Dutton Cook

“ I am only a woman, and I have loved him. I dare not see him again.’ So she said, the hot tears streaming from her eyes, in quite an agony of grief. And now, Wilford, I must leave you: I must go back home again.”
“Why did I not die in her arms before this frightful secret was revealed? She would not then have known the wrong she had suffered, or, at least, would have seen in my death expiation sufficient. No, Madge, you must not go! At least not alone. Do not start. I must see Violet! I must! It will indeed be for the last time. Madge, I implore you, let this be so! ”

“ I never feel so old as when I am basking in the radiance of Madge’s youth and beauty; it is always in the strong sunlight that one’s wrinkles become the most visible. There is certainly great happiness in going down with worn nerves, jaded and gloomy from the over-work of my life here, to the peace and calm of the Manor House; to hear in the evening the lovely voice of Violet giving new beauty to those old true melodies of Mozart; to talk with Wilford over a pipe in the snug porch; to romp with little Wilford on the lawn ”

“ Yes; it seems you love her very dearly—more than you ever loved me. It is strange, how little of value your love was to me when it was solely mine; yet now, when it has gone from me for ever, how I yearn for it again. It has not wholly gone from me, Monsieur Wilford. Say that you have yet some feeling for me."
"Why do you talk in this way, Regine," he answered, sternly. "Do you forget everything! Be undeceived. Learn that my love, if love there ever was between us, is now dead, stone dead. It can never be brought to life again. Heaven forbid it ever should. You know what act killed it. ”

“ It is the problem of our lives. I am but a blind guide, Wilford. Yet it seems to me your first impulse was the true one; to spring from some innate perception God has planted in our souls, and which teaches us to distinguish the good and true. There has been wrongdoing enough, but it has the palliation that it was unconscious wrong. Violet is not your wife. You are guilty of a deliberate crime if you now try to trick her into the belief that she is; if you ask her any more to regard you as her husband. Let the truth be told:—there will be sorrow, but there will be no sin ”

“ Violet asked, almost fiercely. The baby was on the sofa now, curled up, calm, beautiful, quite unconscious of the great grief afflicting those so near to it. “He would not take it from me? It is all mine now; it is all I have in the world now! It is for my baby only that I wish to live, my poor baby, who has no father now—my poor baby, who has no one now to look to for comfort, and support, and protection; no one but a wretched mother, whom, by-and-by, he will be taught to hate.” She bent over the child as though to shield it from harm. ”

“ I could not wrong my friend, or her, by counselling a course which severs them from happiness for ever, which will bring upon her a grief almost more than she can bear. Poor Violet! No, my love is hopeless now as it has ever been. I do not profit by this sorrow. She must know her dreadful doom. We must be just before all things: yet I would die willingly to spare her the pain of To know that she is not Wilford's wife—that another has a better claim to that title—and that child, of whom she is so proud, upon whom she lavishes all a mother's rapture and fondness, that child is——! ”

“ The secret is known to very few; death may at any time diminish their number; may remove the whole cause of your unhappiness. Regine dead, the claims of her relatives upon you become of small consideration. The secret may never be known; there are many secrets that are never known, that, humanly speaking, never can be known. It is for you to decide."
"Yet there would be no real happiness in this," cried Wilford. "Could I hear such a weight of wrongdoing? Could I support by Violet's side a life that would be a perpetual lie—a ceaseless dread?"
"It is in trials like this," said Martin. ”

“ And yet, Violet, I am here—at your feet—to proffer you my heart, and to ask for yours. Give it to me. Give me a motive for life; give me something to make the future precious to me; not because of any deserving of mine, but out of your great goodness and pity. Do I pain you, Violet, talking like this? But indeed I can no more be silent; for I love you, Violet, and that love will find its way into words. It is my only claim; besides that, I have nothing. A broken, wearied man, just escaped from a wreck in which all fortune has gone down. ”

“ Look around you—you see where we are living—you see the sort of neighbourhood—the position we occupy—our manner of life. Is it the sort of sphere in which I ought to move, or Regine, or Alexis?"
"I have known you in a humbler one," he remarked. The words angered her. "You were not always Madame Boisfleury nor even Pichot. You are English born—of obscure parents. Years ago, when you were—"
"Enough!" she cried, almost fiercely. "Is it a fit position for Alexis—for Regine? Do you know what she is doing to earn her livelihood? Do you know to what an occupation she has been compelled to stoop?" ”

“ Could nothing induce you to spare her, you heartless man? Did neither her beauty nor her purity move you to pity? Don’t lie to me, sir: you know that you have been guilty of a shameful wrong. Be assured that your guilt is now known, that your sin is now laid bare. You married Violet, knowing that your marriage was a fraud and falsehood. Still you hoped to escape detection; you changed your name; you lived here obscurely, unknown; you never returned to Grilling Abbots—to the Grange; you sought to sever every tie that united you to us—to our family, and to your own at Grilling Abbots. ”

“ So then, now, you love this child, this wife?" She laid a stress upon the word.
"I do," he answered, firmly, "with all my soul."
"She is good, this Madame Violet—is not that her name? I heard Madame Boisfleuy tell it. She is beautiful—is she not? She is worthy of your love. Oh, how I wish that I could see her! May I see her, Monsieur Wilford?"
"You see her!" he cried. "Dare not attempt it; dare not think of such a thing! What wrong has she ever done to you?"
"You are very cruel, Monsieur Wilford," said Regine; "but you are right. ”

