Whatever, in the secrecy of domestic intercourse, took place on this event was necessarily unknown; but the next Sunday the face of Mr Welford, which had never before appeared at church, was discerned by one vigilant neighbour – probably the anonymous friend, – not in the same pew with his wife, but in a remote corner of the sacred house. And once, when the lieutenant was watching to read in Mrs Welford’s face some answer to his epistle, the same obliging inspector declared that Welford’s countenance assumed a sardonic and withering sneer that made his very blood to creep. However this be, the lieutenant left his quarters, and Mrs Welford’s reputation remained dissatisfactorily untarnished. Shortly after this the county speculation failed, and it was understood that the Welfords were about to leave the town, whither none knew, – some said to gaol; but then, unhappily, no debts could be discovered. Their bills had been ‘next to nothing;’ but, at least, they had been regularly paid. However, before the rumoured emigration took place, a circumstance equally wonderful to the good people of — occurred. One bright spring morning, a party of pleasure from a great house in the vicinity passed through that town. Most conspicuous of these was a young horseman, richly dressed, and of a remarkably showy and handsome appearance. Not a little sensible of the sensation he created, this cavalier lingered behind his companions in order to eye more deliberately certain damsels stationed in a window, and who were quite ready to return his glances with interest. At this moment the horse, which was fretting itself fiercely against the rein that restrained it from its fellows, took fright at a knife-grinder, started violently to one side, and the graceful cavalier, who had been thinking, not of the attitude best adapted to preserve his equilibrium, but to display his figure, was thrown with some force upon a heap of bricks and rubbish which had long, to the scandal of the neighbourhood, stood before the paintless railings around Mr Welford’s house. Welford himself came out at the time, and felt compelled, for he was by no means one whose sympathetic emotions flowed easily, to give a glance to the condition of a man who lay motionless before his very door. The horseman quickly recovered his senses, but found himself unable to rise; one of his legs was broken. Supported in the arms of his groom he looked around, and his eye met Welford’s. An instant recognition gave life to the face of the former, and threw a dark blush over the sullen features of the latter. ‘Heavens!’ said the cavalier, ‘is that –’
‘Hist, my lord!’ cried Welford, quickly interrupting him, and glancing round. ‘But you are hurt, – will you enter my house?’
The horseman signified his assent, and, between the groom and Welford, was borne within the shabby door of the ex-solicitor. The groom was then despatched with an excuse to the party, many of whom were already hastening around the house; and though one or two did force themselves across the inhospitable threshold, yet so soon as they had uttered a few expletives, and felt their stare sink beneath the sullen and chilling asperity of the host, they satisfied themselves, that though it was d—d unlucky for their friend, yet they could do nothing for him at present; and promising to send to inquire after him the next day, they remounted and rode homeward, with an eye more attentive than usual to the motion of their steeds. They did not, however, depart till the surgeon of the town had made his appearance, and declared that the patient must not on any account be moved. A lord’s leg was a windfall that did not happen every day to the surgeon of —. All this while we may imagine the state of anxiety experienced in the town, and the agonized endurance of those rural nerves which are produced in scanty populations, and have so Taliacotian a sympathy with the affairs of other people. One day – two days – three days – a week – a fortnight, nay, a month, passed, and the lord was still the inmate of Mr Welford’s abode. Leaving the gossips to feed on their curiosity, – ‘Cannibals of their own hearts,’ – we must give a glance towards the interior of the inhospitable mansion of the ex-solicitor.
It was towards evening, the sufferer was supported on a sofa, and the beautiful Mrs Welford, who had officiated as his nurse, was placing the pillow under the shattered limb. He himself was attempting to seize her hand, which she coyly drew back, and uttering things sweeter and more polished than she had ever listened to before. At this moment Welford softly entered; he was unnoticed by either; and he stood at the door contemplating them with a smile of calm and self-hugging derision. The face of Mephistopheles regarding Margaret and Faust might suggest some idea of the picture we design to paint; but the countenance of Welford was more lofty, as well as comelier, in character, though not less malignant in expression, than that which the incomparable Retsch has given to the mocking fiend. So utter, so congratulatory, so lordly was the contempt on Welford’s dark and striking features, that though he was in that situation in which ridicule usually attaches itself to the husband, it was the gallant and the wife that would have appeared to the beholder in a humiliating and unenviable light.
