Chapter II: Freed by the Visitation of God

It was as a quailing widow, and not as a reluctant wife, that Lady Bell re-entered the old oak parlour, where she still trembled lest she should hear her husband’s loud, rough accents stuttering with rage, and his stick, when gout confined him to his chair, savagely beating the floor.

Mrs. Walsh, in her towering cap and starched frill, received Lady Bell, and spoke to the point, without softening or reservation. “Yes, it is all over, Lady Bell, the Squire died last night at ten o’clock. He was took with a jaundice on Wednesday se’en night; but no danger was apprehended till five days ago, when Mr. Walsh writ the notice for the papers—to no purpose, so far as the Squire’s desiring to see and speak with you once more was concerned. You and he will not see and speak with each other on this side of the judgment day.”

“Oh, Mrs. Walsh, I came as fast as ever I could.” Lady Bell humbled herself in the dust before her ancient enemy. “I know now I was a bad, bad wife. I would give all I have in the world to be able to live the last year over again, and do my duty by your cousin, who is lying stiff and cold in one of these rooms, where I shall never hear him say that he forgives me, that he makes allowance at last for my youth, my wounded pride—what had a sinful creature to do with pride?—my forced inclinations. Oh! tell me he did not lay his curse upon me with his last breath?” implored Lady Bell, ready to sink down with grief and terror, while she clasped her hands and looked up, her distended eyes brimming over with scalding tears, in Mrs. Walsh’s inflexible face.

“Yes, Lady Bell, you were a bad wife, and you would not take a telling while it was in your power,” declared the uncompromising woman, standing bolt upright, her very mittens bristling with her righteous protest.

“Madam,” interposed Mrs. Sundon with rising indignation, “it is monstrous to reproach this poor child at such a time. She is sufficiently crushed by the nature of the event which has taken place, following on her rashness. She will not be likely to forget it, even without your accusations to embitter the blow. I vouch for Lady Bell’s having lived in safety and honour since she quitted her husband. Madam, you will not refuse my voucher?”

“Madam, I have not heard your honesty questioned, therefore I grant that Lady Bell has come back in honest company,” acknowledged Mrs. Walsh stiffly, “which is more than might have been hoped, from her flying in the face of law and duty, and exposing herself to the worst perils.”

“Though you are the late Mr. Trevor’s kinswoman, you must know,” said Mrs. Sundon, “that Lady Bell Trevor has been more sinned against than sinning.”

“I know that she is not too young or fair or fine to be accountable for her errors to a Power before which the most wilful lady will not dare to plead her daintiness,” maintained Mrs. Walsh doggedly. “But I know, too, that you were sinned against, Lady Bell,” she added candidly, turning to the overwhelmed offender. “So far as that goes, Squire Trevor did not deserve your duty. But you had the will of a higher than my poor cousin to consider, and where should we all be, if we got our due, and no more? It was on the Squire’s mind at the last that he had wronged you; and he sought to receive, as well as to bestow, forgiveness, before he could die in peace.”

“I did not merit it,” said Lady Bell; “but you told him, dear Mrs. Walsh—oh, say that you told the old man that I forgave him, as I hope to be forgiven?”

“I charged him to repent, and if he had done any wrong to a fellow-creature which he could atone for, to make amends. Then I bade him turn for forgiveness for that, and all his sins, to the great God and Saviour, against whom he had chiefly sinned, but who would never refuse him forgiveness, since, in the very act of his seeking it, they were pledged for his salvation.”

“Oh, thank God! that he died in peace with me,” broke in Lady Bell impetuously.

“Rather thank God that he died in peace with his Maker, madam,” Mrs. Walsh did not fail to rebuke her. “I think he did; I am fain to hope he did, though he was not able to fulfil his part of the obligation here; the will must stand for the deed. ‘Torney Kenyon, who did all the Squire’s business, was from home, at the wedding of his son in Bristol. We sent twice, but we could not get hold of the man in time. I think it is better to tell you at once, Lady Bell, what you will hear later.”

“As you will, madam,” replied Lady Bell dejectedly.

“The Squire’s will was executed long before he ever saw your face, when his estate was bequeathed, failing any heir of his body, to my eldest son Jack. The substance of that will has been repeated since you offended the Squire, and it has neither been revoked nor altered, as my cousin certainly desired it to be altered, in his dying moments. But Mr. Walsh and me, expecting that you, or some one for you, would answer our summons, if you were in the country, have made up our minds, and will answer for Jack at his college, to take your wishes on the matter.”

“I have no wishes, Mrs. Walsh,” exclaimed Lady Bell hastily.

“We shall let you have whatever compensation you desire,” went on Mrs. Walsh, paying no heed to the demur, “being well aware that such were Squire Trevor’s intentions while he was yet in the body, and in his right mind, so that you are indebted to no bounty, but to bare justice for your share of the worldly inheritance that our cousin has left behind him.”

“Madam, this honourable conduct does you and Mr. Walsh infinite credit.” Mrs. Sundon could not refrain from awarding her hearty approbation to her late antagonist.

