter, but was manifestly in favour of a conviction. 'Yes; the poor young woman is very much to be pitied,' he said, in answer to the squire, who had ventured to utter a word in favour of Hester. 'A young woman who falls into the hands of an evil man must always be pitied; but it is to prevent the evil men from preying upon the weaker s.e.x that examples such as these are needed. When we think what might have been the case here, in this house, we have all of us a peculiar reason to be thankful for the interposition of divine Providence.' Here Mr. Smirkie made a little gesture of thanksgiving, thanking Heaven for its goodness to his wife in having given her himself. 'Julia, my love, you have a very peculiar reason to be thankful, and I trust you are so. Yes,--we must pity the poor young lady; but it will be well that the offender should be made subject to the outraged laws of his country.' Mrs. Smirkie, as she listened to these eloquent words, closed her eyes and hands in token of her thankfulness for all that Providence had done for her.

If she knew how to compare her condition with that of poor Hester at this time, she had indeed cause for thankfulness. Hester was alone with her baby, and with no information but what had been conveyed to her by her husband's letters. As she read the last of the two she acknowledged to herself that too probably she would not even see his handwriting again till the period of his punishment should have expired. And then?

What would come then? Sitting alone, at the open window of her bed-room, with her boy on her lap, she endeavoured to realise her own position.

She would be a mother, without a husband,--with her b.a.s.t.a.r.d child.

However innocent he might be, such would be her position under the law.

It did not suffice that they too should be man and wife as thoroughly as any whom G.o.d had joined together, if twelve men a.s.sembled together in a jury-box should say otherwise. She had told him that she would be brave;--but how should she be brave in such a condition as this? What should she do? How should she look forward to the time of his release?

Could anything ever again give her back her husband and make him her own in the eyes of men? Could anything make men believe that he had always been her own, and that there had been no flaw? She had been very brave when they had attempted to confine her, to hold her by force at Chesterton. Then she had been made strong, had always been comforted, by opposition. The determination of her purpose to go back had supported her. But now,--how should it be with her now? and with her boy? and with him?

The old man was very good, good and eager in her cause, and would let her live at Folking. But what would they call her? When they wrote to her from Chesterton how would they address her letters? Never, never would she soil her fingers by touching a doc.u.ment that called her by any other name than her own. Yes, her own;--let all the jurymen in all the counties, let all the judges on the bench, say what they would to the contrary. Though it should be for all her life,--though there should never come the day on which they,--they,--the world at large would do him justice and her, though they should call her by what hard name they would, still up there, in the courts of her G.o.d, she would be his wife.

She would be a pure woman there, and there would her child be without a stain. And here, here in this world, though she could never more be a wife in all things, she would be a wife in love, a wife in care, a wife in obedience, a wife in all G.o.dly truth. And though it would never be possible for her to show her face again among mankind, never for her, surely the world would be kinder to her boy! They would not begrudge him his name! And when it should be told how it had come to pa.s.s that there was a blot upon his escutcheon, they would not remind him of his mother's misery. But, above all, there should be no shade of doubt as to her husband. 'I know,' she said, speaking aloud, but not knowing that she spoke aloud, 'I know that he is my husband.' Then there was a knock at the door. 'Well; yes;--has it come? Do you know?'

No; nothing was known there at that moment, but in another minute all would be known. The wheels of the old Squire's carriage had been heard upon the gravel. 'No, ma'am, no; you shall not leave the room,' said the nurse. 'Stay here and let him come to you.'

'Is he alone?' she asked. But the woman did not know. The wheels of the carriage had only been heard.

Alas, alas! he was alone. His heart too had been almost broken as he bore the news home to the wife who was a wife no longer.

'Father!' she said, when she saw him.

'My daughter;--O my daughter!' And then, with their hands clasped together, they sat speechless and alone, while the news was spread through the household which the old man did not dare to tell to his son's wife.

It was very slowly that the actual tidings reached her ears. Mr.

