Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/96

20, 186l. “Your concern at this moment is for your own wife.”

“Certainly it is. Does it appear strange to you?”

“Do not speak with irritation. I was plotting how to meet this new trouble, Mr. Hawkesley. There is a way, of course, but to adopt it would be to stop Mrs. Lygon in her journey.”

“What is it?”

“I could easily cause the truth to be told to her at Boulogne, or at Folkestone—or perhaps—yes, I will undertake to let it meet her on her arrival in London.”

“No. I will not cross her path with another grief. If she goes to her sister’s, let her learn the truth there. No one will tell it her more gently, or advise her more wisely.”

“This is for yourself to decide. Should you think differently some hours hence, there will still be time to interpose.”

“I will now go to the hotel.”

“To remain there, if you will, until a person comes to you from me. After you have dismissed him, it will be for you, Mr. Hawkesley, and for your brother-in-law, to decide on the very grave consideration which I have taken the liberty of suggesting.suggesting.” [sic]

“Grave indeed,” muttered Hawkesley, as he went out, “and I find myself exchanging smooth words over the question whether an infernal murderer and villain shall escape us. It is like a dream—it is like a dream.”

and thoughtfully as the telegraphic message, dispatched by Aventayle to Mrs. Hawkesley at the request of her husband, had been worded, in order to soften as far as possible the epigrammatic curtness of such messages, and to do away with the startling effect which the hardness of the official hand, in lieu of that wont to be so welcome, produces upon those unaccustomed to such communications, there was still the cruel fact which no care could render less cruel. Beatrice learned that her husband’s valued friend, the husband of the feeble woman on the sick bed above, had been stricken down in his strong manhood, and that her weak sister was a widow. Shocking as was the news, melancholy as was the thought that he concerning whom it was sent had been the subject if not of harsh judgment, of suspicion and mistrust on the part of Beatrice when she last wrote, it was far more shocking to her when she came to recal the circumstances under which he and Bertha had parted for ever, and the nature of the revelation which it became her duty to make to the scarcely penitent creature who manifested so inadequate a sense of her sin, so vague a dream of her future.

For herself, Mrs. Hawkesley, with some self-reproach, owned that horror had more share than actual grief in the sensations with which she had to struggle. That she had never thoroughly liked, perhaps had never thoroughly appreciated Urquhart, has been made clear in an earlier part of our story. The negative feelings with which she had regarded him had been altered into something almost resembling hatred by the circumstances which have been told. Chiefly had his unhesitating judgment on Laura, his imperative demand that Lygon should be convinced of her worthlessness on the strength, not of evidence examined by himself, but of testimony that had been conclusive to Urquhart, confirmed Beatrice in her hostile feelings towards him, nor had they been softened by the effect which Robert Urquhart’s sentence had produced upon the mind of her own husband. She was the best of wives, and not the less so that she had the genuine wifely belief that the best of husbands submit to few influences save those of home. Beatrice, therefore, was well prepared to be impressed, even by the careless and non-consequent tales of Bertha, and at the moment of the arrival of the despatch she had no inclination to retract a syllable of the imputations which she had conveyed to her husband.

Then came the telegraph message, and Urquhart was gone, and that strange revulsion, which the head cannot justify and which the heart cannot refuse, that disposition to see only what was good in those who are no longer with us for good or for evil, followed, and Beatrice’s affectionate nature was more afflicted than she could have imagined possible from aught connected with the stern, rough Urquhart. Before she could give herself up to the task of breaking the news to her sister, Mrs. Hawkesley had her own self-rebuke—remorse were too strong a word—to deal with, and it was with a doubly sorrowful heart that she addressed herself to the thought how she might in the gentlest manner open to Bertha the tidings that he whom she had so wickedly wronged was beyond the reach of her penitence.

“Aunt, I wish you would not have letters,” said little Fred Lygon, who had stolen into the room where Beatrice, not heeding him, was once more reading the message.

“Do you, darling?” said his aunt, too accustomed to the ways of childhood to be startled at any child-appearance from any quarter in which playfulness could reveal itself. “Why, dear Fred?”

“Because letters make you look ugly. Tell the postman not to bring any except they come from mamma or papa.”

She kissed the child, and went to her own room, whence, after some time, she passed across to Bertha’s, with a tremor foreign to her usually calm nature.

“I thought that you were never coming any more,” said Bertha, raising herself in the bed, and speaking fretfully.

“I have not been away long, dear,” answered Beatrice, more gently, perhaps, than she would have replied on another occasion. “I had a good many orders to give, and most of them were for you.”

“It is more than an hour,” persisted Bertha, “for I have heard the church clock strike twice; but you think that because I am ill in bed I must believe anything you like to tell me.”

“My dear Bertha,” said Mrs. Hawkesley, coming near her, “you cannot feel that you have been treated with any neglect here. I am sure that it has been a labour of love with us all to do all that we can for you.”