After a momentary pause, Welford approached with a heavy step, – the wife started; – but, with a bland and smooth expression, which, since his sojourn in the town of —, had been rarely visible in his aspect, the host joined the pair, smiled on the nurse, and congratulated the patient on his progress towards recovery. The nobleman, well learned in the usages of the world, replied easily and gaily; and the conversation flowed on cheerful enough till the wife, who had sat abstracted and apart, stealing ever and anon timid glances towards her husband, and looks of a softer meaning towards the patient, retired from the room. Welford then gave a turn to the conversation: he reminded the nobleman of the pleasant days they had passed in Italy, – of the adventures they had shared, and the intrigues they had enjoyed; as the conversation warmed it assumed a more free and licentious turn; and not a little we ween, would the good folks of — have been amazed could they have listened to the gay jests and the libertine maxims which flowed from the thin lips of that cold and severe Welford, whose countenance gave the lie to mirth. Of women in general they spoke with that lively contempt which is the customary tone with men of the world, – only in Welford it assumed a bitterer, a deeper, and a more philosophical cast, than it did in his more animated yet less energetic guest.
The nobleman seemed charmed with his friend; the conversation was just to his taste; and when Welford had supported him up to bed, he shook that person cordially by the hand, and hoped he should soon see him in very different circumstances. When the peer’s door was closed on Welford, he stood motionless for some moments; he then with a soft step ascended to his own chamber. His wife slept soundly; beside the bed was the infant’s cradle. As his eyes fell on the latter, the rigid irony, now habitual to his features, relaxed; he bent over the cradle long, and in deep silence. The mother’s face, blended with the sire’s, was stamped on the sleeping and cherub countenance before him; and as at length, rousing from his reverie, he kissed it gently, he murmured, –
‘When I look on you I will believe that she once loved me. – Pah!’ he said abruptly, and rising, added, ‘this fatherly sentiment for a —’s offering is exquisite in me!’ So saying, without glancing towards his wife, who, disturbed by the loudness of his last words, stirred uneasily, he left the room, and descended into that where he had conversed with his guest. He shut the door with caution, and striding to and fro the humble apartment, gave vent to thoughts marshalled somewhat in the broken array in which they now appear to the reader.
‘Ay, ay, she has been my ruin! And if I were one of your weak fools who make a gospel of the silliest and most mawkish follies of this social state, she would now be my disgrace; but, instead of my disgrace, I will make her my footstool to honour and wealth. And, then, to the devil with the footstool! Yes! Two years I have borne what was enough to turn my whole blood into gall: inactivity, hopelessness – a wasted heart and life in myself, contumely from the world, coldness, bickering, ingratitude, from the one for whom – oh, ass that I was! – I gave up the most cherished part of my nature – rather my nature itself! Two years I have borne this, and now will I have my revenge; �
� I will sell her – sell her! God! I will sell her like the commonest beast of a market! And this paltry piece of false coin shall buy me – my world! Other men’s vengeance comes from hatred – a base, rash, unphilosophical sentiment! Mine comes from scorn – the only wise state for the reason to rest in. Other men’s vengeance ruins themselves – mine shall save me! Hah! – How my soul chuckles when I look at this pitiful pair, who think I see them not, and know that every movement they make is on a mesh of my web! Yet’ – and Welford paused slowly – ‘yet I cannot but mock myself when I think of the arch gull that this boy’s madness, love – love, indeed! – the very word turns me sick with loathing, – made of me. Had that woman, silly, weak, automatal as she is, really loved me, – had she been sensible of the unspeakable sacrifice I had made to her (Antony’s was nothing to it – he lost a real world only; mine was the world of imagination), had she but condescended to learn my nature, to subdue the woman’s devil at her own, I could have lived on in this babbling hermitage for ever, and fancied myself happy and resigned – I could have become a different being. I fancy I could have become what your moralists (quacks!) call “good.” But this fretting frivolity of heart, – this lust of fool’s praise, – this peevishness