Mr. Witt's Widow Part 32

"Won't you help me?"

A heavy step and the sound of impatient pus.h.i.+ng of furniture were heard from the next room.

"Gerald is getting tired of waiting," said George.

"Won't you do anything?" asked Neaera again, barely repressing a sob.

"Supposing I were willing to lie, where is a possible lie? How can I explain it?"

Timms knocked and entered. Gerald begged for a minute's interview, on pressing business.

"In a moment," said George. Then, turning to Neaera, he added brusquely, "Come, you must decide, Mrs. Witt."

Neaera was no longer in a condition to decide anything. Tears were her ready refuge in time of trouble, and she was picturesquely weeping--for she possessed that rare gift--in the old leathern arm-chair.

"Will you leave it to me?" asked George. "I'll do the best I can."

Neaera sobbed forth the opinion that George was her only friend.

"I shall tell him everything," said George. "Do you authorise me to do that?"

"Oh, how miserable I am!--oh, yes, yes."

"Then stop crying, and try to look nice."

"Why?"

"Because I shall bring him in."

"Oh!" cried Neaera in dismay. But when George went out, she made her hair a little rougher--for so paradoxically do ladies set about the task of ordering their appearance--and anointed her eyes with the contents of a mysterious phial, produced from a recondite pocket. Then she sat up straight, and strained her ears to catch any sound from the next room, where her fate was being decided. She could distinguish which of the two men was speaking, but not the words. First Gerald, then George, then Gerald again. Next, for full five minutes, George talked in low but seemingly emphatic tones. Then came a sudden shout from Gerald.

"Here!" he cried. "In your room!"

They had risen, and were moving about. Neaera's heart beat, though she sat still as a statue. The door was flung open, and she rose to meet Gerald, as he entered with a rush. George followed, with a look of mingled anger and perplexity on his face. Gerald flung a piece of paper at Neaera; it was Mrs. Bort's letter, and, as it fell at her feet, she sank back again in her chair, with a bitter little cry. The worst had happened.

"Thank G.o.d for an honest woman!" cried Gerald.

"Gerald!" she murmured, stretching out her hands to him.

"Ah, you can do that to him!" he answered, pointing to George.

"I--I loved you," she said.

"He'll believe you, perhaps--or help you in your lies. I've done with you."

He pa.s.sed his hand over his brow, and went on. "I was easy to hoodwink, wasn't I? Only a little wheedling and fondling--only a kiss or two--and a lie or two! I believed it all. And you," he added, turning on George, "you spared her, you pitied her, you sacrificed yourself. A fine sacrifice!"

George put his hands in his pockets, and shrugged his shoulders.

"I shouldn't go on before Mrs. Witt," he remarked.

"Not go on! No, no. She's so pure, so innocent, isn't she? Worth any sacrifice?"

"What do you mean, Gerald?" said Neaera.

"You don't know?" he asked, with a sneer. "What does a man ask for what he's done? and what will a woman give? Will give? Has given?"

"Hold your tongue!" said George, laying a hand on his shoulder.

Neaera sat still, gazing at her lover with open eyes: only a little shudder ran over her.

"You duped me nicely between you," Gerald continued, "me and all the world. No truth in it all! A mistake!--all a mistake! He found out--his mistake!" His voice rose almost to a shriek, and ended in a bitter laugh.

"You needn't be a brute," said George, coldly.

Gerald looked at him, then at Neaera, and uttered another sneering laugh. George was close by him now, seeming to watch every motion of his lips. Neaera rose from her chair, and flung herself at the feet of the angry man.

"Ah, Gerald, my love, have pity!" she wailed.

"Pity!" he echoed, drawing back, so that she fell on her face before him. "Pity! I might pity a thief, I might pity a liar, I have no pity for a----"

The sentence went unfinished, for, with a sudden motion, George closed on him, and flung him through the open door out of the room.

"Finish your blackguardism outside!" he said, as he shut the door and turned the key.

CHAPTER XVII.

LAURA DIFFERS.

