第 104 页

I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to this

request; and it made no impression on anybody else; so Mrs. Markleham

panted, stared, and fanned herself.

‘Annie!’ said the Doctor, tenderly taking her in his hands. ‘My dear!

If any unavoidable change has come, in the sequence of time, upon our

married life, you are not to blame. The fault is mine, and only mine.

There is no change in my affection, admiration, and respect. I wish to

make you happy. I truly love and honour you. Rise, Annie, pray!’

But she did not rise. After looking at him for a little while, she sank

down closer to him, laid her arm across his knee, and dropping her head

upon it, said:

‘If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or for my

husband in this matter; if I have any friend here, who can give a voice

to any suspicion that my heart has sometimes whispered to me; if I have

any friend here, who honours my husband, or has ever cared for me, and

has anything within his knowledge, no matter what it is, that may help

to mediate between us, I implore that friend to speak!’

There was a profound silence. After a few moments of painful hesitation,

I broke the silence.

‘Mrs. Strong,’ I said, ‘there is something within my knowledge, which

I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal, and have

concealed until tonight. But, I believe the time has come when it would

be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your

appeal absolves me from his injunction.’

She turned her face towards me for a moment, and I knew that I was

right. I could not have resisted its entreaty, if the assurance that it

gave me had been less convincing.

‘Our future peace,’ she said, ‘may be in your hands. I trust it

confidently to your not suppressing anything. I know beforehand that

nothing you, or anyone, can tell me, will show my husband’s noble heart

in any other light than one. Howsoever it may seem to you to touch me,

disregard that. I will speak for myself, before him, and before God

afterwards.’

Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his

permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a little

softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly what had

passed in that same room that night. The staring of Mrs. Markleham

during the whole narration, and the shrill, sharp interjections with

which she occasionally interrupted it, defy description.

When I had finished, Annie remained, for some few moments, silent, with

her head bent down, as I have described. Then, she took the Doctor’s

hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had entered the

room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. Mr. Dick softly

raised her; and she stood, when she began to speak, leaning on him, and

looking down upon her husband--from whom she never turned her eyes.

‘All that has ever been in my mind, since I was married,’ she said in a

low, submissive, tender voice, ‘I will lay bare before you. I could not

live and have one reservation, knowing what I know now.’

‘Nay, Annie,’ said the Doctor, mildly, ‘I have never doubted you, my

child. There is no need; indeed there is no need, my dear.’

‘There is great need,’ she answered, in the same way, ‘that I should

open my whole heart before the soul of generosity and truth, whom, year

by year, and day by day, I have loved and venerated more and more, as

Heaven knows!’

‘Really,’ interrupted Mrs. Markleham, ‘if I have any discretion at

all--’

[‘Which you haven’t, you Marplot,’ observed my aunt, in an indignant

whisper.) --‘I must be permitted to observe that it cannot be requisite

to enter into these details.’

‘No one but my husband can judge of that, mama,’ said Annie without

removing her eyes from his face, ‘and he will hear me. If I say anything

to give you pain, mama, forgive me. I have borne pain first, often and

long, myself.’

‘Upon my word!’ gasped Mrs. Markleham.

‘When I was very young,’ said Annie, ‘quite a little child, my first

associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from a patient

friend and teacher--the friend of my dead father--who was always dear

to me. I can remember nothing that I know, without remembering him. He

stored my mind with its first treasures, and stamped his character upon

them all. They never could have been, I think, as good as they have been

to me, if I had taken them from any other hands.’

‘Makes her mother nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.

‘Not so mama,’ said Annie; ‘but I make him what he was. I must do that.

As I grew up, he occupied the same place still. I was proud of his

interest: deeply, fondly, gratefully attached to him. I looked up to

him, I can hardly describe how--as a father, as a guide, as one whose

praise was different from all other praise, as one in whom I could have

trusted and confided, if I had doubted all the world. You know, mama,

how young and inexperienced I was, when you presented him before me, of

a sudden, as a lover.’

‘I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody here!’

said Mrs. Markleham.

[‘Then hold your tongue, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t mention it any

more!’ muttered my aunt.)

‘It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,’ said

Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, ‘that I was agitated

and distressed. I was but a girl; and when so great a change came in the

character in which I had so long looked up to him, I think I was sorry.

But nothing could have made him what he used to be again; and I was

proud that he should think me so worthy, and we were married.’ ‘--At

Saint Alphage, Canterbury,’ observed Mrs. Markleham.

[‘Confound the woman!’ said my aunt, ‘she WON’T be quiet!’)

‘I never thought,’ proceeded Annie, with a heightened colour, ‘of any

worldly gain that my husband would bring to me. My young heart had no

room in its homage for any such poor reference. Mama, forgive me when

I say that it was you who first presented to my mind the thought that

anyone could wrong me, and wrong him, by such a cruel suspicion.’

‘Me!’ cried Mrs. Markleham.

