The Honour of the Clintons

by Archibald Marshall

How could such an announcement, to the Squire reading it in the obituary column of his paper, cause any emotion stronger than the feeling that all was for the best?

For one thing, although the direct cause of Susan's death had been pneumonia, there was little doubt, to him who knew the state of mind she had been in when her illness had first attacked her, that she had succumbed to that, and not to any ailment of the body, which, otherwise, she could have shaken off. She had paid the price, poor girl! The account as against her was closed, her name dropped from the ledger.

That she had died in full repentance, and would therefore escape the ultimate fate of branded sinners, his easy creed allowed him to take for granted. The very fact that she had died seemed to make her state in the hereafter secure. For her it was well.

And not less so for those whom she had, in the phrase that came readily to his lips, left behind. Humphrey—poor Humphrey—who was overwhelmed with grief, as it was only natural he should be, would come to feel in time that her death had been, if not a blessing in disguise—which would be a harsh way of putting it—then a merciful dispensation of Providence. He had nothing to reproach himself with. He had cloven to his wife at a time when he might, justifiably, have played a very different part; had been prepared to share with her such of the punishment for her crime as could not be avoided; had even accepted—quixotically, as the Squire thought—part responsibility for it; and in short had fulfilled his duty towards her with a fine loyalty such as his father, remembering certain episodes in his career, had hardly thought to be in him. He had been tried as by fire, and had come well out of the ordeal, a better man in every way.

No, Humphrey had nothing to reproach himself with. Indeed, it would comfort him in the future to think that he had been tender to the poor girl in her disgrace, comforted her, been ready to throw over the life that suited him, so as to help her to recover herself, stood up for her, when she could not with reason be defended, been with her at the last, broken down when it was all over. His thoughts ran smoothly into the worn phrases apt to these sad occasions, when grief is subdued to not unpleasing melancholy, and melancholy is the shade of the tree of death, in which we are sitting for a time, but with the sunshine of life still before us.

Humphrey was still young. He could travel for a time, if he wanted to, or, perhaps better still, stay quietly at Kencote, until he had got over his loss; and then he could take up his life as before. When time had healed his wound he might even marry again. But that was to look too far ahead, with poor Susan not yet under the ground, and the Squire checked the thought at once. If she had lived he would certainly have had a very difficult time with her. A high resolve is one thing; the power to carry it out, day by day, when the exaltation in which it was made has faded away, is another. Humphrey was not trained to such efforts. He might have tired of it. Susan might have "broken out" again. All sorts of trouble might have arisen, which—well, which, by the mercy of Providence, it was not necessary now to conjecture. For Humphrey, all was for the best.

The Squire was glad, on his own account, that he had withdrawn his embargo upon Susan's visiting Kencote, before this had happened. He had been very near to imposing it again after his interview with Lord Sedbergh; but Susan had even then been dangerously ill; and the absorption caused by the rapid progress of her illness, and the contingent comings and goings, had fortunately taken his mind off the details of her past misdemeanour. He had been preserved—mercifully—from dealing his son that extra blow.

And yet he doubted whether he would have been able to play his part with her. It was plain now, whatever it had been when he had walked down the steps of Lord Sedbergh's club, that strong reproaches would not have helped matters; that nothing he had had it in his mind, then, to do or say to ease himself of the burden, whose weight his old friend had made him compute by refusing to touch it, would have lightened it; and that the effect of his knowledge would only have been to make things more difficult alike for himself and for Humphrey. His anger against the poor girl would be buried in her grave. It would not be difficult to speak of her now with that regretful affection that would be expected of him.

And her death made him less vulnerable. He perceived now, not without a shudder, that his safety depended upon the silence of a woman who, wherever the responsibility lay, had been bought, and might be bought again; or, if that were unlikely, might lightly let loose the hint which, gathering other hints to itself, would grow into the avalanche that would involve him in the disgrace he so much feared. But an accusation against a dead woman—if it were made it would be less readily believed, more reprehensible, easier to cast off. And Susan would not be there, a possible weakness to her own defence.

Here again he checked his thoughts. He was not ready to face a situation in which he would either have to deny untruthfully, or to keep damaging silence. But, certainly, for him, all was for the best.