Wife in Name Only by Charlotte Mary Brame (best color ebook reader .txt) 📖

criminal type."

Lord Mountdean looked as he felt, shocked.

"But how," he asked, eagerly, "could you be so deceived?"

"That I can never tell you; it was an act of fiendish revenge--cruel, ruthless, treacherous. I cannot reveal the perpetrator. My wife did not deceive me, did not even know that I had been deceived; she thought, poor child, that I was acquainted with the whole of her father's story, but I was not. And now, Lord Mountdean, tell me, do you think I did wrong?"

He raised his care-worn, haggard face as he asked the question and the earl was disturbed at sight of the terrible pain in it.


Chapter XXXVII.


The reason of his separation from his wife revealed, Lord Arleigh again put the question:

"Do you think, Lord Mountdean, that I have done wrong?"

The earl looked at him.

"No," he replied, "I cannot say that you have."

"I loved her," continued Lord Arleigh, "but I could not make the daughter of a convict the mistress of my house, the mother of my children. I could not let my children point to a felon's cell as the cradle of their origin. I could not sully my name, outrage a long line of noble ancestors, by making my poor wife mistress of Beechgrove. Say, if the same thing had happened to you, would you not have acted in like manner?"

"I believe that I should," answered the earl, gravely.

"However dearly you might love a woman, you could not place your coronet on the brow of a convict's daughter," said Lord Arleigh. "I love my wife a thousand times better than my life, yet I could not make her mistress of Beechgrove."

"It was a cruel deception," observed the earl--"one that it is impossible to understand. She herself--the lady you have made your wife--must be quite as unhappy as yourself."

"If it be possible she is more so," returned Lord Arleigh; "but tell me, if I had appealed to you in the dilemma--if I had asked your advice--what would you have said to me?"

"I should have no resource but to tell you to act as you have done," replied the earl; "no matter what pain and sorrow it entailed you could not have done otherwise."

"I thought you would agree with me. And now, Mountdean, tell me, do you see any escape from my difficulty?"

"I do not, indeed," replied the earl.

"I had one hope," resumed Lord Arleigh; "and that was that the father had perhaps been unjustly sentenced, or that he might after all prove to be innocent. I went to see him--he is one of the convicts working at Chatham."

"You went to see him!" echoed the earl, in surprise.

"Yes; and I gave up all hope from the moment I saw him. He is simply a handsome reprobate. I asked him if it was true that he had committed the crime, and he answered me quite frank, 'Yes.' I asked him if there were any extenuating circumstances; he replied 'want of money.' When I had seen and spoken to him, I felt convinced that the step I had taken with regard to my wife was a wise one, however cruel it may have been. No man in his senses would voluntarily admit a criminal's daughter into his family."

"No; it is even a harder case than I thought it," said the earl. "The only thing I can recommend is resignation."

Lord Mountdean thought that he would like to see the hapless young wife, and learn if she suffered as her husband did. He wondered too what she could be like, this convict's daughter who had been gifted with a regal dower of grace and beauty--this lowly-born child of the people who had been fair enough to charm the fastidious Lord Arleigh.

Meanwhile Madaline was all unconscious of the strides that destiny was making in her favor. She had thought her husband's letter all that was most kind; and, though she felt that there was no real grounds for it, she impressed upon her mother the need of the utmost reticence. Margaret Dornham understood from the first.

"Never have a moment's uneasiness, Madaline," she said. "From the hour I cross your threshold until I leave, your father's name shall never pass my lips."

It was a little less dreary for Madaline when her mother was with her. Though they did not talk much, and had but few tastes alike, Margaret was all devotion, all attention to her child.

She was sadly at a loss to understand matters. She had quite expected to find Madaline living at Beechgrove--she could not imagine why she was alone in Winiston House. The arrangement had seemed reasonable enough while Lord Arleigh was abroad, but now that he had returned to England, why did he not come to his wife, or why did not she go to him? She could not understand it; and as Madaline volunteered no explanation, her mother asked for none.

But, when day after day she saw her daughter fading away--when she saw the fair face lose its color, the eyes their light--when she saw the girl shrink from the sunshine and the flowers, from all that was bright and beautiful, from all that was cheerful and exhilarating--she knew that her soul was sick unto death. She would look with longing eyes at the calm, resigned face, wishing with all her heart that she might speak, yet not daring to do so.

