‘For better, for worse, Louis; remember that.’
‘Why has she forgotten it?’
’She is flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone.
And for the boy’s sake! Think of your boy,
Louis. Do not send that letter. Sleep on
it, Louis, and think of it.’
‘I have slept on it.’
’There is no promise in it of forgiveness after
a while. It is written as though you intended
that she should never come back to you.’.
‘That shall be as she behaves herself.’
’But tell her so. Let there be some one
bright spot in what you say to her, on which her mind
may fix itself. If she be not altogether hardened,
that letter will drive her to despair.’
But Trevelyan would not give up the letter, nor indicate
by a word that he would reconsider the question of
its propriety. He escaped as soon as he could
from Lady Milborough’s room, and almost declared
as he did so, that he would never enter her doors
again. She had utterly failed to see the matter
in the proper light. When she talked of Naples
she must surely have been unable to comprehend the
extent of the ill-usage to which he, the husband,
had been subjected. How was it possible that
he should live under the same roof with a wife who
claimed to herself the right of receiving visitors
of whom he disapproved—a visitor, a gentleman,
one whom the world called her lover? He gnashed
his teeth and clenched his fist as he thought of his
old friend’s ignorance of the very first law
in a married man’s code of laws.
But yet when he was out in the streets he did not
post his letter at once; but thought of it throughout
the whole day, trying to prove the weight of every
phrase that he had used. Once or twice his heart
almost relented. Once he had the letter in his
hand, that he might tear it. But he did not tear
it. He put it back into his pocket, and thought
again of his grievance. Surely it was his first
duty in such an emergency to be firm!
It was certainly a wretched life that he was leading.
In the evening he went all alone to an eating-house
for his dinner, and then, sitting with a miserable
glass of sherry before him, he again read and re-read
the epistle which he had written. Every harsh
word that it contained was, in some sort, pleasant
to his ear. She had hit him hard, and should
he not hit her again? And then, was it not his
bounden duty to let her know the truth? Yes;
it was his duty to be firm.
So he went out and posted the letter.
GREAT TRIBULATION
Trevelyan’s letter to his wife fell like a thunderbolt
among them at Nuncombe Putney. Mrs Trevelyan
was altogether unable to keep it to herself; indeed
she made no attempt at doing so. Her husband had
told her that she was to be banished from the Clock
House because her present hostess was unable to endure
her misconduct, and of course she demanded the reasons
of the charge that was thus brought against her.
When she first read the letter, which she did in the
presence of her sister, she towered in her passion.
