CHAPTER VIII.
WOMAN TO WOMAN.
Feminine curiosity, we may take it for granted, is sometimes less keen than feminine grief. If it were otherwise, in what way, I pray you, should any one account for the fact, that some weeks passed away, from the night of Lally’s death, without Heather Dudley knowing all the particulars of Bessie’s existence from the hour when she left Berrie Down, till she reappeared in Lincoln’s Inn Fields?
In truth, the mother’s sorrow was very terrible; so engrossing, that it nearly deadened all desire to ascertain the particulars of another human being’s life; besides which, there was a mystery about Bessie—a mystery Heather, in the midst of her grief, intuitively felt chary of intruding on. She wished no one to hear of her return; she came at night to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and was admitted privily by Tifford, whom probably she had bribed to secrecy, for none of the other servants ever heard of her visits. She wore a ring, a golden wedding-ring, and yet her face was not the face of a happy woman. She volunteered no particulars of the events which had intervened between the time when she stole away from the Hollow like a thief in the night, till she returned to see Lally before she died. She was sweeter than of old, but she was also sadder, and her beauty, neither dimmed nor diminished, was yet changed.
All these things Mrs. Dudley beholding, even through her tears, might have marvelled at, though she never inquired into them, until one day there arrived a note from Bessie, saying, “I can tell you no more, dear Heather, unless you will visit me. Come to me once, at all events; I want to speak to you, and I want to show you something.”
Dressed in her deep mourning, Heather repaired to the address given—a first floor in Roscommon Street, Pentonville.
What a mean street it was—what small, close rooms that pretty Bessie had selected; and yet, when Heather came to sit down beside the fire, with her old friend’s hand clasping hers, she forgot all the words of remonstrance she had intended to speak, and listened to Bessie’s sorrowful apologies.
“It is not exactly the kind of parlour I should have liked to ask you to spend a day in, Heather,” she said; “but beggars, you know, cannot be choosers; and I wanted to talk to you so much—so much—and to show you something, if you do not mind.”
“If I do not mind!” Heather repeated, wonderingly.
“Yes, sweet—my child!” and, with the colour mantling in her cheeks, Bessie went into the next room, her bedchamber, and brought thence a baby—a great, staring, fat baby—with pink feet, and arms that looked as though cord had been tied tightly round the wrists, so deep were the rolls and wrinkles of flesh, so high the mountains and so deep the intermediate valley.
Is it necessary for me to describe what followed during the course of the next ten minutes? What woman is there who does not know exactly how Heather took the little fatuous-looking lump of mortality to her heart and cried over it; who cannot conceive how Bessie, sitting on a low stool, gazed at the meaningless features of her child, which cooed and clung to Heather, and dabbed its fists in her face, and crowed with delight at the sweet eyes bent upon it, and kicked in an ecstasy of infantile excitement at all the notice “mamma’s company” was taking of mamma’s autocrat.
Of course there was weeping. Heather could not so soon forget her own first-born as to forbear shedding tears at sight of Bessie’s baby; and then Bessie cried, and, finally, the autocrat yelled, which ebullition of feeling did more towards restoring the mental equilibrium of the two ladies than one of the Church homilies or a charge from the Archbishop of Canterbury could have done.
And still Heather asked no questions, while Bessie, having brought in her boy’s cradle, sat rocking him to sleep. Mrs. Dudley, spite of that child, the mean lodgings, the tangible wedding-ring, refrained from cross-examination. In an earlier part of this story, it has been stated that Squire Dudley’s wife knew when to keep a discreet silence, but it has not been stated that she frequently did not know when to speak.
She was sensitive to a fault; and so now, though she felt dying to know, and Bessie sat longing to tell, there ensued a silence which the latter at length broke with—
“Heather, why is it that you have never reproached me? how does it happen you had not a single hard word—nothing but love, and tears, and kisses for me, who repaid your kindness with such bitter ingratitude?”
“My darling! why should I reproach you?” Heather answered. “What am I that I should be hard upon you, however it may be?”
“And how do you think it is, Heather?” asked her friend, turning from the child, now fast asleep; “what is your opinion about the matter?”
“I would rather not form any,” was the reply.
“But you must, dear,” Bessie declared; “you are thinking even now about me. What is the conclusion at which you have arrived?”
