Book: The Evil Genius

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Chapter XXXI.

Mr. Herbert Linley.

Of the friends and neighbors who had associated with Herbert
Linley, in bygone days, not more than two or three kept up their
intimacy with him at the later time of his disgrace. Those few,
it is needless to say, were men.

One of the faithful companions, who had not shrunk from him yet,
had just left the London hotel at which Linley had taken rooms
for Sydney Westerfield and himself--in the name of Mr. and Mrs.
Herbert. This old friend had been shocked by the change for the
worse which he had perceived in the fugitive master of Mount
Morven. Linley's stout figure of former times had fallen away, as
if he had suffered under long illness; his healthy color had
faded; he made an effort to assume the hearty manner that had
once been natural to him which was simply pitiable to see. "After
sacrificing all that makes life truly decent and truly enjoyable
for a woman, he has got nothing, not even false happiness, in
return!" With that dreary conclusion the retiring visitor
descended the hotel steps, and went his way along the street.

Linley returned to the newspaper which he had been reading when
his friend was shown into the room.

Line by line he followed the progress of the law report, which
informed its thousands of readers that his wife had divorced him,
and had taken lawful possession of his child. Word by word, he
dwelt with morbid attention on the terms of crushing severity in
which the Lord President had spoken of Sydney Westerfield and of
himself. Sentence by sentence he read the reproof inflicted on
the unhappy woman whom he had vowed to love and cherish. And
then--even then--urged by his own self-tormenting suspicion, he
looked for more. On the opposite page there was a leading
article, presenting comments on the trial, written in the tone of
lofty and virtuous regret; taking the wife's side against the
judge, but declaring, at the same time, that no condemnation of
the conduct of the husband and the governess could be too
merciless, and no misery that might overtake them in the future
more than they had deserved.

He threw the newspaper on the table at his side, and thought over
what he had read.

If he had done nothing else, he had drained the bitter cup to the
dregs. When he looked back, he saw nothing but the life that he
had wasted. When his thoughts turned to the future, they
confronted a prospect empty of all promise to a man still in the
prime of life. Wife and child were as completely lost to him as
if they had been dead--and it was the wife's doing. Had he any
right to complain? Not the shadow of a right. As the newspapers
said, he had deserved it.

The clock roused him, striking the hour.

He rose hurriedly, and advanced toward the window. As he crossed
the room, he passed by a mirror. His own sullen despair looked at
him in the reflection of his face. "She will be back directly,"
he remembered; "she mustn't see me like this!" He went on to the
window to divert his mind (and so to clear his face) by watching
the stream of life flowing by in the busy street. Artificial
cheerfulness, assumed love in Sydney's presence--that was what
his life had come to already.

If he had known that she had gone out, seeking a temporary
separation, with _his_ fear of self-betrayal--if he had suspected
that she, too, had thoughts which must be concealed: sad
forebodings of losing her hold on his heart, terrifying
suspicions that he was already comparing her, to her own
disadvantage, with the wife whom he had deserted--if he had made
these discoveries, what would the end have been? But she had,
thus far, escaped the danger of exciting his distrust. That she
loved him, he knew. That she had begun to doubt his attachment to
her he would not have believed, if his oldest friend had declared
it on the best evidence. She had said to him, that morning, at
breakfast: "There was a good woman who used to let lodgings here
in London, and who was very kind to me when I was a child;" and
she had asked leave to go to the house, and inquire if that
friendly landlady was still living--with nothing visibly
constrained in her smile, and with no faltering tone in her
voice. It was not until she was out in the street that the
tell-tale tears came into her eyes, and the bitter sigh broke
from her, and mingled its little unheard misery with the grand
rise and fall of the tumult of London life. While he was still at
the window, he saw her crossing the street on her way back to
him. She came into the room with her complexion heightened by
exercise; she kissed him, and said with her pretty smile: "Have
you been lonely without me?" Who would have supposed that the
torment of distrust, and the dread of desertion, were busy at
this woman's heart?

He placed a chair for her, and seating himself by her side asked
if she felt tired. Every attention that she could wish for from
the man whom she loved, offered with every appearance of
sincerity on the surface! She met him halfway, and answered as if
her mind was quite at ease.

