Of our married life I need say but few words. I was very happy for a time. You had behaved nobly and generously to my father; you were most kind and indulgent to me. If, as I afterwards learnt, we were living beyond our means, I had no suspicion of it. You never gave me the slightest hint to that effect, and you encouraged what I now know were extravagances in me. But--believe it or not as you will--I could have been contented and happy without them. You told me you were rich, and you could not fail to know that I had no idea of the value of money. Why could you not have confided in me? Was it honest to keep me, of your own free will, in such absolute ignorance, and then to blame me for not having known? I think, if you had trusted me, that you might have found some good in me--judged even by the light of your own hard judgment; but it is in your nature to accuse and judge in the same breath, and to do both unmercifully.
I remember well the last day you were kind to me. You left me in the morning with smiles; you returned home long after midnight a changed man. I, also, was changed when you returned. I have other cause to remember the day; for in the evening my cousin Ralph came to see me, and stayed with me until nearly eleven o'clock. You had sent me a note saying that you were detained at your office by important business. I read the note to my cousin, and he laughed at it, and said that you had good cause for your absence. His words conveyed a strange meaning to my ears, and I asked for an explanation. He gave it to me; and I learnt, to my horror, that you were in the habit of visiting another woman--a stranger in the town. Before I had recovered from the shock, I received another. My cousin Ralph, in a mad moment, proved himself to be what I had not hitherto suspected--a vile bad man. He told me, in passionate terms, that he loved me, and that he had loved me from boyhood; that it had been the dream of his life that we should be married, and that, but for you and your money, his life might have been a life of happiness. I listened in dismay and astonishment; I knew that he had an affection for me, but I thought it was such an affection as one cousin might innocently have entertained for another. I was so overwhelmed by this discovery, and by his accusations against you, that I had no power to stay his words. He misinterpreted my silence, and proceeded in wilder terms to propose flight to me. I tried to answer him, but my grief, and my terror lest you should return while he was in the house--for he was at my feet and refused to stir--made me weak. I implored him for my sake and for his own to leave me; and presently, when I grew stronger, I addressed him in words which it was impossible for him to misunderstand. It flashed upon me then that he had invented the story he had told me about you, and I taunted him with it. He answered me to the effect that he would prove it true before many days were over, and that then I might possibly listen to him more favourably. He left me; and your own conduct towards me from that day, during the short time we were together, was almost a sufficient proof. You would have judged upon that evidence; I was not content with it. I soon tasted the bitterness that lay in knowledge. A clerk in your office, who had for a purpose of his own made himself acquainted with the history of this woman--probably to use against you in some way--and whom you had employed to convey money and letters to her at different times, told me more than I wanted to know. On the day that you had the public quarrel with my cousin Ralph--I heard of it soon afterwards, for it became matter of common talk--I discovered that this woman came from a town in which you had formerly resided--that you knew her then--and that her history was a shameful one. Then there came to me the words that had passed between us upon your first visit to my father's house, when you said that my voice reminded you of a woman who was dear to you, and who was dead. It was easy to supply the blank spaces in the story to make it complete--shamefully, miserably complete. Your clerk told me that the life you had lived in that town was not a respectable one: I did not ask him how he had gained his knowledge, but I was sure of its truth. You left that town, and came to this place, a complete stranger, knowing no one, known by none. You refused to speak of your past life; not a word had ever passed your lips with reference to it. What other confirmation was needed of the truth of your clerk's statements? You tried to blot out your past career, knowing that it would not bear the light, and that the good name and position you had gained would be sullied and lost if the particulars were made public. You deserted the woman who had been your companion, and when you were inadvertently betrayed into remembrance of her by the sound of my voice, you told me she was dead. You never mentioned her again, nor did I, for I had forgotten her. But see how hard it is to lead a life of hypocrisy, as you have done! Shame never dies, nor can it ever be completely wiped away. After years of sojourn here, when you had gained money, position and a good name--when you had position, a simple, ignorant, and innocently-vain girl to your heart, and had sworn to cherish and protect her--this woman tracks you, finds you, and appeals to you by the remembrance of old times, and perhaps by other arguments more powerful, of which I am ignorant. On the very evening she meets you, you take her to a house in the town, and provide lodgings for her, and from that time your visits are frequent. Is this part of your story complete, and need I add to it by saying that you mentioned not a word concerning the woman to the wife you professed to love? If there was no shame in the relations that existed between you and her, why should you have taken such pains to conceal them? On the day you deserted me, you told me you were ruined, and you adopted the miserable subterfuge of saying that you had discovered all, and that you could no longer live with me. Your meaning was plain enough. You implied that I was false to you and to the vows I had taken on the day we were married. A more wicked lie never poisoned the heart of man or woman. I had brought shame and disgrace upon you, you said, and that it was useless my sending after you. I have read this letter often--it is destroyed now; I burnt it lest one who is dearer to me than my heart's blood should see it--and I have wondered at my folly and credulity in ever, for one moment, believing you to be a good and just man. For I did believe you to be this. There was a time in my life when I set you up as a model of honour and integrity and truth. The last words of your letter are burnt into my heart. Do you remember them? 'If I could make you a free woman, so that you might marry the man you love, I would willingly lay down my life; but it cannot be done. The only and best reparation I can offer is to promise, as I do now most faithfully, to wipe you out of my heart, so that you may be free from me for ever.' How fair those words sound--how self-sacrificing--how manly! What a noble nature do they display! Would it be believed that while this letter was on its way to the wife whom he was about to desert--to the wife whom he had most cruelly wronged, and most shamefully betrayed--the man who wrote it was entering the house where the woman lived who had been his companion in former years? The next morning you left. Two days afterwards, the woman followed you to London.
