CHAPTER XXXIII

In no house in Bath was Dick Sheridan’s conduct regarded in the same light as it was in the home of the Linleys. That was, of course, because only by the Linley family was his conduct regarded as a personal matter. His perfidy in professing a friendship for Tom, while all the time he was contriving to take poor Tom’s place in the affections of Mrs. Abington, was referred to with great bitterness by Tom’s mother, and by Polly and Maria in wrathful whispers. They referred to Tom daily as “poor Tom!”—sometimes “poor dear Tom!” All their sympathy went forth for Tom in these days, and every one in the household—not even excepting Mr. Linley and Betsy—felt that it was necessary to treat him with the greatest tenderness. He was the victim of an unhappy attachment to one who was unworthy of the inestimable treasure of his young affections; and, in addition, he had been the dupe of an unscrupulous man who had not hesitated to elbow him aside in order to take his place. Surely one would be quite heartless who failed to have the deepest sympathy with poor Tom, or to heap reprobation on the head of his perfidious friend!

To be sure, Tom’s attachment to Mrs. Abington had been a terror to the household. The father had stormed about it, and the mother had wept over it. The father had threatened in no undertone to turn Tom out of the house, and the mother—with the true instincts of a woman and the experience of a wife—had made her crispest pâtés to tempt him to stay at home. But Tom disregarded alike threats and tartlets, and his sisters had sat daily in terror of a catastrophe. But the remembrance of those awful days did not in the least tend to mitigate their abhorrence of the perfidy of Dick Sheridan. They could not contain their anger when one day they caught sight of him flaunting his success in the face of all the people of Bath while he took the air by the side of Mrs. Abington in her chariot.

Maria, with great tact, drew Tom away from the window on some pretext. Her heart was beating in the excitement of the moment. If Tom had chanced to see that sight it would, she felt, have been impossible to predict what might happen. Tom was a man of spirit—so much was certain—and he had brought home with him from Italy a stiletto with beautiful jewels and pieces of coral set in the haft....

Mr. Linley only smiled when he was alone, and repeated in whispers those words, “God bless Dick Sheridan!” He felt truly grateful to Dick, but not quite so grateful as to make the attempt to force him upon the family as their benefactor; and as for his flaunting it with Mrs. Abington—well, that was Dick’s own affair. He was not in the least offended at his triumph. It was better for Dick Sheridan to make a fool of himself than for Tom Linley to be made a fool of. That was what Mr. Linley thought; and he helped Tom to mend his violin. Tom was ready to begin the work just two days after his breaking of the instrument, and when the glue had properly dried—before the touch of varnish that he gave to the fractured part had ceased to perfume the room, he was improvising that “Elegy to a Dead Love” which, later on, caused some of his audience (women) at a concert to be moved to bitter tears. Love was dead, and a musical elegy had been played over its grave, because Tom Linley had been jilted by Mrs. Abington! And when Mr. Linley declared that nothing more classical than that composition had been produced by an English musician, Tom began to recover from the effects of his wound as speedily as his violin had done. Only once did his sister Maria hear him murmur, while he breathed hard and his eyes were alight with the true fire of genius:

“A jig—an Irish jig! O heavens! an Irish jig!”

The expression on his face was one of bitterness—bitterness tempered by the thought that he had produced an immortal work: the mortality of his love had given him immortality.

But Betsy did not speak a word. Tom was too full of himself and of setting his sorrow to rhythm to notice how often during every day her eyes filled with tears. But one of her sisters who occupied the same bedroom, had awakened once in the night hearing Betsy sob on her pillow, and had asked her what was the matter—was it toothache? “Ah, the ache! the ache!” Betsy had answered. The little girl had expressed her sympathy with her sister’s suffering, and had straightway fallen asleep, forgetting in the morning that she had ever been awakened.

But Mr. Long was not among those who were insensible of any change in Betsy. He did not fail to perceive that some trouble was upon her. He wondered if it was the family trouble in regard to Tom’s promise that oppressed her, or was it due to something more closely affecting herself?

After Tom had renounced the enchantress, and it might have been expected that Betsy would become herself again, Mr. Long noticed that she was more tristful than ever. He made up his mind that, failing to find out by chance the cause of the change, he would ask her concerning it. For some days, however, he had no chance of talking with her apart from the members of her family. But at the end of a week, he found her alone in the music-room. He had met Mr. Linley and his wife on their way to look at a house in the Circus, which their improving circumstances seemed to warrant their taking, and he perceived that there was a likelihood of Betsy’s being at home and alone. He knew that he was fortunate when he heard the sound of her voice while he rang the bell. She was singing, and he knew that now she rarely sang unless she was alone.

She sprang from the harpsichord when he entered the room, and turned away for a suspicious moment before greeting him.

“My dear child, why should you wipe the tears from your eyes?” he said, retaining her hand. “Do you fancy that I am one of those people who think tears a sign of weakness? Nay, you should know that I regard them as an indication of strength—of womanliness, which is the strongest influence that remains with us in the world.”

“Ah, no, no! with me they are a proof of weakness,” she cried quickly—“weakness—weakness! Oh, I am in great trouble, Mr. Long, because I am conscious daily of doing you a great wrong. But you will bear with me—you will forgive me when I confess it to you?”

