The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney Part 9

"It is really time that a properly-qualified governess had charge of those girls," observed my wife, as Mary and Kate after a more than usually boisterous romp with their papa, left the room for bed. I may here remark, _inter alia_, that I once surprised a dignified and highly-distinguished judge at a game of blindman's buff with his children, and very heartily he appeared to enjoy it too. "It is really time that a properly-qualified governess had charge of those girls. Susan May did very well as a nursery teacher, but they are now far beyond her control. _I_ cannot attend to their education, and as for you"--The sentence was concluded by a shrug of the shoulders and a toss of the head, eloquently expressive of the degree of estimation in which _my_ governing powers were held.

"Time enough, surely, for that," I exclaimed, as soon as I had composed myself; for I was a little out of breath. "They may, I think, rub along with Susan for another year or two, Mary is but seven years of age"--

"Eight years, if you please. She was eight years old last Thursday three weeks."

"Eight years! Then we must have been married nine; Bless me, how the time has flown: it seems scarcely so many weeks!"

"Nonsense," rejoined my wife with a sharpness of tone and a rigidity of facial muscle which, considering the handsome compliment I had just paid her, argued, I was afraid, a foregone conclusion. "You always have recourse to some folly of that sort whenever I am desirous of entering into a serious consultation on family affairs."

There was some truth in this, I confess. The "consultations" which I found profitable were not serious ones with my wife upon domestic matters; leading, as they invariably did, to a diminution instead of an increase of the little balance at the banker's. If such a proposition could therefore be evaded or adjourned by even an extravagant compliment, I considered it well laid out. But the expedient, I found, was one which did not improve by use. For some time after marriage it answered remarkably well; but each succeeding year of wedded bliss marked its rapidly-declining efficacy.

"Well, well; go on."

"I say it is absolutely necessary that a first-rate governess should be at once engaged. Lady Maldon has been here to-day, and she"--

"Oh, I thought it might be her new ladyship's suggestion. I wish the 'fountain of honor' was somewhat charier of its knights and ladies, and then perhaps"--

"What, for mercy's sake, are you running on about?" interrupted the lady with peremptory emphasis. "Fountains of honor, forsooth! One would suppose, to hear you talk in that wild, nonsensical way, that you were addressing a bench of judges sitting in _banco_, instead of a sensible person solicitous for her and your children's welfare."

"Bless the woman," thought I; "what an exalted idea she appears to have of forensic eloquence! Proceed, my love," I continued; "there is a difference certainly; and I am all attention."

"Lady Maldon knows a young lady--a distant relative, in deed, of hers--whom she is anxious to serve"--

"At our expense."

"How can you be so ungenerous? Edith Willoughby is the orphan daughter of the late Reverend Mr. Willoughby, curate of Heavy Tree in Warwickshire, I believe; and was specially educated for a first-cla.s.s governess and teacher. She speaks French with the true Parisian accent, and her Italian, Lady Maldon a.s.sures me, is pure Tuscan"--

"He-e-e-m!"

"She dances with grace and elegance; plays the harp and piano with skill and taste; is a thorough _artiste_ in drawing and painting; and is, moreover, very handsome--though beauty, I admit, is an attribute which in a governess might be very well dispensed with."

"True; unless, indeed, it were catching."

I need not prolong this connubial dialogue. It is sufficient to state that Edith Willoughby was duly installed in office on the following day; and that, much to my surprise, I found that her qualifications for the charge she had undertaken were scarcely overcolored. She was a well-educated, elegant, and beautiful girl, of refined and fascinating manners, and possessed of one of the sweetest, gentlest dispositions that ever charmed and graced the family and social circle. She was, I often thought, for her own chance of happiness, too ductile, too readily yielding to the wishes and fancies of others. In a very short time I came to regard her as a daughter, and with my wife and children she was speedily a prodigious favorite. Mary and Kate improved rapidly under her judicious tuition, and I felt for once positively grateful to busy Lady Maldon for her officious interference in my domestic arrangements.

Edith Willoughby had been domiciled with us about two years, when Mr.

Harlowe, a gentleman of good descent and fine property, had occasion to call several times at my private residence on business relating to the purchase of a house in South Audley Street, the t.i.tle to which exhibited by the venders was not of the most satisfactory kind. On one occasion he stayed to dine with us, and I noticed that he seemed much struck by the appearance of our beautiful and accomplished governess. His evident emotion startled and pained me in a much higher degree than I could have easily accounted for even to myself. Mr. Harlowe was a widower, past his first youth certainly, but scarcely more than two or three-and-thirty years of age, wealthy, not ill-looking, and, as far as I knew, of average character in society. Surely an excellent match, if it should come to that, for an orphan girl rich only in fine talents and gentle affections.

But I could not think so. I disliked the man--_instinctively_ disliked and distrusted him; for I could a.s.sign no very positive motive for my antipathy.