Caldigate, when he tried to tell them, found that the power of words had left him. Old as he was, and p.r.o.ne to cynic indifference as he had shown himself, he was affected almost like a young girl. He sobbed convulsively as he hung over her, embracing her. 'My daughter!' he said, 'my daughter! my daughter!'

But at last it was all told. Caldigate had been declared guilty, and the judge had condemned him to be confined to prison for two years. Judge Bramber had told him that, in his opinion, the jury could have found no other verdict; but he went on to say that, looking for some excuse for so terrible a deed as that which had been done,--so terrible for that poor lady who was now left nameless with a nameless infant,--he could imagine that the marriage, though legally solemnised, had nevertheless been so deficient in the appearances of solemnity as to have imbued the husband with the idea that it had not meant all that a marriage would have meant if celebrated in a church and with more of the outward appurtenances of religion. On that account he refrained from inflicting a severer penalty.

Chapter XLIV

After the Verdict

When the verdict was given, Caldigate was at once marched round into the dock, having hitherto been allowed to sit in front of the dock between Mr. Seely and his father. But, standing in the dock, he heard the sentence p.r.o.nounced upon him. 'I never married the woman, my lord,' he said, in a loud voice. But what he said could be of no avail. And then men looked at him as he disappeared with the jailers down the steps leading to regions below, and away to his prison, and they knew that he would no more be seen or heard of for two years. He had vanished. But there was the lady who was not his wife out at Folking,--the lady whom the jury had declared not to be his wife. What would become of her?

There was an old gentleman there in the court who had known Mr.

Caldigate for many years,--one Mr. Ryder, who had been himself a practising barrister but had now retired. In those days they seldom saw each other; but, nevertheless, they were friends. 'Caldigate,' he said, 'you had better let her go back to her own people.'

'She shall stay with me,' he replied.

'Better not. Believe me, she had better not. If so, how will it be with her when he is released? The two years will soon go by, and then she will be in his house. If that woman should die, he might marry her,--but till then she had better be with her own people.'

'She shall stay with me,' the old man said again, repeating the words angrily, and shaking his head. He was so stunned by the blow that he could not argue the matter, but he knew that he had made the promise, and that he was resolved to abide by it.

She had better go back to her own people! All the world was saying it.

She had no husband now. Everybody would respect her misfortune.

Everybody would acknowledge her innocence. All would sympathise with her. All would love her. But she must go back to her own people. There was not a dissentient voice. 'Of course she must go back to you now,'

Nicholas Bolton said to her father, and Nicholas Bolton seldom interfered in anything. 'The poor lady will of course be restored to her family,' the judge had said in private to his marshal, and the marshal had of course made known what the judge had said. On the next morning there came a letter from William Bolton to Robert. 'Of course Hester must come back now. Nothing else is possible.' Everybody decided that she must come back. It was a matter which admitted of no doubt. But how was she to be brought to Chesterton?

None of them who decided with so much confidence as to her future, understood her ideas of her position as a wife. 'I am bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,' she said to herself, 'made so by a sacrament which no jury can touch. What matters what the people say? They may make me more unhappy than I am. They may kill me by their cruelty. But they cannot make me believe myself not to be his wife. And while I am his wife, I will obey him, and him only.'

What she called 'their cruelty' manifested itself very soon. The first person who came to her was Mrs. Robert Bolton, and her visit was made on the day after the verdict. When Hester sent down word begging to be permitted in her misery to decline to see even her sister-in-law, Mrs.

Robert sent her up a word or two written in pencil--'My darling, whom have you nearer? Who loves you better than I?' Then the wretched one gave way, and allowed her brother's wife to be brought to her. She was already dressed from head to foot in black, and her baby was with her.

The arguments which Mrs. Robert Bolton used need not be repeated, but it may be said that the words she used were so tender, and that they were urged with so much love, so much sympathy, and so much personal approval, that Hester's heart was touched. 'But he is my husband,'

Hester said. 'The judge cannot alter it; he is my husband.'