"No, dear, I'm not tired--but I'm glad to get back."

"Did you find your old landlady still alive?"

"Yes. But oh, so altered, poor thing! The struggle for life must
have been a hard one, since I last saw her."

"She didn't recognize you, of course?"

"Oh! no. She looked at me and my dress in great surprise and said
her lodgings were hardly fit for a young lady like me. It was too
sad. I said I had known her lodgings well, many years ago--and,
with that to prepare her, I told her who I was. Ah, it was a
melancholy meeting for both of us. She burst out crying when I
kissed her; and I had to tell her that my mother was dead, and my
brother lost to me in spite of every effort to find him. I asked
to go into the kitchen, thinking the change would be a relief to
both of us. The kitchen used to be a paradise to me in those old
days; it was so warm to a half-starved child--and I always got
something to eat when I was there. You have no idea, Herbert, how
poor and how empty the place looked to me now. I was glad to get
out of it, and go upstairs. There was a lumber-room at the top of
the house; I used to play in it, all by myself. More changes met
me the moment I opened the door."

"Changes for the better?"

"My dear, it couldn't have changed for the worse! My dirty old
play-room was cleaned and repaired; the lumber taken away, and a
nice little bed in one corner. Some clerk in the City had taken
the room--I shouldn't have known it again. But there was another
surprise waiting for me; a happy surprise this time. In cleaning
out the garret, what do you think the landlady found? Try to
guess."

Anything to please her! Anything to make her think that he was as
fond of her as ever! "Was it something you had left behind you,"
he said, "at the time when you lodged there."

"Yes! you are right at the first guess--a little memorial of my
father. Only some torn crumpled leaves from a book of children's
songs that he used to teach me to sing; and a small packet of his
letters, which my mother may have thrown aside and forgotten.
See! I have brought them back with me; I mean to look over the
letters at once--but this doesn't interest you?"

"Indeed it does."

He made that considerate reply mechanically, as if thinking of
something else. She was afraid to tell him plainly that she saw
this; but she could venture to say that he was not looking well.
"I have noticed it for some time past," she confessed. "You have
been accustomed to live in the country; I am afraid London
doesn't agree with you."

He admitted that she might be right; still speaking absently,
still thinking of the Divorce. She laid the packet of letters and
the poor relics of the old song-book on the table, and bent over
him. Tenderly, and a little timidly, she put her arm around his
neck. "Let us try some purer air," she suggested; "the seaside
might do you good. Don't you think so?"

"I daresay, my dear. Where shall we go?"

"Oh, I leave that to you."

"No, Sydney. It was I who proposed coming to London. You shall
decide this time."

She submitted, and promised to think of it. Leaving him, with the
first expression of trouble that had shown itself in her face,
she took up the songs and put them into the pocket of her dress.
On the point of removing the letters next, she noticed the
newspaper on the table. "Anything interesting to-day?" she
asked--and drew the newspaper toward her to look at it. He took
it from her suddenly, almost roughly. The next moment he
apologized for his rudeness. "There is nothing worth reading in
the paper," he said, after begging her pardon. "You don't care
about politics, do you?"

Instead of answering, she looked at him attentively.

The heightened color which told of recent exercise, healthily
enjoyed, faded from her face. She was silent; she was pale. A
little confused, he smiled uneasily. "Surely," he resumed, trying
to speak gayly, "I haven't offended you?"

"There is something in the newspaper," she said, "which you don't
want me to read."

He denied it--but he still kept the newspaper in his own
possession. Her voice sank low; her face turned paler still.

"Is it all over?" she asked. "And is it put in the newspaper?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the Divorce."

He went back again to the window and looked out. It was the
easiest excuse that he could devise for keeping his face turned
away from her. She followed him.

"I don't want to read it, Herbert. I only ask you to tell me if
you are a free man again."

Quiet as it was, her tone left him no alternative but to treat
her brutally or to reply. Still looking out at the street, he
said "Yes."

"Free to marry, if you like?" she persisted.

He said "Yes" once more--and kept his face steadily turned away
from her. She waited a while. He neither moved nor spoke.

