who is now unable to act for herself, that I enter into such details. You understand this?”
“I do indeed, dear Mr. Berry.”
“To a wife who is upon a wife’s terms with a husband, to a wife who is his best friend, and who cares for no friend on earth in comparison with him, to a wife, in fact, who loves her husband, it may seem strange for me to talk of restricted confidence and of questions avoided by mutual consent. But it happens, and that is all that need be said on the matter, that my marriage with Miss Wagstaffe was a union of esteem to a certain extent, and of convenience, perhaps, to a still greater extent, and even before our wedding it was quite well understood between us that what is called love was out of the question. I was not foolish enough, at my age, to suppose that her heart had anything to do with her consent to marry me, or that she had not previously seen more than one person whom she would not sooner have married than the middle-aged, quiet, well-to-do country lawyer. But this is the history of many a match that has turned out very well, so far as the world knows, and I am not going to say that either of us acted unwisely.”
Mrs. Hawkesley listened quietly, and made no sign of dissent from doctrines against which, under other circumstances, she would have protested according to her custom. Perhaps she had in her mind another marriage in which a similar element had worked to the destruction of happiness.
“It pleased God that our children should not live.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, I understand that pity, but it is misplaced. I thank God that our children did not live.”
“Mr. Berry!” exclaimed Beatrice, with a mother’s unfeigned horror.
“They are sad words, are they not?”
“I would call them wicked words if I were not speaking to one who might be my own father,” she answered, energetically.
“They are not, but let them pass.”
Be it said that she continued to listen, but that the kindliness of feeling with which she had begun to regard Mr. Berry was chilled by his strange language on a subject on which her heart would tolerate no profanity.
“I repeat,” he said, “that I am thankful to be childless. When an old man tells that to a young mother, let her think well before she condemns him—let her think what she would have to feel and to suffer before words like those could come from her lips. And then let her listen to him with patience.”
Beatrice looked pityingly at him, but did not answer.
“I have no long story to tell you, Mrs. Hawkesley, my business being only to help in an act of justice. I am not here to enter upon revelations of a life that might have been cheerful, if not happy, but which was incessantly embittered by the abiding pressure of a conviction, not only that I was not loved—I had bargained for that—but that I was disliked. I was not long in discovering that my wife’s old thoughts and old loves came perpetually between me and herself, that at the best I was tolerated, but that at the times when she gave way to her rapidly increasing irritability and melancholy, I was almost the object of her hate. Whether I bore this conviction well or ill is between me and Heaven; whether I remembered that though I had given this wife much which the world esteems, I could not be to her that which woman covets amid all the advantages of life; whether I gladly recognised any of her few kindnesses, and bore in silent patience with her habitual coldness and repugnance, let her say when she has to answer for all. It is enough for me that I can reveal this part of my history to you, and feel I have no excuses to make for myself,—no self-accusation to tender as excuse for her.”
“You do not mean to ask that I shall judge—” began Mrs. Hawkesley, in a troubled voice.
“I have only to ask you to hear, and I will make what you have to hear as brief as I can. I pass over the years spent in this manner. The world thought that the rich lawyer had married a rather strangely-tempered woman, but supposed that they got on as many other couples do, and will do to the end of the chapter. And so the world might have continued to think, for what I had borne so long, I might have borne to the last, but it was not to be so. I need not dwell upon the circumstances which, some few years back, directed the mind of Mrs. Berry into what is termed religion. Enough to say that she devoted herself to its external pursuits with an ardour that was strange to those who had known her slightly, detestable to me, who had my own insight into her character. I will only tell you that the real influences of religion never approached her heart and never softened her nature—never caused her to shed a tear of penitence, or to show any womanly gentleness to the husband who had sought to fulfil his duty. You look at me as if I were drawing too harsh a picture—as if this was not language in which I ought to speak of my own wife—”
“It is very painful language.”
“It is the language which I am sent here to speak. It is what Marion Berry herself ought to say, were she here, making her confession. I will soon relieve you of your care for her, for the story now connects itself with your own family—with your own sister. I told you just now that what I had borne so long I could have borne to the end. It was destined that I should have more to bear. Your sister, Mrs. Lygon, left her husband’s roof, and among the consequences that followed were revelations which I little expected would disturb the later hours of my life.”
“Of yours?”
“Yes. Do not apprehend a scene, or that a man of my years is about to give way to what would befit a man of Lygon’s. I am here as the messenger from a sick bed which may have been changed to a dying bed before I return to my home. I am here to say, for one who cannot say it for herself, that when Marion Berry was in this house she uttered much which was intended to make you and your husband believe that your sister Laura was unworthy, and that now, stretched upon her bed, Marion Berry begs you