IX.
ON the day before the ship-owner's liabilities became due, the terms of the report from the City remained unchanged—and the special license was put to its contemplated use. Mrs. Callender's lawyer and Mrs. Callender's maid were the only persons trusted with the secret. Leaving the chief clerk in charge of the business, with every pecuniary demand on his employer satisfied in full, the strangely married pair quitted England.
They arranged to wait for a few days in Paris, to receive any letters of importance which might have been addressed to Ernest in the interval. On the evening of their arrival, a telegram from London was waiting at their hotel. It announced that the missing ship had passed up Channel—undiscovered in a fog, until she reached the Downs—on the day before Ernest's liabilities fell due.
'Do you regret it?' Mrs. Lismore said to her husband.
'Not for a moment!' he answered.
They decided on pursuing their journey as far as Munich.
Mrs. Lismore's taste for music was matched by Ernest's taste for painting. In his leisure hours he cultivated the art, and delighted in it. The picture-galleries of Munich were almost the only galleries in Europe which he had not seen. True to the engagements to which she had pledged herself, his wife was willing to go wherever it might please him to take her. The one suggestion she made was, that they should hire furnished apartments. If they lived at an hotel, friends of the husband or the wife (visitors like themselves to the famous city) might see their names in the book, or might meet them at the door.
They were soon established in a house large enough to provide them with every accommodation which they required.
Ernest's days were passed in the galleries; Mrs. Lismore remaining at home, devoted to her music, until it was time to go out with her husband for a drive. Living together in perfect amity and concord, they were nevertheless not living happily. Without any visible reason for the change, Mrs. Lismore's spirits were depressed. On the one occasion when Ernest noticed it she made an effort to be cheerful, which it distressed him to see. He allowed her to think that she had relieved him of any further anxiety. Whatever doubts he might feel were doubts delicately concealed from that time forth.
But when two people are living together in a state of artificial tranquillity, it seems to be a law of Nature that the element of disturbance gathers unseen, and that the outburst comes inevitably with the lapse of time.
In ten days from the date of their arrival at Munich, the crisis came. Ernest returned later than usual from the picture-gallery, and—for the first time in his wife's experience—shut himself up in his own room.
He appeared at the dinner-hour with a futile excuse. Mrs. Lismore waited until the servant had withdrawn. 'Now, Ernest,' she said, 'it's time to tell me the truth.'
Her manner, when she said those few words, took him by surprise. She was unquestionably confused; and, instead of lookin g at him, she trifled with the fruit on her plate. Embarrassed on his side, he could only answer:
'I have nothing to tell.'
'Were there many visitors at the gallery?' she asked.
'About the same as usual.'
'Any that you particularly noticed?' she went on. 'I mean, among the ladies.'
He laughed uneasily. 'You forget how interested I am in the pictures,' he said.
There was a pause. She looked up at him—and suddenly looked away again. But he saw it plainly: there were tears in her eyes.
'Do you mind turning down the gas?' she said. 'My eyes have been weak all day.'
He complied with her request—the more readily, having his own reasons for being glad to escape the glaring scrutiny of the light.
'I think I will rest a little on the sofa,' she resumed. In the position which he occupied, his back would have been now turned on her. She stopped him when he tried to move his chair. 'I would rather not look at you, Ernest,' she said, 'when you have lost confidence in me.'
Not the words, but the tone, touched all that was generous and noble in his nature. He left his place, and knelt beside her—and opened to her his whole heart.
'Am I not unworthy of you?' he asked, when it was over.
She pressed his hand in silence.
'I should be the most ungrateful wretch living,' he said, 'if I did not think of you, and you only, now that my confession is made. We will leave Munich to-morrow—and, if resolution can help me, I will only remember the sweetest woman my eyes ever looked on as the creature of a dream.'
She hid her face on his breast, and reminded him of that letter of her writing, which had decided the course of their lives.
'When I thought you might meet the happy woman in my life-time, I said to you, 'Tell me of it—and I promise to tell
Mrs. Lismore's request met with no refusal. Ernest was only at a loss to know how to grant it.
'You tell me she is a copyist of pictures,' his wife reminded him. 'She will be interested in hearing of the portfolio of drawings by the great French artists which I bought for you in Paris. Ask her to come and see them, and to tell you if she can make some copies. And say, if you like, that I shall be glad to become acquainted with her.'
He felt her breath beating fast on his bosom. In the fear that she might lose all control over herself, he tried to relieve her by speaking lightly. 'What an invention yours is!' he said. 'If my wife ever tries to deceive me, I shall be a mere child in her hands.'
