THE story which Aubrey Leigh had to tell was indeed made as short as possible. To describe the most painful crisis in your life, the moment which you yourself shudder to look back at, which awakens in you that fury of self-surprise, horror and wonder which a sudden departure from all the habits of your life brings after it when it is guilt, is not an easy thing; but it supplies terse expressions and rapidity of narration. There is no desire to dwell upon the details, and to tell a story so deeply affecting one’s self to a politely unsympathetic listener who does not affect to be much interested or at all moved by the subtle self-defence which runs through every such statement, is still more conducive to brevity. Aubrey laid bare the tempest that had swept over him with a breathless voice and broken words. He could not preserve his equanimity, or look as if it were an easy thing for him to do. He made the most hurried description of the visitor who had taken possession of his house, saying not a word beyond the bare fact. It had been deeply embarrassing that she should be there, though at first in the melancholy of his widowerhood he had not thought of it, or cared who was in the house. Afterwards he was prevented from doing anything to disturb her by his promise to his dying wife. Then had come the anxiety about the baby, the wavering of that little life in which the forlorn young father had come to take a little pleasure. She had been very kind to the child, watching over it, and when the little thing died, when the misery of the fresh desolation, and the pity of it, and the overwhelming oppression of the sad house had quite overcome the spirit of its young master, then she had thrown herself upon him, with all the signs of a sudden passion of sympathy and tenderness. Had any confessor skilled in the accounts of human suffering heard Aubrey’s broken tale he could have found nothing but truth in it, and would have recognised the subtle sequence of events which had led to that downfall. But Colonel Kingsward, though not unlearned in men, listened like a man of wood, playing with the large paper-knife, and never looking towards the penitent, who told his story with such a strain of the labouring breast and agonised spirit. Had a young officer in whom he had no particular interest thus explained and accounted for some dereliction of duty he might have understood or sympathised. But he had no wish to understand Aubrey; his only desire was to brush him off as quickly as possible, to be done with his ridiculous story, to hear of him no more. He might be as little guilty as he described himself. What then? Aubrey’s character was nothing to Colonel Kingsward, except as it affected his daughter. He had cut him off from all connection with his daughter, and it was now quite immaterial to him whether the man was a weak fool or a deceiver. Probably from as much as he heard while thus listening as little as he could, Leigh was in the former class, and certainly he did not intend to take a weak fool, who had shown himself to be at the mercy of any designing woman, into his family as the husband of Bee. Give him the benefit of the doubt, and allow that it had happened so, that the woman was much more to blame than the man, and what then? A sturdy sinner on the whole was not less but more easily pardoned than a weak fool.
“This is all very well, Mr. Leigh,” Colonel Kingsward said, “and I am sorry that you have thought it necessary to enter into these painful details. They may be quite true. I will not offend you by doubting that you believe them to be quite true. But how, then, do you account for the letter which my wife, I believe, showed you, and which came direct from the lady’s own hand to mine?”
“The letter was a letter which I wrote to my wife two years ago. There had been discussions between us on this very subject. I promised, on condition that Miss Lance should leave us, to make such arrangements for her comfort as were possible to me—to settle a yearly income on her, enough to live on.”
“Was that arrangement ever carried out?”
“No; my wife became ill immediately after. I found her on my return in Miss Lance’s arms, imploring that so long as she lived her friend should not be taken from her. What could I do? And that prayer was changed on my poor Amy’s deathbed to another—that I would never send Miss Lance away; that she should always have a home at Forest-leigh and watch over the child.”
“I don’t wish to arouse any such painful recollections—especially as they can be of no advantage to anyone—but how does this letter come to have the date of last Christmas, more than a year after Mrs. Leigh’s death?”
“How can I tell that, sir? How can I tell how the devilish web was woven at all? The note had no date, I suppose, and the person who could use it for this purpose would not hesitate at such a trifle as to add a date.”
“Mr. Leigh, I repeat the whole matter is too painful to be treated by me. But how is it, if you regarded this lady with those sentiments, that you should have in a moment changed them, and, to put the mildest interpretation upon your proceedings, thus put yourself in her power?”
