Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER VIII.

EXPEDIENTS.

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His mother was in bed and asleep when Horace returned from his play—or at least so he thought. He opened her door and found the room dark, and said, "Are you asleep, mamma?" and got no answer, which he thought rather strange, as she was such a light sleeper. But, to be sure, last night had been so disturbed, she had not slept at all, and the day had been fatiguing and exciting. No doubt she was very tired. He retired on tiptoe, making, as was natural, far more noise than when he had come in without any precaution at all. But she made no sign; he did not wake her, where she lay, very still, with her eyes closed in the dark, holding her very breath that he might not suspect. Horace had enjoyed his evening. The play had been amusing, the dinner good. d**k Fareham, indeed, had asked a few questions.

"I suppose you found the governor all right?" he said.

"I didn't," said Horace; "the mother did."

"And he's all right, I hope?"

"I can't tell you," said Horace, shortly; "I said I hadn't seen him."

The conversation had ended thus for the moment, but young Fareham was too curious to leave it so. He asked Horace when he was coming to the London office. "I know I'm only a warming-pan," he said, "keeping the place warm for you. I suppose that will be settled while you are here."

"I don't know anything about it," said Horace. "We heard you were all at sixes and sevens in the office."

"I at sixes and sevens!"

"Oh, I don't mean to be disagreeable. We heard so," said Horace, "and that the governor had his hands full."

"I'd like to know who told you that," said the young man. "I'd like to punch his head, whoever said it. In the first place, it is not true, and your father is not the man to put such a story about."

Now Horace had not been told this as the reason of his father's absence, but had found it out, as members of a family find out what has been talked of in the house, the persons in the secret falling off their guard as time goes on. He was angry at the resentment with which he was met, but a little at a loss for a reply.

"Perhaps you think I have put it about?" he said, indignant. "It has not been put about at all, but we heard it somehow. That was why my father——"

"I think I can see how it was—I think I can understand," said young Fareham. "That was what called your father up to London. By Jove!"

And after that he was not so pleasant a companion for the rest of the evening. But the play was amusing, and Horace partially forgot this contretemps. When he found his mother's room shut up and quiet, he went to his own without any burden on his mind. He was not so anxious about "the governor" as perhaps Milly in his place might have been. It was highly unpleasant that the mother and he should have quarrelled, and quite incomprehensible. But Horace went to bed philosophically, and the trouble in his mind was not enough to keep him from sleep.

Young Fareham, on his side, wrote an indignant letter to his uncle, demanding to know if his mind too had been poisoned by false reports. The young man was very angry. He was being made the scapegoat; he was the excuse for old Landon's absence, who had not been near the office for months, and he called upon his own particular patron to vindicate him. Had his private morals been attacked he might have borne it; but to talk of the office as at sixes and sevens! this was more than he could bear.

Next morning, before anybody else was awake, an early housemaid stole into Mrs Lycett-Landon's room, and told her that a gentleman had arrived who wanted to see her. The poor lady had slept a little towards the morning, and was waked by this message. She thought it must be her husband, and after a moment of dolorous hesitation got up hastily and dressed herself, and went to the sitting-room, which was still in the disorder of last night, and looking, if that were possible, still more wretched, raw, and unhomelike than in its usual trim. She found, with a great shock and sense of discouragement, old Mr Fareham, pale after his night's journey, with all the wrinkles about his eyes more pronounced, and the slight tremor in his head more visible than ever. He came forward to meet her, holding out both his hands.

"What can I do for you?" he said. "What has happened? I came off, you see, by the first train."

"Oh, Mr Fareham, I never expected this! You must have thought me mad. I think, indeed, I must have been off my head a little last night. I telegraphed, did I?—I scarcely knew what I was doing——"

"You have not found him, then?"

She covered her face with her hands. To meet the old man's eyes in the light of day and tell her story was impossible. Why had not she gone away, buried herself somewhere, and never said a word?

"I have seen Mr Landon, Mr Fareham; he is not—ill: but Horace knows nothing," she said, hastily.

