Dr. Wortle's School Part 25

"Did you put a stone over him?"

"Yes; there is a stone as large as life. You'll find the name on it,--Ferdinand Lefroy of Kilbrack, Louisiana. Kilbrack was the name of our plantation, where we should be living now as gentlemen ought, with three hundred n.i.g.g.e.rs of our own, but for these accursed Northern hypocrites."

"How can I find the stone?"

"There's a chap there who knows, I guess, where all them graves are to be found. But it's on the right hand, a long way down, near the far wall at the bottom, just where the ground takes a little dip to the north. It ain't so long ago but what the letters on the stone will be as fresh as if they were cut yesterday."

"Does no one in San Francisco know of his death?"

"There's a chap named Burke at Johnson's, the cigar-shop in Montgomery Street. He was brother to one of our party, and he went out to the funeral. Maybe you'll find him, or, any way, some traces of him."

The two men sat up discussing the matter nearly the whole of the night, and Peac.o.c.ke, before he started, had brought himself to accede to Lefroy's last proposition. He did give the man money enough to support him for two or three weeks and also to take him to Chicago, promising at the same time that he would hand to him the thousand dollars at Chicago should he find him there at the appointed time, and should he also have found Ferdinand Lefroy's grave at San Francisco in the manner described.

CHAPTER VII.

"n.o.bODY HAS CONDEMNED YOU HERE."

MRS. WORTLE, when she perceived that her husband no longer called on Mrs.

Peac.o.c.ke alone, became herself more a.s.siduous in her visits, till at last she too entertained a great liking for the woman. When Mr. Peac.o.c.ke had been gone for nearly a month she had fallen into a habit of going across every day after the performance of her own domestic morning duties, and remaining in the school-house for an hour. On one morning she found that Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke had just received a letter from New York, in which her husband had narrated his adventures so far. He had written from Southampton, but not after the revelation which had been made to him there as to the death of Ferdinand. He might have so done, but the information given to him had, at the spur of the moment, seemed to be so doubtful that he had refrained. Then he had been able to think of it all during the voyage, and from New York he had written at great length, detailing everything. Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke did not actually read out loud the letter, which was full of such terms of affection as are common between man and wife, knowing that her t.i.tle to be called a wife was not admitted by Mrs.

Wortle; but she read much of it, and told all the circ.u.mstances as they were related.

"Then," said Mrs. Wortle, "he certainly is--no more." There came a certain accession of sadness to her voice, as she reflected that, after all, she was talking to this woman of the death of her undoubted husband.

"Yes; he is dead--at last." Mrs. Wortle uttered a deep sigh. It was dreadful to her to think that a woman should speak in that way of the death of her husband. "I know all that is going on in your mind," said Mrs. Peac.o.c.ke, looking up into her face.

"Do you?"

"Every thought. You are telling yourself how terrible it is that a woman should speak of the death of her husband without a tear in her eye, without a sob,--without one word of sorrow."

"It is very sad."

"Of course it is sad. Has it not all been sad? But what would you have me do? It is not because he was always bad to me,--because he marred all my early life, making it so foul a blotch that I hardly dare to look back upon it from the quietness and comparative purity of these latter days.

It is not because he has so treated me as to make me feel that it has been a misfortune to me to be born, that I now receive these tidings with joy.

It is because of him who has always been good to me as the other was bad, who has made me wonder at the n.o.ble instincts of a man, as the other has made me shudder at his possible meanness."

"It has been very hard upon you," said Mrs. Wortle.

"And hard upon him, who is dearer to me than my own soul. Think of his conduct to me! How he went away to ascertain the truth when he first heard tidings which made him believe that I was free to become his! How he must have loved me then, when, after all my troubles, he took me to himself at the first moment that was possible! Think, too, what he has done for me since,----and I for him! How I have marred his life, while he has striven to repair mine! Do I not owe him everything?"

"Everything," said Mrs. Wortle,--"except to do what is wrong."

"I did do what was wrong. Would not you have done so under such circ.u.mstances? Would not you have obeyed the man who had been to you so true a husband while he believed himself ent.i.tled to the name? Wrong! I doubt whether it was wrong. It is hard to know sometimes what is right and what is wrong. What he told me to do, that to me was right. Had he told me to go away and leave him, I should have gone,--and have died. I suppose that would have been right." She paused as though she expected an answer. But the subject was so difficult that Mrs. Wortle was unable to make one. "I have sometimes wished that he had done so. But as I think of it when I am alone, I feel how impossible that would have been to him.

He could not have sent me away. That which you call right would have been impossible to him whom I regard as the most perfect of human beings. As far as I know him, he is faultless;--and yet, according to your judgment, he has committed a sin so deep that he must stand disgraced before the eyes of all men."

"I have not said so."

"It comes to that. I know how good you are; how much I owe to you. I know that Dr. Wortle and yourself have been so kind to us, that were I not grateful beyond expression I should be the meanest human creature. Do not suppose that I am angry or vexed with you because you condemn me. It is necessary that you should do so. But how can I condemn myself;--or how can I condemn him?"

"If you are both free now, it may be made right."

"But how about repentance? Will it be all right though I shall not have repented? I will never repent. There are laws in accordance with which I will admit that I have done wrong; but had I not broken those laws when he bade me, I should have hated myself through all my life afterwards."

"It was very different."

"If you could know, Mrs. Wortle, how difficult it would have been to go away and leave him! It was not till he came to me and told me that he was going down to Texas, to see how it had been with my husband, that I ever knew what it was to love a man. He had never said a word. He tried not to look it. But I knew that I had his heart and that he had mine. From that moment I have thought of him day and night. When I gave him my hand then as he parted from me, I gave it him as his own. It has been his to do what he liked with it ever since, let who might live or who might die.

