The Palliser Novels (493 page)

“Your aunt was here, and I had something I wished to say but could not say very well before her.”

“I knew that she had driven you away. You and Aunt Harriet were never great friends.”

“Never; — but I will forgive her everything. I will forgive all the injuries that have been done me if you now will do as I ask you.”

Of course she knew what it was that he was about to ask. When he had left her at Longbarns without saying a word of his love, without giving her any hint whereby she might allow herself to think that he intended to renew his suit, then she had wept because it was so. Though her resolution had been quite firm as to the duty which was incumbent on her of remaining in her desolate condition of almost nameless widowhood, yet she had been unable to refrain from bitter tears because he also had seemed to see that such was her duty. But now again, knowing that the request was coming, feeling once more confident of the constancy of his love, she was urgent with herself as to that heavy duty. She would be unwomanly, dead to all shame, almost inhuman, were she to allow herself again to indulge in love after all the havoc she had made. She had been little more than a bride when that husband, for whom she had so often been forced to blush, had been driven by the weight of his misfortunes and disgraces to destroy himself! By the marriage she had made she had overwhelmed her whole family with dishonour. She had done it with a persistency of perverse self-will which she herself could not now look back upon without wonder and horror. She, too, should have died as well as he, — only that death had not been within the compass of her powers as of his. How then could she forget it all, and wipe it away from her mind, as she would figures from a slate with a wet towel? How could it be fit that she should again be a bride with such a spectre of a husband haunting her memory? She had known that the request was to be made when he had come so quickly, and had not doubted it for a moment when he took his sudden departure. She had known it well, when just now the servant told her that Mr. Fletcher was in the drawing-room below. But she was quite certain of the answer she must make. “I should be sorry you should ask me anything I cannot do,” she said in a very low voice.

“I will ask you for nothing for which I have not your father’s sanction.”

“The time has gone by, Arthur, in which I might well have been guided by my father. There comes a time when personal feelings must be stronger than a father’s authority. Papa cannot see me with my own eyes; he cannot understand what I feel. It is simply this, — that he would have me to be other than I am. But I am what I have made myself.”

“You have not heard me as yet. You will hear me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I have loved you ever since I was a boy.” He paused as though he expected that she would make some answer to this; but of course there was nothing that she could say. “I have been true to you since we were together almost as children.”

“It is your nature to be true.”

“In this matter, at any rate, I shall never change. I never for a moment had a doubt about my love. There never has been any one else whom I have ventured to compare with you. Then came that great trouble. Emily, you must let me speak freely this once, as so much, to me at least, depends on it.”

“Say what you will, Arthur. Do not wound me more than you can help.”

“God knows how willingly I would heal every wound without a word if it could be done. I don’t know whether you ever thought what I suffered when he came among us and robbed me, — well, I will not say robbed me of your love, because it was not mine — but took away with him that which I had been trying to win.”

“I did not think a man would feel it like that.”

“Why shouldn’t a man feel as well as a woman? I had set my heart on having you for my wife. Can any desire be dearer to a man than that? Then he came. Well, dearest; surely I may say that he was not worthy of you.”

“We were neither of us worthy,” she said.

“I need not tell you that we all grieved. It seemed to us down in Herefordshire as though a black cloud had come upon us. We could not speak of you, nor yet could we be altogether silent.”

“Of course you condemned me, — as an outcast.”

“Did I write to you as though you were an outcast? Did I treat you when I saw you as an outcast? When I come to you to-day, is that proof that I think you to be an outcast? I have never deceived you, Emily.”

“Never.”

“Then you will believe me when I say that through it all not one word of reproach or contumely has ever passed my lips in regard to you. That you should have given yourself to one whom I could not think to be worthy of you was, of course, a great sorrow. Had he been a prince of men it would, of course, have been a sorrow to me. How it went with you during your married life I will not ask.”

“I was unhappy. I would tell you everything if I could. I was very unhappy.”

“Then came — the end.” She was now weeping, with her face buried in her handkerchief. “I would spare you if I knew how, but there are some things which must be said.”

“No; — no. I will bear it all — from you.”

“Well! His success had not lessened my love. Though then I could have no hope, — though you were utterly removed from me, — all that could not change me. There it was, — as though my arm or my leg had been taken from me. It was bad to live without an arm or leg, but there was no help. I went on with my life and tried not to look like a whipped cur; — though John from time to time would tell me that I failed. But now; — now that it has again all changed, — what would you have me do now? It may be that after all my limb may be restored to me, that I may be again as other men are, whole, and sound, and happy; — so happy! When it may possibly be within my reach am I not to look for my happiness?” He paused, but she wept on without speaking a word. “There are those who will say that I should wait till all these signs of woe have been laid aside. But why should I wait? There has come a great blot upon your life, and is it not well that it should be covered as quickly as possible?”

“It can never be covered.”

“You mean that it can never be forgotten. No doubt there are passages in our life which we cannot forget, though we bury them in the deepest silence. All this can never be driven out of your memory, — nor from mine. But it need not therefore blacken all our lives. In such a condition we should not be ruled by what the world thinks.”

“Not at all. I care nothing for what the world thinks. I am below all that. It is what I think: I myself, — of myself.”

“Will you think of no one else? Are any of your thoughts for me, — or for your father?”

“Oh, yes; — for my father.”

“I need hardly tell you what he wishes. You must know how you can best give him back the comfort he has lost.”

“But, Arthur, even for him I cannot do everything.”

“There is one question to be asked,” he said, rising from her feet and standing before her; — “but one; and what you do should depend entirely on the answer which you may be able truly to make to that.”

This he said so solemnly that he startled her.

“What question, Arthur?”

“Do you love me?” To this question at the moment she could make no reply. “Of course I know that you did not love me when you married him.”

“Love is not all of one kind.”

