‘You did her no wrong. There was a motive which she was keeping from you. In revealing that motive, I reveal the painful secret which brings me to this house. All that I could do to prepare you, I have done. Let me now tell the truth in the plainest and fewest words. When Mr and Mrs Vanstone left Combe-Raven, in the March of the present year –’
Before he could complete the sentence, a sudden movement of Miss Garth’s interrupted him. She started violently, and looked round towards the window. ‘Only the wind among the leaves,’ she said, faintly. ‘My nerves are so shaken, the least thing startles me. Speak out, for God’s sake! When Mr and Mrs Vanstone left this house, tell me in plain words – why did they go to London?’
In plain words, Mr Pendril told her:
‘They went to London to be married.’
With that answer he placed a slip of paper on the table. It was the marriage certificate of the dead parents, and the date it bore was March the twentieth, eighteen hundred and forty-six.
Miss Garth neither moved nor spoke. The certificate lay beneath her unnoticed. She sat with her eyes rooted on the lawyer’s face; her mind stunned, her senses helpless. He saw that all his efforts to break the shock of the discovery had been efforts made in vain; he felt the vital importance of rousing her, and firmly and distinctly repeated the fatal words.
‘They went to London to be married,’ he said. ‘Try to rouse yourself: try to realize the plain fact first: the explanation shall come afterwards. Miss Garth, I speak the miserable truth! In the spring of this year they left home; they lived in London for a fortnight, in the strictest retirement; they were married by licence at the end of that time. There is a copy of the certificate, which I myself obtained on Monday last. Read the date of the marriage for yourself. It is Friday, the twentieth of March – the March of this present year.’
As he pointed to the certificate, that faint breath of air among the shrubs beneath the window, which had startled Miss Garth, stirred the leaves once more. He heard it himself, this time; and turned his face, so as to let the breeze play upon it. No breeze came; no breath of air that was strong enough for him to feel, floated into the room.
Miss Garth roused herself mechanically, and read the certificate. It seemed to produce no distinct impression on her; she laid it on one side, in a lost bewildered manner. ‘Twelve years,’ she said, in low hopeless tones – ‘twelve quiet happy years I lived with this family. Mrs Vanstone was my friend; my dear, valued friend – my sister, I might almost say. I can’t believe it. Bear with me a little, sir, I can’t believe it yet.’
‘I shall help you to believe it, when I tell you more,’ said Mr Pendril – ‘you will understand me better when I take you back to the time of Mr Vanstone’s early life. I won’t ask for your attention just yet. Let us wait a little, until you recover yourself.’
They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from his pocket, referred to them attentively, and put them back again. ‘Can you listen to me, now?’ he asked kindly. She bowed her head in answer. Mr Pendril considered with himself for a moment. ‘I must caution you on one point,’ he said. ‘If the aspect of Mr Vanstone’s character which I am now about to present to you, seems in some respects at variance with your later experience, bear in mind that when you first knew him twelve years since, he was a man of forty; and that, when I first knew him, he was a lad of nineteen.’
His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past.
Chapter Thirteen
‘The fortune which Mr Vanstone possessed when you knew him’ (the lawyer began) ‘was part, and part only, of the inheritance which fell to him on his father’s death. Mr Vanstone the elder, was a manufacturer in the North of England. He married early in life; and the children of the marriage were either six, or seven in number – I am not certain which. First, Michael, the eldest son, still living, and now an old man turned seventy. Secondly, Selina, the eldest daughter, who married in after-life, and who died ten or eleven years ago. After those two, came other sons and daughters whose early deaths make it unnecessary to mention them particularly. The last and by many years the youngest of the children was Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age of nineteen. My father was then on the point of retiring from the active pursuit of his profession; and, in succeeding to his business, I also succeeded to his connection with the Vanstones, as the family solicitor.
‘At that time, Andrew had just started in life by entering the army. After little more than a year of home-service, he was ordered out with his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England, he left his father and his elder brother Michael seriously at variance. I need not detain you by entering into the cause of the quarrel. I need only tell you that the elder Mr Vanstone, with many excellent qualities, was a man of fierce and intractable temper. His eldest son had set him at defiance, under circumstances which might have justly irritated a father of far milder character; and he declared, in the most positive terms, that he would never see Michael’s face again. In defiance of my entreaties, and of the entreaties of his wife, he tore up, in our presence, the will which provided for Michael’s share in the paternal inheritance. Such was the family position, when the younger son left home for Canada.
‘Some months after Andrew’s arrival with his regiment at Quebec, he became acquainted with a woman of great personal attractions, who came, or said she came, from one of the southern states of America. She obtained an immethate influence over him: and she used it to the basest purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate, trusting nature of the man, in later life – you can imagine how thoughtlessly he acted on the impulses of his youth. It is useless to dwell on this lamentable part of the
story. He was just twenty-one: he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman; and she led’ him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to draw back. In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life: he married her.