of temper, – this sullenness in answer to the moody thought, which in me she neither fathomed nor forgave – this vulgar, daily, hourly pining at the paltry pinches of the body’s poverty, the domestic whine, the household complaint, – when I – I have not a thought for such pitiful trials of affection; and all this while my curses, my buried hope, and disguised spirit, and sunken name not thought of; the magnitude of my surrender to her not even comprehended; nay, her “inconveniences,” – a dim hearth, I suppose, or a daintiless table, – compared, ay, absolutely, compared with all which I abandoned for her sake! As if it were not enough, – had I been a fool, an ambitionless, soulless fool, – the mere thought that I had linked my name to that of a tradesman – I beg pardon, a retired tradesman! – as if that knowledge – a knowledge I would strangle my whole race, everyone who has ever met, seen me, rather than they should penetrate – were not enough when she talks of “comparing,” – to make me gnaw the very flesh from my bones! No, no, no! Never was there so bright a turn in my fate as when this titled coxcomb, with his smooth voice and gaudy fripperies, came hither! I will make her a tool to carve my escape from this cavern wherein she has plunged me. I will foment “my lord’s” passion, till “my lord” thinks “the passion” (a butterfly’s passion!) worth any price. I will then make my own terms, bind “my lord” to secrecy, and get rid of my wife, my shame, and the obscurity of Mr Welford, for ever. Bright, bright prospects! Let me shut my eyes to enjoy you! But softly, – my noble friend calls himself a man of the world, skilled in human nature, and a derider of its prejudices; true enough, in his own little way – thanks not to enlarged views but a vicious experience – so he is! The book of the world is a vast miscellany; he is perfectly well acquainted, doubtless, with those pages that treat of the fashions, – profoundly versed, I warrant, in the Magasin des Modes tacked to the end of the index. But shall I, even with all the mastership which my mind must exercise over his, – shall I be able utterly to free myself in this “peer of the world’s” mind from a degrading remembrance? Cuckold! cuckold! ’Tis an ugly word; a convenient, willing cuckold, humph! – There is no grandeur, no philosophical varnish in the phrase. Let me see – yes! I have a remedy for all that. I was married privately, – well! – under disguised names, – well! It was a stolen marriage, far from her town, – well! – witnesses unknown to her, – well! – proofs easily secured to my possession, – excellent! The fool shall believe it a forged marriage, an ingenious gallantry of mine; I will wash out the stain cuckold with the water of another word; I will make market of a mistress, not a wife. I will warn him not to acquaint her with this secret; let me consider for what reason, – oh! My son’s legitimacy may be convenient to me hereafter. He will understand that reason, and I will have his “honour” thereon. And by the way, I do care for that legitimacy, and will guard the proofs; I love my child, – ambitious men do love their children; I may become a lord myself, and may wish for a lord to succeed me; and that son is mine; thank Heaven! I am sure on that point, – the only child, too, that ever shall arise to me. Never, I swear, will I again put myself beyond my own power! All my nature, save one passion, I have hitherto mastered; that passion shall henceforth be my slave, my only thought be ambition, my only mistress be the world!’
As thus terminated the reverie of a man whom the social circumstances of the world were calculated, as if by system, to render eminently and basely wicked, Welford slowly ascended the stairs, and re-entered his chamber: his wife was still sleeping; her beauty was of the fair, and girlish, and harmonized order, which lovers and poets would express by the word ‘angelic;’ and as Welford looked upon her face, hushed and almost hallowed by slumber, a certain weakness and irresolution might have been discernible in the strong lines of his haughty features. At that moment, as if for ever to destroy the return of hope or virtue to either, her lips moved, they uttered one word, – it was the name of Welford’s courtly guest.
About three weeks from that evening, Mrs Welford eloped with the young nobleman, and on the morning following that event, the distracted husband with his child disappeared for ever from the town of —. From that day no tidings whatsoever respecting him ever reached the titillated ears of his anxious neighbours; and doubt, curiosity, discussion, gradually settled into the belief that his despair had hurried him into suicide.