“Mrs. Sundon, I repeat that ‘tis but justice,” argued Mrs. Walsh with a stateliness of her own, winding up with her own favourite axiom, “The world and I have shaken hands long ago.”

“You are all a great deal too kind to me,” wept Lady Bell, “a rebel who deserted my post. But indeed I had liefer, if you do not think it an impertinence in me to make an objection, that Mr. Trevor’s goods went to you and your son Jack, his friends. I am sure I have no right to a single sixpence.”

“Beware of pride and sauciness still under the garb of disinterestedness, Lady Bell,” Mrs. Walsh said severely.

“Nay, I’ll do whatever you will,” Lady Bell hastened to amend her statement, quite subdued, and feeling sadly as if she would never have the heart to have a will of her own again.

“Madam, a second time everything shall be as you will, and as your friends—such as Madam Sundon and your man of business, if you will please to name him—may decide for you,” Mrs. Walsh laid down the law.

Lady Bell knew that she was not and never would be mistress of Trevor Court. Not that she desired it; she even recoiled from it as from a sacrilege.

After the funeral, when the two ladies happened to be alone together, Mrs. Sundon said to Lady Bell—

“They are good people, these Walshes, my dear. I should think very good people to deal with and to raise a country parish sunk in rude ignorance and gross transgression. That was not your case exactly, but I think you might have got on with them, and been the better and not the worse for them. To be plain with you, I cannot help saying, though it may be presumptuous, that I think I could have got on with them. I could acquire a great regard for that woman, and I fancy I might have a still greater for her good man. As for Sally, I should have sought to soften her brusqueness; yet brusqueness is not so great a fault when it comes to weighing faults. But you were too young, and you were petulant between youth and hard usage.”

“I shall get on with them now,” said Lady Bell wistfully, looking incredibly young and very fair in the weeds which had been provided for her, and which she had hastened to put on with her trembling frightened fingers, as a mark of respect for the dead, doing it the more eagerly because she had failed in respect for the living.

“I see the servants look sourly on me, and no wonder,” confided Lady Bell to her friend, “for they stood by their master, whom his wife left. But I’ll bear it, and try to bring them to think better of me, though Trevor Court is not mine, and I cannot stay here, and keep the old people and ask them to serve me. Mrs. Walsh will see to her cousin’s household, that is my comfort. I will do everything Mrs. Walsh bids me from this time. I’ll be good, Mrs. Sundon,” promised Lady Bell, with a faint smile at her own childishness. “But seriously, Mrs. Walsh took my place, and saved me from a grievous reflection which would have haunted my death-bed. She will teach me to be a self-denying, devoted Christian woman like herself. I believe I did not judge Sally Walsh justly,” Lady Bell finished with a little sigh of compunction and doubt. “I dare say she was not so pert and rude as I thought her. I know she was far more dutiful than I have been.”

Mrs. Sundon said nothing more at the time; but she determined that she would not leave Lady Bell with the Walshes, though Mrs. Sundon was able to do them justice. “They were never the people, however good their intentions, to have the guidance of Lady Bell,” reflected the lady. “Now that Lady Bell’s spirit is broke and her conscience burdened, she would become their slave. I had almost as soon put her into a nunnery, where in the present state of her feelings, she would be content to take refuge, but where in time she would be driven either into fanaticism or hypocrisy, my generous, tender Lady Bell! Just when she is freed too, by the judgment of God, from her cruel gaoler (God forgive him!) and restored to hope and happiness. Why, there is a bright life before Lady Bell which nothing has come to spoil beyond recall. So help me, I will make it bright and safe for her as I would make it for my little Caro, since Lady Bell came forward of her own sweet will and did what she could to keep me in Paradise. Oh! it is well for Lady Bell that with all her early trials she has not taken forbidden fruit into her mouth, and found it turn to dust and ashes between her teeth. There is no great good under the sun, but I will pursue the lesser good for my Lady Bell when she begins to look up and smile again. Bless the child! what is the loss by honest death of such a husband as Squire Trevor, though she was desperate enough to run away from him, compared to what some women have to bear? I will keep the knowledge of evil from her, as I would keep it from Caro. She shall not fail to be, so far as I can help her, a devoted Christian woman; but it shall be after her own kind. ‘Wisdom shall be justified of all her children.’”

The Squire’s funeral sermon was preached. It was not without its unvarnished allusions, even though they were in the mouth of Mrs. Walsh’s mild spouse, and not of the most redoubtable champion of truth in the parish, to the evils of stout spirits, stormy passions, and family discord. It was listened to with penitent humiliation and meekness.

A decent interval passed, and the arrangements were completed, by which Lady Bell was put into possession of a moderate jointure, in addition to her marriage settlement, from her deceased husband’s estate.

Then Mrs. Sundon hurried her friend just a little on the plea of the necessity of Mrs. Sundon’s return to her child, and carried Lady Bell back to Nutfield in the first place.