第28章 ON THE WESTERN CIRCUIT(6)

To this Edith had replied on her own responsibility,from the depths of her own heart,without waiting for her maid's collaboration.The luxury of writing to him what would be known to no consciousness but his was great,and she had indulged herself therein.

Why was it a luxury?

Edith Harnham led a lonely life.Influenced by the belief of the British parent that a bad marriage with its aversions is better than free womanhood with its interests,dignity,and leisure,she had consented to marry the elderly wine-merchant as a pis aller,at the age of seven-and-twenty--some three years before this date--to find afterwards that she had made a mistake.That contract had left her still a woman whose deeper nature had never been stirred.

She was now clearly realizing that she had become possessed to the bottom of her soul with the image of a man to whom she was hardly so much as a name.From the first he had attracted her by his looks and voice;by his tender touch;and,with these as generators,the writing of letter after letter and the reading of their soft answers had insensibly developed on her side an emotion which fanned his;till there had resulted a magnetic reciprocity between the correspondents,notwithstanding that one of them wrote in a character not her own.That he had been able to seduce another woman in two days was his crowning though unrecognized fascination for her as the she-animal.

They were her own impassioned and pent-up ideas--lowered to monosyllabic phraseology in order to keep up the disguise--that Edith put into letters signed with another name,much to the shallow Anna's delight,who,unassisted,could not for the world have conceived such pretty fancies for winning him,even had she been able to write them.

Edith found that it was these,her own foisted-in sentiments,to which the young barrister mainly responded.The few sentences occasionally added from Anna's own lips made apparently no impression upon him.

The letter-writing in her absence Anna never discovered;but on her return the next morning she declared she wished to see her lover about something at once,and begged Mrs.Harnham to ask him to come.

There was a strange anxiety in her manner which did not escape Mrs.

Harnham,and ultimately resolved itself into a flood of tears.

Sinking down at Edith's knees,she made confession that the result of her relations with her lover it would soon become necessary to disclose.

Edith Harnham was generous enough to be very far from inclined to cast Anna adrift at this conjuncture.No true woman ever is so inclined from her own personal point of view,however prompt she may be in taking such steps to safeguard those dear to her.Although she had written to Raye so short a time previously,she instantly penned another Anna-note hinting clearly though delicately the state of affairs.

Raye replied by a hasty line to say how much he was affected by her news:he felt that he must run down to see her almost immediately.

But a week later the girl came to her mistress's room with another note,which on being read informed her that after all he could not find time for the journey.Anna was broken with grief;but by Mrs.

Harnham's counsel strictly refrained from hurling at him the reproaches and bitterness customary from young women so situated.

One thing was imperative:to keep the young man's romantic interest in her alive.Rather therefore did Edith,in the name of her protegee,request him on no account to be distressed about the looming event,and not to inconvenience himself to hasten down.She desired above everything to be no weight upon him in his career,no clog upon his high activities.She had wished him to know what had befallen:he was to dismiss it again from his mind.Only he must write tenderly as ever,and when he should come again on the spring circuit it would be soon enough to discuss what had better be done.

It may well be supposed that Anna's own feelings had not been quite in accord with these generous expressions;but the mistress's judgment had ruled,and Anna had acquiesced.'All I want is that NICENESS you can so well put into your letters,my dear,dear mistress,and that I can't for the life o'me make up out of my own head;though I mean the same thing and feel it exactly when you've written it down!'

When the letter had been sent off,and Edith Harnham was left alone,she bowed herself on the back of her chair and wept.

'I wish it was mine--I wish it was!'she murmured.'Yet how can Isay such a wicked thing!'

CHAPTER V

The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him.The intelligence itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in relation to it.The absence of any word of reproach,the devotion to his interests,the self-sacrifice apparent in every line,all made up a nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind.

'God forgive me!'he said tremulously.'I have been a wicked wretch.

I did not know she was such a treasure as this!'

He reassured her instantly;declaring that he would not of course desert her,that he would provide a home for her somewhere.

Meanwhile she was to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her.