“I was only marvelling!” Mrs. Dudley answered. “If you are married, where is your husband—why are you here? if you are not married—oh! Bessie, sweet, forgive me!”
“Forgive you, Heather!” Bessie answered, “forgive you! If you think even the implication of such a misfortune so hurtful to me, what will the reality prove to you, Heather? I am not a married woman, spite of this—and this”—she pointed to ring and infant—“I am no more married in the eye of the law, than I was when I left Berrie Down!”
“God help you!” Heather murmured, softly.
“Ay, God help me, indeed!” Bessie repeated. “Sometimes, sitting here alone, I think He has dealt with me very hardly; but, then, I look at my child and grow patient. I want to tell you my story, if it will not weary you.”
“Weary me!” Heather exclaimed.
“You do not draw away from me—you do not regard me as a pariah,” Bessie continued. “If I were to go to my mother now, and tell her what I am about to tell you, she would order me out of the house, and address me for ever after with the doorchain up. Do you understand me clearly, Heather Dudley?” she said, almost impatiently. “I am not a married woman, and yet I am a mother! Shall I fetch your shawl and bonnet, and send for a cab, and bid you farewell for ever? Don’t you hate to touch me? Is the room not oppressive in which I breathe the same air with you?” and, as she spoke, Bessie rose excitedly, and would have moved farther away but that Heather caught and chid her for her want of faith.
“I am your friend, love,” she said in the low tone which had such a virtue of healing and leisure in it—“not your judge. We are woman to woman now, Bessie, tell me what you will.”
Then Bessie, flinging herself on her knees, buried her face in the folds of Heather’s dress, and sobbed aloud. “I have sinned,” she said, “I have sinned, but not willingly; my greatest guilt was my deceitfulness, my sly ingratitude.”
“You were deceitful,” Heather answered. “Oh! Bessie, how could you, how was it possible for you, to engage yourself to Gilbert Harcourt, caring, as you must have done——”
“Heather, you are wrong,” broke in Bessie; “I was engaged to Gilbert Harcourt before I ever saw the—the—father of my child. You know what a life I had at home; you know any life would have seemed preferable to that. Across it in an unlucky hour Mr. Harcourt walked. He fell in love with me—he was a good creature and a kindly, and so, though I did not care for him in the least, I said yes when he asked me to marry him—said yes, prompted and badgered thereto by my mother, and so became engaged.
“What is the idea of the world in such matters? Is it not almost that a woman engaged is a woman married? Such was my idea, at all events; but I wearied of the tie before long; it is hard always to remember one is engaged to a man for whom one does not care two straws. That was my case with Gilbert Harcourt. I tried hard to like him, but I failed; my sin as regards him was ever promising to become his wife, not in breaking my promise; is it not better to part even at the altar-rails than to take false vows before God? I played a double game for months and months—there was my error; but I was a coward, and I dare never have faced my mother had I told her my repugnance to marrying the suitor she favoured; besides, my other suitor did not come forward. Oh! Heather, Heather, I felt so miserable and so wicked down at the Hollow, I felt so deceitful and false amongst you all. My love, had you been my mother, I never should have been sitting here to-day, a wife, and yet no wife; had you not been my friend, God only knows where I should have been to-day, perhaps dead, perhaps living in sin, certainly not here, struggling feebly to do right, to atone for my transgression, striving to forget the only man I ever loved, Heather, the only man I ever loved.”
She put her hand to her head and moaned as she spoke—moaned like one in some bodily pain.
“Bessie,” whispered Heather, bending low, “don’t speak to me about your trouble, dear, if it pains you to do so. I do not require to hear——”
“But I require to tell you,” Bessie broke in vehemently. “We met, he and I, after I was engaged to Gilbert, where do you think, Heather? in a railway carriage, and he never spoke to me, and I never spoke to him for forty miles while the train rushed on to the lonely country place where I was travelling to spend my Christmas—the Christmas previous to that I passed with you. Mamma and I had quarrelled that morning, and, in consequence of our quarrel, I missed the train by which my friends expected me; the result of this was, that when I arrived at Thirkell no one met me, and there I was stranded at about nine o’clock of a winter’s night on the platform of a lonely country station, where such a luxury as a fly was unknown, and the parsonage whither I was bound three miles off.