‘She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the influence of his brother officers, and to persuade him, up to the period of the marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them a secret. She could do this; but she could not provide against the results of accident. Hardly three months had passed, when a chance disclosure exposed the life she had led, before her marriage. But one alternative was left to her husband – the alternative of instantly separating from her.
‘The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy – for a boy in disposition he still was – may be judged by the event which followed the exposure. One of Andrew’s superior officers – a certain Major Kirke,1 if I remember right – found him in his quarters, writing to his father a confession of the disgraceful truth, with a loaded pistol by his side. That officer saved the lad’s life from his own hand; and hushed up the scandalous affair, by a compromise. The marriage being a perfectly legal one, and the wife’s misconduct prior to the ceremony, giving her husband no claim to his release from her by divorce, it was only possible to appeal to her sense of her own interests. A handsome annual allowance was secured to her, on condition that she returned to the place from which she had come; that she never appeared in England; and that she ceased to use her husband’s name. Other stipulations were added to these. She accepted them all; and measures were privately taken to have her well looked after in the place of her retreat. What life she led there, and whether she performed all the conditions imposed on her, I cannot say. I can only tell you that she never, to my knowledge, came to England; that she never annoyed Mr Vanstone; and that the annual allowance was paid her, through a local agent in America, to the day of her death. All that she wanted in marrying him was money; and money she got.
‘In the mean time, Andrew had left the regiment. Nothing would induce him to face his brother-officers after what had happened. He sold out, and returned to England. The first intelligence which reached him on his return, was the intelligence of his father’s death. He came to my office in London, before going home, and there he learnt from my lips how the family quarrel had ended.
‘The will which Mr Vanstone the elder had destroyed in my presence,
had not been, so far as I knew, replaced by another. When I was sent for, in the usual course, on his death, I fully expected that the law would be left to make the customary division among his widow and his children. To my surprise, a will appeared among his papers, correctly drawn and executed, and dated about a week after the period when the first will had been destroyed. He had maintained his vindictive purpose against his eldest son; and had applied to a stranger for the professional assistance which I honestly believe he was ashamed to ask for at my hands.
‘It is needless to trouble you with the provisions of the will in detail. There were the widow, and three surviving children to be provided for. The widow received a life interest only, in a portion of the testator’s property. The remaining portion was divided between Andrew and Selina – two-thirds to the brother; one-third to the sister. On the mother’s death, the money from which her income had been derived, was to go to Andrew and Selina, in the same relative proportions as before – five thousand pounds having been first deducted from the sum, and paid to Michael, as the sole legacy left by the implacable father to his eldest son.
‘Speaking in round numbers, the division of property, as settled by the will, stood thus. Before the mother’s death, Andrew had seventy thousand pounds; Selina had thirty-five thousand pounds; Michael – had nothing. After the mother’s death, Michael had five thousand pounds, to set against Andrew’s inheritance augmented to one hundred thousand, and Selina’s inheritance increased to fifty thousand. – Do not suppose that I am dwelling unnecessarily on this part of the subject. Every word I now speak bears on interests still in suspense, which vitally concern Mr Vanstone’s daughters. As we get on from past to present, keep in mind the terrible inequality of Michael’s inheritance and Andrew’s inheritance. The harm done by that vindictive will is, I greatly fear, not over yet.
‘Andrew’s first impulse, when he heard the news which I had to tell him, was worthy of the open, generous nature of the man. He at once proposed to divide his inheritance with his elder brother. But there was one serious obstacle in the way. A letter from Michael was waiting for him at my office, when he came there; and that letter charged him with being the original cause of estrangement between his father and his elder brother. The efforts which he had made – bluntly and incautiously, I own; but with the purest and kindest intentions, as I know – to compose the quarrel before leaving home, were perverted by the vilest
misconstruction, to support an accusation of treachery and falsehood which would have stung any man to the quick. Andrew felt, what I felt, that if these imputations were not withdrawn, before his generous intentions towards his brother took effect, the mere fact of their execution would amount to a practical acknowledgement of the justice of Michael’s charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the most forbearing terms. The answer received was as offensive as words could make it. Michael had inherited his father’s temper, unredeemed by his father’s better qualities: his second letter reiterated the charges contained in the first, and declared that he would only accept the offered division as an act of atonement and restitution on Andrew’s part. I next wrote to the mother, to use her influence. She was herself aggrieved at being left with nothing more than a life interest in her husband’s property; she sided resolutely with Michael; and she stigmatized Andrew’s proposal as an attempt to bribe her eldest son into withdrawing a charge against his brother, which that brother knew to be true. After this last repulse, nothing more could be done. Michael withdrew to the Continent; and his mother followed him there. She lived long enough, and saved money enough out of her income, to add considerably, at her death, to her elder son’s five thousand pounds. He had previously still further improved his pecuniary position by an advantageous marriage; and he is now passing the close of his days either in France or Switzerland – a widower, with one son. We shall return to him shortly. In the mean time, I need only tell you that Andrew and Michael never again met – never again communicated, even by writing. To all intents and purposes, they were dead to each other, from those early days to the present time.