The young man’s flushed and anxious face grew deadly pale. He turned his eyes from the inquisitor to the high blank light pouring in from the large window. “God knows,” he said, “that is what I cannot explain—or rather, I should say, the devil knows!” he cried with vehemence. “I was entirely off my guard—thinking, heaven knows, of nothing less.”
“The devil is a safe sort of agency to put the blame on. We cannot in ordinary affairs accept him as the scapegoat, Mr. Leigh—excuse me for saying so. I will not refuse to say that I allow there may be excuses for you, with a woman much alive to her own interests and ready for any venture. You did write to her, however, on the day you left?”
“I wrote to her, telling her the arrangement I had proposed to my wife, in the very letter which she has sent to you—that I would carry it out at once, and that I hoped she would perceive, as I did, that it was impossible we should remain under the same roof, or, indeed, meet again.”
“That was on what date?”
“The evening before my child’s funeral. Next day, as soon as it was over, I left the house, and have never set foot in it again.”
“Yet this lady, to whom you had, you say, sent such a letter, was at the funeral, and stood at the child’s grave leaning on your arm.”
“More than that,” cried Aubrey, with a gasp of his labouring breath, “she came up to me as I stood there and put her arm, as if to support me, within mine.”
The Colonel could not restrain an exclamation. “By Jove,” he said, “she is a strong-minded woman, if that is true. Do you mean to say that this was after she had your letter?”
“I suppose so. I sent it to her in the morning. I was anxious to avoid any scene.”
“And then, on your way to London, on that day, you went to your solicitors, and gave instructions in respect to Miss Lance’s annuity—which you say now had been determined on long before?”
“It was determined on long before.”
“But never mentioned to any one until that time.”
“I beg your pardon; on the day on which I wrote that letter to my wife I went direct to my lawyer and talked the matter over freely with Mr. Morell, who had known me all my life, and knew all the circumstances—and approved my resolution, as the best of two evils, he said.”
“This is the most favourable thing I have heard, Mr. Leigh. He will, of course, be able to back you up in what you say?”
“Mr. Morell!” Aubrey sprang to his feet with a start of dismay. “I think,” he cried, “all the powers of hell must be against me. Mr. Morell is dead.”
They looked at each other for a moment in silence. A half smile came upon the Colonel’s face, though even he was a little overawed by the despair in the countenance of the young man.
“I don’t know that it matters very much,” he said, “for, after all, Mr. Leigh, your anxiety to get rid of your wife’s companion might have two interpretations. You might have been sincerely desirous to free yourself from a temptation towards another woman, which would have given Mrs. Leigh pain. A man does not sacrifice two hundred a year without a strong motive. And subsequent events make this a far more likely reason than the desire to get rid of an unwelcome inmate.”
“I cannot tell whether my motive was likely or not. I tell you, sir, what it was.”
“Ah, yes—but unfortunately without any corroboration—and the story is very different from the other side. It appears from that that you wished to establish relationship during your poor wife’s life, and that it was the lady who was moved by pity for you in a moment of weakness—which is much more according to the rule in such matters.”
“It is a lie!” Aubrey cried. “Colonel Kingsward, you are a man—and an honourable man. Can you imagine another man, with the same principles as yourself, guilty of such villainy as that? Can you believe——”
“Mr. Leigh,” said the other, “it is unnecessary to ask me what I can believe; nor can I argue, from what I would do, as to what you would do. That may be of good Christianity, you know, but it is not tenable in life. Many men are capable enough of what I say; and, indeed, I do you the credit to believe that you were willing to keep the temptation at a distance—to make a sacrifice in order to ease the mind of your wife. I show a great deal of faith in you when I say that. Another man might say that Mrs. Leigh had exacted it from you as a thing necessary to her peace.”
Aubrey Leigh rose up again, and began to pace the room from one side to the other. He could not keep still in his intolerable impatience and scorn of the net which was tightening about his feet. Anger rose up like a whirlwind in his mind; but to indulge it was to lose for ever the cause which, indeed, was already lost. When he had gained control over himself and his voice, he said, “We had neighbours; we had friends; our life was not lived in a corner unknown to the world. There is my mother; ask them—they all know——.”
