"It was the first unhappiness of my new life," said Annie. "It was the first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known. These moments have been more, of late, than I can count; but not--my generous husband!--not for the reason you suppose; for in my heart there is not a thought, a recollection, or a hope, that any power could separate from you!"
She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful and true, I thought, as any Spirit. The Doctor looked on her, henceforth, as steadfastly as she on him.
"Mama is blameless," she went on, "of having ever urged you for herself, and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure,--but when I saw how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in my name; how you were traded on in my name; how generous you were, and how Mr. Wickfield, who had your welfare very much at heart, resented it; the first sense of my exposure to the mean suspicion that my tenderness was bought--and sold to you, of all men on earth--fell upon me like unmerited disgrace, in which I forced you to partic.i.p.ate. I cannot tell you what it was--mama cannot imagine what it was--to have this dread and trouble always on my mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I crowned the love and honour of my life!"
"A specimen of the thanks one gets," cried Mrs. Markleham, in tears, "for taking care of one"s family! I wish I was a Turk!"
("I wish you were, with all my heart--and in your native country!" said my aunt.)
"It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin Maldon. I had liked him": she spoke softly, but without any hesitation: "very much. We had been little lovers once. If circ.u.mstances had not happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched. There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose."
I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange application that I could not divine. "There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose"--"no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose."
"There is nothing," said Annie, "that we have in common. I have long found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart."
She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an earnestness that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as quiet as before.
"When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so freely bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the mercenary shape I was made to wear, I thought it would have become him better to have worked his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would have tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I thought no worse of him, until the night of his departure for India. That night I knew he had a false and thankless heart. I saw a double meaning, then, in Mr. Wickfield"s scrutiny of me. I perceived, for the first time, the dark suspicion that shadowed my life."
"Suspicion, Annie!" said the Doctor. "No, no, no!"
"In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!" she returned. "And when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of shame and grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your roof, one of my own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for the love of me, had spoken to me words that should have found no utterance, even if I had been the weak and mercenary wretch he thought me--my mind revolted from the taint the very tale conveyed. It died upon my lips, and from that hour till now has never pa.s.sed them."
Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair; and retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any more.
"I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him from that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the avoidance of this explanation. Years have pa.s.sed since he knew, from me, what his situation here was. The kindnesses you have secretly done for his advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my surprise and pleasure, have been, you will believe, but aggravations of the unhappiness and burden of my secret."
She sunk down gently at the Doctor"s feet, though he did his utmost to prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:
"Do not speak to me yet! Let me say a little more! Right or wrong, if this were to be done again, I think I should do just the same. You never can know what it was to be devoted to you, with those old a.s.sociations; to find that anyone could be so hard as to suppose that the truth of my heart was bartered away, and to be surrounded by appearances confirming that belief. I was very young, and had no adviser. Between mama and me, in all relating to you, there was a wide division. If I shrunk into myself, hiding the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured you so much, and so much wished that you should honour me!"
"Annie, my pure heart!" said the Doctor, "my dear girl!"
"A little more! a very few words more! I used to think there were so many whom you might have married, who would not have brought such charge and trouble on you, and who would have made your home a worthier home. I used to be afraid that I had better have remained your pupil, and almost your child. I used to fear that I was so unsuited to your learning and wisdom. If all this made me shrink within myself (as indeed it did), when I had that to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much, and hoped that you might one day honour me."
"That day has shone this long time, Annie," said the Doctor, and can have but one long night, my dear."
"Another word! I afterwards meant--steadfastly meant, and purposed to myself--to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one to whom you had been so good. And now a last word, dearest and best of friends! The cause of the late change in you, which I have seen with so much pain and sorrow, and have sometimes referred to my old apprehension--at other times to lingering suppositions nearer to the truth--has been made clear tonight; and by an accident I have also come to know, tonight, the full measure of your n.o.ble trust in me, even under that mistake. I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in return, will ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with all this knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear face, revered as a father"s, loved as a husband"s, sacred to me in my childhood as a friend"s, and solemnly declare that in my lightest thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the fidelity I owe you!"