'I will not say a word to the contrary. But the law has separated you, and you should obey the law. You should not even eat his bread now, because--because--. Oh, Hester, you understand.'

'I do understand,' she said, rising to her feet in her energy, 'and I will eat his bread though it be hard, and I will drink of his cup though it be bitter. His bread and his cup shall be mine, and none other shall be mine. I do understand. I know that these wicked people have blasted my life. I know that I can be nothing to him now. But his child shall never be made to think that his mother had condemned his father. Yes, Margaret,' she said again, 'I do love you, and I do trust you, and I know that you love me. But you do not love him; you do not believe in him. If they came to you and took Robert away, would you go and live with other people? I do love papa and mamma. But this is his house, and he bids me stay here. The very clothes which I wear are his clothes. I am his; and though they were to cut me apart from him, still I should belong to him. No,--I will not go to mamma. Of course I have forgiven her, because she meant it for the best; but I will never go back to Chesterton.'

Then there came letters from the mother, one letter hot upon the other, all appealing to those texts in Scripture by which the laws of nations are supposed to be supported. 'Give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's.' It was for the law to declare who were and who were not man and wife, and in this matter the law had declared. After this how could she doubt? Or how could she hesitate as to tearing herself away from the belongings of the man who certainly was not her husband? And there were dreadful words in these letters which added much to the agony of her who received them,--words which were used in order that their strength might prevail. But they had no strength to convert, though they had strength to afflict. Then Mrs. Bolton, who in her anxiety was ready to submit herself to any personal discomfort, prepared to go to Folking. But Hester sent back word that, in her present condition, she would see n.o.body,--not even her mother.

But it was not only from the family of the Boltons that these applications and entreaties came. Even Mr. Seely took upon himself to tell Mr. Caldigate that under existing circ.u.mstances Hester should not be detained at Folking.

'I do not know that either she or I want advice in the matter,' Mr.

Caldigate replied. But as a stone will be worn hollow in time by the droppings of many waters, so was it thought that if all Cambridge would continue firm in its purpose, then this stone might at last be made to yield. The world was so anxious that it resolved among itself that it would submit to any amount of snubbing in carrying out its object. Even the mayor wrote. 'Dear Mr. Caldigate, greatly as I object to all interference in families, I think myself bound to appeal to you as to the unfortunate condition of that young lady from Chesterton.' Then followed all the arguments, and some of the texts,--both of which were gradually becoming hackneyed in the matter. Mr. Caldigate's answer to this was very characteristic: 'Dear Mr. Mayor, if you have an objection to interfere in families, why do you do it?' The mayor took the rebuke with placid good-humour, feeling that his little drop might also have done something towards hollowing the stone.

But of all the counsellors, perhaps Mr. Smirkie was the most zealous and the most trusting. He felt himself to be bound in a peculiar manner to Folking,--by double ties. Was not the clergyman of the parish the brother of his dear departed one? And with whom better could he hold sweet counsel? And then that second dear one, who had just been vouchsafed to him,--had she not as it were by a miracle been rescued from the fate into which the other poor lady had fallen, and obtained her present thoroughly satisfactory position? Mr. Smirkie was a clergyman who understood it to be his duty to be urgent for the good cause, in season and out of season, and who always did his duty. So he travelled over to Utterden and discussed the matter at great length with Mr. Bromley. 'I do believe in my heart,' said Mr. Bromley, 'that the verdict is wrong.' But Mr. Smirkie, with much eloquence, averred that that had nothing to do with the question. Mr. Bromley opened his eyes very wide. 'Nothing at all,' said Mr. Smirkie. 'It is the verdict of the jury, confirmed by the judge, and the verdict itself dissolves the marriage. Whether the verdict be wrong or right, that marriage ceremony is null and void. They are not man and wife;--not now, even if they ever were. Of course you are aware of that.'