'What have I done--what have I done?' she groaned, 'that an earthly purgatory should be my lot? Did I fail in my duty to my lord? Was I not too indulgent a wife, screening his unfaithfulness, enduring insult without end from that dreadful woman?'
Then she reflected how his death had not brought peace to her; how relentless Time had administered secret scourgings, whilst she appeared to be sitting--a noble, envied widow--between two growing sons. Was her torment to go on increasing, instead of wearing itself out with its own rigour? What would be the end? That early sin which took place so long ago--could any one declare that she was aught but an unwilling agent in it? Might the trace of it never be washed clean? Was suicide the only means of escape from an agony to which on earth there seemed no term? If, driven by despair, she were to hurry unbidden into the presence of her Maker, might she not hope to be forgiven? If your cross is too heavy for your strength, sure you may be pardoned for casting it aside!
As she writhed, a prey to phantoms of retrospect, she felt that her sin was not a faded one of long ago; that it continued still, and that while she permitted it to roll on unchecked, numbers at compound interest were being chalked to her account. That dreadful secret which had blanched her hair! Years had woven such confusing complications round it, that were she, taking her courage in both hands, to speak out now, it would be only to transfer a burthen, not destroy it. No, no! Ten times no! The time for setting right the wrong was past--past, irretrievably. Instead of moaning over it, it were better to concentrate all attention upon this matter of Shane and Norah. At all hazards, the billing and cooing of that couple must be stopped while there was time. Shane was the late earl's eldest son, and Mrs. Gillin----! And Norah was sixteen years old, bred a Protestant by my lord's special desire. Could his wife be misled in her suspicions? The conduct of Mrs. Gillin in the matter was most amazing. My lady surveyed it from all points of view. Truly she was racked by many torments. Até was at work. The orders of the dread goddess were being carried out by the Eumenides.
CHAPTER XII.
[A MOTHER'S WILES.]
Having indulged in a soothing torrent of tears, Doreen departed with lightened heart with the other young people for an excursion on the bay. She felt all the better for the passage of arms, for her breezy common-sense told her that my lady's charges resulted from momentary pique, and had no foundation in conviction. But, resulting from the quarrel, a vista had risen in her mind for the first time of what she might be sacrificing for her people's sake. Evil tongues will wag. Women who brave public opinion have always gone to the wall, time out of mind. No. Not always. Scandal had nothing to say against the maid of Domrémy; Judith's fair fame was smirched in nowise by that little supper en tête-à-tête with Holofernes. Miss Wolfe failed to consider that the rapid action of that Jewish tragedy, with its pitiless termination in the murder of a helpless sleeper, did much to keep the tongue of scandal quiet. Had she held clandestine interviews with the doughty general, walked with him by moonlight and so forth, it is highly probable that all the geese in Jewry would have cackled, and that the heroine would have been tabooed for a brazen slut. Now the young lady whose peculiar position interests us so much at present, while perfectly innocent of wrong-doing, could not but see that her motives might possibly be misinterpreted; that spiteful remarks, similar to her aunt's, would probably go the round of Dublin. Was she prepared to endure opprobrium? was the game worth the candle she was burning for it? was the good she was likely to achieve at all in proportion to the social ruin which would fall upon herself? Like the generous young person that she was, her first romantic feeling was an exultant glow at the distant prospect of martyrdom; her second--due to the practical firmness of her character--a doubt whether she might not be self-deceived by inexperience. Then her father too--the good weak father who cared very much for sublunary fleshpots--what would he say when he came to know how deeply circumstances were involving his child in matters which he would surely disapprove? She could not help the stirring of an idea (which she strove hard to lull to rest) to the effect that it is not very heroic to drag innocent people into a mess; and a second one moved at the stirring of the first, which whispered that if her own name were to be publicly bandied, her father would certainly get into trouble for not keeping her in check. Her aunt's was the wisdom of the world; there was no doubt about it.
It is all very well to sacrifice yourself, vow that you will never marry, that no woodbine-bonds of family affection shall be permitted to spring up around you--provided that you stand quite alone. If you have a parent who delights in fleshpots, who holds an honourable situation of which your own heroics may deprive him, it is surely a matter of doubt whether your better part would not be the dusting of household furniture, the warming of slippers, the mending of old stockings, instead of the more picturesque operation of donning plume and helm. What, I wonder, did the parents of Joan of Arc think of their daughter when she abandoned the care of sheep to go a-soldiering? Doreen recognised the objections to her proposed course with a pang, but wavered, searching for an excuse such as should render her desires commendable. She would have liked to go down to posterity as a female Moses. The position of the budding lawgiver at Pharaoh's court was somewhat like her own, save in the important point that he had no father who loved fleshpots. If it might only be permitted for Arthur Wolfe's daughter to wean him from them to better things! But that seemed too good a prospect to be hoped for, so with a sigh she put it from her.
As, after the recent skirmish, she reviewed the situation, I grieve to relate she was not sorry for her pertness. My lady had no business to say what she had said, to make rude speeches, and to worry about Shane. The young lady conceived herself bound to speak up boldly in self-defence, to put my lady down on the subject of private liberty, as she often did in the matter of King William. The two ladies started in all things from two opposite poles. That they should clash was inevitable. But she did promise herself to be more prudent in the future for her father's sake; to do what was feasible for the good cause in private, strictly remaining in the background herself, come what might. And this resolution being firmly graven on her mind, she busied herself about fishing-tackle with the placid calm which passed with her for cheerfulness.
Meanwhile my lady sat alone in the tapestry-saloon among the faded effigies of departed Crosbies, looking appealingly at them as though they could help her in an extremity. The guiding spring of her life had been pride, which became firmly grafted by marriage in the glory of her husband's lineage. Pride it was which had supported her fainting heart in many a bitter struggle. Black care had thinned her cheek, had pressed crow's-feet about her restless eyes; yet, save for a querulous manner and the peculiar sudden dilation of the pupil which struck us when first we were introduced to the stately countess in '83, there was but little that was unusual on the surface to tell a new acquaintance that the battle which she fought was never-ceasing.
In the late lord's lifetime she was wretched enough--but with a numbing dulness which is its own anodyne. Moreover, as we discovered on his deathbed, the important secret, if important it were, had been shared between the two. A secret known to even one other person, whose feelings in the matter are similar to our own, is lightened by more than half its weight. He died. His widow was condemned to drag the chain alone--worse than alone, for yet one other person knew of it whose feelings were remote from friendly. The late lord's devil-may-care visage glanced sideways down with an eternal smirk from its frame upon the wall. He was dead. His breast was unburthened. He slept in peace, and there was his smiling counterfeit grinning at his unhappy partner. Did he sleep in peace? Oh! If she could have been sure of that! But no. Possibly he was enduring torments even worse than hers. As he lay choking between the confines of two worlds, perchance he had been allowed to see what was still concealed from her human ken--and then had cried out the warning--'Set right that wrong while you have the opportunity.' How horribly unjust seemed the retribution which pursued her! Her sin had been the negative one of living a long lie. If she had had courage to confess--to abase her stiff-necked pride--the wrong might have been set right with but little serious injury to any but herself. But my lord--the prime sinner--had encouraged this pride, declaring that there was no call for a great sacrifice--until the last moment when his eyes were opened, and he called out in his agony, 'Beware!' By that time the pride so long nurtured was become a second nature.