She had her arms around the Doctor"s neck, and he leant his head down over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.
"Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband! Never cast me out! Do not think or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take me to your heart, my husband, for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!"
In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. d.i.c.k, without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding kiss.
And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that she did so; for I am confident that I detected him at that moment in the act of making preparations to stand on one leg, as an appropriate expression of delight.
"You are a very remarkable man, d.i.c.k!" said my aunt, with an air of unqualified approbation; "and never pretend to be anything else, for I know better!"
With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and we three stole quietly out of the room, and came away.
"That"s a settler for our military friend, at any rate," said my aunt, on the way home. "I should sleep the better for that, if there was nothing else to be glad of!"
"She was quite overcome, I am afraid," said Mr. d.i.c.k, with great commiseration.
"What! Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?" inquired my aunt.
"I don"t think I ever saw a crocodile," returned Mr. d.i.c.k, mildly.
"There never would have been anything the matter, if it hadn"t been for that old Animal," said my aunt, with strong emphasis. "It"s very much to be wished that some mothers would leave their daughters alone after marriage, and not be so violently affectionate. They seem to think the only return that can be made them for bringing an unfortunate young woman into the world--G.o.d bless my soul, as if she asked to be brought, or wanted to come!--is full liberty to worry her out of it again. What are you thinking of, Trot?"
I was thinking of all that had been said. My mind was still running on some of the expressions used. "There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose." "The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart." "My love was founded on a rock." But we were at home; and the trodden leaves were lying under-foot, and the autumn wind was blowing.
CHAPTER 46. INTELLIGENCE
I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing--for my success had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at that time upon my first work of fiction--I came past Mrs. Steerforth"s house. I had often pa.s.sed it before, during my residence in that neighbourhood, though never when I could choose another road. Howbeit, it did sometimes happen that it was not easy to find another, without making a long circuit; and so I had pa.s.sed that way, upon the whole, pretty often.
I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with a quickened step. It had been uniformly gloomy and dull. None of the best rooms ab.u.t.ted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed old-fashioned windows, never cheerful under any circ.u.mstances, looked very dismal, close shut, and with their blinds always drawn down. There was a covered way across a little paved court, to an entrance that was never used; and there was one round staircase window, at odds with all the rest, and the only one unshaded by a blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look.
I do not remember that I ever saw a light in all the house. If I had been a casual pa.s.ser-by, I should have probably supposed that some childless person lay dead in it. If I had happily possessed no knowledge of the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.
As it was, I thought as little of it as I might. But my mind could not go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened a long train of meditations. Coming before me, on this particular evening that I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and later fancies, the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows of disappointments dimly seen and understood, the blending of experience and imagination, incidental to the occupation with which my thoughts had been busy, it was more than commonly suggestive. I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side made me start.
It was a woman"s voice, too. I was not long in recollecting Mrs.
Steerforth"s little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in her cap. She had taken them out now, to adapt herself, I suppose, to the altered character of the house; and wore but one or two disconsolate bows of sober brown.
"If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and speak to Miss Dartle?"
"Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?" I inquired.
"Not tonight, sir, but it"s just the same. Miss Dartle saw you pa.s.s a night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and when I saw you pa.s.s again, to ask you to step in and speak to her."
I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how Mrs.
Steerforth was. She said her lady was but poorly, and kept her own room a good deal.
When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself. She was sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the great city. It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the sky; and as I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here and there some larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I fancied it was no inapt companion to the memory of this fierce woman.
She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me. I thought her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had seen her last; the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still plainer.
Our meeting was not cordial. We had parted angrily on the last occasion; and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took no pains to conceal.
"I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle," said I, standing near her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her gesture of invitation to sit down.
"If you please," said she. "Pray has this girl been found?"
"No."