‘It was an ill-assorted match evidently,’ I said. ‘But why did you not agree to separate?’
‘I shrank from mentioning such a thing; with all his faults, I believed that he was still at the bottom devotedly attached to me. Besides, such a step is always distressing and compromising. No; I went on bearing my troubles, not silently indeed, for I have too much spirit, I confess, to make a meek and uncomplaining wife; but I bore them anyhow, although I confess that any affection I ever had for him had been lost in the embroilments of our married life. You may think that I was to blame, and that if there were a real attachment on his part towards me, I ought to have been able to manage him; but I tell you no! There was a certain malignity in his nature that made him spiteful and tormenting even to those whom he loved. Anyhow, life was a sorrowful burden to me whilst he was with me.’
She rose, looking quite overcome by the recital of her troubles. Her eyes were filled with tears; her hands trembled nervously, as she raised them to press the hair back from her forehead. I murmured a few words expressive of sympathy and good-will.
‘Well!’ she said, sitting down and wiping her eyes with a pretty embroidered handkerchief; ‘not to dwell upon my troubles. I was at last relieved from the hateful knot by his death—a death I believe he contrived in a way that should leave me in as cruel and doubtful a position as possible. He left home one day without giving me any intimation that he would stay away—that was his general practice—or leaving me any money to carry on the household expenses. And the next thing I heard of him was from a little village on the coast, that he had been drowned while bathing. I believe that he committed suicide. I ascertained that he had been informing himself most minutely of the set of the tides and currents about the coast, and with fiendish ingenuity had taken to the water at a time when the tide was certain to carry his body far out to sea.’
‘But what object could he have had in that, madam?’
‘Don’t you see? The pension which I had lost in marrying revived on my widowhood. But he had contrived that his body should never be found. In vain I applied to the authorities to renew my pension. There had been several cases of attempted personation and fraud about these pensions, and they utterly refused to renew mine without absolute proof of my husband’s death. This I was unable to afford to their satisfaction, his body never having been discovered. Still the circumstantial evidence was most strong, and I was advised to bring an action in the way of a petition of right. A circumstance, however, occurred,’ said the widow with a slight blush, ‘which rendered such a step unnecessary.’
‘Ah! I see,’ I cried; ‘you married again?’
‘Yes; and this time my venture was more fortunate. My second husband was an officer in the army, frank and free and brave. No young couple could have been happier. But alas! we were neither of us prudent in the management of our affairs. We had small means in the present, but great expectations, and we were too sanguine to think of the possibility of disappointment. Life became a series of feasts and fêtes. My husband sold out of the army, and we lived gaily enough on the proceeds of his commission, till that was all gone, and we saw ourselves brought to the verge of ruin. I must tell you that my husband was also of a literary turn, and wrote military sketches and so on, that brought in a little money, but nothing substantial.
‘We had one resource still left—the house in which we lived; it had been my mother’s, and at her death she left it to me. It was a pretty little house in the neighbourhood of St John’s Wood; but it was leasehold only, and the lease had not more than ten years to run. We had found it under these circumstances impossible to mortgage our interest. We might have sold the lease; and that with the furniture, which had also been my mother’s, would have realised five or six hundred pounds. But when that was gone, where should we look for shelter? Charles’s great expectations’——
‘Pardon me for interrupting you. You have mentioned your husband’s Christian name: it will make your narrative clearer if you tell me also his surname.’