Ought I not to rejoice that he is dead?" Mrs. Wortle could not answer the question. She could only shudder. "It was not by any will of my own,"

continued the eager woman, "that I married Ferdinand Lefroy. Everything in our country was then destroyed. All that we loved and all that we valued had been taken away from us. War had destroyed everything. When I was just springing out of childhood, we were ruined. We had to go, all of us; women as well as men, girls as well as boys;--and be something else than we had been. I was told to marry him."

"That was wrong."

"When everything is in ruin about you, what room is there for ordinary well-doing? It seemed then that he would have some remnant of property.

Our fathers had known each other long. The wretched man whom drink afterwards made so vile might have been as good a gentleman as another, if things had gone well with him. He could not have been a hero like him whom I will always call my husband; but it is not given to every man to be a hero."

"Was he bad always from the first?"

"He always drank,--from his wedding-day; and then Robert was with him, who was worse than he. Between them they were very bad. My life was a burden to me. It was terrible. It was a comfort to me even to be deserted and to be left. Then came this Englishman in my way; and it seemed to me, on a sudden, that the very nature of mankind was altered. He did not lie when he spoke. He was never debased by drink. He had other care than for himself. For himself, I think, he never cared. Since he has been here, in the school, have you found any cause of fault in him?"

"No, indeed."

"No, indeed! nor ever will;--unless it be a fault to love a woman as he loves me. See what he is doing now,--where he has gone,--what he has to suffer, coupled as he is with that wretch! And all for my sake!"

"For both your sakes."

"He would have been none the worse had he chosen to part with me. He was in no trouble. I was not his wife; and he need only--bid me go. There would have been no sin with him then,--no wrong. Had he followed out your right and your wrong, and told me that, as we could not be man and wife, we must just part, he would have been in no trouble;--would he?"

"I don't know how it would have been then," said Mrs. Wortle, who was by this time sobbing aloud in tears.

"No; nor I, nor I. I should have been dead;--but he? He is a sinner now, so that he may not preach in your churches, or teach in your schools; so that your dear husband has to be ruined almost because he has been kind to him. He then might have preached in any church,--have taught in any school. What am I to think that G.o.d will think of it? Will G.o.d condemn him?"

"We must leave that to Him," sobbed Mrs. Wortle.

"Yes; but in thinking of our souls we must reflect a little as to what we believe to be probable. He, you say, has sinned,--is sinning still in calling me his wife. Am I not to believe that if he were called to his long account he would stand there pure and bright, in glorious garments,--one fit for heaven, because he has loved others better than he has loved himself, because he has done to others as he might have wished that they should do to him? I do believe it! Believe! I know it. And if so, what am I to think of his sin, or of my own? Not to obey him, not to love him, not to do in everything as he counsels me,--that, to me, would be sin. To the best of my conscience he is my husband and my master. I will not go into the rooms of such as you, Mrs. Wortle, good and kind as you are; but it is not because I do not think myself fit. It is because I will not injure you in the estimation of those who do not know what is fit and what is unfit. I am not ashamed of myself. I owe it to him to blush for nothing that he has caused me to do. I have but two judges,--the Lord in heaven, and he, my husband, upon earth."

"n.o.body has condemned you here."

"Yes;--they have condemned me. But I am not angry at that. You do not think, Mrs. Wortle, that I can be angry with you,--so kind as you have been, so generous, so forgiving;--the more kind because you think that we are determined, headstrong sinners? Oh no! It is natural that you should think so,--but I think differently. Circ.u.mstances have so placed me that they have made me unfit for your society. If I had no decent gown to wear, or shoes to my feet, I should be unfit also;--but not on that account disgraced in my own estimation. I comfort myself by thinking that I cannot be altogether bad when a man such as he has loved me and does love me."

The two women, when they parted on that morning, kissed each other, which they had not done before; and Mrs. Wortle had been made to doubt whether, after all, the sin had been so very sinful. She did endeavour to ask herself whether she would not have done the same in the same circ.u.mstances. The woman, she thought, must have been right to have married the man whom she loved, when she heard that that first horrid husband was dead. There could, at any rate, have been no sin in that.

And then, what ought she to have done when the dead man,--dead as he was supposed to have been,--burst into her room? Mrs. Wortle,--who found it indeed extremely difficult to imagine herself to be in such a position,--did at last acknowledge that, in such circ.u.mstances, she certainly would have done whatever Dr. Wortle had told her. She could not bring it nearer to herself than that. She could not suggest to herself two men as her own husbands. She could not imagine that the Doctor had been either the bad husband, who had unexpectedly come to life,--or the good husband, who would not, in truth, be her husband at all; but she did determine, in her own mind, that, however all that might have been, she would clearly have done whatever the Doctor told her. She would have sworn to obey him, even though, when swearing, she should not have really married him. It was terrible to think of,--so terrible that she could not quite think of it; but in struggling to think of it her heart was softened towards this other woman. After that day she never spoke further of the woman's sin.

Of course she told it all to the Doctor,--not indeed explaining the working of her own mind as to that suggestion that he should have been, in his first condition, a very bad man, and have been reported dead, and have come again, in a second shape, as a good man. She kept that to herself.

But she did endeavour to describe the effect upon herself of the description the woman had given her of her own conduct.

"I don't quite know how she could have done otherwise," said Mrs. Wortle.

"Nor I either; I have always said so."