OTHER claims! What other claims? Aubrey Leigh went out of the office in Pall Mall with these words circling through his mind. They seemed to have nothing to do with that which occupied him, which filled every thought. His dazed memory and imagination caught them up as he went forth in the fury of suppressed anger, and the dizzy, stifled sensation of complete failure. He had felt sure, even when he felt least sure, that when it was possible to tell his tale fully, miserable story as it was, the man to whom he humbled himself thus, not being a recluse or a mere formalist—a man of the world—would at least, to some degree, understand and perceive how little real guilt there might be even in such a fault as he had committed. It was not a story which could be repeated in a woman’s ears; but a man, who knew more or less what was in man—the momentary lapses, the sudden impulses, the aberrations of intolerable trouble, sorrow, and despair——. Aubrey did not take into account the fact that there are some men to whom such a condition as that into which he himself had fallen in the desolation of his silent house—when death came a second time within the sad year, and his young soul felt in the first sensation of despair that he could not bear it; that he was a man signalled out by fate, to whom it was vain to struggle, to whom life was a waste and heaven a mockery—was inconceivable. Colonel Kingsward was certainly not a man like that. He would have said to himself that the mother being gone it was only a blessing and advantage that the child should go too, and he would have withdrawn himself decorously to his London lodgings and his club, and his friends would all have said that it was on the whole a good thing for him, and that he was young, and his life still before him. So, indeed, they had said of Aubrey, and so poor Aubrey had proved for himself. Had there not been that terrible moment behind him, that intolerable blackness and midnight of despair, in which any hand that gripped his could lead him till the light of morning burst upon him, and showed him whither in his misery he had been led!
Satisfy other claims? The words blew like a noxious wind through his brain. He laughed to himself softly as he went along. What claims had he to satisfy? He had done all that honour and scorn could do to satisfy the harpy who had dug her claws into his life. Should he try to propitiate her with other gifts? No, no! That would be but to prolong the scandal, to give her a motive for continuance, to make it appear that he was in her power. He was in her power, alas, fatally as it proved, if it should be so that she had made an end of the happiness of his life. She had blighted the former chapter of that existence, bringing out all that was petty in the poor little bride over whom she had gained so complete an ascendancy, showing her husband Amy’s worst side, the aspect of her which he might never have known but for that fatal companion ever near. And now she had ruined him altogether—ruined him as in old stories the Pamelas of the village were ruined by a villain who took advantage of their simplicity. What lovely woman who had stooped to folly could be more ruined than this unhappy young man? He laughed to himself at this horrible travesty of that old familiar eighteenth century tale. This was the fin de siecle version of it, he supposed—the version in which it was the designing woman who seized upon the moment of weakness and the man who suffered shipwreck of everything in consequence. There was a horrible sort of ridicule in it which wrought poor Aubrey almost to madness. When the woman is the victim, however sorely she may be to blame for her own disgrace, a sort of pathos and romance is about her, and pity is winged with indignation against the man who is supposed to have taken advantage of her weakness. But when it is a man who is the victim! Then the mildest condemnation he can look for is the coarse laugh of contempt, the inextinguishable ridicule, to which even in fiction it is too great a risk to expose a hero. He was no hero—but an unhappy young man fallen into the most dreadful position in which man could be, shut out of all hope of ever recovering himself, marked by the common scorn—no ordinary sinner, a man who had profaned his own home, and all the most sacred prejudices of humanity. He had felt all that deeply when he rushed from his house, a man distraught not knowing where he went. And then morning and evening, and the dews and the calm, and the freshness and elasticity inalienable from youth had driven despair and horror away. He had felt it at last impossible that all his life—a life which he desired to live out in duty and kindness, and devotion to God and man—should be spoiled for ever by his momentary yielding to a horrible temptation. He had thought at first that he never could hold up his head again. But gradually the impression had been soothed away, and he had vainly hoped that such a thing might be left behind him and might be heard of no more.
Now he was undeceived—now he was convinced that for what a man does he must answer, not only at the bar of God, where all the secrets of the heart are revealed, but also before men. There are times in which the former judgment is more easy to think of than the latter—for God knows all, everything that is in favour of the culprit, while men only know what is against him. A man with sorrow in his heart for all his shortcomings, can endure, upon his knees, that all-embracing gaze of infinite understanding and pity. But to stand before men who misconstrue, mis-see, misapprehend, how different a thing it is—who do not know the end from the beginning, to whom the true balance and perfect poise of justice is almost impossible—who can judge only as they know, and who can know only the husk and shell of fact, the external aspect of affairs by the side which is visible to them. All these thoughts went through Aubrey’s mind as he went listlessly about those familiar streets in their autumnal quiet, no crowd about, nothing to interrupt the progress of the wayfarer. He went across the Green Park, which is brown in the decadence of summer, almost as solitary as if he had been in his own desolate glades at home. London has a soothing effect sometimes on such a still, sunny autumn day, when it seems to rest after the worry and heat and strain of all its frivolity and folly. The soft haze blurs all the outlines, makes the trees too dark and the sky too pale; yet it is sunshine and not fog which wraps the landscape, even that landscape which lies between Pall Mall and Piccadilly. It soothed our young man a little in the despair of his thoughts. Surely, surely at eight-and-twenty everything could not be over. Bee would in a year or two be the mistress of her own actions. She was not a meek girl, to be coerced by her father. She would judge for herself in such a dreadful emergency. After all that had passed, the whole facts of the case would have to be submitted to her, which was a thought that enveloped him as in flames of shame. Yet she would judge for herself, and her judgment would be more like that of heaven than like that of earth. A kind of celestial ray gleamed upon him in this thought.