Although the unfortunate Mrs Welford was in reality of a light and frivolous turn, and, above all, susceptible to personal vanity, she was not without ardent affections and keen sensibilities. Her marriage had been one of love, that is to say, on her part, the ordinary love of girls, who love not through actual and natural feeling so much as forced predisposition. Her choice had fallen on one superior to herself in birth, and far above all, in person and address, whom she had habitually met. Thus her vanity had assisted her affection, and something strange and eccentric in the temper and mind of Welford had, though at times it aroused her fear, greatly contributed to inflame her imagination. Then, too, though an uncourtly, he had been a passionate and a romantic lover. She was sensible that he gave up for her much that he had previously conceived necessary to his existence; and she stopped not to inquire how far this devotion was likely to last, or what conduct on her part might best perpetuate the feelings from which it sprung. She had eloped with him. She had consented to a private marriage. She had passed one happy month, and then delusion vanished! Mrs Welford was not a woman who could give to reality, or find in it, the charm equal to delusion. She was perfectly unable to comprehend the intricate and dangerous character of her husband. She had not the key to his virtues, nor the spell for his vices. Neither was the state to which poverty compelled them one well calculated for that tender meditation, heightened by absence, and cherished in indolence, which so often supplies one who loves with the secret to the nature of the one beloved. Though not equal to her husband in birth or early prospects, Mrs Welford had been accustomed to certain comforts, often more felt by those who belong to the inferior classes than by those appertaining to the more elevated, who, in losing one luxury, will often cheerfully surrender all. A fine lady can submit to more hardships than her woman; and every gentleman who travels smiles at the privations which agonize his valet. Poverty and its grim comrades made way for a whole host of petty irritations and peevish complaints; and as no guest or visitor ever relieved the domestic discontent, or broke on the domestic bickering, they generally ended in that moody sullenness which so often finds love a grave in repentance. Nothing makes people tire of each other like a familiarity that admits of carelessness in quarrelling and coarseness in complaining. The biting sneer of Welford gave acrimony to the murmur of his wife; and when once each conceived the other the injurer, or him or herself the wronged, it was vain to hope that one would be more wary, or the other more ind
ulgent. They both exacted too much, and the wife in especial conceded too little. Mrs Welford was altogether and emphatically what a libertine calls ‘a woman,’ – such as a frivolous education makes a woman, – generous in great things, petty in small; vain, irritable, full of the littleness of herself and her complaints, ready to plunge into an abyss with her lover, but equally ready to fret away all love with reproaches when the plunge had been made. Of all men, Welford could bear this the least. A woman of a larger heart, a more settled experience, and an intellect capable of appreciating his character, and sounding all his qualities, might have made him perhaps an useful and a great man; and, at least, her lover for life. Amidst a harvest of evil feelings, the mere strength of his nature rendered him especially capable of intense feeling and generous emotion. One who relied on him was safe, – one who rebelled against him trusted only to the caprice of his scorn. Still, however, for two years, love, though weakening with each hour, fought on in either breast, and could scarcely be said to be entirely vanquished in the wife, even when she eloped with her handsome seducer. A French writer has said, pithily enough, ‘Compare for a moment the apathy of a husband with the attention, the gallantry, the adoration of a lover, and can you ask the result?’ He was a French writer; but Mrs Welford had in her temper much of the Frenchwoman. A suffering patient, young, handsome, well versed in the arts of intrigue, contrasted with a gloomy husband whom she had never comprehended, long feared, and had lately doubted if she disliked; – ah! A much weaker contrast has made many a much better woman food for the lawyers! Mrs Welford eloped; but she felt a revived tenderness for her husband on the very morning that she did so. She carried away with her his letters of love as well as her own, which when they first married she had in an hour of fondness collected together, – then an inestimable hoard! – and never did her new lover receive from her beautiful lips half so passionate a kiss as she left on the cheek of her infant. For some months she enjoyed with her paramour all for which she had sighed in her home. The one for whom she had forsaken her legitimate ties was a person so habitually cheerful, courteous, and what is ordinarily termed good-natured (though he had in him as much of the essence of selfishness as any nobleman can decently have), that he continued gallant to her without an effort long after he had begun to think it possible to tire even of so lovely a face. Yet there were moments when the fickle wife recalled her husband with regret; and, contrasting him with her seducer, did not find all the colourings of the contrast flattering to the latter. There is something in a powerful and marked character which women, and all weak natures, feel themselves constrained to respect; and Welford’s character thus stood in bold, and therefore advantageous though gloomy, relief when opposed to the levities and foibles of this guilty woman’s present adorer. However this be, the die was cast; and it would have been policy for the lady to have made the best of her present game. But she who had murmured as a wife was not complaisant as a mistress. Reproaches made an interlude to caresses, which the noble lover by no means admired. He was not a man to retort, he was too indolent; but neither was he one to forbear. ‘My charming friend,’ said he one day, after a scene, ‘you weary of me, – nothing more natural! Why torment each other? You say I have ruined you; my sweet friend, let me make you reparation – become independent; I will settle an annuity upon you; fly me – seek happiness elsewhere, and leave your unfortunate, your despairing lover to his fate.’
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