And Sir Charles, what were his thoughts during his drive? Among all the wonderful revelations which the publication of the Divorce-Court trials has made public, the sad heart-rending misery, the brutal ruffianism, the heartless villany, the existence of which could scarcely have been dreamed of, there is one phase of life which, so far as I have seen--and I have looked for it attentively,--has never yet been chronicled. The man who leaves his wife and family to get on as they best can, while he revels in riot and debauchery; the man who is the blind slave of his own brute passions, and who goes headlong to destruction without any apparent thought save for his own gratification; the man who would seem in the iteration of his share of the marriage-service to have substituted "hate" for "love," and who either detests his wife with savage rancour, or loathes her with deep disgust, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until the Judge-Ordinary does them part; the respectable man, so punctual in the discharge of his domestic duties, so unswerving in the matter of family-prayers, whose conjugal comfort is one day wrecked by the arrival of a clamorous and not too sober lady with heightened colour and blackened eyelids:--with all these types we are familiar enough through the newspaper columns; but there is another character, by no means so numerously represented, nor so likely to be brought publicly under notice, who yet exists, and with specimens of which some of us must be familiar. I mean the man who, with great affection for his wife and strong desire to do right, is yet so feeble in moral purpose, so impotent to struggle against inclination, such a facile prey to temptation, as to be perpetually doing wrong. He never grows hardened in his vice, he never withdraws his love from its proper object--for in that case it would quickly be supplanted by the opposite feeling; he never even grows indifferent: after every slip he inwardly upbraids himself bitterly and vows repentance; in his hour of remorse he institutes comparisons between his proper and improper attractions, in which the virtues of the former are always very bright and the vices of the latter always very black; and then on the very next occasion his virtuous resolutions melt away like snow, and he goes wrong again as pleasantly as possible.
Sir Charles Mitford was of this class. He would have been horrified if any one had suggested that he had any intention of wronging his wife; would have said that such an idea had never crossed his mind--and truthfully, as whenever it rose he immediately smothered it; would have declared, as he believed, that Georgie was the prettiest, the best, and the dearest girl in the world. But he was a man of strong passions, and most susceptible to flattery; and ever since Mrs. Hammond had seemed to select him for special notice, more especially since she had assumed the habit of occasionally looking pensively at him, with a kind of dreamy languor in her large eyes, he had thought more of her, in both senses of the phrase, than was right. He was thinking of her even then, as he sat square and erect in his phaeton, before he passed out of Georgie's gaze; thinking of her large eyes and their long glances, her full rounded figure, a peculiar hand-clasp which she gave, a thrill without a grip, a scarcely perceptible unforgettable pressure. Then his horsey instincts rose within him, and he began to take coachman's notice of the chestnuts; saw the merits and demerits of each, and almost unconsciously set about the work of educating the former, and checking the latter; and thus he employed himself until the white houses of Torquay came within sight, and glancing at his watch he found he should have done his twenty miles in an hour and forty minutes.
Mrs. Hammond had told him that he would be sure of finding their address at the Royal Hotel; so to the Royal Hotel he drove. The chestnuts went bounding through the town, attracting attention from all the valetudinarians then creeping about on their shopping or anteprandial walks. These poor fellows in respirators and high shawls, bending feebly on sticks or tottering on each other's arms, resented the sight of this great strong Phoebus dashing along with his spinning chariot-wheels. When he pulled up at the door of the Royal, a little crowd of invalids crept out of sunny nooks, and sheltered corners, where they had been resting, to look at him. The waiter, a fat greasy man, who used to let the winter-boarders tear many times at the bell before he dreamt of answering it, heard the tramp of the horses, and the violent pull given to the door-bell by Sir Charles's groom, and in a kind of hazy dream thought that it must be summer again, and that it must be some of the gents from the yachts, as was always so noisy and obstreperous. Before he could rouse himself sufficiently to get to the door, he had been anticipated by the landlord, wit° had scarcely made his bow, before Dr. Bronk, who had noticed the phaeton dashing round the corner, fancied it might be a son or a nephew on the lookout for quarters--and medical attendance--for some invalid relative, came into the portico, and bestowed the greatest care in rubbing his shoes on the hall-mat.
