CHAPTER XXXII.
MR. JESSOP’S SUGGESTION.
Laurence Wynne had taken but one person into his confidence, and that was Mr. Jessop. As he sat smoking a post-midnight cigar over the fire in his friend’s chambers, he told him that Mrs. Wynne no longer existed. She preferred to stick to her name of West, and wished to keep her marriage a secret always from—not alone her father, but the whole world.
This much he had divulged. He felt that he must speak to some one. His heart was so sore that he could not maintain total silence, and who so fitting a confidant as his old friend Dick Jessop? He was chivalrous to Madeline in spite of all that had come and gone, and veiled her defects as skilfully as he could, not speaking out of the full bitterness of his soul. But Mr. Jessop’s active imagination filled in all the delicately traced outline—perhaps in rather too black a shading, if the truth were known!
However, he kept his surmises discreetly to himself, and puffed and pondered for a long time in silence. At last he spoke.
“I would let her alone, and not bother my head about her, Laurence! She is bound to come back.”
“I don’t think so,” responded the other, curtly.
“Yes; she will return on account of the child.”
“And what would such a coming-back be worth to me? It will not be for my sake,” said Wynne, holding his feelings under strong restraint.
“I know of something that would bring her, like a shot out of a seventy-four pounder,” observed Mr. Jessop after another pause, surveying the coals meditatively as he spoke.
“What?”
“Your paying attention to another woman. Get up a strong and remarkable flirtation with some pretty, smart society matron. Lots of them love your stories. Love me, love my stories. Love my stories, love me, eh? Show yourself in the park, at theatres—better still, a little dinner at the Savoy—and Mrs. Wynne will be on in the scene before you can say Jack Robinson! Jealousy will fetch her!”
“I wouldn’t give a straw for the affection of a woman who was influenced solely by what you have suggested. No, no; I married her before she knew her own mind—before she had a chance of seeing other people, and the world. Now she has seen other people, and become acquainted with the world, she prefers both to me. On five or six hundred a year, with no rich relations, Madeline and I would have been happy enough. As it is, she is happy enough. I must get on alone as well as I can. I made a mistake. I was too hasty.”
“Yes, marry in haste, and repent at leisure!” said Mr. Jessop, grimly.
“I don’t mean that; I mean that I mulled that business at Mrs. Harper’s. I should have wired to Mrs. Wolferton, or insisted on Mrs. Harper taking Madeline back, and given her time to turn round and to reflect; but I rushed the whole thing. However, I must now abide by the position I am placed in with what fortitude I can.”
“You married her, and gave her a home, when she had no friend,” put in Mr. Jessop, sharply. Mr. Jessop was devoted to Laurence, and excessively angry with Laurence’s wife.
“It is not every one I would confide in, Dick,” said his companion; “but you are my oldest chum. You are welcome to be introduced to the skeleton in my cupboard—an old friend’s privilege. We need never talk of this again. I suppose people get over these things in time! There is nothing for it but work—plenty of work.”
Although he discoursed in this cool, self-restrained manner, Mr. Jessop knew, by years of experience, that his friend—who never made much, or, indeed, any, fuss about his feelings—had felt the blow in every nerve of his body.
“Do not think too hardly of her, Dicky,” he exclaimed, promptly reading the other’s thoughts. “She is very young, and very pretty. I’m only a poor, hard-working barrister; and she had an awful time once—you know when! We must never forget how she came through that ordeal. And, after all, I have no human rival. If she does not care for me, she cares for no other man. She is blessed with a particularly cool, unsusceptible temperament. My only rival is riches. It is the money that has ousted me. The enormous strength of wealth has pushed me out of her heart, and barred the door. Time, another powerful engine, may thrust her out of mine!”
“Time! Bosh. Time will never thrust away the fact that she is the mother of your child. He is a tie between you that neither time, riches, nor any amount of balderdash you may talk—nor any number of matrimonial squabbles—can ever break.”
“You are mistaken in your idea of the whole case, Jessop, and under a totally wrong impression. Nothing can bridge the gulf between Madeline and me, unless she chooses to come back of her own accord, and unsay a good deal that she has said; and this she will never do—never. She does not care a straw for me. I merely remind her of days of squallor, sickness, and hideous poverty. She was delighted to accept the freedom which I offered her——”
“And what a fool you were to do it!” exclaimed his listener, contemptuously.
“Not at all; but I should be a fool were I to try to keep a wife, who is not even one in name, and never casts a thought to me from month’s end to month’s end. I shall be—nay, I am—free too.”
“But not in a legal sense, my dear boy; you cannot marry again.”
“No, thank you,” emphatically knocking the ashes off his cigar with great deliberation as he spoke. “The burnt child dreads the fire. I made a bad start this time, and even if I had the chance—which, please God, I never shall have—I would not tempt Fate again, no matter what the provocation. Women are a great mystery: their chief faults and virtues are so unexpected. Look at Madeline: when we were paupers she was a ministering angel. Now that she is rich, she is merely, a smart society girl, and——”
“And milliners, jewellers, flatterers minister to her,” broke in Jessop.
“I intend to make my profession my mistress, and to devote myself to her heart and soul. The law is a steady old lady.”
“And a very cantankerous, hard, flinty-faced, capricious old hag you’ll find the goddess of Justice, my dear fellow. I am going to give up paying my addresses to her! My uncle has left me a tidy legacy. I intend to settle down in comfort in his old manor-house—shoot, fish, hunt, burn my wig, gown, and law books, and turn my back for ever on the Inns of Court.”
“Jessop, you are not in earnest.”
“I am,” impressively; “and what’s one man’s loss is another man’s gain. It will be all the better for you, Laurence, since you are so bent upon the woolsack. I’ll give you a heave-up with pleasure. You will now get all Bagge and Keepe’s business, for one thing—and, let me tell you, that that is no trifle.”