“Had it not been for the manner in which I parted from my mother I should have returned to town by the next train due at Thirkell, the station-master informed me, at 10.25 P.M. As things were, however, I decided on making the best of my way to Holston Vicarage on foot, protected by a porter six feet high, who declared his willingness to take charge of me.
“All this time my travelling companion was engaged in sending a telegram to town, to which he said he should wait an answer, and ‘in the meanwhile,’ he added, turning to me, ‘if you are not afraid of the cold, my man can drive you over to Holston and be back here quite as soon as I shall require him.’
“What should you have done under the circumstances, Heather? dropped a pretty curtsey and answered—‘Thank you, sir, but my mamma would not be pleased if she heard of my accepting any civility at your hands, and as I am a good child and like to do what my mamma tells me, I will walk, if you please, all along the dirty lanes to Holston, and make myself as uncomfortable as it is possible for a human being to render herself?’
“That would have been proper, would it not, man being woman’s natural enemy? I, however, preferring impropriety to discomfort, accepted his offer, was helped by him into a dog-cart, which seemed to me about five storeys high, thanked him, bade him good-night, and in twenty minutes was set down at the door of Holston Parsonage, when, of course, my friends had quite given me up. Oh! dear,” Bessie sighed, “oh! dear, to think that so simple a thing should be the beginning of so much trouble!”
“And after that——” Mrs. Dudley suggested.
“After that, how did we meet?” the girl replied; “the first time it was on the road, and we bowed; next time, we spoke. The people I was staying with were old as the hills, and never took a walk by any chance. I did, unhappily; and so at length it came to pass that we—he and I, met on the downs, in the lanes—sometimes here, sometimes there—but still constantly. I think,” added Bessie, “we both fought against our wish to see each other in those days—I know I did—I know I chose each morning I went out a different path, but let me go which way I would I met him.
“At last, I thought I had better return to town, but he followed me to London. Can you fancy what it was, Heather, to return to that horrible engagement—to the sight of a man now grown positively distasteful? No, you cannot, love, I know; God forbid you should. What next? we met in town, we met at the seashore; and still I did try to avoid him. You believe me, Heather, I did strive with all my heart to do my duty to Gilbert and forget the other, but it was impossible; I loved the last, I had grown absolutely to dislike the first. It was no negative feeling I had for my affianced husband then, it was active aversion. Oh! Heather, then came the part of my life I hate to look back upon. I was not honest, I was not open. When in a fit of repentance, for such I know now it must have been, he disappeared from Southend, where we were then staying, I never told Gilbert I was changed. I let him come on—on—I allowed them all to talk about my marriage; and I meant to marry him, loving the other all the time, and only angry at his having, as I considered, deserted me.”
“Did he—did the one you were fond of know of your engagement to Gilbert?” Mrs. Dudley replied.
“Ah! Heather, do you think there was anything I kept from him?” Bessie answered; “and, if I had not been the stupid goose I was, his manner might have told me there must be something wrong. He listened to me, and he thought the affair over, as it seemed, in his mind; and then he begged me to give Gilbert up, but he never said, ‘I will come forward and shield you from the storm you dread.’ No, he only said, ‘If you love me, you will have nothing to do with him.’ But I was afraid, afraid of my mother, afraid of being found out, afraid of our being parted, and I had never seen any good in all my life, and how could I be good and firm—how was it possible?”
“My poor child! my poor darling!” Heather murmured.
“You do not know Southend,” Bessie said, looking up in the face which was bent down over her. “You do not know Southend. People tell me it is not a nice place, but it was as the kingdom of heaven to me. There are walks along the shore to Leigh, and walks beyond Leigh to Hadleigh; there is a way along the shore to Shoeburyness, and there are delicious field-paths leading to farm-houses, which seemed to me the very abodes of peace and contentment. Oh! those days—those sunshiny happy days! You are crying, love, what is it? Are you sorry for me? I was a poor weak treacherous girl; but so happy, darling, so blessed!”
And Bessie covered her face with her hands, and the tears came trickling through her fingers. They had indeed been happy days, but they were gone, and she sat weeping for the bliss which had been; whilst Heather, thinking of the sunshine and bliss her own life had lacked, could not choose but weep also.
