“Well?” said Fairfield, dubiously.
“Couldn’t you stretch a point for my sake, and go – and tell him the real state of affairs in respect to Miss Lance, and how untrue it is, how ridiculously untrue, that she was kept at Forest-leigh by any will of mine? Why, it was a thing, as you have just said, that all the county knew! An infatuation – and nothing less than the bane of my whole married life.”
“Yes, I know – everybody thought so,” Mr. Fairfield said. That new idea – was it perhaps germinating faintly in his mind? – no one had thought of any other explanation, but yet – ”
“If you were only to say so – only as much as that – that all my friends recognised the state of the case.”
“I could say that,” said Fairfield, with hesitation. “Don’t think me unfriendly, Aubrey, but it’s a little awkward for a man to interfere in another man’s affairs, and it’s not only your affairs that I know so well, but you see Kingsward’s too – ”
“I am aware of that, Fairfield; still, to break off what I believe in my heart would be for his daughter’s happiness too – ”
“To be sure there’s the young lady to be taken into consideration,” said Fairfield, dubiously.
It will be as well to carry this incident to its completion at once. Mr. Fairfield at the last allowed himself to be convinced, and he went that afternoon to the club, to which he still belonged by some early military experiences, and where Colonel Kingsward was one of those who ruled supreme. He knew exactly when to find him at the club, where he strolled in after leaving his office, to refresh himself with a cup of tea, or something else in its place. The intercessor went up to the table at which the Colonel sat with the evening paper, and conversed for a little on the topics of the day. After these had been run over, and the prospects of war slightly discussed – for Colonel Kingsward had not much respect for Mr. Fairfield’s opinion on that subject – the latter gentleman said abruptly —
“I say, Kingsward, I am very sorry to hear there is some hitch in the marriage which I was so glad to hear of last week.”
“Ah, oh! So Leigh has been with you, I presume?” the Colonel replied.
“Yes; and, upon my life, Colonel, there is not a word of truth in any talk you may have heard about that Miss Lance – . We all know quite well the whole business. You should hear Mary on the subject. Of course, he can’t say to you, poor fellow, that his first wife was a little queer, and that that woman made her her slave.”
“No; it wasn’t to be expected that he would tell me that.”
“But it’s true. She got completely the upper hand of that poor little thing. The husband had no influence. I believe he hated her – like the devil.”
“You think so,” said the Colonel, with a strange smile, “yet it is a curious thing that he endured her all the same, and also that a wife should insist so in keeping another woman in her husband’s constant company – and an attractive woman, as I hear.”
“Oh! a devil of a woman,” cried Fairfield. “I was telling Aubrey I should no more have ventured to expose myself to her blandishments – . One of those sort of women, you know, that you cannot abide, yet who can turn you round their little finger.”
“And what did he say to that?” the Colonel asked, still with that smile.
“Oh, he said she never had any charm for him – and I believe it – for what with poor little Mrs. Leigh’s whims and vagaries, and the other’s flatteries and adulation and complete empire over her, his life was made a burden to him. You should hear Mary on that subject – none of the ladies could keep their patience.”
“Yet it appears Mr. Aubrey Leigh kept his – until he got tired,” said the Colonel. “Believe me, Fairfield, when there is such an unnatural situation as that, there must be more in it than meets the eye.”
Fairfield, a good, steady soul, who generally had his ideas suggested to him, went away very serious from that interview. It was very strange indeed that a woman should prefer her friend to her husband, and make things wretched for him in order to keep her comfortable – it was very curious that with a woman so much superior to Amy in the house, a woman of the kind that turn men’s heads, that mild Aubrey Leigh, who was not distinguished for force of character, should have never sought a moment’s relief with her from poor Mrs. Leigh’s querulousness. Fairfield accelerated his departure by an hour or two in order not to meet Aubrey again before he had poured those strange doubts and suggestions into his own Mary’s ears.
CHAPTER XI
The party of travellers whose progress had hitherto been like that of a party of pleasure, who had been interested in everything they saw, and hailed every new place with delight, as if that had been the haven of all their hopes, travelled home from Cologne in a very different spirit. For one thing, it could not be concealed that Mrs. Kingsward was ill, which was a thing that she herself and the whole family stoutly, one standing by another, had hitherto been able to deny. She had not gone far, not an hour’s journey, when she had to abandon her seat by the window – where it had always been her delight to “see the country,” and point out every village to her children – and lie down upon the temporary couch which Moulsey prepared for her with shawls and cushions along one side of the carriage. She cried out against herself as “self-indulgent” and “lazy,” but she did not resist this arrangement. It effectually took any pleasure that there might have been out of the journey: for Bee, as may be supposed, though she was not melancholy, and would not admit, even to Betty, in the closest confidence, that she was at all afraid of the ultimate issue, was certainly self-absorbed, and glad not to be called upon to notice the scenery, but allowed to subside into a corner with her own thoughts. Charlie was in the opposite corner, exceedingly glum, and not conversible. Bee would not speak to him or look at him, and even Betty, that little thing, had said, “Oh, Charlie, how could you be so nasty to Aubrey?” for her sole salutation that morning. He was not sure even that his mother, though he had stood on her side and backed her up, was pleased with him for it. She talked to him, it is true, occasionally, and made him do little things for her, but rather in the way in which a mother singles out the pariah of the family, the one who is boycotted for some domestic offence, to show him that all are not against him, than in the tone which is used to a champion and defender. So it was not wonderful that Charlie was glum; but to see him in one corner, biting or trying to bite the few hairs that he called his moustache, with his brows bent down to his chin, and his chin sunk in the collar of his coat – and Bee in another, very different – indeed, her face glorified with dreams, and her eyes full of latent light, ready to flash out at any moment – was not cheerful for the others.
Mrs. Kingsward looked at them from one to another, and at little Betty between busied in a little book, with that baffled feeling which arises in the mind of a delicate woman when the strong individualities and wills of her children become first developed before her, after that time of their youth when all were guided by her decision, and mamma’s leave was asked for everything. How fierce, how self-willed, how determined in his opposition Charlie looked like his father, not to be moved by anything! And Bee, how possessed by those young hopes of her own, which the mother knew would be of no avail against the fiat gone forth against her! Mrs. Kingsward knew her husband better than her children did. She knew that having taken up his position he would not give in. And Bee, with all that light of resistance in her eyes – Bee as little willing to give in as he! The invalid trembled when she thought of the clash of arms that would resound over her head – of the struggle which would rend her cheerful house in two. She did not at all realise that the cheerful days of that house were numbered – that soon it would be reduced into its elements, as a somewhat clamorous, restless, too energetic brood of children, with a father very self-willed, who hitherto had known nothing of them but as happy and obedient creatures, whose individual determinations concerned games and lessons, and who, so far as the conduct of