"The reason why, I cannot tell, But I don't like thee, Dr. Fell."

These lines indicate an unconquerable feeling which most persons have, I presume, experienced; and which frequently, I think, results from a kind of c.u.mulative evidence of uncongeniality or unworthiness, made up of a number of slight indices of character, which, separately, may appear of little moment, but altogether, produce a strong, if undefinable, feeling of aversion. Mr. Harlowe's manners were bland, polished, and insinuating; his conversation was sparkling and instructive; but a cold sneer seemed to play habitually about his lips, and at times there glanced forth a concentrated, polished ferocity--so to speak--from his eyes, revealing hard and stony depths, which I shuddered to think a being so pure and gentle as Edith might be doomed to sound and fathom. That he was a man of strong pa.s.sions and determination of will, was testified by every curve of his square, ma.s.sive head, and every line of his full countenance.

My aversion--reasonable or otherwise, as it might be--was not shared by Miss Willoughby; and it was soon apparent that, fascinated, intoxicated by her extreme beauty (the man was, I felt, incapable of love in its high, generous, and spiritual sense), Mr. Harlowe had determined on offering his hand and fortune to the unportioned orphan. He did so, and was accepted. I did not conceal my dislike of her suitor from Edith; and my wife--who, with feminine exaggeration of the hints I threw out, had set him down as a kind of polished human tiger--with tears intreated her to avoid the glittering snare. We of course had neither right nor power to push our opposition beyond friendly warning and advice; and when we found, thanks to Lady Maldon, who was vehemently in favor of the match--to, in Edith's position, the dazzling temptation of a splendid establishment, and to Mr. Harlowe's eloquent and impa.s.sioned pleadings--that the rich man's offer was irrevocably accepted, we of course forebore from continuing a useless and irritating resistance. Lady Maldon had several times very plainly intimated that our aversion to the marriage arose solely from a selfish desire of retaining the services of her charming relative; so p.r.o.ne are the mean and selfish to impute meanness and selfishness to others.

I might, however, I reflected, be of service to Miss Willoughby, by securing for her such a marriage settlement as would place her beyond the reach of one possible consequence of caprice and change. I spoke to Mr.

Harlowe on the subject; and he, under the influence of headstrong, eager pa.s.sion, gave me, as I expected, _carte blanche_. I availed myself of the license so readily afforded: a deed of settlement was drawn up, signed, sealed, and attested in duplicate the day before the wedding; and Edith Willoughby, as far as wealth and position in society were concerned, had undoubtedly made a surprisingly good bargain.

It happened that just as Lady Maldon, Edith Willoughby, and Mr. Harlowe were leaving my chambers after the execution of the deed, Mr. Ferret the attorney appeared on the stairs. His hands were full of papers, and he was, as usual, in hot haste; but he stopped abruptly as his eye fell upon the departing visitors, looked with startled earnestness at Miss Willoughby, whom he knew, and then glanced at Mr. Harlowe with an expression of angry surprise. That gentleman, who did not appear to recognize the new-comer, returned his look with a supercilious, contemptuous stare, and pa.s.sed on with Edith--who had courteously saluted the inattentive Mr. Ferret--followed by Lady Maldon.

"What is the meaning of that ominous conjunction?" demanded Mr. Ferret as the affianced pair disappeared together.

"Marriage, Mr. Ferret! Do you know any just cause or impediment why they should not be joined together in holy wedlock?"

"The fellow's wife is dead then?"

"Yes; she died about a twelvemonth ago. Did you know her?"

"Not personally; by reputation only. A country attorney, Richards of Braintree, for whom I transact London business sent me the draught of a deed of separation--to which the unfortunate lady, rather than continue to live with her husband, had consented--for counsel's opinion. I had an interview with Mr. Harlowe himself upon the business; but I see he affects to have forgotten me. I do not know much of the merits of the case, but according to Richards--no great shakes of a fellow, between ourselves--the former Mrs. Harlowe was a martyr to her husband's calculated virulence and legal--at least not _illegal_, a great distinction, in my opinion, though not so set down in the books--despotism. He espoused her for her wealth: that secured, he was desirous of ridding himself of the inc.u.mbrance to it. A common case!--and now, if you please, to business."

I excused myself, as did my wife, from being present at the wedding; but everything, I afterwards heard, pa.s.sed off with great _eclat_. The bridegroom was all fervor and obsequiousness; the bride all bashfulness and beauty. The "happy pair," I saw by the afternoon newspapers, were to pa.s.s the honeymoon at Mr. Harlowe's seat, Fairdown Park. The evening of the marriage-day was anything, I remember, but a pleasant one to me. I reached home by no means hilariously disposed, where I was greeted, by way of revival, with the intelligence that my wife, after listening with great energy to Lady Maldon's description of the wedding festivities for two tremendous hours, had at last been relieved by copious hysteria, and that Mary and Kate were in a fair way--if the exploit could be accomplished by perseverance--of crying themselves to sleep. These were our bridal compliments; much more flattering, I imagine, if not quite so honey-accented, as the courtly phrases with which the votaries and the victims of Hymen are alike usually greeted.

