The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

“Ach!” she went on, “you stare at me; you who are his cousin think that I, who am his wife, am hard upon his lordship, but, mein Gott! who can be hard upon iron? It is the iron is hardest, and hurts what hits it. I say he is a terrible man.”

“Then,” asked Rupert solemnly, “why did you marry him?”

She looked up and down the great, lonely room lined with books, into which none save the housemaids ever penetrated, and then at the closed door behind her, and answered:

“I will tell you, Rupert, who are honest, who think as I do and believe in a God and judgment. I am well born in my own country, very well born, of an older and more distinguished family than any of you, who made your money out of brewing but the other day. But after my father’s death in the war we were poor, my mother and I, so when that rich old Lady Hodgson, who was German born, you know, and a friend of our family, asked me to come to live with her for eight months of every year, and paid me well for it, why, I came. There I met his lordship, who found out that I sent most of my salary home to my mother, and that I thought otherwise than the fashionable English ladies about many things—children, for instance, and after the death of her first ladyship began to take much notice of me. At last one day he proposed, and I said, ‘No,’ for I always doubted that man. Then, oh! he was clever. What do you think he did? You see, he knew that I am brought up religious, so he tells me that he is greatly troubled by doubts, and that the real reason why he wants to marry me is that he thinks that I would be able to give him peace of soul again, and to bring him back into the fold of faith—yes, those were his words, ‘the fold of faith.’ Him! that black lamb!” she added, with a gasp of indignation, while Rupert burst out laughing.

“Ah!” she went on, “for you it is funny, but not for me. Well, he over-persuades me, he tells me I shall be wicked if I turn a penitent soul back from the door of life by refusing to have anything to do with it, and so on, and so on, till, sheep’s-head that I am, I believe him: Also my mother wish the marriage, and I liked to be noble in your country as well as my own. So I marry him and find out. The fold of faith! The door of life! Oh! the black goats live in that fold of his—the black, left-hand goats—and the door he knocks at, it is the door of hell. I find he believes in nothing, and when I reproach him, he tells me that it was only his little joke—his little joke to make me marry him, because he thought I should be a good, useful, domestic wife and a fine, handsome mother for his children. Ach! Mein Gott, he said it was a little joke—” and rising from her chair in her woe and indignation, Tabitha held up her hands and turned her fair face to heaven, with a look on it like that of a saint who has just felt the first stroke of martyrdom. Indeed it was a very strange scene, and one that impressed Rupert deeply.

“And what has been the end about his children?” she went on tempestuously. “I have had how many—six, seven—oh! I do my duty, I promise and I pay, but these children they do not live. How can they live with that wicked man for father? The last—it lived some time, and I beg him to have it christened—yes, I crawl about on my knees on the floor after him and beg him let it be made a Christian, and he mocked me and my ‘silly superstitions,’ and he say he will not have it because the child will catch cold. And the child it do catch cold, the cold of death, and now that poor little soul of his it must live on unredeemed for ever, and perhaps, oh, perhaps suffer terribly because of the sin of that wicked man.”

“Don’t say that,” said Rupert, “it’s a hard creed, and I won’t believe a word of it. The innocent can’t be made to suffer for the guilty.”

“Ah! but I do say it, and I do believe it, for I was so taught, and I tell you it torments me, and, Rupert, no child of mine will ever live! You will be the heir of all these lands and drink-shops and moneys, and may they bring you joy. As for me, I wish I were where her first ladyship is. Oh! I know they say he murdered her, that poor Clara, or drove her to death, and I daresay when I have no more children he will do the same to me. Well, I care nothing. And now I have told you and eased my heart, who have no friend but God since my mother died, and I thank you for listening so patient to my sad story, because I should like one of you to know the truth after it is all over—the truth of what comes to women who are led away by false words and the love of place and riches;” and once more throwing up her arms, she uttered two or three dry, hard sobs, then to Rupert’s infinite relief, turned and left the room.

It seemed to be his fate to receive the confidences of the wives of Lord Devene, and Heaven knows he did not desire this second edition of them. Yet his heart bled for the poor German lady who had been beguiled to fill a place which, for all its seeming grandeur, was to her a very habitation in Purgatory, since day by day she saw her most cherished convictions trampled upon and scorned; while the cruel articles of her narrow creed bred in her mind the belief, or rather the mania, that the sin of the father was wreaked upon the bodies of her children, and even had power to pursue and torment their innocent souls. In its way, this tragedy was as great as that of her whom she succeeded, the wretched woman who, in her lawless search for relief from loveless misery, had found but death. Yet, alas! upon the head of that one he had brought down the evil, and the head of this one he was powerless to protect.

Nor, indeed, did Rupert wish to encourage such painful conversations, confidences, and the intimacy that must result from them. Therefore he was determined that he would get away from Tabitha’s house as soon as possible. But first he must find an opportunity of speaking to Edith and learn his fate. Indeed, after the words which had broken from his lips that day, it was his duty so to do. If only it could be accomplished this night, as it chanced he had a good excuse for departing on the following morning, since he had received a telegram from an old brother-officer, with whom he was engaged to stay in Norfolk, shifting the date of the visit and begging him, if possible, to come down on the morrow instead of that day week.