Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/574

 566 to denounce it as a lie, and to trample through it on the instant. Another moment, and his eyes flashed with an honest anger, and the paleness had utterly disappeared, face and brow speaking as plainly as the eyes.

“I am answered,” said Mr. Berry.

“Take an answer in words, though,” said Arthur Lygon, in a hoarse voice. “If” His friend interrupted him.

“Let no idle words pass between us,” said Mr. Berry, gravely. “We have bitterness enough to deal with. You would say that the idea I ventured to raise came before you for the first time, and is so false, so abhorrent to your nature, that nothing but your feeling that I did not speak in levity, but as an old man who would serve a young friend, prevented your striking me down upon this grass.”

“Something of that,” said Arthur, recovering himself. “Not the violent thought you would suggest—but—well, Berry, it is a wickedness to have spoken the words of her—in connection with her name.”

“It is,” said Mr. Berry, “and I feel it as deeply as you can do. But you forced me to put that wicked question by evading a more harmless one. You will not continue to do so.”

“Berry, you speak as if you thought I were keeping back something which I ought to say.”

“So you are.”

“Ask for it, and hear it.”

“If I put it again, it will be in words that may offend you.”

“Nothing that does not affect her can offend me—nothing from you can or shall.” And he held out his hand.

“A good woman,” said Mr. Berry, retaining his hold on Lygon’s hand, “does not leave her husband’s home for any fault of her own. In that case, if she leaves it, the fault must be his.”

Arthur Lygon looked the other full and fairly in the face.

“I answer your look,” said Mr. Berry. “I have seen a good deal of the world—both sides of it—and knowing how lightly people can absolve themselves from offences of their own, you will pardon me if I push my question. You have done nothing to drive Laura from her home?”

“I!” repeated Arthur. “I, who love her better than my life, and only ask to spend my life in making hers happy! I drive her away! Are you mad?”

“I believe all you say,” said the old lawyer. “But you need not be told that women have strange ideas, and that matters which we pass over as trifles sometimes determine their whole lives. You have nearly satisfied me, and yet I should like you to tell me, in plain English, one thing.”

“I beg of you—ask it.”

“You are a handsome man—you were a favourite with women—I do not believe that you would deliberately do wrong; but has anything survived from the old days, or is there any momentary folly that can have reached Laura’s ears?”

“On my honour,—no. On my honour,—no. And if it sounds foolishly when I say that not only do I love her heartily and thoroughly, but that she seems to me so incalculably superior, both in mind and body, to anything I have seen since my marriage, I can’t help that. I swear to you that you have got the truth.”

“And I am right glad to get it. That is enough, my dear Arthur. And now the ground is clear, in one sense, though the making it so increases our difficulties ten-fold. Husband and wife being alike without fault as regards one another, and yet being separated, we approach a mystery. I suppose we shall break into it, but we must see.”

“Remember, I have nothing else in life to live for,” said Arthur, passionately.

“Yes, you have, Arthur, much. Even if the mystery should baffle you to your dying hour, you have that child beyond the hill, and two other children in London to live for, besides your duty.”

“A cold word, that,” said Arthur, “and you must believe it very potent with me, when you, just now, imputed to me that I could be false to the best woman in the whole world for the sake of some wretched intrigue. But we will not talk of that now. Answer me, Berry, for my head has been in one whirl, and only the necessity of hypocrisy has kept me straight—answer me, what is the first thing that occurs to you as the key to this accursed mystery?”

“You must give me time.”

“No, but your first thought? Don’t refuse it. If you could know what kind of night I have spent, madly plunging my hand into darkness, as it were, to try to grapple with a belief, with an idea, you would not refuse it.”

“I have not a definite answer to make. I could, perhaps, say something; but it would, in all probability, be wrong, and to lead you astray, at such a moment, would be a sin. Yet—stay. I might be raising another horror, in simply telling you to dispel one idea which perhaps has not come across you. Tell me, Arthur—and do not think me fencing with your question—have you, yourself, settled, or tried to settle, upon any conviction?”

Arthur Lygon again turned pale.

“One thought,” he said, in a low voice, “came whispering near me in the darkness, and would not be driven away. It is not my thought, but it would come, and return, though I cursed it off. Mind, and for God’s sake remember, the thought is mine, nor is there the slightest foundation for it in this world. I scarcely dare repeat it.”

Mr. Berry gazed earnestly into the pale agitated face, and in answer to his reiterated demand he saw the lips of Arthur Lygon form themselves for the utterance of one expected word.

“Do not say it,” said Berry.

“It has crossed your mind, too, then Arthur, his face becoming still ghastlier.

“No.”

“Ah!” said Lygon, the tears almost forcing their way to his eyes, “then you have another solution.”

“Do not press me, that is a kind fellow, until