“Does anyone outside know what goes on between a husband and wife?” said Colonel Kingsward. “Such discussions do not go on before witnesses. If poor Mrs. Leigh——”
“Sir,” cried Aubrey, stung beyond hearing, “I will not permit any man to pity my wife.”
“It was beyond my province I allow, but one uses the word for those who die young. I don’t know why, for if all is true that we profess to believe they certainly have the best of it. Well, if Mrs. Leigh, to speak by the book, had any such burden on her mind, and really felt her happiness to depend on the banishment of that dangerous companion, it is not likely that she would speak of it either to your neighbours or to your mother.”
“Why not? My mother was of that mind, though not for that villainous reason; my mother knew, everybody knew—everybody agreed with me in wishing her gone. I appeal to all who knew us, Colonel Kingsward! There is not a friend I have who did not compassionate me for Amy’s insensate affection. God forgive me that I should say a word against my poor little girl, but it was an infatuation—as all her friends knew.”
“Don’t you think we are now getting into the region of the extravagant?” Colonel Kingsward said. “I cannot send out a royal commission to take the evidence of your friends.”
Aubrey had to pause again to master himself. If this man, with his contemptuous accents, his cool disdain, were not Bee’s father!—-- but he was so, and, therefore, must not be defied. He answered after a time in a subdued voice. “Will you allow me—to send one or two of them to tell you what they know. There is Fairfield, with whom you are acquainted already, there is Lord Langtry, there is Vavasour, who was with us constantly——”
“To none of these gentlemen, I presume, would Mrs. Leigh be likely to unfold her most intimate sentiments.”
“Two of them have wives,” said Aubrey, determined to hold fast, “whom she saw familiarly daily—country neighbours.”
“I must repeat, Mr. Leigh, I cannot send out a royal commission to take the evidence of your friends.”
“Do you mean that you will not hear any evidence, Colonel Kingsward?—that I am condemned already?—that it does not matter what I have in my favour?”
Colonel Kingsward rose to dismiss his suitor. “I have already said, Mr. Leigh, that I am not your judge. I have no right to condemn you. Your account may be all true; your earnestness and air of sincerity, I allow, in a case in which I was not personally involved, would go far to making me believe it was true. But what then? The matter is this: Will I allow my daughter to marry a man of whom such a question has been raised? I say no: and there I am within my clear rights. You may be able to clear yourself, making out the lady to be a sort of demon in human shape. My friend, who saw her, said she was a very attractive woman. But really this is not the question. I am not a censor of public morals, and on the whole it is a matter of indifference to me whether you are guiltless or not. The sole thing is that I will not permit my daughter to put her foot where such a scandal has been. I have nothing to do with you but everything with her. And I think now that all has been said.”
“That is, you will not hear anything more?”
“Well—if you like to put it so—I prefer not to hear any more.”
“Not if Bee’s happiness should be involved?”
“My daughter’s happiness, I hope, does not depend upon a man whom she has known only for a month. She may think so now. But she will soon know better. That is a question into which I decline to enter with you.”
“Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love,” said Aubrey, with a coarse laugh. He turned as if to go away. “But you do not mean that this is final, Colonel Kingsward—— not final? Not for ever? Never to be revised or reconsidered—— even if I were as bad as you think me?”
“How needless is all this! I have told you your character does not concern me—and I do not say that you are bad—or think so. I am sorry for you. You have got into a rather dreadful position, Mr. Leigh, for a young man of your age.”
“And yet at my age you think I should be cut off for ever from every hope of salvation!”
“Not so; this is all extravagant—ridiculous! And if you will excuse me, I am particularly busy this morning, with a hundred things to do.”
Poor Aubrey would have killed with pleasure, knocked down and trampled upon, the immovable man of the world who thus dismissed him; but to be humble, even abject, was his only hope. “I will try, then, to find some moment of leisure another time.”
“It is unnecessary, Mr. Leigh. I shall not change my mind; surely you must see that it is better for all parties to give it up at once.”
“I shall never give it up.”
“Pooh! one nail drives out another. You don’t seem to have been a miracle of constancy in your previous relationships. Good morning. I trust to hear soon that you have made as satisfactory a settlement of other claims.”