“I shall leave this house today—immediately after breakfast,” she said to Miss Biggs, as they sat disconsolately at the table with the urn between them.
“And I think you will be quite right, my dear,” replied Miss Biggs. “It is your bounden duty to put down such wicked iniquity as this;—not only for your own sake, but for that of morals in general. What in the world is there so beautiful and so lovely as a high tone of moral sentiment?” To this somewhat transcendental question Mrs. Furnival made no reply. That a high tone of moral sentiment as a thing in general, for the world’s use, is very good, she was no doubt aware; but her mind at the present moment was fixed exclusively on her own peculiar case. That Tom Furnival should be made to give up seeing that nasty woman who lived at Hamworth, and to give up also having letters from her—that at present was the extent of her moral sentiment. His wicked iniquity she could forgive with a facility not at all gratifying to Miss Biggs, if only she could bring about such a result as that. So she merely grunted in answer to the above proposition.
“And will you sleep away from this?” asked Miss Biggs.
“Certainly I will. I will neither eat here, nor sleep here, nor stay here till I know that all this is at an end. I have made up my mind what I will do.”
“Well?” asked the anxious Martha.
“Oh, never mind. I am not exactly prepared to talk about it. There are things one can’t talk about—not to anybody. One feels as though one would burst in mentioning it. I do, I know.”
Martha Biggs could not but feel that this was hard, but she knew that friendship is nothing if it be not long enduring. “Dearest Kitty!” she exclaimed. “If true sympathy can be of service to you—”
“I wonder whether I could get respectable lodgings in the neighbourhood of Red Lion Square for a week?” said Mrs. Furnival, once more bringing the conversation back from the abstract to the concrete.
In answer to this Miss Biggs of course offered the use of her own bedroom and of her father’s house; but her father was an old man, and Mrs. Furnival positively refused to agree to any such arrangement. At last it was decided that Martha should at once go off and look for lodgings in the vicinity of her own home, that Mrs. Furnival should proceed to carry on her own business in her own way—the cruelty being this, that she would not give the least hint as to what that way might be—and that the two ladies should meet together in the Red Lion Square drawing-room at the close of the day.
“And about dinner, dear?” asked Miss Biggs.
“I will get something at a pastrycook’s,” said Mrs. Furnival.
“And your clothes, dear?”
“Rachel will see about them; she knows.” Now Rachel was the old female servant of twenty years’ standing; and the disappointment experienced by poor Miss Biggs at the ignorance in which she was left was greatly enhanced by a belief that Rachel knew more than she did. Mrs. Furnival would tell Rachel but would not tell her. This was very, very hard, as Miss Biggs felt. But, nevertheless, friendship, sincere friendship is long enduring, and true patient merit will generally receive at last its appropriate reward.
Then Mrs. Furnival had sat down, Martha Biggs having been duly sent forth on the mission after the lodgings, and had written a letter to her husband. This she entrusted to Rachel, whom she did not purpose to remove from that abode of iniquity from which she herself was fleeing, and having completed her letter she went out upon her own work. The letter ran as follows:—
Harley Street—Friday.
My dearest Tom,
I cannot stand this any longer, so I have thought it best to leave the house and go away. I am very sorry to be forced to such a step as this, and would have put up with a good deal first; but there are some things which I cannot put up with—and won’t. I know that a woman has to obey her husband, and I have always obeyed you, and thought it no hardship even when I was left so much alone; but a woman is not to see a slut brought in under her very nose—and I won’t put up with it. We’ve been married now going on over twenty-five years, and it’s terrible to think of being driven to this. I almost believe it will drive me mad, and then, when I’m a lunatic, of course you can do as you please.
I don’t want to have any secrets from you. Where I shall go I don’t yet know, but I’ve asked Martha Biggs to take lodgings for me somewhere near her. I must have somebody to speak to now and again, so you can write to 23 Red Lion Square till you hear further. It’s no use sending for me, for I won’t come;—not till I know that you think better of your present ways of going on. I don’t know whether you have the power to get the police to come after me, but I advise you not. If you do anything of that sort the people about shall hear of it.
And now, Tom, I want to say one word to you. You can’t think it’s a happiness to me going away from my own home where I have lived respectable so many years, or leaving you
