Linley. In the absence of any correspondence of her own, Mrs. Presty took possession of her daughter's letters.
"One addressed in the lawyer's handwriting," she announced; "and one from Randal. Which shall I open for you first?"
"Randal's letter, if you please."
Mrs. Presty handed it across the table. "Any news is a relief from the dullness of this place," she said. "If there are no secrets, Catherine, read it out."
There were no secrets on the first page.
Randal announced his arrival in London from the Continent, and his intention of staying there for a while. He had met with a friend (formerly an officer holding high rank in the Navy) whom he was glad to see again--a rich man who used his wealth admirably in the interest of his poor and helpless fellow-creatures. A "Home," established on a new plan, was just now engaging all his attention: he was devoting himself so unremittingly to the founding of this institution that his doctor predicted injury to his health at no distant date. If it was possible to persuade him to take a holiday, Randal might return to the Continent as the traveling-companion of his friend.
"This must be the man whom he first met at the club," Mrs. Presty remarked. "Well, Catherine, I suppose there is some more of it. What's the matter? Bad news?"
"Something that I wish Randal had not written. Read it yourself--and don't talk of it afterward."
Mrs. Presty read:
"I know nothing whatever of my unfortunate brother. If you think this is a too-indulgent way of alluding to a man who has so shamefully wronged you, let my conviction that he is already beginning to suffer the penalty of his crime plead my excuse. Herbert's nature is, in some respects, better known to me than it is to you. I am persuaded that your hold on his respect and his devotion is shaken--not lost. He has been misled by one of those passing fancies, disastrous and even criminal in their results, to which men are liable when they are led by no better influence than the influence of their senses. It is not, and never will be, in the nature of women to understand this. I fear I may offend you in what I am now writing; but I must speak what I believe to be the truth, at any sacrifice. Bitter repentance (if he is not already feeling it) is in store for Herbert, when he finds himself tied to a person who cannot bear comparison with you. I say this, pitying the poor girl most sincerely, when I think of her youth and her wretched past life. How it will end I cannot presume to say. I can only acknowledge that I do not look to the future with the absolute despair which you naturally felt when I last saw you."
Mrs. Presty laid the letter down, privately resolving to write to Randal, and tell him to keep his convictions for the future to himself. A glance at her daughter's face warned her, if she said anything, to choose a new subject.
The second letter still remained unnoticed. "Shall we see what the lawyer says?" she suggested--and opened the envelope. The lawyer had nothing to say. He simply inclosed a letter received at his office.
Mrs. Presty had long passed the age at which emotion expresses itself outwardly by a change of color. She turned pale, nevertheless, when she looked at the second letter.
The address was in Herbert Linley's handwriting.
Chapter XXIV.
Hostility.
When she was not eating her meals or asleep in her bed, absolute silence on Mrs. Presty's part was a circumstance without precedent in the experience of her daughter. Mrs. Presty was absolutely silent now. Mrs. Linley looked up.
She at once perceived the change in her mother's face and asked what it meant. "Mamma, you look as if something had frightened you. Is it anything in that letter?" She bent over the table, and looked a little closer at the letter. Mrs. Presty had turned it so that the address was underneath; and the closed envelope was visible still intact. "Why don't you open it?" Mrs. Linley asked.
Mrs. Presty made a strange reply. " I am thinking of throwing it into the fire."
"My letter?"
"Yes; your letter."
"Let me look at it first."
"You had better not look at it, Catherine."
Naturally enough, Mrs. Linley remonstrated. "Surely I ought to read a letter forwarded by my lawyer. Why are you hiding the address from me? Is it from some person whose handwriting we both know?" She looked again at her silent mother--reflected--and guessed the truth. "Give it to me directly," she said; "my husband has written to me."
Mrs. Presty's heavy eyebrows gathered into a frown. "Is it possible," she asked sternly, "that you are still fond enough of that man to care about what he writes to you?" Mrs. Linley held out her hand for the letter. Her wise mother found it desirable to try persuasion next. "If you really won't give way, my dear, humor me for once. Will you let me read it to you?"
"Yes--if you promise to read every word of it."
Mrs. Presty promised (with a mental reservation), and opened the letter.
At the two first words, she stopped and began to clean her spectacles. Had her own eyes deceived her? Or had Herbert Linley actually addressed her daughter--after having been guilty of the cruelest wrong that a husband can inflict on a wife--as "Dear Catherine"? Yes: there were the words, when she put her spectacles on again. Was he in his right senses? or had he written in a state of intoxication?
Mrs. Linley waited, with a preoccupied mind: she showed no signs of impatience or surprise. As it presently appeared, she was not thinking of the letter addressed to her by Herbert, but of the letter written by Randal. "I want to look at it again." With that brief explanation she turned at once to the closing lines which had offended her when she first read them.
Mrs. Presty hazarded a guess at what was going on in her daughter's mind. "Now your husband has written to you," she said, "are you beginning to think Randal's opinion may be worth considering again?" With her eyes still on Randal's letter, Mrs. Linley merely answered: "Why don't you begin?" Mrs. Presty began as follows, leaving out the familiarity of her son-in-law's address to his wife.
"I hope and trust you will forgive me for venturing to write to you, in consideration of the subject of my letter. I have something to say concerning our child. Although I have deserved the worst you can think of me, I believe you will not deny that even your love for our little Kitty (while we were living together) was not a truer love than mine. Bad as I am, my heart has that tender place left in it still. I cannot endure separation from my child."
Mrs. Linley rose to her feet. The first vague anticipations of future atonement and reconciliation, suggested by her brother-in-law, no longer existed in her mind: she foresaw but too plainly what was to come. "Read faster," she said, "or let me read it for myself."
Mrs. Presty went on: "There is no wish, on my part, to pain you by any needless allusion to my claims as a father. My one desire is to enter into an arrangement which shall be as just toward you, as it is toward me. I propose that Kitty shall live with her father one half of the year, and shall return to her mother's care for the other half If there is any valid objection to this, I confess I fail to see it."
Mrs. Linley could remain silent no longer.
"Does he see no difference," she broke out, "between his position and mine? What consolation--in God's name, what consolation is left to me for the rest of my life but my child? And he threatens to separate us for six months in every year! And he takes credit to himself for an act of exalted justice on his part! Is there no such thing as shame in the hearts of men?"
Under ordinary circumstances, her mother would have tried to calm her. But Mrs. Presty had turned to the next page of the letter, at the moment when her daughter spoke.
What she found written, on that other side, produced a startling effect on her. She crumpled the letter up in her hand, and threw it into the fireplace. It fell under the grate instead of into the grate.