“Then suddenly he went away,” Bessie resumed, “and soon afterwards I came to stay with you; in your house I learned that summer my alphabet of a better life. Unconsciously, women like you, Heather, mould and purify other women; you are as the salt which salteth the earth—you are as the leaven hid in the three measures of meal——”
“Stop, Bessie dearest,” entreated Heather. “Have not you, even you, said within this last fortnight, I was hard to my husband, and I have been hard and unsympathetic, and wrapped up in my own grief, Lord pardon me?”
“But I did not mean that you were really hard,” Bessie declared; “only that you were not quite the Heather you used to be—the Heather who thought of Arthur before she thought of any one else—there, there—I must get on with my story or I shall never finish it. Where was I?—growing better—when he came after me once again, praying, pleading, assuring me, both by word of mouth and by letter, that it could not be right for me to marry a man I disliked; that if I persisted in keeping to my engagement I should be preparing misery for myself, for Gilbert, and for him.
“But still, he never said, ‘I will come and claim you from him’—never once.
“How I strove to keep my engagement you may, perhaps, remember; but when he saw I was determined to be true to my promise, he grew desperate, and would have had me risk everything and go off with him then. He explained that he was placed in a difficult position in consequence of his father, on whom he was dependent, wishing him to marry a rich widow; and, of course, I was not so selfish as to desire that he should beggar himself for my sake; so we parted again. Oh, Heather, I did not sink without many a struggle, many a frantic effort to touch secure ground. Everything he told me was false, even to his name; for he assumed that of a cousin the better to deceive me; but I loved him then as I love him now; and then as now. I found it hard to see a fault in him.
“At last I could bear it no longer, and left with him as you know; we were married next morning at a church in the City—he had been residing in the parish for the requisite period—and, as we drove away from the door, I saw my father walking along the side path. I could have put out my hand and touched his shoulder, but he prevented my speaking to him. He would not let me write to you or any one. He said some day he would avow our marriage, and, till then, I must be patient; and I was patient. I never wearied him. I never even felt fretful; if he had asked me to go to Iceland with him, I would have done it. I would have died for him.
“We were so happy,” she continued, after a pause; “we had the loveliest cottage you can imagine in a distant county; and, though he said he was poor, I never felt any shortness of money; we never seemed to have anxiety about providing for the morrow’s wants. My only trouble was his frequent absences; but still, spite of these, he spent a considerable part of his time with me, and he grew to know you and Arthur, and Lally, and the girls, as though you had all been members of his own household.”
“You have more to tell me,” Heather said, as Bessie paused.
“Yes,” was the reply; “I have, the end of my story. One day, when we were out together, we met a gentleman whom my husband greeted with a certain annoyance and restraint. They seemed very familiar and intimate; but, still, Maurice—I always called him Maurice—did not introduce his friend to me, nor invite him to our house. After he left us, I asked his name.
“‘Oh, that is my rich cousin,’ Maurice said in reply. ‘I hope he did not guess who you are.’
“‘Why, would he tell your father?’ I asked, and he answered ‘No; he did not think so. He believed him to be a better fellow than all that came to; but he is a canting idiot,’ he said, ‘and has got so many strange ideas. If he should happen to call, you must not see him; remember, you must not, Bessie!’
“I promised him that I would not, and I meant to keep my promise; but a fortnight afterwards—when my husband having gone up to London, I was alone—this same man stepped, without any announcement whatever, through one of the front windows opening into the garden, and, after very briefly apologising for his intrusion, and the fright he had caused me, commenced one of the most dreadful sermons you ever heard, Heather, and wound up by inquiring ‘whether I had ever considered I was going down into hell and dragging his cousin there with me.’
“Thinking he was mad, I humoured him at first; but, after a time, finding there was a wonderful coherence in his discourse—that it was, in fact, too stupid to be the speech of a madman—I asked him, plainly, what he meant, entreating of him, in the same sentence, not to tell Maurice’s father of his son’s marriage; for that fear of bringing unhappiness on my husband was the only grief I had.
“Then it was his turn to look bewildered. ‘Father—son—husband—Maurice!’ he repeated in blank astonishment. ‘My cousin’s name is not Maurice, and has no father living. May I ask pardon if you are married to my——the gentleman I——met you with the other day?’