"My dear lady, if I am to do anything for you I must know."

"I don't think there is anything to be done. We have had a—serious disagreement; but Horace knows nothing," she repeated again. He looked at her, and she could not bear his eyes. "I am very sorry to have given you so much trouble——"

"The trouble is nothing," he said. "I have known you almost all your life. It would be strange if I could not take a little trouble. I think I know what you mean. You were distracted last night, and sent for me. But now in the calm of the morning things do not look so bad, and you think you have been too hasty. I can understand that, if that is what you mean."

She could not bear his eye. She sank down in the chair where she had sat last night and talked to Horace. In the calm of the morning! It was only now, when she felt that she had begun to live again, that all her problems came back to her, full awake, and fell upon her like harpies. Things do not look so bad! There passed through her mind a despairing question, whether she had strength to persuade him that this was so, and that there really was nothing to appeal to him about.

"My dear lady," he said again, "you must be frank with me. Is it a false alarm, and nothing for me to do? If so, not another word; I will forget that you ever sent for me. But if there is something more——"

How much was going through her mind, and how many scenes were rising before her eyes as he spoke! There appeared to her a vision of duty terrible to perform; of going home, putting on a face of calm, speaking of papa as usual to the children, living her life as usual, keeping her secret: and then of the universal questions that would arise, Where was he? what had become of him? why did he never return? Or she seemed to see herself going away, making some pretext of health, of education, she could not tell what, carrying her children, astonished, half unwilling, full of questions which she could not answer, away with her into the unknown. These visions rolled upward before her eyes surrounded with mists and confusion, out of which they appeared and reappeared. When her old friend stopped speaking her imagination stopped too, and she came to a pause. And then the impossibility of all these efforts came over her and overwhelmed her—the mists, the clouds, the chaos of helplessness and confusion in which there was no standing-ground, nor anything to grasp at, swallowing her up. She did not know how long she sat silent while the old man stood and looked at her. Then she burst forth all at once,—

"I cannot tell the children! How is it possible? Horace and Milly, they are grown up; they will want to know. How can I tell them? I want you to help me to keep it from them—to think of something. I would rather die than tell them," she said, starting up wringing her hands.

"My dear lady! my dear lady!——"

"Mr Fareham, Robert—has married—again!"

The old man gave a loud cry—almost a shriek—of surprise and horror. "You don't know what you are saying," he said.

"That sounds as if I were dead," she said, calmed by the revelation, with a faint smile. "Oh yes, I know very well what I am saying. He is married—as if I were dead—as if I had never existed. I went to see him, and I saw—her!"

Old Fareham caught her hands in his; he led her to her seat again, and put her in it, uttering all the time sounds that were half soothing, half blaspheming. He stood by her, patting her on the shoulder, his old eyebrows contracted, his lips quivering under their heavy grey moustache. He was more agitated now than she was. The telling of her secret seemed to have delivered her soul. When he had recovered himself he asked a hundred questions, to all which she answered calmly enough. The room, with its look of disorder—the litter of last night, the fresh morning sunshine streaming in disregarded, emphasising the squalor of the ashes in the grate—surrounded with a fitting background the strange discussion between these two—the old man fatigued with his night journey, the woman pale as a ghost, with eyes incapable of sleep. She told him everything, forestalling his half-said protest that it must be another Lycett-Landon with the fact of her personal encounter with her husband, forgetting nothing. The facts of the case had by this time paled of their first importance to her eyes, while they were everything to his. They no longer agitated her; while that which convulsed her very soul seemed to him of but little importance. "I cannot tell the children. How am I to tell the children?" He became weary of this refrain.

"We can think of the children later. In the meantime, this other is the important question. He has brought himself within the range of the law; you can punish him."

"Punish him?" she said, with a strange smile—"punish him?"

"Yes; you may forgive if you please, but I can't forgive. He deserves to be punished, and he shall be punished—and the woman——"

"He said she was as innocent—as I am."

