Gratitude, therefore, and duty kept him here.
But
there, meanwhile, so far out of his reach,
what might be going on? He lived a perfectly
double life. Lucia was in trouble—some
inexplicable shadow of disgrace was threatening her—something
so grave that even her mother, who knew him so well,
thought it an unsurmountable barrier between them—something
which looked the more awful from its vagueness and
mystery. It is true that he was only troubled—not
discouraged by the appearance of this phantom.
He was as ready to fight for his Una as ever was Redcross
Knight—but then would his Una wait for him?
To be forcibly held back from the combat must have
been much worse to a true champion than any wounds
he could receive in fair fight. So at least it
seemed to Maurice, secretly chafing, and then bitterly
reproaching himself for his impatience; yet the next
moment growing as impatient as before.
To him in this mood came Mrs. Costello’s last
letter. Now at last the mystery was cleared up,
and its impalpable shape reduced to a positive and
ugly reality. Like his father, Maurice found no
small difficulty in understanding and believing the
story told to him. That Mrs. Costello, calm,
gentle, and just touched with a quiet stateliness,
as he had always known her, could ever have been an
impulsive, romantic girl, so swayed by passion or
by flattery as to have left her father’s house
and all the protecting restraints of her English life
to follow the fortunes of an Indian, was an idea so
startling that he could not at once accept it for
truth. In Lucia the incongruity struck him less.
Her beauty, dark and magnificent, her fearless nature,
her slender erect shape, her free and graceful movements—all
the charms which he had by heart, suited an Indian
origin. He could readily imagine her the daughter
of a chief and a hero. But this was not what
he was required to believe. He had read lately
the description of a brutal, half-imbecile savage,
who had committed a peculiarly frightful and revolting
murder, and he was told to recognize in this wretch
the father of his darling. But it was just this
which saved him. He would believe that Christian
was Mrs. Costello’s husband and Lucia’s
father, because Mrs. Costello told him so herself
and of her own knowledge—but as for a murder,
innocent men were often accused of that; and when
a man is once accused by the popular voice of a horrible
crime, everybody knows how freely appropriate qualities
can be bestowed on him. So the conviction which
remained at the bottom of Maurice’s mind, though
he never drew it up and looked steadily at it, was
just the truth—that Christian, by some train
of circumstances or other, had been made to bear the
weight of another person’s guilt. As to
the other question of his giving up Lucia, Maurice
never troubled himself to think about it. He was,
it must be confessed, of a singularly obstinate disposition,
and in spite of his legal training not particularly
Print
Word
PDF
