he said. “But I sha’n’t do it; you may dismiss that from your mind. I don’t wish the country to know that my wife was—” Then he ended with a laugh which was so insulting that John Trevanion involuntarily clinched his fist and made a step forward; then recollected himself, and fell back with a suppressed exclamation.
“It is quite natural you should take her part, Jack. She’s a fine woman still of her years, though a good bit older than you would think. How old were you, Madam, when I married you? Oh, old enough for a great deal to have happened—eight-and-twenty or thereabouts—just on the edge of being passée then, the more fool I! Jove! what a fool I was, thrusting my head into the bag. I don’t excuse myself. I posed myself in those days as a fellow that had seen life, and wasn’t to be taken in. But you were too many for me. Never trust to a woman, John, especially a woman that has a history and that sort of thing. You are never up to their tricks. However knowing you may be, take my word for it, they know a thing or two more than you.”
“If you mean to do nothing but insult your wife, Reginald—”
“John, for Heaven’s sake! What does it matter? You will think no worse of me for what he says, and no better. Let him talk!” cried Madam, under her breath.
“What is she saying to you—that I am getting weak in my mind and don’t know what I am saying? Ah! that’s clever. I have always expected something of the sort. Look here, Madam! sit down at once and write to Charley Blake, do you hear? Charley—not the old fellow. Ask him to come here from Saturday to Monday, I want to have a talk with him. You are not fond of Charley Blake. And tell him to bring all his tools with him. He will know”—with a significant laugh—“what I mean.”
She went to the writing-table without a word, and wrote the note. “Will you look at it, Reginald, to see if it is what you wish.”
The patient snarled at her with his laugh. “I can trust you,” he said, “and you shall see when Blake comes.”
“What do you want with Blake, Reginald? Why should you trouble yourself with business in your present state of health? You must have done all that is necessary long ago, I wish you would keep quiet and give yourself a chance.”
“A chance! that’s Beaton’s opinion, I suppose—that I have more than a chance. That’s why you all gather round me like a set of crows, ready to pounce upon the carcass. And Madam, Madam here, can scarcely hold herself in, thinking how soon she will be free.” He pushed back his chair, and gazed from one to another with fiery eyes which seemed ready to burst from their sockets. “A chance! that’s all I’ve got, is it? You needn’t wait for it, John; there’s not a penny for you.”
“Reginald, what the doctor says is that you must be calm, that nothing must be done to bring on those spasms that shake you so. Never mind what John says; he does not know.”
“Oh, you!” cried the sick man; “you—you’ve motive enough. It’s freedom to you. I don’t tell you to scheme for it, I know that’s past praying for. Nobody can doubt it’s worth your while—a good settlement, and freedom to dance on my grave as soon as you like, as soon as you have got me into it. But John has got no motive,” he said again, with a sort of garrulous pathos; “he’ll gain nothing. He’ll rather lose something perhaps, for he couldn’t have the run of the house if it were yours, as he has done all his life. Yours!” the sick man added, with concentrated wrath and scorn; “it shall never be yours; I shall see to that. Where is the note to Charley—Charley Blake? John, take charge of it for me; see that it’s put in the post. She has the bag in her hands, and how can I tell whether she will let it go? She was a great deal too ready to write it, eh? don’t you think, knowing it was against herself?”
After this cheerful morning’s talk, which was the ordinary kind of conversation that went on in Mr. Trevanion’s room, from which John Trevanion could escape and did very shortly, but Madam could not and did not, the heavy day went on, little varied. Mrs. Trevanion appeared at lunch with a sufficiently tranquil countenance, and entered into the ordinary talk of a family party with a composure or philosophy which was a daily miracle to the rest. She checked little Sophy’s impertinences and attended to the small pair of young ones like a mother embarrassed with no cares less ignoble. There was an air of great gravity about her, but not more than the critical condition of her husband’s health made natural. And the vicar, who came in to lunch to ask after the squire, saw nothing in Madam’s manner that was not most natural and seemly. He told his wife afterwards that she took it beautifully; “Very serious, you know, very anxious, but resigned and calm.” Mrs. Vicar was of opinion that were she Mrs. Trevanion she would be more than resigned, for everybody knew that Madam had “a great deal to put up with.” But from her own aspect no one could have told the continual flood of insult to which she was exposed, the secret anxiety that was gnawing at her heart. In the evening, before dinner, she met her brother-in-law by accident before the great fireplace in the hall. She was sitting there, thrown down in one of the deep chairs, like a worn-out creature. It was rare to see her there, though it was the common resort of the household, and so much, in spite of himself, had John Trevanion been moved by the sense of mystery about, and by his brother’s vituperations, that his first glance was one of suspicion. But his approach took her by surprise. Her face was hidden in her hands, and there was an air of abandon in her attitude and figure as if she had thrown herself, like a wounded animal, before the fire. She uncovered her face, and, he thought, furtively, hastily dried her eyes as she turned to see who was coming. Pity was strong in his heart, notwithstanding his suspicion, he came forward and looked down upon her kindly. “I am very glad,” he said, “to see that you are able to get a moment to yourself.”
“Yes,” she said, “Reginald seems more comfortable to-night.”
“Grace,” said John Trevanion, “it is beyond human patience. You ought not to have all this to bear.”
“Oh, nothing is beyond human patience,” she said, looking up at him suddenly with a smile. “Never mind, I can bear it very well. After all, there is no novelty in it to wound me. I have been bearing the same sort of thing for many years.”
“And you have borne it without a murmur. You are a very wonderful woman, or—”
“What do you mean? Do you think me a bad one? It would not be wonderful after all you have heard. But I am not a bad woman, John. I am not without blame; who is? But I am not what he says. This is mere weakness to defend myself; but when one has been beaten down all day long by one perpetual flood like a hailstorm— What was that? I thought I heard Reginald’s voice.”
“It was nothing; some of the servants. I am very sorry for you, Grace. If anything can be done to ease you—”
“Nothing can be done. I think talking does him good; and what is the use of a man’s wife if not to hear everything he has to say? It diverts the evil from others, and I hope from himself too. Yes, I do think so; it is an unpleasant way of working it out, and yet I think, like the modes they adopt in surgery sometimes, it relieves the system. So let him talk,” she went on with a sigh. “It will be hard, though, if I am to lose the support of your good opinion, John.”
To this he made no direct answer, but asked, hurriedly, “What do you suppose he wants with Charley Blake? Charley specially, not his father, whom I have more faith in?”
“Something about his will, I suppose. Oh, perhaps not anything of consequence. He tries to scare me, threatening something—but it is not for that that I am afraid.”
“We shall be able to do you justice in that point. Of what are you afraid?”
She rose with a sudden impulse and stood by him in the firelight, almost as tall as he, and with a certain force of indignation in her which gave her an air of command and almost grandeur beside the man who suspected and hesitated. “Nothing!” she said, as if she flung all apprehension from her. John, whose heart had been turned from her, felt himself melting against his will. She repeated after a time, more gently, “I know that if passion can suggest anything it will be done. And he will not have time to reconsider, to let his better nature—” (here she paused, and in spite of herself a faint smile, in which there was some bitterness, passed over her face) “his better nature speak,”