to whom he had given this order was the—cook. There is no reason why a cook should be less trustworthy in such a matter than any other servant; and in Mr. Trevelyan’s household there was a reason why she should be more so,—as she, and she alone, was what we generally call an old family domestic. She had lived with her master’s mother, and had known her master when he was a boy. Looking about him, therefore, for some one in his house to whom he could speak,—feeling that he was bound to convey the order through some medium,—he called to him the ancient cook, and imparted to her so much of his trouble as was necessary to make the order intelligible. This he did with various ill-worded assurances to Mrs. Prodgers that there really was nothing amiss. But when Mrs. Trevelyan heard what had been done,—which she did from Mrs. Prodgers herself, Mrs. Prodgers having been desired by her master to make the communication,—she declared to her sister that everything was now over. She could never again live with a husband who had disgraced his wife by desiring her own cook to keep a guard upon her. Had the footman been instructed not to admit Colonel Osborne, there would have been in such instruction some apparent adherence to the recognised usages of society. If you do not desire either your friend or your enemy to be received into your house, you communicate your desire to the person who has charge of the door. But the cook!
“And now, Nora, if it were you, do you mean to say that you would remain with him?” asked Mrs. Trevelyan.
Nora simply replied that anything under any circumstances would be better than a separation.
On the morning of the third day there came the following letter:—
Wednesday, June 1, 12 midnight.
Dearest Emily,
You will readily believe me when I say that I never in my life was so wretched as I have been during the last two days. That you and I should be in the same house together and not able to speak to each other is in itself a misery, but this is terribly enhanced by the dread lest this state of things should be made to continue.
I want you to understand that I do not in the least suspect you of having as yet done anything wrong,—or having even said anything injurious either to my position as your husband, or to your position as my wife. But I cannot but perceive that you are allowing yourself to be entrapped into an intimacy with Colonel Osborne which if it be not checked, will be destructive to my happiness and your own. After what had passed before, you cannot have thought it right to receive letters from him which I was not to see, or to write letters to him of which I was not to know the contents. It must be manifest to you that such conduct on your part is wrong as judged by any of the rules by which a wife’s conduct can be measured. And yet you have refused even to say that this shall be discontinued! I need hardly explain to you that if you persist in this refusal you and I cannot continue to live together as man and wife. All my hopes and prospects in life will be blighted by such a separation. I have not as yet been able to think what I should do in such wretched circumstances. And for you, as also for Nora, such a catastrophe would be most lamentable. Do, therefore, think of it well, and write me such a letter as may bring me back to your side.
There is only one friend in the world to whom I could endure to talk of this great grief, and I have been to her and told her everything. You will know that I mean Lady Milborough. After much difficult conversation I have persuaded her to see you, and she will call in Curzon Street tomorrow about twelve. There can be no kinder-hearted, or more gentle woman in the world than Lady Milborough; nor did any one ever have a warmer friend than both you and I have in her. Let me implore you then to listen to her, and be guided by her advice.
Pray believe, dearest Emily, that I am now, as ever, your most affectionate husband, and that I have no wish so strong as that we should not be compelled to part.
Louis Trevelyan.
This epistle was, in many respects, a very injudicious composition. Trevelyan should have trusted either to the eloquence of his own written words, or to that of the ambassador whom he was about to despatch; but by sending both he weakened both. And then there were certain words in the letter which were odious to Mrs. Trevelyan, and must have been odious to any young wife. He had said that he did not “as yet” suspect her of having done anything wrong. And then, when he endeavoured to explain to her that a separation would be very injurious to herself, he had coupled her sister with her, thus seeming to imply that the injury to be avoided was of a material kind. She had better do what he told her, as, otherwise, she and her sister would not have a roof over their head! That was the nature of the threat which his words were supposed to convey.
The matter had become so serious, that Mrs. Trevelyan, haughty and stiffnecked as she was, did not dare to abstain from showing the letter to her sister. She had no other counsellor, at any rate, till Lady Milborough came, and the weight of the battle was too great for her own unaided spirit. The letter had been written late at night, as was shown by the precision of the date, and had been brought to her early in the morning. At first she had determined to say nothing about it to Nora, but she was not strong enough to maintain such a purpose. She felt that she needed the poor consolation of discussing her wretchedness. She first declared that she would not see Lady Milborough. “I hate her, and she knows that I hate her, and she ought not to have thought of coming,” said Mrs. Trevelyan.
But she was at last beaten out of this purpose by Nora’s argument, that all the world would be against her if she refused to see her husband’s old friend. And then, though the letter was an odious letter, as she declared a dozen times, she took some little comfort in the fact that not a word was said in it about the baby. She thought that if she could take her child with her into any separation, she could endure it, and her husband would ultimately be conquered.
“Yes; I’ll see her,” she said, as they finished the discussion. “As he chooses to send her, I suppose I had better see her. But I don’t think he does much to mend matters when he sends the woman whom he knows I dislike more than any other in all London.”
Exactly at twelve o’clock Lady Milborough’s carriage was at the door. Trevelyan was in the house at the time and heard the knock at the door. During those two or three days of absolute wretchedness, he spent most of his hours under the same roof with his wife and sister-in-law, though he spoke to neither of them. He had had his doubts as to the reception of Lady Milborough, and was, to tell the truth, listening with most anxious ear, when her ladyship was announced. His wife, however, was not so bitterly contumacious as to refuse admittance to his friend, and he heard the rustle of the ponderous silk as the old woman was shown upstairs. When Lady Milborough reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Trevelyan was alone.
“I had better see her by myself,” she had said to her sister.
Nora had then left her, with one word of prayer that she would be as little defiant as possible.
“That must depend,” Emily had said, with a little shake of her head.
There had been a suggestion that the child should be with her, but the mother herself had rejected this.
“It would be stagey,” she had said, “and claptrap. There is nothing I hate so much as that.”
She was sitting, therefore, quite alone, and as stiff as a man in armour, when Lady Milborough was shown up to her.
And Lady Milborough herself was not at all comfortable as she commenced the interview. She had prepared many wise words to be spoken, but was not so little ignorant of the character of the woman with whom she had to deal, as to suppose that the wise words would get themselves spoken without interruption. She had known from the first that Mrs. Trevelyan would have much to say for herself, and the feeling that it would be so became stronger than ever as she entered the room. The ordinary feelings between the two ladies were cold and constrained, and then there was silence for a few moments when the Countess had taken her seat. Mrs. Trevelyan had quite determined that the enemy should fire the first shot.
“This is a very sad state of things,” said the Countess.
“Yes, indeed, Lady Milborough.”
“The saddest in the world;—and so unnecessary;—is it not?”
“Very unnecessary,