A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


In the drawer of his writing-table she found his diary. It was a
thick quarto: it began with their marriage, and ended with his leaving
home--for then he took another volume. This diary became her Bible; she
studied it daily, till her tears hid his lines. The entries were very
miscellaneous, very exact; it was a map of their married life. But
what she studied most was his observations on her own character, so
scientific, yet so kindly; and his scholar-like and wise reflections.
The book was an unconscious picture of a great mind she had hitherto but
glanced at: now she saw it all plain before her; saw it, understood it,
adored it, mourned it. Such women are shallow, not for want of a
head upon their shoulders, but of ATTENTION. They do not really
study anything: they have been taught at their schools the bad art of
skimming; but let their hearts compel their brains to think and think,
the result is considerable. The deepest philosopher never fathomed a
character more thoroughly than this poor child fathomed her philosopher,
when she had read his journal ten or eleven times, and bedewed it with a
thousand tears.

One passage almost cut her more intelligent heart in twain:--

"This dark day I have done a thing incredible. I have spoken with brutal
harshness to the innocent creature I have sworn to protect. She had run
in debt, through inexperience, and that unhappy timidity which makes
women conceal an error till it ramifies, by concealment, into a fault;
and I must storm and rave at her, till she actually fainted away. Brute!
Ruffian! Monster! And she, how did she punish me, poor lamb? By soft
and tender words--like a lady, as she is. Oh, my sweet Rosa, I wish you
could know how you are avenged. Talk of the scourge--the cat! I would be
thankful for two dozen lashes. Ah! there is no need, I think, to punish
a man who has been cruel to a woman. Let him alone. He will punish
himself more than you can, if he is really a man."

From the date of that entry, this self-reproach and self-torture kept
cropping up every now and then in the diary; and it appeared to have
been not entirely without its influence in sending Staines to sea,
though the main reason he gave was that his Rosa might have the comforts
and luxuries she had enjoyed before she married him.

One day, while she was crying over this diary, Uncle Philip called; but
not to comfort her, I promise you. He burst on her, irate, to take her
to task. He had returned, learned Christopher's departure, and settled
the reason in his own mind: that uxorious fool was gone to sea by a
natural reaction; his eyes were open to his wife at last, and he was
sick of her folly; so he had fled to distant climes, as who would not,
that could?

"SO, ma'am," said he, "my nephew is gone to sea, I find--all in a hurry.
Pray may I ask what he has done that for?"

It was a very simple question, yet it did not elicit a very plain
answer. She only stared at this abrupt inquisitor, and then cried,
piteously, "Oh, Uncle Philip!" and burst out sobbing.

"Why, what is the matter?"

"You WILL hate me now. He is gone to make money for ME; and I would
rather have lived on a crust. Uncle--don't hate me. I'm a poor,
bereaved, heart-broken creature, that repents."

"Repents! heigho! why, what have you been up to now, ma'am? No great
harm, I'll be bound. Flirting a little with some FOOL--eh?"

"Flirting! Me! a married woman."

"Oh, to be sure; I forgot. Why, surely he has not deserted you."

"My Christopher desert me! He loves me too well; far more than I
deserve; but not more than I will. Uncle Philip, I am too confused and
wretched to tell you all that has happened; but I know you love him,
though you had a tiff: uncle, he called on you, to shake hands and ask
your forgiveness, poor fellow! He was so sorry you were away. Please
read his dear diary: it will tell you all, better than his poor foolish
wife can. I know it by heart. I'll show you where you and he quarrelled
about me. There, see." And she showed him the passage with her finger.
"He never told me it was that, or I would have come and begged your
pardon on my knees. But see how sorry he was. There, see. And now I'll
show you another place, where my Christopher speaks of your many, many
acts of kindness. There, see. And now please let me show you how he
longed for reconciliation. There, see. And it is the same through
the book. And now I'll show you how grieved he was to go without your
blessing. I told him I was sure you would give him that, and him going
away. Ah, me! will he ever return? Uncle dear, don't hate me. What shall
I do, now he is gone, if you disown me? Why, you are the only Staines
left me to love."

"Disown you, ma'am! that I'll never do. You are a good-hearted
young woman, I find. There, run and dry your eyes; and let me read
Christopher's diary all through. Then I shall see how the land lies."

Rosa complied with his proposal; and left him alone while she bathed her
eyes, and tried to compose herself, for she was all trembling at this
sudden irruption.