And as for these other claims—well, if any claim were put forth he would not shrink—would not try to compromise, would not try to hide his shame under piles of gold. Now he had no motive for concealment, he would face it out and have the question set straight in the eye of day. To be sure, for a man to accuse a woman is against the whole conventional code of honour. To accuse all women is the commonplace of every day; but to put the blame of seduction upon one is what a man dare not do save in the solitude of his chamber—or in such a private inquisition as Aubrey had gone through that day. This is one of the proofs that there is much to be said on both sides, and that it is the unscrupulous of either side who has the most power to humble and to destroy. But the bravado did him good for the moment—let her make her claim, whatever that claim was, and he would meet it in the face of day!
Other ideas came rapidly into Aubrey’s mind when he strolled listlessly into his club, and almost ran against the friend in whose house he had first met Colonel Kingsward, and through whom consequently all that had afterwards happened had come about. “Fairfield!” he cried, with a gleam of sudden hope in his eyes.
“Leigh! You here?—I thought you were philandering on the banks of—some German river or other. Well! and so I hear I have to congratulate you, my boy—and I’m sure I do so with all my heart——”
“You might have done so a week ago, and I should have responded with all mine. But you see me fallen again on darker days. Fate’s against me, it seems, in every way.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” cried his friend. “I expected to see you triumphant. What has gone wrong? Not settlements already, eh?”
“Settlements! They are free to make what settlements they like so far as I am concerned.”
“Kingsward’s a very cool hand, Aubrey. You may lose your head if you like, but he always knows what he is about. You are an excellent match——”
“You think so,” said poor Aubrey, with a laugh. “Not badly off; a mild, domestic fellow, with no devil in me at all.
“I should not exactly say that. A man is no man without a spice of the devil. Why, what’s the matter? Now I look at you, instead of a victorious lover, you have the most miserable hang-dog——”
“Hang-dog, that is it—a rope’s end, and all over. Hang it, no! I am not going to give in. Fairfield, I don’t want to speak disrespectfully of any woman.”
“Is it Mrs. Kingsward who is too young, herself, to think of enacting the part of mother-in-law so soon as this?”
“Mrs. Kingsward is a sort of an angel, Fairfield, if it were not old-fashioned to say so—and, alas, I fear, she will not enact any part long, which is so much the worse for me.”
“You don’t say so! That pretty creature, with all her pretty ways, and her daughter just the same age as she! Poor Kingsward. Aubrey, if a man shows a little impatience with your raptures in such circumstances, I don’t think you ought to be hard upon him.”
“I don’t believe he knows what are the circumstances, nor any of them. It is not from that cause, Fairfield. You know Miss Lance, poor Amy’s friend——”
Once more he grew hot all over as he named her name, and turned his face from his friend’s gaze.
“Remember her! I should think so, and all you had to bear on that point, old man. We have often said, Mary and I, that if ever there was a hero——”
“Fairfield! they have got up a tale that it was I who kept her at Forest-leigh against poor Amy’s will, and that my poor wife’s life was made miserable by my attentions to that fi——.” Fiend he would have said, but he changed it to “woman,” which meant to him at that moment the same thing.
Fairfield stared for a moment—was he taking a new idea into his commonplace mind? Then he burst into a loud laugh. “You can call the whole county to bear witness to that,” he cried. “Attentions! Well, I suppose you were civil, which was really more than anyone expected from you.”
“You know, and everybody knows, what a thorn in the flesh it was. My poor Amy! Without that, there would have been no cloud on our life, and it all arose from her best qualities, her tender heart, her faithfulness——”
A dubious shade came over Fairfield’s face. “Yes, no doubt; and Miss Lance’s flattery and blandishments. Aubrey, I don’t mind saying it now that you are well quit of her—that was a woman to persuade a fellow into anything. I should no more have dared to keep her—especially after—in my house, and to expose myself to her wiles——”
“They never were wiles for me,” said Aubrey, again turning his head away. It was true, true—far more true than the fatal contradiction of it, which lay upon his heart like a stone. “I never came nearer to hating any of God’s creatures than that woman. She made my life a burden to me. She took my wife from me——. She—— I needn’t get dithyrambic on the subject; you all know.”