Surviving the slow death little by little of all her other
illusions, one last hope had lingered in her heart. It was killed
by that cruel look, fixed on the view of the street.

"I'll try to think of a place that we can go to at the seaside."
Having said those words she slowly moved away to the door, and
turned back, remembering the packet of letters. She took it up,
paused, and looked toward the window. The streets still
interested him. She left the room.



Chapter XXXII.


Miss Westerfield.


She locked the door of her bedchamber, and threw off her
walking-dress; light as it was, she felt as if it would stifle
her. Even the ribbon round her neck was more than she could
endure and breathe freely. Her overburdened heart found no relief
in tears. In the solitude of her room she thought of the future.
The dreary foreboding of what it might be, filled her with a
superstitious dread from which she recoiled. One of the windows
was open already; she threw up the other to get more air. In the
cooler atmosphere her memory recovered itself; she recollected
the newspaper, that Herbert had taken from her. Instantly she
rang for the maid. "Ask the first waiter you see downstairs for
today's newspaper; any one will do, so long as I don't wait for
it." The report of the Divorce--she was in a frenzy of impatience
to read what _he_ had read--the report of the Divorce.

When her wish had been gratified, when she had read it from
beginning to end, one vivid impression only was left on her mind.
She could think of nothing but what the judge had said, in
speaking of Mrs. Linley.

A cruel reproof, and worse than cruel, a public reproof,
administered to the generous friend, the true wife, the devoted
mother--and for what? For having been too ready to forgive the
wretch who had taken her husband from her, and had repaid a
hundred acts of kindness by unpardonable ingratitude.

She fell on her knees; she tried wildly to pray for inspiration
that should tell her what to do. "Oh, God, how can I give that
woman back the happiness of which I have robbed her!"

The composing influence of prayer on a troubled mind was
something that she had heard of. It was not something that she
experienced now. An overpowering impatience to make the speediest
and completest atonement possessed her. Must she wait till
Herbert Linley no longer concealed that he was weary of her, and
cast her off? No! It should be her own act that parted them, and
that did it at once. She threw open the door, and hurried
half-way down the stairs before she remembered the one terrible
obstacle in her way--the Divorce.

Slowly and sadly she submitted, and went back to her room.

There was no disguising it; the two who had once been husband and
wife were parted irrevocably--by the wife's own act. Let him
repent ever so sincerely, let him be ever so ready to return,
would the woman whose faith Herbert Linley had betrayed take him
back? The Divorce, the merciless Divorce, answered:--No!

She paused, thinking of the marriage that was now a marriage no
more. The toilet-table was close to her; she looked absently at
her haggard face in the glass. What a lost wretch she saw! The
generous impulses which other women were free to feel were
forbidden luxuries to her. She was ashamed of her wickedness; she
was eager to sacrifice herself, for the good of the once-dear
friend whom she had wronged. Useless longings! Too late! too
late!

She regretted it bitterly. Why?

Comparing Mrs. Linley's prospects with hers, was there anything
to justify regret for the divorced wife? She had her sweet little
child to make her happy; she had a fortune of her own to lift her
above sordid cares; she was still handsome, still a woman to be
admired. While she held her place in the world as high as ever,
what was the prospect before Sydney Westerfield? The miserable
sinner would end as she had deserved to end. Absolutely dependent
on a man who was at that moment perhaps lamenting the wife whom
he had deserted and lost, how long would it be before she found
herself an outcast, without a friend to help her--with a
reputation hopelessly lost--face to face with the temptation to
drown herself or poison herself, as other women had drowned
themselves or poisoned themselves, when the brightest future
before them was rest in death?

If she had been a few years older, Herbert Linley might never
again have seen her a living creature. But she was too young to
follow any train of repellent thought persistently to its end.
The man she had guiltily (and yet how naturally) loved was lord
and master in her heart, doubt him as she might. Even in his
absence he pleaded with her to have some faith in him still.

