down what you have just said. He will believe it no more than I do; but you will wish him to hear it?”
“He must do much more than that,” said Mr. Berry, “and I beg that you will not be rash. I am an old man, and I assure you, with all the sincerity of one who has nothing to hope or fear in this world, that unless you are guided in this business, you, or your husband, will destroy for ever the chance of re-uniting Laura and her husband. Do you believe that she was justified in leaving him?”
“I believe that she will justify herself to him.”
“You do not—you cannot. You are deceiving yourself between hope and love. But what earthly excuse have you devised for a virtuous wife and mother who rushes away from a happy home? What excuse, if you yourself should commit such an act of madness, would you hold to justify you?”
“This is for Arthur, not for me to decide,” replied Beatrice.
“Nay, nay, you have no solution of the mystery. Do you not know that when Mrs. Lygon left, Arthur hurried down to me, and that it was this very question which exhausted our best energies, and left us without a clue or guide? Has the case mended by her long absence, since then? Yet you will not see this, and will not hear that there is indeed evidence against her.”
“Mr. Berry,” said Mrs. Hawkesley, “I know that you will acquit me of intending offence, but I cannot help answering that everything that comes from—from Lipthwaite—”
“From Mrs. Berry.”
“That is my meaning; and I regret that everything from that quarter is so tainted with the poison of her wicked hatred that I refuse to have anything to do with such suggestions. I will not say that you are influenced by her—”
“Yes, say it, if you think it. An old man, married to a younger woman, and one of an artful and resolute nature, has been deluded into believing whatever her malice may have dictated. It is true that he has humiliated himself by describing his own sorrow and misery, but that may be only part of the fraud, and may have been enjoined upon him by his wife, in order to give a better colour to the story.”
“You are putting words into my mouth—”
“But not thoughts into your mind. I have but said what has been passing through it. No matter. I love Arthur Lygon as if he had been my own son, and I will shrink at nothing that can help to restore to him his happiness. You, convinced of the innocence of your sister, refuse to assist me, because you disbelieve that I am speaking the truth. I had hoped to convince you without other words, but it shall be done.”
“Mr. Berry—”
“You must listen to me now, and if hereafter you think of this interview, and I trust that it may be one to which you will look back with gratitude in other respects, you will remember that you forced an old man to his last resource—to a confession which man should not make to woman—before you would consent to be useful to your sister.”
“You speak very unkindly.”
“We are all unkind—so be it. Mrs. Hawkesley, if those letters which have established in the mind of Mr. Urquhart the conviction which he has now imparted to Mr. Lygon and to Mr. Hawkesley—you look incredulous, but it is so—if those accursed letters, I say, are destroyed in France, Laura Lygon and her husband had better formally part for ever, for they will never again be husband and wife.”
“Will you tell me why you say so?”
“Because Arthur Lygon will never be able to efface from his mind the conviction that, though that miscreant, Ernest Adair, has chosen to repudiate the letters, he has done so from base reasons, and that the truth was really set before Mr. Urquhart.”
“Base reasons,” repeated Mrs. Hawkesley.
“That he has been bribed to declare the letters to be forgeries.”
“And who should bribe him?”
“Mrs. Lygon, or her friends, specially your husband. There, now your eye flashes, and your cheek reddens, but be calm. I am speaking for Mrs. Lygon, you are struggling against her interests. You think that Arthur Lygon will dare to entertain no such dastardly idea—even if he should cling to a suspicion that may affect his own wife—will he venture to suspect your own honourable husband? He would do ill—he would wrong a man worthy a wife like yourself, but, Mrs. Hawkesley, he will do it. You know not, and never may you know, the self-communings that pass between man and his soul at hours when both should be at rest. You know nothing of the spectres that rise in the cool dawn, when a man awakens, with his body helpless from the languor of the night, but his mind feverishly vigorous to snatch and cherish all foul and bitter thoughts. That is the time when, with his brow within the breath of his slumbering wife, Arthur Lygon will lie and weave his stubborn doubts into a damnable faith, and will scowl down upon her while she is dreaming of him and of her children.”
“I cannot answer you,” said Mrs. Hawkesley, nearly crying. “If such evil thoughts are allowed to haunt us—”
“We know where to go for the exorcism. Yes, but Arthur Lygon has never learned that lesson. Make this hollow peace if you can, destroy those letters, and on some still morning Lygon will rise up from the side of his sleeping wife, and steal from the room—and she will see him no more.”
“What would you have me do?”
“First, be convinced yourself, or you will convince no one else. And now hear me. It was with no good will that Mrs. Berry sent me on the message I have come to deliver.”
“I am sure of that.”
“The retractation of what was said here was her own voluntary act, for she believes that she is dying, and I know not what idea of reparation and of salvation may have instigated her, but the message was given, and were that all, I should have written it, not charged myself with the delivery of aught so painful. But when I tell you that we must have those letters in England, I tell you what was wrung from the abject terror of a proud woman, who yielded to a threat more