“ The stage fills but a very small part now in the economy of our social enjoyment, but it was different with past generations. It was real pain to them to lose their darling actress—to contemplate no more the ceaseless grace of that supple, elegant figure—to watch no more the lovely face that seemed to sparkle with wit and humour and archness, as a diamond emits light—to dwell no longer upon the witching beauty of her smile—to listen no more to the joyous music of her laugh. She had been always ready at the call of her audience. She had never failed in her duty to the public as a performer. ”

“ But I am not an imaginative writer, I don't deal in fiction—I criticise, I don't create; and it seems to me that there are only two places worth living in—London and Paris. I would divide my time equally between them if I could; but I am obliged to remain in London the greater part of the year; when I do get a holiday I go to Paris; the holiday over, I return to London."
"You do not care, then, for the country, nor the seaside?" Violet asked.
"I prefer people to places; I would sooner have crowds of faces round me than be alone in the midst of magnificent scenery. ”

“ Thus I send you back again to beggary, then; thus I cancel my will—thus—thus," and as he spoke, with trembling hands he tore the paper to shreds. "Thus I make Stephen my heir, and bequeath all to him. Now, sir, go forth—stranger, outcast, beggar: let me never set eyes on you again. Let me—"
He flung the crumpled fragments of paper into the face of his son; he whirled his thin, withered arms in the air, as though endeavouring to invoke some new curse upon his firstborn child; but his voice failed him: his passion prevented what he said from being either articulate or audible. ”

“ Oh! so sad she looks, so wan, and hardly speaks, hardly looks from the ground; holding her baby so close to her heart, as though she feared to lose that also; and then she turns from one to the other of us, half frightened, half imploring that we will say no word against you. She will not listen to an accusation against you. ‘He is not guilty of this sin,’ she murmurs always; ‘he has been the victim of some scandalous fraud. He never would have done this wrong—never, never!’ over and over again, like one crazed. Oh, Wilford! you have never been so loved as Violet loved you. ”

“ Love me and trust in me always. Good-bye!"
One last hurried kiss, and he was gone. She heard the noise of the cab bearing him away; she listened until the sound quite died off. Then a sense of loneliness came dreadfully upon her, and the tears streamed down her face. Had Mr. Phillimore seen her then, he would have cried aloud in his admiration at the exquisite semblance of Raffaelle's Mater Dolorosa that she presented.
"I have never doubted him," she said. "Let me not doubt him now. And yet there was something new and strange in his voice as he spoke of that newspaper business. ”

“ And Madge sauntered into the garden. Indeed there hardly seemed to be room for her in the house—she had grown so much taller during the last half-hour—such a sense of importance had come upon her. She was the depository of so tremendous a secret; she had passed from childhood to womanhood at one bound. She was a woman quite now—the confidant of another woman, and the other woman in love; and the other woman Vi, her elder sister; and she, Madge, had discovered her sister's secret unassisted, all by herself, entirely of her own superior sagacity. ”

“ No wrong for her, for Wilford, for myself. I love; but it is my heart's secret—it will never be known to living soul. It may be madness, but it is not sin. I would not harm my friend even in thought, much less in deed. I love hopelessly—it is my own affair. I am resigned to that hopelessness. I am strong enough, I believe, to bear even that burden. And now—to work. My cigar is smoked out. Enough of this sentimentalism of a baldheaded, middle-aged man up three pair of stairs. For poor Wilford, he will recover, thanks to her care. ”

“ Remember always”—and she placed her hand, with a solemn gesture, on the Bible at her side—“it is not for us to judge—and—and—he is my husband before God! I must not say—I must not hear—a single word against him.”
“You are an angel, Violet; and this man”—but he stopped himself. “How I trusted him! How fond I was of him—ever since he was quite a child—a baby in his grand cradle at the Grange. How I cheered his poor mother with good prophecies about her boy! I would have staked my life upon his integrity. I did more, my dear one—I staked your happiness! I am rightly punished. ”

“ I am almost angry with each of your letters that does not contain them explicitly—implication is not sufficient. I should like the precise words written large at the beginning of each letter, and again large at the end. I think that would satisfy me. Oh! if you knew how happy the thought of your love makes me, Violet—what value it gives to my future—how great a change it has made in me in every way! I sometimes pause, wondering if all can be true. Is there this leaven of doubt about all joy? Do those who are happy always stop to question their position and plague themselves with inquiries? ”

“ Perhaps I may never hope for Violet’s pardon or pity. The wrong I have done—I am quite conscious how great and cruel that wrong is—may well hinder her from one further feeling of tenderness towards me. Still, Madge, it cannot but be some comfort to her in the future to know that her suffering, her anguish—well—her shame, if you will have it so, was brought about certainly by no human design, but by means of an awful and inscrutable accident—a wild, mad chance. ”

“ Vi interposes, laughing.
"Yes, you're romantic. I'm practical. You like novels with lots of sentiment in them, and that sort of stuff. I like funny stories that make one die of laughing. Hallo! Vi. Stephen Hadfield's coming here. Will he come into this room, do you think? Isn't my dress awfully untidy—and isn't this collar crumpled? And my hair feels as though it had all tumbled down at the back. Has it, Vi? I wish I could look so neat and trim as you always do; but I never shall, I know. Oh, it's all right. He's gone into the surgery."
"I hope there's no one ill at the Grange." ”

“ Write, and say that upon reflection you cannot: tell them—anything! Only do not leave me, Wilford. You may fall ill on the road. You may die, Wilford, and I shall never see you more."
The tears started to her eyes at the thought, and she circled him with her soft arms, and kissed him.
"Dearest Vi, is this reasonable?" he said, gently. "I have accepted the offer made to me. Am I not bound in honour—"
"Enough, Wilford. You must go, I see. But may I not go with you?"
"You forget, Vi, the baby. You cannot leave baby; and we cannot expose the little one to all the fatigues of this journey." ”