[‘Ah! You, to be sure!’ observed my aunt, ‘and you can’t fan it away, my

military friend!’)

‘It was the first unhappiness of my new life,’ said Annie. ‘It was the

first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known. These moments have

been more, of late, than I can count; but not--my generous husband!--not

for the reason you suppose; for in my heart there is not a thought, a

recollection, or a hope, that any power could separate from you!’

She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful and

true, I thought, as any Spirit. The Doctor looked on her, henceforth, as

steadfastly as she on him.

‘Mama is blameless,’ she went on, ‘of having ever urged you for herself,

and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure,--but when I saw

how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in my name; how you

were traded on in my name; how generous you were, and how Mr. Wickfield,

who had your welfare very much at heart, resented it; the first sense

of my exposure to the mean suspicion that my tenderness was bought--and

sold to you, of all men on earth--fell upon me like unmerited disgrace,

in which I forced you to participate. I cannot tell you what it

was--mama cannot imagine what it was--to have this dread and trouble

always on my mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I

crowned the love and honour of my life!’

‘A specimen of the thanks one gets,’ cried Mrs. Markleham, in tears,

‘for taking care of one’s family! I wish I was a Turk!’

[‘I wish you were, with all my heart--and in your native country!’ said

my aunt.)

‘It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin

Maldon. I had liked him’: she spoke softly, but without any hesitation:

‘very much. We had been little lovers once. If circumstances had not

happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really

loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched. There can

be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’

I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to

what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange

application that I could not divine. ‘There can be no disparity in

marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose’--‘no disparity in

marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’

‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, ‘that we have in common. I have long

found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no

more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having

saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’

She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an earnestness

that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as quiet as before.

‘When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so freely

bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the mercenary shape

I was made to wear, I thought it would have become him better to have

worked his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would have

tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I thought no

worse of him, until the night of his departure for India. That night I

knew he had a false and thankless heart. I saw a double meaning, then,

in Mr. Wickfield’s scrutiny of me. I perceived, for the first time, the

dark suspicion that shadowed my life.’

‘Suspicion, Annie!’ said the Doctor. ‘No, no, no!’

‘In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!’ she returned. ‘And

when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of shame and

grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your roof, one of my

own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for the love of me, had

spoken to me words that should have found no utterance, even if I had

been the weak and mercenary wretch he thought me--my mind revolted from

the taint the very tale conveyed. It died upon my lips, and from that

hour till now has never passed them.’

Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair; and

retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any more.

‘I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him from

that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the avoidance of

this explanation. Years have passed since he knew, from me, what his

situation here was. The kindnesses you have secretly done for his

advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my surprise and pleasure,

have been, you will believe, but aggravations of the unhappiness and

burden of my secret.’

She sunk down gently at the Doctor’s feet, though he did his utmost to

prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:

‘Do not speak to me yet! Let me say a little more! Right or wrong, if

this were to be done again, I think I should do just the same. You never

can know what it was to be devoted to you, with those old associations;

to find that anyone could be so hard as to suppose that the truth of my

heart was bartered away, and to be surrounded by appearances confirming

that belief. I was very young, and had no adviser. Between mama and

me, in all relating to you, there was a wide division. If I shrunk into

myself, hiding the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured

you so much, and so much wished that you should honour me!’

‘Annie, my pure heart!’ said the Doctor, ‘my dear girl!’

‘A little more! a very few words more! I used to think there were so

many whom you might have married, who would not have brought such charge

and trouble on you, and who would have made your home a worthier home. I

used to be afraid that I had better have remained your pupil, and almost

your child. I used to fear that I was so unsuited to your learning and

wisdom. If all this made me shrink within myself (as indeed it did),

when I had that to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much,

and hoped that you might one day honour me.’

‘That day has shone this long time, Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘and can

have but one long night, my dear.’

‘Another word! I afterwards meant--steadfastly meant, and purposed to

myself--to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one

to whom you had been so good. And now a last word, dearest and best of

friends! The cause of the late change in you, which I have seen with

so much pain and sorrow, and have sometimes referred to my old

apprehension--at other times to lingering suppositions nearer to the

truth--has been made clear tonight; and by an accident I have also come

to know, tonight, the full measure of your noble trust in me, even

under that mistake. I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in

return, will ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with

all this knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear

face, revered as a father’s, loved as a husband’s, sacred to me in

my childhood as a friend’s, and solemnly declare that in my lightest

thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the

fidelity I owe you!’

She had her arms around the Doctor’s neck, and he leant his head down

over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.

‘Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband! Never cast me out! Do not think

or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my

many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I

have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take me to your heart, my husband,

for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!’

In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. Dick,

without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding kiss.

And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that she did so;

for I am confident that I detected him at that moment in the act of

making preparations to stand on one leg, as an appropriate expression of

delight.

‘You are a very remarkable man, Dick!’ said my aunt, with an air of

unqualified approbation; ‘and never pretend to be anything else, for I

know better!’

With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and we