When she returned to the drawing-room, he was walking about, looking
grave and thoughtful.

"It is the old story," said he, rather gently: "a MISUNDERSTANDING. How
wise our ancestors were that first used that word to mean a quarrel!
for, look into twenty quarrels, and you shall detect a score of
mis-under-standings. Yet our American cousins must go and substitute the
un-ideaed word 'difficulty'; that is wonderful. I had no quarrel with
him: delighted to see either of you. But I had called twice on him; so I
thought he ought to get over his temper, and call on a tried friend
like me. A misunderstanding! Now, my dear, let us have no more of these
misunderstandings. You will always be welcome at my house, and I shall
often come here and look after you and your interests. What do you mean
to do, I wonder?"

"Sir, I am to go home to my father, if he will be troubled with me. I
have written to him."

"And what is to become of the Bijou?"

"My Christie thought I should like to part with it, and the
furniture--but his own writing-desk and his chair, no, I never will,
and his little clock. Oh! oh! oh!--But I remember what you said about
agents, and I don't know what to do; for I shall be away."

"Then, leave it to me. I'll come and live here with one servant; and
I'll soon sell it for you."

"You, Uncle Philip!"

"Well, why not?" said he roughly.

"That will be a great trouble and discomfort to you, I'm afraid."

"If I find it so, I'll soon drop it. I'm not the fool to put myself out
for anybody. When you are ready to go out, send me word, and I'll come
in."

Soon after this he bustled off. He gave her a sort of hurried kiss at
parting, as if he was ashamed of it, and wanted it over as quickly as
possible.

Next day her father came, condoled with her politely, assured her there
was nothing to cry about; husbands were a sort of functionaries that
generally went to sea at some part of their career, and no harm ever
came of it. On the contrary, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," said
this judicious parent.

This sentiment happened to be just a little too true, and set the
daughter crying bitterly. But she fought against it. "Oh no!" said she,
"I MUSTN'T. I will not be always crying in Kent Villa."

"Lord forbid!"

"I shall get over it in time--a little."

"Why, of course you will. But as to your coming to Kent Villa, I
am afraid you would not be very comfortable there. You know I am
superannuated. Only got my pension now."

"I know that, papa: and--why, that is one of the reasons. I have a good
income now; and I thought if we put our means together"--

"Oh, that is a very different thing. You will want a carriage, I
suppose. I have put mine down."

"No carriage; no horse; no footman; no luxury of any kind till my
Christie comes back. I abhor dress; I abhor expense; I loathe everything
I once liked too well; I detest every folly that has parted us; and I
hate myself worst of all. Oh! oh! oh! Forgive me for crying so."

"Well, I dare say there are associations about this place that upset
you. I shall go and make ready for you, dear; and then you can come as
soon as you like."

He bestowed a paternal kiss on her brow, and glided doucely away before
she could possibly cry again.

The very next week Rosa was at Kent Villa, with the relics of her
husband about her; his chair, his writing-table, his clock, his
waste-paper basket, a very deep and large one. She had them all in her
bedroom at Kent Villa.

Here the days glided quietly but heavily.

She derived some comfort from Uncle Philip. His rough, friendly way was
a tonic, and braced her. He called several times about the Bijou. Told
her he had put up enormous boards all over the house, and puffed it
finely. "I have had a hundred agents at me," said he; "and the next
thing, I hope, will be one customer; that is about the proportion."
At last he wrote her he had hooked a victim, and sold the lease and
furniture for nine hundred guineas. Staines had assigned the lease to
Rosa, so she had full powers; and Philip invested the money, and two
hundred more she gave him, in a little mortgage at six per cent.

Now came the letter from Madeira. It gave her new life. Christopher
was well, contented, hopeful. His example should animate her. She would
bravely bear the present, and share his hopes of the future: with
these brighter views Nature co-operated. The instincts of approaching
maternity brightened the future. She fell into gentle reveries, and saw
her husband return, and saw herself place their infant in his arms with
all a wife's, a mother's pride.

In due course came another long letter from the equator, with a
full journal, and more words of hope. Home in less than a year, with
reputation increased by this last cure; home, to part no more.

Ah! what a changed wife he should find! how frugal, how candid, how full
of appreciation, admiration, and love, of the noblest, dearest husband
that ever breathed!

Lady Cicely Treherne waited some weeks, to let kinder sentiments return.
She then called in Dear Street, but found Mrs. Staines was gone to
Gravesend. She wrote to her.

