“I want you to do something for me,” she said, almost in a whisper—“I want you to have a sum of money, and to get it to him”—she could not make herself utter his name—“on condition that he goes out of the country with it. Let him go to Australia with the woman——”
“Yes,” Mrs. North said, seeing she hesitated.
“She is not in his position, and could never be received in society.”
“No, dear,” Mrs. North said, reflecting that Mr. Wimple’s own position was not particularly exalted.
“I want him to go out of the country,” Aunt Anne went on—“as far away as possible; I cannot breathe the same air with him, or bear to think that he is beneath the same sky. It is pollution; it is hurrying me out of life; it is most repugnant to me to think that when I am dead he will frequently be within only a few miles of this cottage and of my dear Walter and Florence”—she stopped for a moment, and shuddered, and put her thin hands, one over the other, under her chin. “When I am dead and buried,” she went on, “I believe I should know if his body were put underground, too, in the same country with me, and feel the desecration. It has killed me; it has made me eager to die. But I want to know that he will go away—that none of those I care for will ever see his face again; it will be a sacrilege if he even passes them in the street. I want him to have a sum of money, and to go away.”
“I will take care that he has it,” Mrs. North said gently, “I will speak to the Hibberts. But, Aunt Anne,” she asked, “don’t you think you might forgive him? He shall go away, but you would not like to die without forgiving him?” Mrs. North did not for a moment expect her to do it, or even wish it, but she felt it almost a duty to say what she did from a little notion, as old-fashioned as one of Aunt Anne’s perhaps, about dying in charity with all men.
“No, you must not ask me to do that”—and her voice was determined. “I cannot; it was too terrible.”
“And I am very glad,” Mrs. North said, having eased her conscience with the previous remark—“a slightly revengeful spirit comforts one so much.”
“Don’t let us ever speak of him again, even you and I. I want to shut him out of the little bit of life I have left.”
“We never will,” Mrs. North said. “Let this be the Amen of him. Now I will make the will. Here is a sheet of note-paper and a singularly bad quill pen.”