The Sorceress (complete). Oliphant Margaret
his house, a man distraught not knowing where he went. And then morning and evening, and the dews and the calm, and the freshness and elasticity inalienable from youth had driven despair and horror away. He had felt it at last impossible that all his life – a life which he desired to live out in duty and kindness, and devotion to God and man – should be spoiled for ever by his momentary yielding to a horrible temptation. He had thought at first that he never could hold up his head again. But gradually the impression had been soothed away, and he had vainly hoped that such a thing might be left behind him and might be heard of no more.
Now he was undeceived – now he was convinced that for what a man does he must answer, not only at the bar of God, where all the secrets of the heart are revealed, but also before men. There are times in which the former judgment is more easy to think of than the latter – for God knows all, everything that is in favour of the culprit, while men only know what is against him. A man with sorrow in his heart for all his shortcomings, can endure, upon his knees, that all-embracing gaze of infinite understanding and pity. But to stand before men who misconstrue, mis-see, misapprehend, how different a thing it is – who do not know the end from the beginning, to whom the true balance and perfect poise of justice is almost impossible – who can judge only as they know, and who can know only the husk and shell of fact, the external aspect of affairs by the side which is visible to them. All these thoughts went through Aubrey’s mind as he went listlessly about those familiar streets in their autumnal quiet, no crowd about, nothing to interrupt the progress of the wayfarer. He went across the Green Park, which is brown in the decadence of summer, almost as solitary as if he had been in his own desolate glades at home. London has a soothing effect sometimes on such a still, sunny autumn day, when it seems to rest after the worry and heat and strain of all its frivolity and folly. The soft haze blurs all the outlines, makes the trees too dark and the sky too pale; yet it is sunshine and not fog which wraps the landscape, even that landscape which lies between Pall Mall and Piccadilly. It soothed our young man a little in the despair of his thoughts. Surely, surely at eight-and-twenty everything could not be over. Bee would in a year or two be the mistress of her own actions. She was not a meek girl, to be coerced by her father. She would judge for herself in such a dreadful emergency. After all that had passed, the whole facts of the case would have to be submitted to her, which was a thought that enveloped him as in flames of shame. Yet she would judge for herself, and her judgment would be more like that of heaven than like that of earth. A kind of celestial ray gleamed upon him in this thought.
And as for these other claims – well, if any claim were put forth he would not shrink – would not try to compromise, would not try to hide his shame under piles of gold. Now he had no motive for concealment, he would face it out and have the question set straight in the eye of day. To be sure, for a man to accuse a woman is against the whole conventional code of honour. To accuse all women is the commonplace of every day; but to put the blame of seduction upon one is what a man dare not do save in the solitude of his chamber – or in such a private inquisition as Aubrey had gone through that day. This is one of the proofs that there is much to be said on both sides, and that it is the unscrupulous of either side who has the most power to humble and to destroy. But the bravado did him good for the moment – let her make her claim, whatever that claim was, and he would meet it in the face of day!
Other ideas came rapidly into Aubrey’s mind when he strolled listlessly into his club, and almost ran against the friend in whose house he had first met Colonel Kingsward, and through whom consequently all that had afterwards happened had come about. “Fairfield!” he cried, with a gleam of sudden hope in his eyes.
“Leigh! You here? – I thought you were philandering on the banks of – some German river or other. Well! and so I hear I have to congratulate you, my boy – and I’m sure I do so with all my heart – ”
“You might have done so a week ago, and I should have responded with all mine. But you see me fallen again on darker days. Fate’s against me, it seems, in every way.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” cried his friend. “I expected to see you triumphant. What has gone wrong? Not settlements already, eh?”
“Settlements! They are free to make what settlements they like so far as I am concerned.”
“Kingsward’s a very cool hand, Aubrey. You may lose your head if you like, but he always knows what he is about. You are an excellent match – ”
“You think so,” said poor Aubrey, with a laugh. “Not badly off; a mild, domestic fellow, with no devil in me at all.
“I should not exactly say that. A man is no man without a spice of the devil. Why, what’s the matter? Now I look at you, instead of a victorious lover, you have the most miserable hang-dog – ”
“Hang-dog, that is it – a rope’s end, and all over. Hang it, no! I am not going to give in. Fairfield, I don’t want to speak disrespectfully of any woman.”
“Is it Mrs. Kingsward who is too young, herself, to think of enacting the part of mother-in-law so soon as this?”
“Mrs. Kingsward is a sort of an angel, Fairfield, if it were not old-fashioned to say so – and, alas, I fear, she will not enact any part long, which is so much the worse for me.”
“You don’t say so! That pretty creature, with all her pretty ways, and her daughter just the same age as she! Poor Kingsward. Aubrey, if a man shows a little impatience with your raptures in such circumstances, I don’t think you ought to be hard upon him.”
“I don’t believe he knows what are the circumstances, nor any of them. It is not from that cause, Fairfield. You know Miss Lance, poor Amy’s friend – ”
Once more he grew hot all over as he named her name, and turned his face from his friend’s gaze.
“Remember her! I should think so, and all you had to bear on that point, old man. We have often said, Mary and I, that if ever there was a hero – ”
“Fairfield! they have got up a tale that it was I who kept her at Forest-leigh against poor Amy’s will, and that my poor wife’s life was made miserable by my attentions to that fi – .” Fiend he would have said, but he changed it to “woman,” which meant to him at that moment the same thing.
Fairfield stared for a moment – was he taking a new idea into his commonplace mind? Then he burst into a loud laugh. “You can call the whole county to bear witness to that,” he cried. “Attentions! Well, I suppose you were civil, which was really more than anyone expected from you.”
“You know, and everybody knows, what a thorn in the flesh it was. My poor Amy! Without that, there would have been no cloud on our life, and it all arose from her best qualities, her tender heart, her faithfulness – ”
A dubious shade came over Fairfield’s face. “Yes, no doubt; and Miss Lance’s flattery and blandishments. Aubrey, I don’t mind saying it now that you are well quit of her – that was a woman to persuade a fellow into anything. I should no more have dared to keep her – especially after – in my house, and to expose myself to her wiles – ”
“They never were wiles for me,” said Aubrey, again turning his head away. It was true, true – far more true than the fatal contradiction of it, which lay upon his heart like a stone. “I never came nearer to hating any of God’s creatures than that woman. She made my life a burden to me. She took my wife from me – . She – I needn’t get dithyrambic on the subject; you all know.”
“Oh, yes, we all know; but you were too soft-hearted. You should have risked a fit of tears from poor Mrs. Leigh – excuse me for saying so now – and sent her away.”
“I tried it a dozen times. Poor Amy would have broken her heart. She threatened even to go with her. And they say women don’t make friendships with each other!”
Fairfield shrugged his shoulders a little. “I suffer myself from my wife’s friends,” he said; “there’s always some ‘dear Clara’ or other putting the table out of joint, making me search heaven and earth when there’s anybody to dinner to find an odd man. But Mary has some – ” Sense, he was going to say, but stopped short. Mrs. Fairfield was one of those who had concluded long ago that dear Amy