In a few days she received a reply, studiously polite and cold.

This persistent injustice mortified her at last. She said to herself,
"Does she think his departure was no loss to ME? It was to her
interests, as well as his, I sacrificed my own selfish wishes. I will
write to her no more."

This resolution she steadily maintained. It was shaken for a moment,
when she heard, by a side wind, that Mrs. Staines was fast approaching
the great pain and peril of women. Then she wavered. But no. She prayed
for her by name in the Liturgy, but she troubled her no more.

This state of things lasted some six weeks, when she received a letter
from her cousin Tadcaster, close on the heels of his last, to which she
had replied as I have indicated. She knew his handwriting, and opened it
with a smile.

That smile soon died off her horror-stricken face. The letter ran
thus:--


TRISTAN D'ACUNHA, Jan. 5.

DEAR CICELY,--A terrible thing has just happened. We signalled a raft,
with a body on it, and poor Dr. Staines leaned out of the port-hole,
and fell overboard. Three boats were let down after him; but it all went
wrong, somehow, or it was too late. They could never find him, he was
drowned; and the funeral service was read for the poor fellow.

We are all sadly cut up. Everybody loved him. It was dreadful next
day at dinner, when his chair was empty. The very sailors cried at not
finding him.

First of all, I thought I ought to write to his wife. I know where she
lives; it is called Kent Villa, Gravesend. But I was afraid; it might
kill her: and you are so good and sensible, I thought I had better write
to you, and perhaps you could break it to her by degrees, before it gets
in all the papers.

I send this from the island, by a small vessel, and paid him ten pounds
to take it.

Your affectionate cousin,

TADCASTER.


Words are powerless to describe a blow like this: the amazement, the
stupor, the reluctance to believe--the rising, swelling, surging horror.
She sat like a woman of stone, crumpling the letter. "Dead!--dead?"

For a long time this was all her mind could realize--that Christopher
Staines was dead. He who had been so full of life and thought and
genius, and worthier to live than all the world, was dead; and a million
nobodies were still alive, and he was dead.

She lay back on the sofa, and all the power left her limbs. She could
not move a hand.

But suddenly she started up; for a noble instinct told her this blow
must not fall on the wife as it had on her, and in her time of peril.

She had her bonnet on in a moment, and for the first time in her life,
darted out of the house without her maid. She flew along the streets,
scarcely feeling the ground. She got to Dear Street, and obtained Philip
Staines's address. She flew to it, and there learned he was down at
Kent Villa. Instantly she telegraphed to her maid to come down to her
at Gravesend, with things for a short visit, and wait for her at the
station; and she went down by train to Gravesend.

Hitherto she had walked on air, driven by one overpowering impulse.
Now, as she sat in the train, she thought a little of herself. What was
before her? To break to Mrs. Staines that her husband was dead. To tell
her all her misgivings were more than justified. To encounter her cold
civility, and let her know, inch by inch, it must be exchanged for
curses and tearing of hair; her husband was dead. To tell her this, and
in the telling of it, perhaps reveal that it was HER great bereavement,
as well as the wife's, for she had a deeper affection for him than she
ought.

Well, she trembled like an aspen leaf, trembled like one in an ague,
even as she sat. But she persevered.

A noble woman has her courage; not exactly the same as that which leads
forlorn hopes against bastions bristling with rifles and tongued with
flames and thunderbolts; yet not inferior to it.

Tadcaster, small and dull, but noble by birth and instinct, had seen the
right thing for her to do; and she, of the same breed, and nobler far,
had seen it too; and the great soul steadily drew the recoiling heart
and quivering body to this fiery trial, this act of humanity--to do
which was terrible and hard, to shirk it, cowardly and cruel.

She reached Gravesend, and drove in a fly to Kent Villa.

The door was opened by a maid.

"Is Mrs. Staines at home?"

"Yes, ma'am, she is at HOME: but--"

"Can I see her?"

"Why, no, ma'am, not at present."

"But I must see her. I am an old friend. Please take her my card. Lady
Cicely Treherne."

The maid hesitated, and looked confused. "Perhaps you don't know, ma'am.
Mrs. Staines, she is--the doctor have been in the house all day."

"Ah, the doctor! I believe Dr. Philip Staines is here."

"Why, that IS the doctor, ma'am. Yes, he is here."

"Then, pray let me see him--or no; I had better see Mr. Lusignan."

