* * * * *
Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. The flushes of
indignation which had passed over her, as she gathered this man's opinion
of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered
that Swithin--her dear Swithin--was perfectly acquainted with this
cynical view of her nature; that, reject it as he might, and as he
unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and
lay in him. Stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep
for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and
aerate into life.
The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure; the
mortification--she had known nothing like it till now. But this was not
all. There succeeded a feeling in comparison with which resentment and
mortification were happy moods--a miserable conviction that this old man
who spoke from the grave was not altogether wrong in his speaking; that
he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. Only
those persons who are by nature affected with that ready esteem for
others' positions which induces an undervaluing of their own, fully
experience the deep smart of such convictions against self--the wish for
annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair, at feeling that
at length we, our best and firmest friend, cease to believe in our cause.
Viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other side of
the garden wall. Their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away;
the bell rang for lunch; and she went in. But her life during that
morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the full
circumstances of his situation as she knew them now--as she had never
before known them--ought she to make herself the legal wife of Swithin
St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honour at any price to him? such was
the formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startled
understanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her
charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. Save Thyself was
sound Old Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the
New. But was there a line of conduct which transcended mere
self-preservation? and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in
practice now?
That she had wronged St. Cleeve by marrying him--that she would wrong him
infinitely more by completing the marriage--there was, in her opinion, no
doubt. She in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and
had led him like a child. She remembered--as if it had been her fault,
though it was in fact only her misfortune--that she had been the one to
go for the license and take up residence in the parish in which they were
wedded. He was now just one-and-twenty. Without her, he had all the
world before him, six hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road
to fame as he should choose: with her, this story was negatived.