She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her, when she
had returned that morning from her walk. He had been kind and
considerate; he had listened to her little story of the relics of
her father, found in the garret, as if her interests were his
interests. There had been nothing to disappoint her, nothing to
complain of, until she had rashly attempted to discover whether
he was free to make her his wife. She had only herself to blame
if he was cold and distant when she had alluded to that delicate
subject, on the day when he first knew that the Divorce had been
granted and his child had been taken from him. And yet, he might
have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than
looking into the street--as if he had forgotten her in the
interest of watching the strangers passing by! Perhaps he was not
thinking of the strangers; perhaps his mind was dwelling fondly
and regretfully on his wife?

Instinctively, she felt that her thoughts were leading her back
again to a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness
recoiled. Was there nothing she could find to do which would
offer some other subject to occupy her mind than herself and her
future?

Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her
father's letters placed on the table by her bedside.

The first three letters that she examined, after untying the
packet, were briefly written, and were signed by names unknown to
her. They all related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised
bets which were certain to make the fortunes of the clever
gamblers on the turf who laid them. Absolute indifference on the
part of the winners to the ruin of the losers, who were not in
the secret, was the one feeling in common, which her father's
correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw the
letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning.

The next letter which she picked out from the little heap was of
some length, and was written in a clear and steady hand. By
comparison with the blotted scrawls which she had just burned, it
looked like the letter of a gentleman. She turned to the
signature. The strange surname struck her; it was "Bennydeck."

Not a common name, and not a name which seemed to be altogether
unknown to her. Had she heard her father mention it at home in
the time of her early childhood? There were no associations with
it that she could now call to mind.

She read the letter. It addressed her father familiarly as "My
dear Roderick," and it proceeded in these words:--



"The delay in the sailing of your ship offers me an opportunity
of writing to you again. My last letter told you of my father's
death. I was then quite unprepared for an event which has
happened, since that affliction befell me. Prepare yourself to be
surprised. Our old moated house at Sandyseal, in which we have
spent so many happy holidays when we were schoolfellows, is sold.

"You will be almost as sorry as I was to hear this; and you will
be quite as surprised as I was, when I tell you that Sandyseal
Place has become a Priory of English Nuns, of the order of St.
Benedict.

"I think I see you look up from my letter, with your big black
eyes staring straight before you, and say and swear that this
must be one of my mystifications. Unfortunately (for I am fond of
the old house in which I was born) it is only too true. The
instructions in my father's will, under which Sandyseal has been
sold, are peremptory. They are the result of a promise made, many
years since, to his wife.

"You and I were both very young when my poor mother died; but I
think you must remember that she, like the rest of her family,
was a Roman Catholic.

"Having reminded you of this, I may next tell you that Sandyseal
Place was my mother's property. It formed part of her marriage
portion, and it was settled on my father if she died before him,
and if she left no female child to survive her. I am her only
child. My father was therefore dealing with his own property when
he ordered the house to be sold. His will leaves the purchase
money to me. I would rather have kept the house.

"But why did my mother make him promise to sell the place at his
death?

"A letter, attached to my father's will, answers this question,
and tells a very sad story. In deference to my mother's wishes it
was kept strictly a secret from me while my father lived.

"There was a younger sister of my mother's who was the beauty of
the family; loved and admired by everybody who was acquainted
with her. It is needless to make this long letter longer by
dwelling on the girl's miserable story. You have heard it of
other girls, over and over again. She loved and trusted; she was
deceived and deserted. Alone and friendless in a foreign country;
her fair fame blemished; her hope in the future utterly
destroyed, she attempted to drown herself. This took place in
France. The best of good women--a Sister of Charity--happened to
be near enough to the river to rescue her. She was sheltered; she
was pitied; she was encouraged to return to her family. The poor
deserted creature absolutely refused; she could never forget that
she had disgraced them. The good Sister of Charity won her
confidence. A retreat which would hide her from the world, and
devote her to religion for the rest of her days, was the one end
to her wasted life that she longed for. That end was attained in
a Priory of Benedictine Nuns, established in France. There she
found protection and peace--there she passed the remaining years
of her life among devoted Sister-friends--and there she died a
quiet and even a happy death.

"You will now understand how my mother's grateful remembrance
associated her with the interests of more than one community of
Nuns; and you will not need to be told what she had in mind when
she obtained my father's promise at the time of her last illness.

