The answer was a pleased laugh.
‘Why, there,’ he cried, ‘you’ve given in a nutshell the whole duty of a wife who wishes to be loved!’
Nancy tried to laugh with him.
CHAPTER 8
He must be a strong man whom the sudden stare of Penury does not daunt and, in some measure, debase. Tarrant, whatever the possibilities of his nature, had fallen under a spell of indolent security, which declared its power only when he came face to face with the demand for vigorous action. The moment found him a sheer poltroon. ‘What! Is it possible that I—I—am henceforth penniless? I, to whom the gods were so gracious? I, without warning, flung from sheltered comfort on to the bare road side, where I must either toil or beg?’ The thing seemed unintelligible. He had never imagined such ruin of his hopes.
For the first time, he turned anxious thoughts upon the money to which his wife was—would be—might be—entitled. He computed the chances of success in the deception he and she were practising, and knew with shame that he must henceforth be party to a vulgar fraud. Could Nancy be trusted to carry through this elaborate imposition—difficult for the strongest-minded woman? Was it not a certainty that some negligence, or some accident, must disclose her secret? Then had he a wife and child upon his hands, to support even as common men support wife and child, by incessant labour. The prospect chilled him.
If he went to the West Indies, his absence would heighten the probability of Nancy’s detection. Yet he desired to escape from her. Not to abandon her; of that thought he was incapable; but to escape the duty—repulsive to his imagination—of encouraging her through the various stages of their fraud. From the other side of the Atlantic he would write affectionate, consolatory letters; face to face with her, could he support the show of tenderness, go through an endless series of emotional interviews, always reminding himself that the end in view was hard cash? Not for love’s sake; he loved her less than before she proved herself his wife in earnest. Veritable love—no man knew better—would have impelled him to save himself and her from a degrading position.
Was he committing himself to a criminality which the law would visit? Hardly that—until he entered into possession of money fraudulently obtained.
In miserable night-watchings, he fell to the most sordid calculations. Supposing their plot revealed, would Nancy in fact be left without resources? Surely not,—with her brother, her aunt, her lifelong friends the Barmbys, to take thought for her. She could not suffer extremities. And upon this he blushed relief.