The Bertrams

by Anthony Trollope

"Pretty nearly; such excellence as there is."

"I should have thought—" and then he paused.

"You are not coming to reproach me, I hope," she said.

"Reproach you, Lady Harcourt! No; my reproaches, silent or expressed, never fall on your head."

"Then you must be much altered;" and as she said these last words, in what was hardly more than a whisper, she saw some lady in a distant part of the room to whom some attention might be considered to be due, and rising from her seat she walked away across the room. It was very shortly after that Adela had spoken to him.

For many a long and bitter day, Bertram had persuaded himself that she had not really loved him. He had doubted it when she had first told him so calmly that it was necessary that their marriage should be postponed for years; he had doubted it much when he found her, if not happy, at least contented under that postponement; doubt had become almost certainty when he learnt that she discussed his merits with such a one as Henry Harcourt; but on that day, at Richmond, when he discovered that the very secrets of his heart were made subject of confidential conversation with this man, he had doubted it no longer. Then he had gone to her, and his reception proved to him that his doubts had been too well founded—his certainty only too sure. And so he had parted with her—as we all know.

But now he began to doubt his doubts—to be less certain of his certainty. That she did not much love Sir Henry, that was very apparent; that she could not listen to his slightest word without emotion—that, too, he could perceive; that Adela conceived that she still loved him, and that his presence there was therefore dangerous—that also had been told to him. Was it then possible that he, loving this woman as he did—having never ceased in his love for one moment, having still loved her with his whole heart, his whole strength—that he had flung her from him while her heart was still his own? Could it be that she, during their courtship, should have seemed so cold and yet had loved him?

A thousand times he had reproached her in his heart for being worldly; but now the world seemed to have no charms for her. A thousand times he had declared that she cared only for the outward show of things, but these outward shows were now wholly indifferent to her. That they in no degree contributed to her happiness, or even to her contentment, that was made manifest enough to him.

And then these thoughts drove him wild, and he began to ask himself whether there could be yet any comfort in the fact that she had loved him, and perhaps loved him still. The motives by which men are actuated in their conduct are not only various, but mixed. As Bertram thought in this way concerning Lady Harcourt—the Caroline Waddington that had once belonged to himself—he proposed to himself no scheme of infamy, no indulgence of a disastrous love, no ruin for her whom the world now called so fortunate; but he did think that, if she still loved him, it would be pleasant to sit and talk with her; pleasant to feel some warmth in her hand; pleasant that there should be some confidence in her voice. And so he resolved—but, no, there was no resolve; but he allowed it to come to pass that his intimacy in Eaton Square should not be dropped.

And then he bethought himself of the part which his friend Harcourt had played in this matter, and speculated as to how that pleasant fellow had cheated him out of his wife. What Adela had said might be very true, but why should he regard Sir Henry's happiness? why regard any man's happiness, or any woman's? Who had regarded him? So he hired a horse, and rode in the Park when he knew Lady Harcourt would be there, dined with Baron Brawl because Lady Harcourt was to dine there, and went to a ball at Mrs. Madden's for the same reason. All which the solicitor-general now saw, and did not press his friend to take a part at any more of his little dinners.