“You need not fear that I shall attempt to disturb your domestic happiness, Mr. Rock. And now for Heaven’s sake get out of my way before I forget myself.”
Samuel obeyed, still grinning and sneering with hate and jealousy; and Henry walked on to where the dog-cart was waiting for him. Taking the reins, he turned the horse’s head and drove back to Rosham.
“Thomson,” he said to the butler, who came to open the door, “I have changed my mind about going to town to-day; you can unpack my things. Stop a minute, though: I remember I am due at Monk’s Lodge, so you needn’t meddle with the big portmanteau. When does my mother come back?”
“To-morrow, her ladyship wrote me this morning, Sir Henry.”
“Oh! very well. Then I sha’n’t see her till Tuesday; but it doesn’t matter. Send down to the keeper and tell him that I want to speak to him, will you? I think that I will change my clothes and shoot some rabbits after lunch. Stop, order the dog-cart to be ready to drive me to Monk’s Lodge in time to dress for dinner.”
To analyse Henry’s feelings during the remainder of that day would be difficult, if not impossible; but those of shame and bitter anger were uppermost in his mind shame that he had laid himself open to such words as Rock used to him, and anger that his vanity and blind faith in a woman’s soft speeches and feigned love should have led him into so ignominious a position. Mingled with these emotions were his natural pangs of jealousy and disappointed affection, though pride would not suffer him to give way to them. Again and again he reviewed every detail of the strange and, to his sense, appalling story; and at times, overpowering as was the evidence, his mind refused to accept its obvious moral namely, that he had been tricked and made a tool of yes, used as a foil to bring this man to the point of marriage. How was it possible to reconcile Joan’s conduct in the past and that wild letter of hers with her subsequent letters and action? Thus only: that as regards the first she had been playing on his feelings and inexperience of the arts of women; and that, as in sleep men who are no poets can sometimes compose verse which is full of beauty, so in her delirium Joan had been able to set on paper words and thoughts that were foreign to her nature and above its level. Or perhaps that letter was a forgery written by Mrs. Bird, who was “so romantic.” The circumstances under which it reached him were peculiar, and Joan herself expressly repudiated all knowledge of it. Notwithstanding his doubts, perplexities and suffering, as might have been expected, the matter in the end resolved itself into two very simple issues: first, that, whatever may have been her exact reasons, Joan Haste had broken with him once and for all by marrying another man; and second, that, as a corollary to her act, many dangers and difficulties which beset him had disappeared, and he was free, if he wished it, to marry another woman.
Henry was no fool, and when the first bitterness was past, and he could consider the matter, if not without passion as yet, at least more calmly, he saw, the girl being what she had proved herself to be, that all things were working together for his good and the advantage of his family. Supposing, for instance, that he had found her out after marriage instead of before it, and supposing that the story which she told him in her first letter had been true, instead of what it clearly was a lie? Surely in these and in many other ways his escape had been what an impartial person might call fortunate. At the least, of her own act she had put an end to an imbroglio that had many painful aspects, and there remained no stain upon his honour, for which he was most truly thankful.
And now, having learnt his lesson in the hard school of experience, he would write to his friend the under-secretary, saying he could not be in town till Wednesday. Meanwhile he would pay his visit at Monk’s Lodge.
CHAPTER XXXV.
DISENCHANTMENT.
It was Sunday evening at Monk’s Lodge, and Henry and Mr. Levinger were sitting over their wine after dinner. For a while they talked upon indifferent subjects, and more particularly about the shooting on the previous day and the arrangements for the morrow’s sport. Then there was a silence, which Mr. Levinger broke.