Is anything more wanted to complete the shameful story? Had I brought disgrace upon you, or had you brought it upon me? A noble reparation, indeed, did you make to me!
You may ask how it was that I discovered your visit to the woman. My father and my cousin saw you coming from the house, where doubtless you had completed all your arrangements, and left your final instructions. My cousin it was who told me. 'Now,' he said, 'do you believe that he is false?' 'Yes,' I answered; 'I am convinced of it' What followed? Remember it is your dead wife who is speaking to you, and do not dare, for your soul's sake, to add to your cruelty by doubting what she says. My cousin Ralph then began to speak again of his own selfish passion, and I bade him never to presume to address me again. From that day I never saw him; some little while afterwards my father told me he had gone abroad, but we never heard from him.
We remained--my father and I--for a few weeks after your departure, and then my father's health suddenly broke down. In one thing you had most completely succeeded; you had blackened my name as well as your own. Innocent as I was, wronged as I was, I think no one in my native place pitied me. Persons who had once respected me avoided me, or slighted me. Day by day the torture of living in this atmosphere of injustice grew until it was unbearable; and when my father broke down, I took him with me into a strange place, where neither of us was known, and where I hoped by carefully husbanding our small means, and by employing some hours of the day in needlework, to be enabled to live quietly, if not in peace. There was another reason why I was anxious to leave--a reason which you will now learn for a certainty for the first time. I was about to become a mother.
I kept this secret from you. Often and often had I listened to the expression of your wishes--the dearest wish of your heart, you said--that our union might be blessed with children. Your wish was that our first child might be a girl, and I used to hang with delight upon your words--believing in them in my credulous faith--when you described how you would educate and rear her into a good woman. I kept the secret, intending to joyfully surprise you later on; but it was fated that you should never learn it from my lips. When my time drew near, I was among strangers. I prayed that I might be blessed with a boy, who would be able to fight against the world's cruelties--with a boy who might one day--if you lived--be able to tell you to your face that you had slandered his mother. I had those thoughts at that time, and I set them down so that you may know exactly the state of my mind towards you. I prayed most fervently that the child might not be a girl, whose fate it might be to be treated by a man as her unhappy mother was treated by you. But my prayers were not heard. The child I clasped to my breast--your child--was a girl.
I hardly dared to look into her face at first, for I feared that it might resemble you, and that I should be compelled to hate her. I thanked God when I saw that there was but little resemblance to you. Think when you read this what my feelings towards you must have been.
My darling's was the sweetest, most beautiful face that I had ever gazed upon. I had never conceived it possible that a human heart could throb with such ineffable delight as mine did even in the midst of my bitter sorrow and shame, when I looked into my darling's face and eyes. I offered up grateful prayers that I lived and was a mother, and I offered up prayers of thankfulness also that it was out of your power to rob me of my treasure. That you would have done it had you known, I entertained no doubt.
The first few months of my child's life I was as happy as it was possible for a wronged and betrayed woman to be. Intending in these lines to hide nothing, I will not disguise from you that I shed many bitter tears because she was deprived of a father's love; but she did not lack love and attention. She was my one comfort and joy; I soon had no one else to love but her.
My father died. The doctor who had attended him in his illness warned me that, unless I was careful of myself, my life might be short. The thought that my darling might be left, helpless and dependent, among strangers, frightened me, and I did not know which way to turn for counsel and advice. I had not a friend in the world capable of helping me by a kindly, sensible word. To this condition you had brought me.