Running the Gauntlet: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

The next heir to the title and entailed estates was a boy named Edward Mitford, whom Lady Mitford had never seen, and who, with his widowed mother, lived in an obscure village in Warwickshire, where the heir to so much wealth and position picked up a very indifferent education at a school of fourth-rate pretensions and sixth-rate performances. No mention of this youth had been made by Sir Charles, who had, very naturally, bestowed no thought upon the distant contingency of his succession. The house in London had been rented by Sir Charles for a term of years; and Lady Mitford determined to retain it in her own possession. Having formed this resolution, and ascertained all that was necessary relative to her position, Lady Mitford wrote to the Reverend Cuthbert Farleigh. She recalled herself to his recollection, and appealed to his kindness. She was very friendless, she said, and wanted advice. Sir Laurence Alsager had told her that the kindness of heart which had been so distinguishing a characteristic of Cuthbert Farleigh in his boyhood was no less conspicuous in his more advanced and responsible years, and she asked him to come to her. She did not make any mention of Helen in the letter; she would defer that until they could talk it over, she thought; and then he would perhaps make her an offer of Helen's society, which she would gladly accept.

The Reverend Cuthbert answered the letter in person; and the meeting between the former friends and companions under such altered circumstances could hardly have failed to be affecting. Georgie thanked him with all her heart, and felt less lonely and desolate that evening than she had felt since the day on which Sir Laurence Alsager had left her. He had arrived late; and they agreed to postpone the discussion of the serious matters on which Georgie desired his advice until the following day.

As Lady Mitford sat alone that night before the bright fire in her dressing-room, she passed her life before her in mental review. She questioned herself concerning the grief which she felt so keenly, and yet blamed herself for not feeling with still greater acuteness. The oppression, the vague gloom of a great change, of a tremendous shock, from whose first effects she had not suffered so much as from that which succeeded, were on her. The dreadful death of her husband appalled her; less because it was he who had been killed, and because he had been killed in so awful manner, than because it seemed to set the seal of the curse upon their marriage. She saw that marriage now as it was,--a mistake first; then a disaster; finally a catastrophe;--and she recoiled with horror from the awful lesson of life thus opened out before her.

"Swift and sure," she thought, "punishment has followed wrong in his case. It seems hard, too; he was not the only man beguiled by a wanton woman, not the only man who betrayed and deserted his wife. Little as I have seen of the world, I have seen instances of the same thing; but these men, who had as little conscience, had more self-control, more judgment, more self-respect, and did not expose themselves to the risks which he dared, and which have been fatal to him. Poor fellow! poor Charley!"

Her reveries always ended thus, in sweet womanly compassion and forgiveness. She did not deceive herself; she did not lament for Sir Charles with the intense and passionate grief of bereavement; she did not make any false estimate of her loss, or give way to any sentiment in which the perfect truth did not abide; but she shrank appalled and miserable from the contemplation of so total a wreck as her wretched husband's life had been, from the possibilities of sin and suffering which it revealed to her.

Lord Dollamore had written to her,--Banks had brought the letter; and so she learned that the last thought of the dying man had been of her, the last word he had spoken had been her name. Georgie did not attach greater importance to this fact than it deserved. She knew how to discriminate between remorse and repentance too well to make a mistake; but she was very thankful for the message, very thankful that her husband had been permitted to utter it. She knew that in the future, as long as she should live, those words would be a comforting recollection to her; and she fully comprehended how much harder it would all have been to endure, had the silence which had subsisted between her and Sir Charles for several days before he left town never been broken, even by those two gasping, hardly-articulate sounds.

Cuthbert Farleigh and Lady Mitford held a long consultation, as they had agreed to do; and during its progress the curate learned that she was acquainted with the fact of his engagement to Helen Manningtree; and Lady Mitford imparted to him the permission and counsel Sir Laurence Alsager had given her to ask Helen to come to her in any time of need.

"You have had more than one such time of need, dear Lady Mitford," said Cuthbert, "since Sir Laurence wrote to you and to Helen; and why have you never made a sign, why have you never asked Helen to come to you?"

"Because I could not think it right, Cuthbert. The trouble I was in was of a peculiar kind,--my sorrow was the result of another's sin; and I don't think it would have been right to have brought a young girl like Helen in contact with it. When I think of my own girlhood, when I remember how far I was from the mere knowledge of such perversities in human relations being possible, I am sure I was right."

Cuthbert Farleigh remembered his own words to Helen,--"You are better without the confidence of an unhappy wife,"--and admired the directness with which the instinct and the principle of this woman had guided her to a similar conclusion.