"He at once proposed to bequeath the house as a free gift to the
Benedictines. My mother thanked him and refused. She was thinking
of me. 'If our son fails to inherit the house from his father,'
she said, 'it is only right that he should have the value of the
house in money. Let it be sold.'

"So here I am--rich already--with this additional sum of money in
my banker's care.

"My idea is to invest it in the Funds, and to let it thrive at
interest, until I grow older, and retire perhaps from service in
the Navy. The later years of my life may well be devoted to the
founding of a charitable institution, which I myself can
establish and direct. If I die first--oh, there is a chance of
it! We may have a naval war, perhaps, or I may turn out one of
those incorrigible madmen who risk their lives in Arctic
exploration. In case of the worst, therefore, I shall leave the
interests of my contemplated Home in your honest and capable
hands. For the present good-by, and a prosperous voyage outward
bound."



So the letter ended.

Sydney dwelt with reluctant attention on the latter half of it.
The story of the unhappy favorite of the family had its own
melancholy and sinister interest for her. She felt the foreboding
that it might, in some of its circumstances, be her story
too--without the peaceful end. Into what community of merciful
women could _she_ be received, in her sorest need? What religious
consolations would encourage her penitence? What prayers, what
hopes, would reconcile her, on her death-bed, to the common doom?

She sighed as she folded up Captain Bennydeck's letter and put it
in her bosom, to be read again. "If my lot had fallen among good
people," she thought, "perhaps I might have belonged to the
Church which took care of that poor girl."

Her mind was still pursuing its own sad course of inquiry; she
was wondering in what part of England Sandyseal might be; she was
asking herself if the Nuns at the old moated house ever opened
their doors to women, whose one claim on their common
Christianity was the claim to be pitied--when she heard Linley's
footsteps approaching the door.

His tone was kind; his manner was gentle; his tender interest in
her seemed to have revived. Her long absence had alarmed him; he
feared she might be ill. "I was only thinking," she said. He
smiled, and sat down by her, and asked if she had been thinking
of the place that they should go to when they left London.



Chapter XXXIII.


Mrs. Romsey.


The one hotel in Sandyseal was full, from the topmost story to
the ground floor; and by far the larger half of the landlord's
guests were invalids sent to him by the doctors.

To persons of excitable temperament, in search of amusement, the
place offered no attractions. Situated at the innermost end of a
dull little bay, Sandyseal--so far as any view of the shipping in
the Channel was concerned--might have been built on a remote
island in the Pacific Ocean. Vessels of any importance kept well
out of the way of treacherous shoals and currents lurking at the
entrance of the bay. The anchorage ground was good; but the depth
of water was suited to small vessels only--to shabby old
fishing-smacks which seldom paid their expenses, and to dirty
little coasters carrying coals and potatoes. At the back of the
hotel, two slovenly rows of cottages took their crooked course
inland. Sailing masters of yachts, off duty, sat and yawned at
the windows; lazy fishermen looked wearily at the weather over
their garden gates; and superfluous coastguards gathered together
in a wooden observatory, and leveled useless telescopes at an
empty sea. The flat open country, with its few dwarf trees and
its mangy hedges, lay prostrate under the sky in all the
desolation of solitary space, and left the famous restorative air
free to build up dilapidated nerves, without an object to hinder
its passage at any point of the compass. The lonely drab-colored
road that led to the nearest town offered to visitors, taking
airings, a view of a low brown object in the distance, said to be
the convent in which the Nuns lived, secluded from mortal eyes.
At one side of the hotel, the windows looked on a little wooden
pier, sadly in want of repair. On the other side, a walled
inclosure accommodated yachts of light tonnage, stripped of their
rigging, and sitting solitary on a bank of mud until their owners
wanted them. In this neighborhood there was a small outlying colony
of shops: one that sold fruit and fish; one that dealt in groceries
and tobacco; one shut up, with a bill in the window inviting a
tenant; and one, behind the Methodist Chapel, answering the
double purpose of a post-office and a storehouse for ropes and
coals. Beyond these objects there was nothing (and this was the
great charm of the place) to distract the attention of invalids,
following the doctor's directions, and from morning to night
taking care of their health.

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