What seemed to her even more surprising[8] was that no one appeared to think such a state of things strange; and when she had been at Winiston some few weeks, she discovered that, as far as the occupants of the house were concerned, the condition of matters was not viewed as extraordinary. She offered no remark to the servants, and they offered none to her, but from casual observations she gathered that her daughter had never been to Beechgrove, but had lived at Winiston all her married life, and that Lord Arleigh had never been to visit her.

How was this? What did the terrible pain in her daughter's face mean? Why was her bright young life so slowly but surely fading away? She noted it for some time in silence, and then she decided to speak.

One morning when Madaline had turned with a sigh from the old-fashioned garden with its wilderness of flowers, Margaret said, gently:

"Madaline, I never hear you speak of the Duchess of Hazlewood who was so very kind to you. Does she never come to see you?"

She saw the vivid crimson mount to the white brow, to be speedily replaced by a pallor terrible to behold.

"My darling," she cried, in distress, "I did not expect to grieve you!"

"Why should I be grieved?" said the girl, quietly. "The duchess does not come to see me because she acted to me very cruelly; and I never write to her now."

Then Margaret for awhile was silent. How was she to bring forward the subject nearest to her heart? She cast about for words in which to express her thoughts.

"Madaline," she said, at last, "no one has a greater respect than I have for the honor of husband and wife; I mean for the good faith and confidence there should be between them. In days gone by I never spoke of your poor father's faults--I never allowed any one to mention them to me. If any of the neighbors ever tried to talk about him, I would not allow it. So, my darling, do not consider that there is any idle curiosity in what I am about to say to you. I thought you were so happily married, my dear; and it is a bitter disappointment to me to find that such is not the case."

There came no reply from Lady Arleigh; her hands were held before her eyes.

"I am almost afraid, dearly as I love you, to ask you the question," Margaret continued; "but, Madaline, will you tell me why you do not live with your husband?"

"I cannot, mother," was the brief reply.

"Is it--oh, tell me, dear!--is it any fault of yours? Have you displeased him?"

"It is through no fault of mine, mother. He says so himself."

"Is it from any fault of his? Has he done anything to displease you?"

"No," she answered, with sudden warmth, "he has not--indeed, he could not, I love him so."

"Then, if you have not displeased each other, and really love each other, why are you parted in this strange fashion? It seems to me, Madaline, that you are his wife only in name."

"You are right, mother--and I shall never be any more; but do not ask me why--I can never tell you. The secret must live and die with me."

"Then I shall never know it, Madaline?"

"Never, mother," she answered.

"But do you know, my darling, that it is wearing your life away?"

"Yes, I know it, but I cannot alter matters. And, mother," she continued, "if we are to be good friends and live together, you must never mention this to me again."

"I will remember," said Margaret, kissing the thin white hands, but to herself she said matters should not so continue. Were Lord Arleigh twenty times a lord, he should not break his wife's heart in that cold, cruel fashion.

A sudden resolve came to Mrs. Dornham--she would go to Beechgrove and see him herself. It he were angry and sent her away from Winiston House, it would not matter--she would have told him the truth. And the truth that she had to tell him was that the separation was slowly but surely killing his wife.


Chapter XXXVIII.


Margaret Dornham knew no peace until she had carried out her intention. It was but right, she said to herself, that Lord Arleigh should know that his fair young wife was dying.

"What right had he to marry her?" she asked herself indignantly, "if he meant to break her heart?"

What could he have left her for? It could not have been because of her poverty or her father's crime--he knew of both beforehand. What was it? In vain did she recall all that Madaline had ever said about her husband--she could see no light in the darkness, find no solution to the mystery; therefore the only course open to her was to go to Lord Arleigh, and to tell him that his wife was dying.

"There may possibly have been some slight misunderstanding between them which one little interview might remove," she thought.

One day she invented some excuse for her absence from Winiston House, and started on her expedition, strong with the love that makes the weakest heart brave. She drove the greater part of the distance, and then dismissed the carriage, resolving to walk the remainder of the way--she did not wish the servants to know whither she was going. It was a delightful morning, warm, brilliant, sunny. The hedge-rows were full of wild roses, there was a faint odor of newly-mown hay, the westerly wind was soft and sweet.

As Margaret Dornham walked through the woods, she fell deeply into thought. Almost for the first time a great doubt had seized her, a doubt that made her tremble and fear. Through many long years she had clung to Madaline--she had thought her love and tender care of more consequence to the child than anything else. Knowing nothing of her father's rank or position, she had flattered herself into believing that she had been Madaline's best