"I must say that--"
"Silence, if you please; I will not be interrupted. I took you from that inferior position, and made you my husband. I made you master of this house and my fortune. I raised you, Mr. Calverley. I tell you, I raised you, sir, from obscurity to position, from comparative penury to wealth; and what is my reward? Day after day you are absent from home at your counting-house in Mincing-lane. I don't object to that; I suppose it is necessary; but I know--yes, I know, Mr. Calverley--this is not my first experience of men of business; I have been a grand-daughter, a daughter, and a sister of the firm, and though latterly Mr. Gurwood was not quite regular in his attendance, at least at one time he was an excellent man of business--so that I may say also the wife of the firm, and I know that business hours are over at five, and that my sainted father used then to come straight home to Clapham by the omnibus."
"I--"
"You must allow me to speak, if you please; I will not be interrupted. Instead of which, I find you going to your club and dawdling there to the latest minute, often keeping my dinner waiting; and when you return home, your conversation is frivolous, your manner light and flighty, and wanting in repose; your tastes and habits evidently unsuitable to a person in the position of my husband. I have borne all this without complaint; I know that all of us mortals--sinful mortals--have a cross to bear, and that you have been bestowed upon me in that capacity. But, be a lone deserted woman when I have a husband whose legitimate business it is to stay at home and take care of me, I will not. These Swartmoor works are all very well, I daresay, and I know you declare that they bring in a vast deal of profit; but there was profit enough in my father's time without any of your iron works; and if you intend to continue paying them a visit every fortnight, and staying several days away, as you have done lately, they shall be given up, Mr. Calverley--they shall be given up, I say. I may be of no more concern to you than a chair or a table, but I will not be a deserted woman, and these iron works shall be given up."
Those who had seen but little of the pleasant-faced John Calverley, would scarcely have recognised him in the darkly-frowning man who now strode forward, and crossing his arms on the back of a chair immediately in front of his wife, said in a very quiet but very determined voice:
"They shall not be given up. Understand that once for all--they shall not be given up. You may say what you like, but I am master in my business, if not in my home, and they shall not be given up. And now, Jane, you must listen to me; must listen to words which I never intended to have said, if the speech you have just made had not rendered it necessary. You have told me what you have pleased to call facts; now I will give you my version of them. When I married you ten years ago--and God knows you cannot deplore that marriage more heartily than I do--I was, as you say, the head clerk of the firm which your father had established. But in his latter days he had been ill and inattentive to business; and after his death your uncles, to whom the concern was left, proved themselves utterly inadequate to its guidance; and if it had not been for me, the firm of Lorraine and Company would have been in the Gazette. You know this well enough; you know that I, as head clerk, took the whole affair on my shoulders, reorganised it, opened out new avenues for its commerce, and finally succeeded in making it what it was when you first saw me. You taunt me with having been raised by you from penury to position; but you know that the whole of your fortune was embarked in the business, and that if it had not been for my clear head and hard work, you would have lost every penny of it. You accuse me of being light and frivolous and unsuited to you, of being away from my home; though, except on these business expeditions, not an evening do I pass out of your society. In return, I ask you what sort of a home you make for me? what sign of interest, of comfort, of anything like womanly grace and feeling is there about it? What reception do I meet with on my return from business? what communion, what reciprocity is there between us? Every word I say, every remark I make, you either sneer or snap at. You are a hard, intolerant Pharisee, Jane Calverley. By your hardness and intolerance, by your perpetually nagging and worrying at him, you tried to break the spirit of your former husband, George Gurwood, one of the kindest fellows that ever lived. But you failed in that; you only drove him to drink and to death. Now I have said my say, have said what I never intended should pass my lips, what never would have passed them, if it had not been for your provocation. I wish you good-night--I am now going to the club."
So saying, John Calverley bowed his head and passed from the room, leaving his wife no longer rigid and defiant, but swaying herself to and fro, and moaning helplessly.
[CHAPTER IV.]
PAULINE.
The cold gray morning light, shining through the little window of a small bedroom in a second-rate hotel at Lymington, made its way through the aperture between the common dimity curtains, which had been purposely separated overnight, and fell on the slumbering figure of Pauline. The poor and scanty furniture of the room, with its dingy bed-hangings, its wooden washstand, two rush-bottomed chairs, and rickety one-sided chest of drawers, all painted a pale stone-colour, were in strong contrast with the richness of colouring observable in the sleeper,--observable in her jet-black hair, now taken from off her face and gathered into one large coil at the back of her head; in her olive complexion, sun-embrowned indeed, but yet showing distinctly the ebb and flow of her southern blood; and in the deep orange-hued handkerchief daintily knotted round her neck. See, now, how troubled are her slumbers; how from between her parted lips comes a long though scarcely audible moan; how the strong thin hand lying outside the coverlet clutches convulsively at nothing; and how she seems in her unrest to be struggling to free herself from the thraldom of the troublous dream, under the influence of which part of the torture suffered by her during the previous day is again pressing upon her!