"Tell me plainly," she cried, "is there something you can"t forgive?"
"There is something I can"t forget."
"What is it? Oh, what is it! When my mother told poor little Kitty that her father was dead, are you even more sorry than I am that I allowed it? Are you even more ashamed of me than I am of myself?"
"No. I regret that you allowed it; but I understand how you were led into that error. Your husband"s infidelity had shaken his hold on your respect for him and your sympathy with him, and had so left you without your natural safeguard against Mrs. Presty"s sophistical reasoning and bad example. But for _that_ wrong-doing, there is a remedy left.
Enlighten your child as you have enlightened me; and then--I have no personal motive for pleading Mr. Herbert Linley"s cause, after what I have seen of him--and then, acknowledge the father"s claim on the child."
"Do you mean his claim to see her?"
"What else can I mean? Yes! let him see her. Do (G.o.d help me, now when it"s too late!)--do what you ought to have done, on that accursed day which will be the blackest day in my calendar, to the end of my life."
"What day do you mean?"
"The day when you remembered the law of man, and forgot the law of G.o.d; the day when you broke the marriage tie, the sacred tie, by a Divorce!"
She listened--not conscious now of suspense or fear; she listened, with her whole heart in revolt against him.
"You are too cruel!" she declared. "You can feel for me, you can understand me, you can pardon me in everything else that I have done.
But you judge without mercy of the one blameless act of my life, since my husband left me--the act that protected a mother in the exercise of her rights. Oh, can it be you? Can it be you?"
"It can be," he said, sighing bitterly; "and it is."
"What horrible delusion possesses you? Why do you curse the happy day, the blessed day, which saw me safe in the possession of my child?"
"For the worst and meanest of reasons," he answered--"a selfish reason.
Don"t suppose that I have spoken of Divorce as one who has had occasion to think of it. I have had no occasion to think of it; I don"t think of it even now. I abhor it because it stands between you and me. I loathe it, I curse it because it separates us for life."
"Separates us for life? How?"
"Can you ask me?"
"Yes, I do ask you!"
He looked round him. A society of religious persons had visited the hotel, and had obtained permission to place a copy of the Bible in every room. One of those copies lay on the chimney-piece in Catherine"s room.
Bennydeck brought it to her, and placed it on the table near which she was sitting. He turned to the New Testament, and opened it at the Gospel of Saint Matthew. With his hand on the page, he said:
"I have done my best rightly to understand the duties of a Christian.
One of those duties, as I interpret them, is to let what I believe show itself in what I do. You have seen enough of me, I hope, to know (though I have not been forward in speaking of it) that I am, to the best of my poor ability, a faithful follower of the teachings of Christ. I dare not set my own interests and my own happiness above His laws. If I suffer in obeying them as I suffer now, I must still submit. They are the laws of my life."
"Is it through me that you suffer?"
"It is through you."
"Will you tell me how?"
He had already found the chapter. His tears dropped on it as he pointed to the verse.
"Read," he answered, "what the most compa.s.sionate of all Teachers has said, in the Sermon on the Mount."
She read: "Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."
Another innocent woman, in her place, might have pointed to that first part of the verse, which pre-supposes the infidelity of the divorced wife, and might have asked if those words applied to _her_. This woman, knowing that she had lost him, knew also what she owed to herself. She rose in silence, and held out her hand at parting.
He paused before he took her hand. "Can you forgive me?" he asked.
She said: "I can pity you."
"Can you look back to the day of your marriage? Can you remember the words which declared the union between you and your husband to be separable only by death? Has he treated you with brutal cruelty?"
"Never!"
"Has he repented of his sin?"
"Yes."
"Ask your own conscience if there is not a worthier life for you and your child than the life that you are leading now." He waited, after that appeal to her. The silence remained unbroken. "Do not mistake me,"
he resumed gently. "I am not thinking of the calamity that has fallen on me in a spirit of selfish despair--I am looking to _your_ future, and I am trying to show you the way which leads to hope. Catherine! have you no word more to say to me?"
In faint trembling tones she answered him at last:
"You have left me but one word to say. Farewell!"
He drew her to him gently, and kissed her on the forehead. The agony in his face was more than she could support; she recoiled from it in horror. His last act was devoted to the tranquillity of the one woman whom he had loved. He signed to her to leave him.
Chapter LIII. The Largest Nature, the Longest Love.
Mrs. Presty waited in the garden to be joined by her daughter and Captain Bennydeck, and waited in vain. It was past her grandchild"s bedtime; she decided on returning to the house.
"Suppose we look for them in the sitting-room?" Kitty proposed.
"Suppose we wait a moment, before we go in?" her wise grandmother advised. "If I hear them talking I shall take you upstairs to bed."
"Why?"
Mrs. Presty favored Kitty with a hint relating to the management of inquisitive children which might prove useful to her in after-life.
"When you grow up to be a woman, my dear, beware of making the mistake that I have just committed. Never be foolish enough to mention your reasons when a child asks, Why?"
"Was that how they treated _you_, grandmamma, when you were a child yourself?"
"Of course it was!"
"Why?"
They had reached the sitting-room door by this time. Kitty opened it without ceremony and looked in. The room was empty.