Wyllard's Weird: A Novel

by M. E. Braddon

He helped her first by nominally lending—actually giving her—every sixpence of his own patrimony, disposing, bit by bit, of that little estate in Perthshire of which his ancestors had been so proud. When he had beggared himself thus, he began to borrow of the Jews—always for Lady Valeria—and finally found himself in such a mess, financially, that he had to leave the army.

General Harborough heard of his difficulties, and supposed they were all self-induced, but made the kindest excuses for the sinner. He offered to pay Bothwell's debts, and implored him not to throw up his career, with all its brilliant chances. The General was wounded to the quick when his offers were steadfastly refused.

"A gentleman knows how to accept a service as well as how to render one," he said. "You saved my life, and I have never felt burdened by the obligation."

Bothwell stood before him, grave, pale, silent, humiliated by his kindness.

"Forgive me, sir," he faltered at last. "Believe me, I am not ungrateful. There was a time when I would rather have accepted a favour from you than from any other man living. But I am tired of the army. I feel that I shall never get on. I have sent a statement of my affairs to my cousin's husband, who has a genius for finance. He will settle with my creditors, and I shall begin the world again, my own man."

Bothwell sighed involuntarily after those last words. What freedom, or manhood, or independence could there ever be for him, bound as he was bound?

He left India soon after this interview with the General, who was to return to England in the following year. Lady Valeria deeply resented her lover's conduct in leaving the East, while she was obliged to remain there. It was desertion, infidelity. He ought to have remained at any cost, at any loss of his own self-respect. She could never be brought to consider things from his standpoint. If he had loved her, she argued, he would have stayed. Love never counts the cost of anything. They parted in anger, and Bothwell went home with a sore heart, yet with a sense of relief in the idea of recovered freedom.

Then came a period of comparative liberty for Bothwell. He received an occasional letter from Lady Valeria, full of upbraidings and regrets. He answered as best he might—kindly, affectionately even; but he flattered himself that the fatal tie, the dishonourable engagement, was a folly of the past. He was all the more anxious to believe this, during that peaceful winter at Penmorval, on account of his growing esteem for another woman. O, what a different feeling it was, that winter love of his! Those happy half-hours amidst the rimy hedgerows, with the shrill north-easter swirling across the dark brown of the ploughed fields, the yellow light of a setting sun shining beneath a leaden sky. How curiously different was the girl's light happy talk in the English lane—talk which all the world might have heard—from those impassioned whispers beside the fountain, under the stars of Orient! At first it seemed to him that he was only soothed and cheered by his acquaintance with Hilda Heathcote. He affected to consider her a mere girl, hardly emerged from the nursery. He was surprised to find how rightly she thought upon the gravest subjects. Then all at once he awoke to the knowledge that he loved her: and while he was hesitating, doubting whether he were free to indulge this new and purer, sweeter, happier love, hardly daring to ask himself whether that old tie was or was not cancelled, he received a letter from Valeria, with the Paris postmark.

"We have just arrived here from Brindisi," she wrote. "We shall stay here for a few days while I order some gowns, and we shall be in London for a few weeks. After that we go to the General's place near Plymouth, where you must come and see me every day, just as you used at Simla. O Bothwell, I can hardly trust myself to write. I dare not tell you half the joy I feel in the idea of our meeting. If you cared for me you would come to London. It would be so easy to pretend business, and you would be warmly welcomed in Grosvenor Square. You might bring your portmanteau and stop with us. There is a barrack of empty rooms on the third floor. Ours is one of those huge corner houses, and the piggeries for the servants are over the offices at the back. I hope you will contrive to come. Your last letter seemed to me so cold and distant—as if you were beginning to forget, or as if you had not forgiven my anger at your desertion. Ah, Bothwell, you should have pitied me and sympathised with me in that cruel parting. You ought to have known that my anger was despair. But you thought only of your own dignity, your own self-respect—not of my sorrow. Men are so selfish."

Bothwell did not go to London. He excused himself upon various grounds, and remained quietly at Penmorval. But from that hour his manner to Hilda changed altogether. From an unavowed lover he became an indifferent acquaintance. He set a watch upon his tongue that it should say no words of pleasantness. He vowed that he would not again suffer himself to be enmeshed in Lady Valeria's net: but until he had calmly and deliberately broken with her he could not be the lover of any other woman. He made up his mind that so soon as the General and his wife were settled at Fox Hill there should be a rupture—temperate, gentle, firm, and irrevocable.