“You know what love I mean. You did not love me then. You could not have loved me, — though, perhaps, I thought I had deserved your love. But love will change, and memory will sometimes bring back old fancies when the world has been stern and hard. When we were very young I think you loved me. Do you remember seven years ago at Longbarns, when they parted us and sent me away, because — because we were so young? They did not tell us then, but I think you knew. I know that I knew, and went nigh to swear that I would drown myself. You loved me then, Emily.”

“I was a child then.”

“Now you are not a child. Do you love me now, — to-day? If so, give me your hand, and let the past be buried in silence. All this has come, and gone, and has nearly made us old. But there is life before us yet, and if you are to me as I am to you it is better that our lives should be lived together.” Then he stood before her with his hand stretched out.

“I cannot do it,” she said.

“And why?”

“I cannot be other than the wretched thing I have made myself.”

“But do you love me?”

“I cannot analyse my heart. Love you; — yes! I have always loved you. Everything about you is dear to me. I can triumph in your triumphs, rejoice at your joy, weep at your sorrows, be ever anxious that all good things may come to you; — but, Arthur, I cannot be your wife.”

“Not though it would make us happy, — Fletchers and Whartons all alike?”

“Do you think I have not thought it over? Do you think that I have forgotten your first letter? Knowing your heart, as I do know it, do you imagine that I have spent a day, an hour, for months past, without asking myself what answer I should make to you if the sweet constancy of your nature should bring you again to me? I have trembled when I have heard your voice. My heart has beat at the sound of your footstep as though it would burst! Do you think I have never told myself what I had thrown away? But it is gone, and it is not now within my reach.”

“It is; it is,” he said, throwing himself on his knees, and twining his arms round her.

“No; — no; — no; — never. I am disgraced and shamed. I have lain among the pots till I am foul and blackened. Take your arms away. They shall not be defiled,” she said as she sprang to her feet. “You shall not have the thing that he has left.”

“Emily, — it is the only thing in the world that I crave.”

“Be a man and conquer your love, — as I will. Get it under your feet and press it to death. Tell yourself that it is shameful and must be abandoned. That you, Arthur Fletcher, should marry the widow of that man, — the woman that he had thrust so far into the mire that she can never again be clean; — you, the chosen one, the bright star among us all; — you, whose wife should be the fairest, the purest, the tenderest of us all, a flower that has yet been hardly breathed on! While I — Arthur,” she said, “I know my duty better than that. I will not seek an escape from my punishment in that way, — nor will I allow you to destroy yourself. You have my word as a woman that it shall not be so. Now I do not mind your knowing whether I love you or no.” He stood silent before her, not able for the moment to go on with his prayer. “And now, go,” she said. “God bless you, and give you some day a fair and happy wife. And, Arthur, do not come again to me. If you will let it be so, I shall have a delight in seeing you; — but not if you come as you have come now. And, Arthur, spare me with papa. Do not let him think that it is all my fault that I cannot do the thing which he wishes.” Then she left the room before he could say another word to her.

But it was all her fault. No; — in that direction he could not spare her. It must be told to her father, though he doubted his own power of describing all that had been said. “Do not come again to me,” she had said. At the moment he had been left speechless; but if there was one thing fixed in his mind, it was the determination to come again. He was sure now, not only of love that might have sufficed, — but of hot, passionate love. She had told him that her heart had beat at his footsteps, and that she had trembled as she listened to his voice; — and yet she expected that he would not come again! But there was a violence of decision about the woman which made him dread that he might still come in vain. She was so warped from herself by the conviction of her great mistake, so prone to take shame to herself for her own error, so keenly alive to the degradation to which she had been submitted, that it might yet be impossible to teach her that, though her husband had been vile and she mistaken, yet she had not been soiled by his baseness.

He went at once to the old barrister’s chambers and told him the result of the meeting. “She is still a fool,” said the father, not understanding at second-hand the depths of his daughter’s feeling.

“No, sir, — not that. She feels herself degraded by his degradation. If it be possible we must save her from that.”

“She did degrade herself.”

“Not as she means it. She is not degraded in my eyes.”

“Why should she not take the only means in her power of rescuing herself and rescuing us all from the evil that she did? She owes it to you, to me, and to her brother.”

“I would hardly wish her to come to me in payment of such a debt.”

“There is no room left,” said Mr. Wharton angrily, “for soft sentimentality. Well; — she must take her bed as she makes it. It is very hard on me, I know. Considering what she used to be, it is marvellous to me that she should have so little idea left of doing her duty to others.”

Arthur Fletcher found that the barrister was at the moment too angry to hear reason, or to be made to understand anything of the feelings of mixed love and admiration with which he himself was animated at the moment. He was obliged therefore to content himself with assuring the father that he did not intend to give up the pursuit of his daughter.

When Mr. Wharton got home on that day he said not a word to Emily as to Arthur Fletcher. He had resolved to take various courses, — first to tell her roundly that she was neglecting her duty to herself and to her family, and that he would no longer take her part and be her good friend unless she would consent to marry the man whom she had confessed that she loved. But as he thought of this he became aware, — first that he could not carry out such a threat, and then that he would lack even the firmness to make it. There was something in her face, something even in her dress, something in her whole manner to himself, which softened him and reduced him to vassalage directly he saw her. Then he determined to throw himself on her compassion and to implore her to put an end to all this misery by making herself happy. But as he drew near home he found himself unable to do even this. How is a father to beseech his widowed daughter to give herself away in a second marriage? And therefore when he entered the house and found her waiting for him, he said nothing. At first she looked at him wistfully, — anxious to learn by his face whether her lover had been with him. But when he spoke not a word, simply kissing her in his usual quiet way, she became cheerful in manner and communicative. “Papa,” she said, “I have had a letter from Mary.”