‘Brown,’ said the Vicar tremulously, ‘you are doing a sort of generous act—God help us!—which I can’t help consenting to, though it’s utterly wrong; but you speak as if you had not a scrap of feeling for her or anyone.’
‘I haven’t!’ he cried fiercely, ‘after three years of it. Half the time and more she’s been ashamed of me, disgusted with me. Do you think a man can stand that? By——! I neither can nor will. I’m going,’ he continued, buttoning his coat hastily; ‘you can come or not, as you please.’
‘You had better have some supper first,’ said the Vicar.
‘Ah! that’s the most sensible word you have said,’ cried Brown.
Was it bravado, was it bitterness, was it relief in escaping, or the lightness of despair? Mr. Germaine could never tell. It was something of all of these feelings, mingled with the fierce pride of a peasant slighted, and a certain indignant contemptuous generosity to let her go free—the woman who was ashamed of him. All these were in Brown’s thoughts.
CHAPTER X.
‘HE HAS GONE—FOR EVER!’
Mrs. Blencarrow spent that evening with her children; she made no attempt to leave them after dinner. A lull had come into her heart after the storm. She was aware that it was only temporary, nothing real in it; but in the midst of a tempest even a few minutes of stillness and tranquillity are dear. She had found on the mantelpiece of the business-room the intimation, ‘Away on business till Monday,’ and though it perplexed, it also soothed her. And the brothers returning with the proof of Kitty’s statement, the extract which no doubt they would bring from those books to confound her, could now scarcely arrive to-night. A whole evening undisturbed among the children, who might so soon be torn from her, in her own familiar place, which might so soon be hers no longer; an evening like the past, perhaps the last before the coming of that awful future when she must go forth to frame her life anew, loveless and hopeless and ashamed. It was nothing but ‘the torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below,’ the moment of calm before the storm; and yet it was calm, and she was thankful for that one soft moment before the last blow fell.
The children were again lively and happy over their round game; the sober, kind governess—about whom Mrs. Blencarrow had already concluded in her own mind that she could secure at least the happiness of the little ones if their mother were forced to leave them—was seated with them, even enjoying the fun, as it is a blessed dispensation of Providence that such good souls often do. Emmy was the only one who was out of it; she was in her favourite corner with a book, and always a watchful glance at her mother. Emmy, with that instinct of the heart which stood her in place of knowledge, had a perception, she could not have told how, of the pause in her mother’s soul. She would do nothing to disturb that pause. She sat praying mutely that it might last, that it might be peace coming back. Naturally Emmy, even with all her instinct, did not know the terrible barrier that stood between her mother and peace.
And thus they all sat, apparently in full enjoyment of the sweet household quiet, which by moments was so noisy and full of commotion, the mother seated with the screen between her and the great blazing fire, the children round the table, Emmy with her book.
Mrs. Blencarrow’s eyes dwelt upon them with the tenderest, the most pathetic of smiles.