_Ira brevis furor_, says the moralist; and the adjective is the only part of the saw that is open to exception. Gerald Neston's wrath burnt fiercely, but it burnt steadily also, and reflection brought with it nothing but a stronger conviction of his wrongs. To George, the interpretation his cousin put on his action in s.h.i.+elding Neaera seemed to argue that uncommon degree of wrong-headedness that is hardly distinguishable from immorality. Yet, in the recesses of George's heart lurked the knowledge that Mrs. Witt, plain, old, unattractive, might have reaped scant mercy, at his hands; and Gerald, if he did not believe all he had brutally hinted, believed quite enough of it to make him regard George as a traitor and Neaera as an intriguer. What sane man could have acted as George had acted, unless under a woman's fascination? Jealousy did the rest, for Neaera herself had sapped the strength of her lover's trust in her, and he doubted not that she who had deluded him in everything else had not hesitated to practise on him the last deceit. She and George were confederates. Need any one ask how they became so, or what the terms of the alliance were?

It was hardly wonderful that this theory, strange as it seemed, should find a place in Gerald's disordered mind, or that, having done so, it should vent itself in intemperate words and reckless sneers. It was, however, more remarkable that the opinion gained some general favour. It pleased the cynical, for it explained away what seemed like a generous action; it pleased the gossips, for it introduced into the Neston affair the topic most congenial to gossips; it pleased the "unco guid," for it pointed the moral of the ubiquity of sin; it pleased men as a s.e.x, because it made George's conduct natural and explicable; it pleased women as a s.e.x, because it ratified the opinion they had always held of beautiful mysterious widows in general, and of Neaera Witt in particular. And amid this chorus, the voice of the charitable, admitting indiscretion, but a.s.serting generosity, was lost and hushed, and George's little band of friends and believers were dubbed blind partisans and, by consequence, almost accomplices.

Fortunately for George, among his friends were men who cared little for public reprobation. Mr. Blodwell did his work, ate his dinner, said what he thought, and esteemed the opinion of society much at the value the Duke of Wellington set upon the views of the French nation. As for Lord Mapledurham and Sidmouth Vane, unpopularity was the breath of their nostrils; and Vane did not hesitate to purchase the pleasure of being in a minority by a sacrifice of consistency; he abandoned the theory which he had been among the first to suggest, as soon as the suggestion pa.s.sed by general acceptance into vulgarity.

The three men gave George Neston a dinner, drank Neaera's health, and allowed themselves an att.i.tude of almost contemptuous protest against the verdict of society--a verdict forcibly expressed by the _Bull's-eye_, when it declared with not unnatural warmth that it had had enough of this "sordid affair." But then the _Bull's-eye_ had hardly shown its wonted perspicacity, and Mr. Espion declared that he had not been treated in a respectful way. There was no traversing the fact; George's party fell back on a denial of the obligation.

Mankind is so constructed that the approbation of man does not satisfy man, nor that of woman woman. If all the clubs had been ringing with his praises, George Neston would still have turned his first and most eager glance to Mrs. Pocklington's. As it was, he thought of little else than what view of his conduct would gain the victory there. Alas! he knew only too soon. Twice he called: twice was entrance refused him. Then came a note from Mrs. Pocklington--an unanswerable note; for the lady a.s.serted nothing and denied nothing; she intrenched herself behind common opinion. She, as George knew, was a tolerably independent person so far as her own fame was concerned: but where her daughter was interested, it was another thing; Laura's suitor must not be under a cloud; Laura's future must not be jeopardied; Laura's affections must be reposed only where absolute security could be guaranteed. Mr.

Pocklington agreed with his wife to the full. Hence there must be an end of everything--so far as the Pocklington household was concerned, an end of George Neston. And poor George read the decree, and groaned in his heart. Nevertheless, strange events were happening behind that door, so firmly, so impenetrably closed to George's eager feet--events to Mrs.

Pocklington inconceivable, even while they actually happened; to her husband, alarming, reprehensible, extraordinary, puzzling, amusing, almost, in a way, delightful. In fine, Laura rebelled. And the declaration of independence was promulgated on this wise.

Mrs. Pocklington had conveyed to her daughter, with all delicacy requisite and imaginable, the new phase of the affair. It shocked and distressed her to allude to such things; but Laura was a woman now, and must know--and so forth. And Laura heard it all with no apparent shock--nay, with a calmness approaching levity; and when she was told that all communications between herself and George must cease, she shook her pretty head and retired to her bedroom, neither accepting nor protesting against the decision.

The next morning after breakfast she appeared, equipped for a walk, holding a letter in her hand. Mrs. Pocklington had ordered her household, and had now sat down to a comfortable hour with a novel before luncheon. _Dis aliter visum._