"He said! he is a famous authority. One knows what kind of creature——"

"I have seen her," said Queen Eleanor, with a sigh, "poor child. He said nothing but the truth; she is not in fault. She is the one who is most injured. I would save her if I could."

"Save her! You would let this sweet establishment go on," he said, with fine sarcasm, "and not disturb them?"

"Yes," she said. "It may be wrong, but I think I would if I could."

"You are mad!" cried the old man. "You have lost all your good sense, and your feeling too. What, your own husband! you would let him go on living in sin—happy——"

She stopped him with a curious kind of authority—a look before which he paused in spite of himself.

"Happy!" she said; "I suppose so; at fifty, after living honestly all these years!"

He stopped and shook his grey head. "I have known such a thing before. It seems as if they must break out—as if common life and duty became insupportable. I have known such a case once before."

She cried out eagerly, "Who was it?" then stopped with a half-smile. "What does it matter to me who it was? The only thing that matters now is the children. What is to be done about the children? I cannot tell them; nor can you, nor any one. Mr Fareham, let him alone; let him be—happy, as you call it—if he can. But the children—what am I to say to the children?" She rose up again, and began to walk about the room, unable to keep still. "Horace, who is a man, and Milly. If they were little things it would not matter; they would not understand."

"And is it possible," said old Fareham, looking at her almost sourly, "that this is the only thing you can think of?—not your own wrongs, nor his abominable behaviour, nor——"

She paused a little, standing by the table. "Oh, you do wrong," she said, "you do wrong! A woman has her pride. If his duty has become—insupportable; it was you who used the word—and life insupportable, do you think a woman like me would hold him to it? Oh, you do wrong! I have put that away. But the children—I cannot put them away! And he was a good father, a kind father. Think of something. If only they might never find out!"

Here her voice gave way, and she could say no more.

"Horace will have to know," he said, shaking his head.

"Why? You could tell him there was some difficulty between us, something that could not be got over. That we were both in the wrong, as people always are in a quarrel. And no doubt I must have been in the wrong, or—or Robert would never have gone so far—so far astray. No doubt I have been wrong; you must have seen it—you with your experience—and yet you never said a word. Why didn't you tell me?—you might have done it so easily. Why didn't you say, 'You make life too hum-drum, too commonplace for him. He wants variety and change?' I would have taken it very well from you. I am not a woman who will not take advice. Why did you never tell me? I could have made so many changes if I had known."

He took her hand again, with a great pity, and almost remorse, in his old face. "It is too early," he said, "to do anything. Tell me where I shall find him, and go back to your room and try to rest. Say you are too tired to see the boy, if that is all you are thinking of; and go to bed—go to bed, and try and get a little sleep. I have a great deal of experience, as you say. Leave it to me. I will see him, and then we will talk it over, and think what is best to be done."

"You will see—him? What will you say to him, Mr Fareham? Why should you see him? Is not the chapter closed so far as he is concerned?"

"Closed? He will come home when he is tired of—the other establishment—is that what you mean him to do?"

She blushed like a girl, growing crimson to her hair. "Oh yes," she said, "I know you have a great deal of experience; but, perhaps, here you do not understand. That—that would not be necessary. He is not a man who would—Mr Fareham, you don't suppose I wish him any harm?"

"You are a great deal too good—too merciful."

"I am not merciful; it is all ended. Don't you know, since yesterday the world has come to an end. Life has become impossible—impossible! that is all about it. I am not angry; it is too serious for that. I would not harm him for the world. God help him! I don't know how he can live, any more than I know how I can live. It is—no word will express what it is. But he will not come back. He is not that kind of man."

"Do you think if you had not seen him yesterday, if he did not know that you had found him out—do you think," said old Fareham, deliberately, "that he would not have come back?"

She looked at him for an instant, and then hid her face in her hands.

"I have no doubt on the subject," said the old man, triumphantly. "But when a man has put himself within the reach of the law he is powerless, and we have him in our hands."