“Oh, yes, we all know; but you were too soft-hearted. You should have risked a fit of tears from poor Mrs. Leigh—excuse me for saying so now—and sent her away.”
“I tried it a dozen times. Poor Amy would have broken her heart. She threatened even to go with her. And they say women don’t make friendships with each other!”
Fairfield shrugged his shoulders a little. “I suffer myself from my wife’s friends,” he said; “there’s always some ‘dear Clara’ or other putting the table out of joint, making me search heaven and earth when there’s anybody to dinner to find an odd man. But Mary has some——” Sense, he was going to say, but stopped short. Mrs. Fairfield was one of those who had concluded long ago that dear Amy was a little goose, taken sad advantage of by her persistent friend.
“Fairfield,” said Aubrey, “you could do me a great service if you would. Colonel Kingsward has just told me that he can’t send out a royal commission to examine my friends on this subject. You see him sometimes, I suppose. I know you belong to one of his clubs. Still more, he’s at his office all the morning, and you know him well enough to look in upon him there.”
“Well?” said Fairfield, dubiously.
“Couldn’t you stretch a point for my sake, and go—and tell him the real state of affairs in respect to Miss Lance, and how untrue it is, how ridiculously untrue, that she was kept at Forest-leigh by any will of mine? Why, it was a thing, as you have just said, that all the county knew! An infatuation—and nothing less than the bane of my whole married life.”
“Yes, I know—everybody thought so,” Mr. Fairfield said. That new idea—was it perhaps germinating faintly in his mind?—no one had thought of any other explanation, but yet——”
“If you were only to say so—only as much as that—that all my friends recognised the state of the case.”
“I could say that,” said Fairfield, with hesitation. “Don’t think me unfriendly, Aubrey, but it’s a little awkward for a man to interfere in another man’s affairs, and it’s not only your affairs that I know so well, but you see Kingsward’s too——”
“I am aware of that, Fairfield; still, to break off what I believe in my heart would be for his daughter’s happiness too——”
“To be sure there’s the young lady to be taken into consideration,” said Fairfield, dubiously.
It will be as well to carry this incident to its completion at once. Mr. Fairfield at the last allowed himself to be convinced, and he went that afternoon to the club, to which he still belonged by some early military experiences, and where Colonel Kingsward was one of those who ruled supreme. He knew exactly when to find him at the club, where he strolled in after leaving his office, to refresh himself with a cup of tea, or something else in its place. The intercessor went up to the table at which the Colonel sat with the evening paper, and conversed for a little on the topics of the day. After these had been run over, and the prospects of war slightly discussed—for Colonel Kingsward had not much respect for Mr. Fairfield’s opinion on that subject—the latter gentleman said abruptly—
“I say, Kingsward, I am very sorry to hear there is some hitch in the marriage which I was so glad to hear of last week.”
“Ah, oh! So Leigh has been with you, I presume?” the Colonel replied.
“Yes; and, upon my life, Colonel, there is not a word of truth in any talk you may have heard about that Miss Lance——. We all know quite well the whole business. You should hear Mary on the subject. Of course, he can’t say to you, poor fellow, that his first wife was a little queer, and that that woman made her her slave.”
“No; it wasn’t to be expected that he would tell me that.”
“But it’s true. She got completely the upper hand of that poor little thing. The husband had no influence. I believe he hated her—like the devil.”
“You think so,” said the Colonel, with a strange smile, “yet it is a curious thing that he endured her all the same, and also that a wife should insist so in keeping another woman in her husband’s constant company—and an attractive woman, as I hear.”
“Oh! a devil of a woman,” cried Fairfield. “I was telling Aubrey I should no more have ventured to expose myself to her blandishments——. One of those sort of women, you know, that you cannot abide, yet who can turn you round their little finger.”
“And what did he say to that?” the Colonel asked, still with that smile.
“Oh, he said she never had any charm for him—and I believe it—for what with poor little Mrs. Leigh’s whims and vagaries, and the other’s flatteries and adulation and complete empire over her, his life was made a burden to him. You should hear Mary on that subject—none of the ladies could keep their patience.”
“Yet it appears Mr. Aubrey Leigh kept his—— until he got tired,” said the Colonel. “Believe me, Fairfield, when there is such an unnatural situation as that, there must be more in it than meets the eye.”
Fairfield, a good, steady soul, who generally had his ideas suggested to him, went away very serious from that interview. It was very strange indeed that a woman should prefer her friend to her husband, and make things wretched for him in order to keep her comfortable—it was very curious that with a woman so much superior to Amy in the house, a woman of the kind that turn men’s heads, that mild Aubrey Leigh, who was not distinguished for force of character, should have never sought a moment’s relief with her from poor Mrs. Leigh’s querulousness. Fairfield accelerated his departure by an hour or two in order not to meet Aubrey again before he had poured those strange doubts and suggestions into his own Mary’s ears.