‘You can now estimate what Andrew’s position was when he left his profession and returned to England. Possessed of a fortune, he was alone in the world; – his future destroyed at the fair outset of life; his mother and brother estranged from him; his sister lately married, with interests and hopes in which he had no share. Men of firmer mental calibre might have found refuge from such a situation as this, in an absorbing intellectual pursuit. He was not capable of the effort; all the strength of his character lay in the affections he had wasted. His place in the world was that quiet place at home, with wife and children to make his life happy, which he had lost for ever. To look back was more than he dare. To look forward was more than he could. In sheer despair, he let his own impetuous youth drive him on; and cast himself into the lowest dissipations of a London life.
‘A woman’s falsehood had driven him to his ruin. A woman’s love saved him at the outset of his downward career. Let us not speak of her harshly – for we laid her with him yesterday in the grave.
‘You, who only knew Mrs Vanstone in later life, when illness and sorrow and secret care had altered and saddened her, can form no adequate idea of her attractions of person and character when she was a girl of seventeen. I was with Andrew when he first met her. I had tried to rescue him for one night at least, from degrading associates and degrading pleasures, by persuading him to go with me to a ball given by one of the great City Companies. There, they met. She produced a strong impression on him, the moment he saw her. To me, as to him, she was a total stranger. An introduction to her, obtained in the customary manner, informed him that she was the daughter of one Mr Blake. The rest he discovered from herself. They were partners in the dance (unobserved in that crowded ball-room), all through the evening.
‘Circumstances were against her from the first. She was unhappy at home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station in life: they were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy of her. It was her first ball – it was the first time she had ever met with a man who had the breeding, the manners and the conversation of a gentleman. Are these excuses for her, which I have no right to make? If we have any human feeling for human weakness, surely not!
‘The meeting of that night, decided their future. When other meetings had followed, when the confession of her love had escaped her, he took the one course of all others (took it innocently and unconsciously), which was most dangerous to them both. His frankness and his sense of honour forbade him to deceive her: he opened his heart, and told her the truth. She was a generous, impulsive girl; she had no home ties strong enough to plead with her; she was passionately fond of him – and he had made that appeal to her pity, which, to the eternal honour of women, is the hardest of all appeals for them to resist. She saw, and saw truly, that she alone stood between him and his ruin. The last chance of his rescue hung on her decision. She decided; and saved him.
‘Let me not be misunderstood; let me not be accused of trifling with the serious social question on which my narrative forces me to touch. I will defend her memory by no false reasoning – I will only speak the truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which must have ended in his early death. It is the truth that she restored him to that happy home-existence which you remember so tenderly – which he remembered so gratefully that, on the day when he was free, he made
her his wife. Let strict morality claim its right, and condemn her early fault. I have read my New Testament to little purpose indeed, if Christian mercy may not soften the hard sentence against her – if Christian charity may not find a plea for her memory in the love and fidelity, the suffering and the sacrifice of her whole life.
‘A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events which have happened within your own experience.
‘I need not remind you that the posit
ion in which Mr Vanstone was now placed, could lead in the end to but one result – to a disclosure, more or less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts were made to keep the hopeless misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake’s family; and, as a matter of course, those attempts failed before the relentless scrutiny of her father and her friends. What might have happened if her relatives had been, what is termed, “respectable”, I cannot pretend to say. As it was, they were people who could (in the common phrase) be conveniently treated with. The only survivor of the family at the present time, is a scoundrel calling himself Captain Wragge. When I tell you that he privately extorted the price of his silence from Mrs Vanstone, to the last; and when I add that his conduct presents no extraordinary exception to the conduct, in their lifetime, of the other relatives – you will understand what sort of people I had to deal with in my client’s interests, and how their assumed indignation was appeased.
‘Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr Vanstone and Miss Blake remained there afterwards for some years. Girl as she was she faced her position and its necessities without flinching. Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to the man she loved; having quieted her conscience by persuading herself that his marriage was a legal mockery, and that she was “his wife in the sight of Heaven”, she set herself from the first to accomplish the one foremost purpose of so living with him, in the world’s eye, as never to raise the suspicion that she was not his lawful wife. The women are few indeed, who cannot resolve firmly, scheme patiently, and act promptly, where the dearest interests of their lives are concerned. Mrs Vanstone – she has a right now, remember, to that name – Mrs Vanstone had more than the average share of a woman’s tenacity and a woman’s tact; and she took all the needful precautions, in those early days, which her husband’s less ready capacity had not the art to devise – precautions to which they were largely indebted for the preservation of their secret in later times.