Of course he preferred it. Was he not essentially
good-natured? Would he not, at any ordinary season,
go out of his way to do a kindness? Did not his
soul revolt against every form of injustice?
Whom had he ever injured? For his humanity, no
less than for his urbanity, he claimed a noteworthy
distinction among young men of the time.
And there lay the pity of it. But for Nancy’s
self-abandonment, he might have come to love her in
good earnest. As it was, the growth of their
intimacy had been marked with singular, unanticipated
impulses on his side, impulses quite inconsistent with
heartless scheming. In the compunctious visitings
which interrupted his love-making at least twice,
there was more than a revolt of mere honesty, as he
recognised during his brief flight to London.
Had she exercised but the common prudence of womanhood!
Why, that she did not, might tell both for and against
her. Granting that she lacked true dignity, native
refinement, might it not have been expected that artfulness
would supply their place? Artful fencing would
have stamped her of coarse nature. But coarseness
she had never betrayed; he had never judged her worse
than intellectually shallow. Her self-surrender
might, then, indicate a trait worthy of admiration.
Her subsequent behaviour undeniably pleaded for respect.
She acquainted him with the circumstances of her home
life, very modestly, perhaps pathetically. He
learnt that her father was not ill to do, heard of
her domestic and social troubles, that her mother
had been long dead, things weighing in her favour,
to be sure.
If only she had loved him less!
It was all over; he was married. In acting honourably,
it seemed probable that he had spoilt his life.
He must be prepared for anything. Nancy said
that she should not, could not, tell her father, yet
awhile; but that resolution was of doubtful stability.
For his own part, he thought it clearly advisable that
the fact should not become known at Champion Hill;
but could he believe Nancy’s assurance that
Miss. Morgan remained in the dark? Upon one
catastrophe, others might naturally follow.
Here, Saturday at noon, came a letter of Nancy’s
writing. A long letter, and by no means a bad
one; superior, in fact, to anything he thought she
could have written. It moved him somewhat, but
would have moved him more, had he not been legally
bound to the writer. On Sunday she could not
come to see him; but on Monday, early in the afternoon—
Well, there were consolations. A wise man makes
the best of the inevitable.
Since his return he had seen no one, and none of his
friends knew where he had been. A call from some
stray Hodiernal would be very unseasonable this Monday
afternoon; but probably they were all enjoying their
elegant leisure in regions remote from town. As
the hour of Nancy’s arrival drew near, he sat
trying to compose himself —with indifferent
success. At one moment his thoughts found utterance,
and he murmured in a strange, bewildered tone—’My
wife.’ Astonishing words! He laughed
at their effect upon him, but unmirthfully. And
his next murmur was—’The devil!’
A mere ejaculation, betokening his state of mind.