“‘Certainly,’ I answered; ‘do you think I should be here if I were not?’
“‘Then,’ he said, ‘it is my duty to tell you my cousin has most grossly deceived you. The marriage is not, cannot be, a legal one; for, to my knowledge, his wife is alive at the present moment.’
“After that,” proceeded Bessie, “there is a blank in my memory—I suppose I fainted; it was a fearful blow to receive, but the man who dealt it stayed with me for nearly an hour, and was very kind and thoughtful towards me. He did not call the servants; he made no fuss; he threw a little water on my face, and let me struggle back to consciousness without drawing the attention of any one to my trouble. When I was quite recovered he begged my pardon for the mistake he had made in the first instance, and assured me, I think truly, that, had he guessed for a moment the depth of his cousin’s treachery, he never would have been so abrupt.
“‘But I spoke to him in his own house about you the other day,’ he added, ‘and he bade me mind my own business, and not interfere with his—who you were or what you were, he said, was his concern, and his only. So then I determined that you should not perish eternally for want of a word spoken in time.’
“I let him go on for some minutes—I let him preach to his heart’s content, and then I said:
“‘You have told me his faults—now show me his excuse. He was forced to marry against his will. His wife is old, ugly, ill-tempered. He never loved her; it was a marriage of convenience, which he was compelled into by others.’
“He knew what I was thinking of—he guessed I was seeking an apology to stay with him. He had sense enough to see I would have given life itself to hear his wife was a hideous old shrew. He had not human feeling sufficient to understand my mad jealousy, but he could not help seeing it was not accusations against my husband I wanted to hear. Oh no! it was the defence I was panting for.
“‘He married young,’ was the reply, ‘a lady of equal age, well born, wealthy, beautiful, accomplished, virtuous. They do not live happily, it is true; but she was his own free choice. He was rich and independent enough always to marry whomsoever he pleased.’
“‘And his real name?’ I asked.
“Then he told me, and then only I fully understood how cruelly I had been deceived—what a tissue of falsehoods his story had been from first to last, from beginning to end. He had passed himself off to me as the man who now sat explaining the depth of my misery to me. I showed him the certificate of my marriage, and he said, ‘Yes; according to this the bridegroom was myself. What shall you do now? You will not, I trust, make the matter public, nor think of prosecuting him.’
“Prosecuting him! I stared at him as I repeated the words. Bring trouble to the man I loved! What did he think I was made of, I wonder, to expect I should turn in a moment like that? Husband or no husband, he was still dearer to me than anything on the face of God’s earth; and so I told this bearer of bad tidings, who then seemed to fear I should fall, as he expressed it, into deeper sin; that my beauty—he had the grace to admit I was beautiful—should prove a worse snare than ever to his cousin, a lure of the devil to trap him to destruction.
“I could not bear any more after that. I asked him if he were a clergyman, and he said no; that the sect to which he belonged approved of lay preachers, and that all men were ministers whom the grace of God moved to speak His word.
“‘And do you imagine such lecturing will do me any good?’ I said; ‘do you not know you are taking the most likely means to make me remain where I am? Do you consider it is a light trouble which has befallen me? Do you expect me to feel grateful to you for bringing news which has utterly destroyed my happiness?’ for I was so happy—so happy.
“‘Sinfully happy,’ he said.
“At that I fired up. Where was the sin, I asked, when I knew nothing of it? Why could he not have left me alone, now the thing was done and past, and that no act of mine could undo it? Why did he come there? I raved, I think I must have done, for at length he said he would leave me for a season, and return the next day when I grew calmer, and more willing to listen to the voice of consolation.
“‘Meaning yours,’ I suggested.
“‘I will help you, if you permit me,’ he answered; ‘help you with advice—money to go back to your friends.’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘you will not. You have done what you consider your duty; and, if I do not thank you for your misjudged kindness, it is only because I find it difficult to speak ordinary words of courtesy when my heart is broken. There is nothing more you can do for me—all the rest lies between him and me—between him and me and God, and in the bitterness of our future no man shall meddle.’
“‘As you wish,’ he answered; ‘only tell me one thing more: have you friends to whom you can apply for assistance? I only ask that I may feel you are not quite desolate.’
