Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/233

226 She detained him by the hand he had placed in hers.

“It is so. Yourself,” she said, almost bitterly. “You think of no one but yourself. This selfishness is fearful—yes, and it is contemptible, too.”

“Beatrice!”

“I tell you that you cannot quarrel with me. I can stand before you and charge you with contemptible cowardice, and you cannot strike me—you cannot even insult me in return. Yes, I have the advantage, and I use it. Arthur, the time of your own trial has come, and you prove unworthy. Poor Laura!”

“I can only be silent, Beatrice, and leave you.”

“Your tongue may be silent, but your heart, such as it is, owns that I am speaking the truth. And when you have gone away, and the flush of anger is over, you will accuse yourself in the very words I have spoken. Do not forget them, Arthur. I have said that you are a coward.”

“I will forget all, except that a sister made a last and desperate effort on behalf of her sister—to preserve that sister in her position in the world.”

“Arthur,” exclaimed Beatrice, passionately, “such bitter words were on my lips—they shall not be spoken—no, thank God, I have mastered myself—there. But you are very wicked.”

“Be it so, and let me go.”

“Her position in the world! There is one position in this world, and but one for which Laura cares, and for which at this moment she would joyfully give twenty years of a life that ought to be too happy for her willingly to shorten it. That, and all the world could offer, she would give to find her head on your breast, and to hear you whisper her name. You know it, you are owning it to your God at this moment, and you are too cowardly to open that door, and with one word bring a happy creature to your arms.”

“Why do you harp on the most offensive word you can find?” said Arthur, angrily.

“Because it is the truest. Even while you speak you are proving it. You are striving to close your heart against me, and fastening on that word.”

“Cowardly!” repeated Arthur, slowly.

“Yes. You are afraid of yourself. You, who have been proud, and have had a right to be proud of your calm, silent courage, who have shown yourself too really brave to be foolishly impetuous, who have faced the troubles and trials of years, and have conquered them all, you are now afraid of yourself, and of your own thoughts. I read your heart, Arthur, as if it were my own, and I almost hate you for a meanness that will send Laura to her grave.”

“I must not answer you.”

“O, if you could, we should all be so happy! But you cannot.”

“In part you are right, Beatrice, and it is painful to me to own that you are right, because that accuses one of whom I wish to speak only with kindness. I see my course before me; I have convinced myself that it is just, and I should indeed feel ashamed hereafter, if my conscience could tell me that I weakly gave way. That is cowardice of which I own I am guilty.”

“What weak, miserable, stilted words! and yet they are the right ones, Arthur, for uttering a miserable pretence. If we are never to meet again, do not let us part with a falsehood between us—a cruel, shallow falsehood.”

“You have heard none.”

“Do not say so. Dear Arthur, you talk of justice; be just to yourself, and to us all. It is of no such mocking folly that you are afraid. It is of your own nature. You are proud, sensitive, and you have learned to be suspicious—there, do not speak—I know what you would answer to that word.”

“That the lesson has been wantonly forced on me,” said Arthur, sternly. “It was none of my seeking—suspicion was no part of the nature which you describe so vindictively, Beatrice. Ask Laura. Her goings-out and her comings in were uncontrolled by me; her friends, her letters, her secrets were her own. I had made her my wife, and in that word was absolute, unquestioning faith. Suddenly a whole history of treachery is thrust before my eyes, and that image, Beatrice, will outlive all others.”

“Yes, you speak the truth, now,” said Beatrice, sadly.

“And what are you asking, or what is she stooping to ask through you? That a husband who loved her better than life, and believed her worthy of his love, and who can say, as if he were speaking his last words, that never for one waking hour of their married life was she absent from his mind, and who never let a day pass without some act, it might be a trifle, it might be more, for her comfort, or her amusement—you are asking that this husband, alienated by her own deceit, shall affect to receive her home as he would have welcomed her from some holiday, and shall pretend to re-people his home and his heart with all the loving thoughts of old days, with all that she swept remorselessly away in an endeavour to conceal her treachery. This Beatrice Hawkesley stoops to ask of me, that her sister may continue to live in her husband’s house, and go out into the world under the protection of his name. You scoff at a man’s pride, Beatrice, but what is a woman’s?”

“Her love, which, Arthur, you have never comprehended—and which, I judge from your words, you never will comprehend. For the sake of that deep, true love of Laura’s, I can bear with your language, wounding as it is, and as it is intended to be. Yes, we stoop to ask what you have said we ask. We accept this at your hands, and not sullenly, Arthur, but with humble gratitude, and we will wait for the day when you shall thank those who accepted your grudged and contemptuous pity. Even on those terms, Arthur, and with such low thoughts on your part of the motives that lead us, I beg you to receive back my sister to your home.”

“I scarcely believe that I hear the voice of Beatrice Hawkesley,” said Arthur, speaking low.

“No,” said Beatrice, “you hear the voice of your wife. I speak at her bidding, and, if you will, believe her at your knees asking what I have asked in her name.”

“Beatrice, the time is too solemn for trifling.