"Master have gone out for the day, ma'am; but if you'll step in the
drawing-room, I'll tell the doctor."

Lady Cicely waited in the drawing-room some time, heart-sick and
trembling.

At last Dr. Philip came in, with her card in his hand, looking evidently
a little cross at the interruption. "Now, madam, please tell me, as
briefly as you can, what I can do for you."

"Are you Dr. Philip Staines?"

"I am, madam, at your service--for five minutes. Can't quit my patient
long, just now."

"Oh, sir, thank God I have found you. Be prepared for ill news--sad
news--a terrible calamity--I can't speak. Read that, sir." And she
handed him Tadcaster's note.

He took it, and read it.

He buried his face in his hands. "Christopher! my poor, poor boy!"
he groaned. But suddenly a terrible anxiety seized him. "Who knows of
this?" he asked.

"Only myself, sir. I came here to break it to her."

"You are a good, kind lady, for being so thoughtful. Madam, if this gets
to my niece's ears, it will kill her, as sure as we stand here."

"Then let us keep it from her. Command me, sir. I will do anything. I
will live here--take the letters in--the journals--anything."

"No, no; you have done your part, and God bless you for it. You must not
stay here. Your ladyship's very presence, and your agitation, would set
the servants talking, and some idiot-fiend among them babbling--there is
nothing so terrible as a fool."

"May I remain at the inn, sir; just one night?"

"Oh yes, I wish you would; and I will run over, if all is well with
her--well with her? poor unfortunate girl!"

Lady Cicely saw he wished her gone, and she went directly.

At nine o'clock that same evening, as she lay on a sofa in the best room
of the inn, attended by her maid, Dr. Philip Staines came to her. She
dismissed her maid.

Dr. Philip was too old, in other words, had lost too many friends, to
be really broken down by bereavement; but he was strangely subdued. The
loud tones were out of him, and the loud laugh, and even the keen sneer.
Yet he was the same man; but with a gentler surface; and this was not
without its pathos.

"Well, madam," said he gravely and quietly. "It is as it always has
been. 'As is the race of leaves, so that of man.' When one falls,
another comes. Here's a little Christopher come, in place of him that is
gone: a brave, beautiful boy, ma'am; the finest but one I ever brought
into the world. He is come to take his father's place in our hearts--I
see you valued his poor father, ma'am--but he comes too late for me. At
your age, ma'am, friendships come naturally; they spring like loves in
the soft heart of youth: at seventy, the gate is not so open; the soil
is more sterile. I shall never care for another Christopher; never see
another grow to man's estate."

"The mother, sir," sobbed Lady Cicely; "the poor mother?"

"Like them all--poor creature: in heaven, madam; in heaven. New life!
new existence! a new character. All the pride, glory, rapture, and
amazement of maternity--thanks to her ignorance, which we must prolong,
or I would not give one straw for her life, or her son's. I shall never
leave the house till she does know it, and come when it may, I dread the
hour. She is not framed by nature to bear so deadly a shock."

"Her father, sir. Would he not be the best person to break it to her? He
was out to-day."

"Her father, ma'am? I shall get no help from him. He is one of those
soft, gentle creatures, that come into the world with what your canting
fools call a mission; and his mission is to take care of number one.
Not dishonestly, mind you, nor violently, nor rudely, but doucely and
calmly. The care a brute like me takes of his vitals, that care Lusignan
takes of his outer cuticle. His number one is a sensitive plant. No
scenes, no noise; nothing painful--by-the-by, the little creature that
writes in the papers, and calls calamities PAINFUL, is of Lusignan's
breed. Out to-day! of course he was out, ma'am: he knew from me his
daughter would be in peril all day, so he visited a friend. He knew his
own tenderness, and evaded paternal sensibilities: a self-defender. I
count on no help from that charming man."

"A man! I call such creachaas weptiles!" said Lady Cicely, her ghastly
cheek coloring for a moment.

"Then you give them a false importance."

In the course of this interview, Lady Cicely accused herself sadly of
having interfered between man and wife, and with the best intentions
brought about this cruel calamity. "Judge, then, sir," said she,
"how grateful I am to you for undertaking this cruel task. I was her
schoolfellow, sir, and I love her dearly; but she has turned against me,
and now, oh, with what horror she will regard me!"