Mr. Hammond? No, the landlord had never heard the name. Constant change of faces renders landlords preternaturally stupid on this point, they can never fit names to faces or faces to names. Hammond? no, he thought not. John! did John know the name of Hammond? But before John could sufficiently focus his wits to know whether he did or not, Dr. Bronk had heard all, had stepped up to the side of the phaeton, had made a half-friendly, half-deferential bow, and was in full swing.
Mr. Hammond? a middle-aged gentleman,--well, who perhaps might be described as rather elderly, yes. Bald,--yes. With a young daughter and a very charming wife? Yes, O yes; certainly he knew them; he had the honour of being their medical attendant,--Dr. Bronk of the Paragon. Lately had come down to Torquay, recommended to him by his--he was proud to say--old friend and former fellow-pupil, Sir Charles Dumfunk, now President of the College of Physicians. Where were they? well, they had been really unfortunate. Torquay, my dear sir, every year rising in importance, every year more sought after,--for which perhaps some little credit was due to a little medical brochure of his, Torquay and its Climate,--Torquay was so full that when Mrs. Hammond sent down that admirable person, Miss Gillespie,--whom of course the gentleman knew,--there was only one house vacant. So the family had been forced to content themselves with a mansion--No. 2, Cleveland Gardens, very nice, sheltered, and yet with a charming sea-view. Where was it? Did the gentleman see the bow-windowed shop at the corner? Second turning to the right, just beyond that--"Se-cond turn-ing to the right!" This shouted after Sir Charles, who, with a feeling that the chestnuts were too rapidly cooling after their sharp drive, had started them off the minute he had obtained the information.
The second turning to the right was duly taken, and No. 2, Cleveland Gardens, was duly reached. It was the usual style of seaside-house, with stuccoed front and green veranda, and the never-failing creeper which the Devonians always grow to show the mildness of their climate. The groom's thundering knock produced a smart waiting-maid, who acknowledged that Mrs. Hammond lived there; and the sending in of Sir Charles Mitford's card produced a London flunkey, on whom the country air had had a demoralizing influence, so far as his outward appearance was concerned. But he acknowledged Sir Charles's arrival with a deferential bow, and begging him to walk in, assured him that his mistress would come down directly. So the groom was sent round, to put up his horses at the stables of the Royal, and Sir Charles followed the footman into the drawing-room.
It was not an apartment to be left alone in for long. No doubt the family of the owner, a younger brother of an Irish peer, found it pleasant and airy when they were down there in the summer, and the owner himself found the rent of it for the spring, autumn, and winter, a very hopeful source of income; but it bore "lodging-house" on every scrap of furniture throughout it. Sir Charles stared round at the bad engravings, at the bad old-fashioned artists on the walls; looked with concentrated interest on a plaster-model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and wondered whether the mortar shrinking had warped it; peeped into two or three books on the table; looked out of the window at the promenading invalids and the green twinkling sea; and was relieved beyond measure when he heard a woman's step on the staircase outside.
The door opened, and a woman entered--but not Mrs. Hammond. A tall woman, with sallow cheeks and great eyes, and a thickish nose and large full lips, with a low forehead, over which tumbled waves of crisp brown hair, with a marvellous lithe figure and a peculiar swinging walk. Shifty in her glance, stealthy in her walk, cat-like in her motions, her face deadly pale,--a volcano crumbled into ashes, with no trace of its former fire save in her eyes,--a woman at once uncomfortable, uncanny, noticeable, and fearsome,--Miss Gillespie.
The family of the younger brother of the Irish peer owning the house prided themselves immensely on certain pink-silk blinds to the windows, which happened at that moment to be down. There must have been some very peculiar effect in the tint thrown by those blinds to have caused Sir Charles Mitford to stare so hard at the new-comer, or to lose all trace of his ordinary colour as he gazed at her.
She spoke first. Her full lips parted over a brilliant set of teeth as with a slight inclination she said, "I have the pleasure of addressing Sir Charles Mitford? Mrs. Hammond begs me to say that she is at present in attendance upon Mr. Hammond, who is forbidden to-day to leave his room; but she hopes to be with you in a very few minutes."