“This touched me a little. ‘I have one friend,’ I said, ‘who would not, I know, turn from me in any distress or difficulty.’
“‘And that friend——’
“‘Is a woman,’ I finished, ‘and one not of my own kindred nor of mine own house; but I shall not go to her, and what I mean to do I shall not tell you.’
“He turned and looked at me doubtfully; then he said, ‘May I call to-morrow?’ to which I answered, ‘Yes,’ if he would only leave me then.
“Twice on his way to the window he stopped and hesitated; and while he went down the garden, I saw him clasp his hands as if praying.
“I longed to fling a book after him; but I was wrong, Heather, I was wrong. I believe him to have been a good man, though he did come and take all the sunshine out of my life in a minute, for it was such sunshine, and I was so happy.
“When he left me, then, for the first time I realised my position. I will not tell you, Heather, what I passed through during the hours that followed. There was a time when I knew, if such a temptation had been presented to me, I should have yielded to it; but I thought of you, and that thought made me strong. I seemed to hear your voice calling me away. I fancied I could see your eyes pleading—pleading for me to leave; you saved me, Heather. I should have stayed on, had I never known you; I should have stayed on or drowned myself—the temptation swayed now to sin, now to suicide, and when I left his house, I do not think I knew exactly whether it was to be life or death,—whether I would end the struggle or endure it. I believe I was mad.”
“And how long is it since all this happened?” Mrs. Dudley inquired.
“Months and months ago,” was the reply. “How far I walked that night, all through the darkness, I should be afraid to say; for how many days and nights I wandered purposelessly on, I could not tell you: my mind took no account of time or distance. It was in the autumn, and the weather lovely. I kept to the field-paths and the lonely lanes; I avoided high roads, and railway stations, and towns. I had no object in view except to get a long distance away from him; and where I should ultimately have walked to, I cannot imagine, had my strength been equal to my will; but it was not. I dropped down one morning on a piece of green sward under the shelter of some elm-trees, (the place reminded me of Berrie Down Lane,) and I thought I was dying. I saw a house in the distance, and strove to crawl on towards it, but failed in the attempt. I do not remember anything after that, until I found myself lying in a strange bed in a strange room, with my baby beside me.
“English Samaritans dwelt in the house I had seen amongst the trees, and some of them finding me lying dead, as they thought, by the wayside, carried me in. I was ill for months, and during the whole of that time they never asked me who I was, or whence I came. Voluntarily, however, I told them my story, and then they would have had me stay with them always, and teach their children, and give such poor service as I could in exchange for board and lodging.
“I agreed to do so; but, before I settled down, I felt I must see you once more, and hear how Lally was. So I made my way to the Hollow, where learning from Ned that she was not expected to live, I travelled straight on to London,—and you know the rest. I will go back to my friends very shortly now. I have written to tell them the reason why I could not return before.”
“But why not stay in London, Bessie?” inquired Mrs. Dudley.
“Because I am poor,” was the reply, “and I must now work for myself and my child; because I shall be safe there from any fear of meeting him,—because I have nothing to keep me in London, excepting you; and you, Heather—will let me write to you occasionally, will you not?”
“That was not the way in which you intended to finish your sentence,” remarked Heather, with a smile.
“No,” Bessie answered, frankly, “it was not.”
“You were going to say you could not come to see me quite safely, because you thought I knew something of the person who has brought you to this, my child.”
“Don’t, Heather—don’t!” Bessie pleaded.
“I am to ask no questions, then? I am not to inquire his name; but there is one thing I may do, love, and that is tell you what his cousin would not, that if it be the individual I suspect, he is one of the most miserable men on earth.”
“And do you think he really loved me?”
“How should I be able to tell that?” Heather answered; “and you must talk of love no more in connection with him, Bessie; for love becomes sin, when it is impossible for it to produce other fruits than shame and sorrow.”
After that the two women sat silent for a time,—Bessie holding Heather’s hand, and Heather stroking Bessie’s hair gently and thoughtfully.
Little more than twelve months before, Heather had told Alick she did not know much about wickedness herself, and behold, already she was coming dimly to understand, that no human comprehension of life can be perfect, the boundaries of which exclude from sight, all evil, all passion, all temptation, all repentance, all despair.