Time, business, worldly hopes and cares, the triumphs and defeats of an exciting profession, gradually weakened the impression made upon me by the gentle virtues of Edith Willoughby; and when, about fifteen months after the wedding, my wife informed me that she had been accosted by Mrs.

Harlowe at a shop in Bond Street, my first feeling was one of surprise, not untinged with resentment, for what I deemed her ungrateful neglect.

"She recognized you then?" I remarked.

"Recognized me! What do you mean?"

"I thought perhaps she might have forgotten your features, as she evidently has our address."

"If you had seen," replied my wife, "how pale, how cold, how utterly desolate she looked, you would think less hardly of her. As soon as she observed me, a slight scream escaped her; and then she glanced eagerly and tremblingly around like a startled fawn. Her husband had pa.s.sed out of the shop to give, I think, some direction to the coachman. She tottered towards me, and clasping me in her arms, burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. "Oh, why--why," I asked as soon as I could speak, "why have you not written to us?" "I dared not!" she gasped. "But oh tell me, do you--does your husband remember me with kindness? Can I still reckon on his protection--his support?" I a.s.sured her you would receive her as your own child: the whispered words had barely pa.s.sed my lips, when Mr.

Harlowe, who had swiftly approached us unperceived, said, "Madam, the carriage waits." His stern, pitiless eye glanced from his wife to me, and stiffly bowing, he said, "Excuse me for interrupting your conversation; but time presses. Good-day." A minute afterwards, the carriage drove off."

I was greatly shocked at this confirmation of my worst fears; and I meditated with intense bitterness on the fate of a being of such meek tenderness exposed to the heartless brutalities of a sated sensualist like Harlowe. But what could be done? She had chosen, deliberately, and after warning, chosen her lot, and must accept the consequences of her choice. In all the strong statutes, and sharp biting laws of England, there can be found no clause wherewith to shield a woman from the "regulated" meanness and despotism of an unprincipled husband.

Resignation is the sole remedy, and therein the patient must minister to herself.

On the morning of the Sunday following Edith's brief interview with my wife, and just as we were about to leave the house to attend divine service, a cab drove furiously up to the door, and a violent summons by both knocker and bell announced the arrival of some strangely-impatient visitor. I stepped out upon the drawing-room landing, and looked over the banister rail, curious to ascertain who had honored me with so peremptory a call. The door was quickly opened, and in ran, or rather staggered, Mrs. Harlowe, with a child in long clothes in her arms.

"Shut--shut the door!" she faintly exclaimed, as she sank on one of the hall seats. "Pray shut the door--I am pursued!"

I hastened down, and was just in time to save her from falling on the floor. She had fainted. I had her carried up stairs, and by the aid of proper restoratives, she gradually recovered consciousness. The child, a girl about four months old, was seized upon by Mary and Kate, and carried off in triumph to the nursery. Sadly changed, indeed, as by the sickness of the soul, was poor Edith. The radiant flush of youth and hope rendering her sweet face eloquent of joy and pride, was replaced by the cold, sad hues of wounded affections and proud despair. I could read in her countenance, as in a book, the sad record of long months of wearing sorrow, vain regrets, and bitter self-reproach. Her person, too, had lost its rounded, airy, graceful outline, and had become thin and angular.

Her voice, albeit, was musical and gentle as ever, as she murmured, on recovering her senses, "You will protect me from my--from that man?" As I warmly pressed her hand, in emphatic a.s.surance that I would shield her against all comers, another loud summons was heard at the door. A minute afterwards, a servant entered, and announced that Mr. Harlowe waited for me below. I directed he should be shown into the library; and after iterating my a.s.surance to Edith that she was quite safe from violence beneath my roof, and that I would presently return to hear her explanation of the affair, I went down stairs.

Mr. Harlowe, as I entered, was pacing rapidly up and down the apartment.

He turned to face me; and I thought he looked even more perturbed and anxious than vengeful and angry. He, however, as I coldly bowed, and demanded his business with me, instantly a.s.sumed a bullying air and tone.

"Mrs. Harlowe is here: she has surrept.i.tiously left South Audley Street in a hired cab, and I have traced her to this house."

"Well?"

"Well! I trust it is well; and I insist that she instantly return to her home."

"Her _home_!"

I used the word with an expression significative only of my sense of the sort of "home" he had provided for the gentle girl he had sworn to love and cherish; but the random shaft found a joint in his armor at which it was not aimed. He visibly trembled, and turned pale.