“Before you confess—before,” he said. “But what can you have to confess?”

“It is terrible—terrible, for though I have given you my promise to marry you, I find that I cannot do it—I cannot do it.”

She remained standing before him, but put both her hands up to her face. The movement was ineffectual; her hands failed to conceal her tears.

“Why?” he asked, after a pause.

There was another and a longer pause before she said:

“Because ’twere to do you a great wrong, sir. I believed when I gave you my promise that I would be strong enough to keep it. But I find that I am too weak. Oh, I am miserable on account of it! ’Tis not that I have failed in my respect for you—in my regard—but I feel that ’twould be impossible. Oh, I cannot do it—I cannot marry you, Mr. Long.”

“You do not love me as a girl should love her lover?” said he, and he was actually smiling.

She could not answer him. The truth seemed too cruel. She could only put her hand in his. That was her instinct. She knew that she could trust him to understand her.

“Yes, I see that you do not love me,” said he; “and I too have to confess that I cannot give to you the love of a lover.”

Her eyes opened wide as she looked at him; there was deep pathos in her look of innocent inquiry.

“You have found that your love is given to some one else?” he said, with great gentleness.

A flush came to her face; she turned away her head.

“And I—I too have given all my love to another,” he said still more gently.

Quickly she turned to him again. She laid the hand which he was not holding on the hand that held hers.

He led her to the sofa, and she seated herself, wondering.

“My Betsy,” he said, “I hoped that I would never be led to do you a wrong, and I hope that I did not wrong you when I asked you for the promise which you gave me; but at that time, and before it, all my love was given to another—another even younger than yourself.”

A little coldness had come to her eyes. She drew back an inch from him. He recognised how womanly was the movement.

“You will see her—one day; but I cannot show her to you now. I can only show you her likeness.”

He took out of an inner pocket a miniature enclosed in a plain red gold case. It was attached to a black watered silk riband which he wore round his neck. He looked at the picture for a long time before handing it to her, which he did with a sigh.

She took the case in her hands, and saw that the picture was of a girl’s face, lovely in its spirituality, pathetic in its innocence. The eyes were of the softest grey, and their expression had a certain indefinable sadness in it, in spite of the smile that illuminated the face.

“She is beautiful,” said Betsy gently.

“Ah, she is more beautiful than that picture now,” said he. “It was painted forty years ago. She is more beautiful now.”

“Only an angel could be more beautiful,” said Betsy.

“That is true—only an angel. She is among the angels,” said he. “Dear child, it was Mr. Jackson, the organist of Exeter, who told me that when you sang your face was like the face of one who is looking at an angel. I wondered if I should think so when I saw you. I found that he spoke the truth: I have seen you when you seemed to be looking into her face. It was for her sake, my dear, that I wished to do something to help you. I hoped that this privilege might be granted to me.”

“And you have helped me—no one has helped me more.”

“Have I helped you to understand yourself—to understand what love means? That is sometimes the last thing that women understand.”

“I think that you helped me to understand myself, and the result is, pain—self-reproach.”

She took the case in her hands

She took the case in her hands.

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“There is no need for either, Betsy. There is no need for pain, even though the one whom you loved showed himself to be unworthy of you. Ah, my dear, if you mourn until you find a man worthy of your love, you will pass a melancholy lifetime. Listen to me, my sweet one, while I tell you what was my dream. When I came here for the first time and found you in the midst of danger, surrounded by unscrupulous men—men who were as incapable of appreciating your real nature as—as—well, as incapable as was your father; when I perceived that you were like a white lily that slowly withers when brought out of the gladness of the garden to be stifled by the air of a dark room; when I perceived that, in order to avoid the shame of facing the public from the platform of a concert-room, you might be led to give your hand to some one who would lead you into misery and dishonour—then, for her sake—for the sake of the angel whom I loved in my boyhood and whom I love now in the autumn of my life—I made up my mind that I would try to help you.”

“And you did—indeed, you did help me. Ah, I should have known what you meant—I might have known how good and unselfish you were. ’Tis true that sometimes I fancied—something like what you have told me now. Yes, I felt that you were too fond of me to love me. That sounds absurd, but I think you understand what I mean.”

“You have put the sentiment into the best phrase: I was too fond of you to be in love with you or to look for you to love me with the love of a girl for her lover. I wondered who it was you did love in that way, and I believed that the truth was revealed to me. I saw Dick Sheridan in the same room with you, and I saw the light that came into your face.”

“Alas—alas!”

“The chance that I told you of when he came to my help, enabled me to see a good deal of him, and I felt sure that it would be given to me to have my dearest wish realised—to see you happy by the side of a man who adored you and who could appreciate the beauty of your nature. Alas! I was disappointed. Instead of earning my respect by his constancy to the sentiment of love—constancy to that ideal of love which I believed he could appreciate—he has earned my contempt.”

“Ah, no—not contempt!” she cried almost piteously.

“Why not contempt?” he said. “I tell you that in giving himself to that woman—he confessed to me that he was going to marry her—he has earned my contempt and yours.”

“No, ’tis not true. I love him and he loves me!” she cried. “Ah, you should spare him—you should spare him!”

“Why should I spare him? He is worthy only of contempt.”

“No, no! he is to be pitied—only pitied. Do not be hard on him: he did it because he loved me.”