"Madam," said the doctor, "there is nothing more mean and unjust than
to judge others by events that none could foresee. Your conscience
is clear. You did your best for my poor nephew: but Fate willed it
otherwise. As for my niece, she has many virtues, but justice is one
you must not look for in that quarter. Justice requires brains. It's
a virtue the heart does not deal in. You must be content with your own
good conscience, and an old man's esteem. You did all for the best; and
this very day you have done a good, kind action. God bless you for it!"

Then he left her; and next day she went sadly home, and for many a long
day the hollow world saw nothing of Cicely Treherne.

When Mr. Lusignan came home that night, Dr. Philip told him the
miserable story, and his fears. He received it, not as Philip had
expected. The bachelor had counted without his dormant paternity. He
was terror-stricken--abject--fell into a chair, and wrung his hands,
and wept piteously. To keep it from his daughter till she should be
stronger, seemed to him chimerical, impossible. However, Philip insisted
it must be done; and he must make some excuse for keeping out of her
way, or his manner would rouse her suspicions. He consented readily to
that, and indeed left all to Dr. Philip.

Dr. Philip trusted nobody; not even his own confidential servant. He
allowed no journal to come into the house without passing through his
hands, and he read them all before he would let any other soul in the
house see them. He asked Rosa to let him be her secretary and open her
letters, giving as a pretext that it would be as well she should have no
small worries or trouble just now.

"Why," said she, "I was never so well able to bear them. It must be a
great thing to put me out now. I am so happy, and live in the future.
Well, dear uncle, you can if you like--what does it matter?--only there
must be one exception: my own Christie's letters, you know."

"Of course," said he, wincing inwardly.

The very next day came a letter of condolence from Miss Lucas. Dr.
Philip intercepted it, and locked it up, to be shown her at a more
fitting time.

But how could he hope to keep so public a thing as this from entering
the house in one of a hundred newspapers?

He went into Gravesend, and searched all the newspapers, to see what he
had to contend with. To his horror, he found it in several dailies and
weeklies, and in two illustrated papers. He sat aghast at the difficulty
and the danger.

The best thing he could think of was to buy them all, and cut out the
account. He did so, and brought all the papers, thus mutilated, into
the house, and sent them into the kitchen. He said to his old servant,
"These may amuse Mr. Lusignan's people, and I have extracted all that
interests me."

By these means he hoped that none of the servants would go and buy more
of these same papers elsewhere.

Notwithstanding these precautions, he took the nurse apart, and said,
"Now, you are an experienced woman, and to be trusted about an excitable
patient. Mind, I object to any female servant entering Mrs. Staines's
room with gossip. Keep them outside the door for the present, please.
Oh, and nurse, if anything should happen, likely to grieve or to worry
her, it must be kept from her entirely: can I trust you?"

"You may, sir."

"I shall add ten guineas to your fee, if she gets through the month
without a shock or disturbance of any kind."

She stared at him, inquiringly. Then she said,--

"You may rely on me, doctor."

"I feel I may. Still, she alarms me. She looks quiet enough, but she is
very excitable."

Not all these precautions gave Dr. Philip any real sense of security;
still less did they to Mr. Lusignan. He was not a tender father, in
small things, but the idea of actual danger to his only child was
terrible to him and he now passed his life in a continual tremble.

This is the less to be wondered at, when I tell you that even the stout
Philip began to lose his nerve, his appetite, his sleep, under this
hourly terror and this hourly torture.

Well did the great imagination of antiquity feign a torment, too great
for the mind long to endure, in the sword of Damocles suspended by
a single hair over his head. Here the sword hung over an innocent
creature, who smiled beneath it, fearless; but these two old men must
sit and watch the sword, and ask themselves how long before that subtle
salvation shall snap.

"Ill news travels fast," says the proverb. "The birds of the air shall
carry the matter," says Holy Writ; and it is so. No bolts nor bars, no
promises nor precautions, can long shut out a great calamity from the
ears it is to blast, the heart it is to wither. The very air seems full
of it, until it falls.

Rosa's child was more than a fortnight old; and she was looking more
beautiful than ever, as is often the case with a very young mother, and
Dr. Philip complimented her on her looks. "Now," said he, "you reap the
advantage of being good, and obedient, and keeping quiet. In another ten
days or so, I may take you to the seaside for a week. I have the honor
to inform you that from about the fourth to the tenth of March there is
always a week of fine weather, which takes everybody by surprise, except
me. It does not astonish me, because I observe it is invariable. Now,
what would you say if I gave you a week at Herne Bay, to set you up
altogether?"