“How I hate that word severe, when applied to a woman.”
“I dare say you do—when applied to another man’s wife. But there will be no severity in my first proposition. As for the child—if I approve of the place in which she lives, as I do at present—he shall remain with her for nine months in the year till he is six years old. Then he must come to me. And he shall come to me altogether if she sees or hears from that man. I believe that £800 a year will enable her to live with all comfort under your mother’s roof.”
“As to that,” said Stanbury, slowly, “I suppose I had better tell you at once, that the Nuncombe Putney arrangement cannot be considered as permanent.”
“Why not?”
“Because my mother is timid and nervous, and altogether unused to the world.”
“That unfortunate woman is to be sent away—even from Nuncombe Putney!”
“Understand me, Trevelyan.”
“I understand you. I understand you most thoroughly. Nor do I wonder at it in the least. Do not suppose that I am angry with your mother, or with you, or with your sister. I have no right to expect that they should keep her after that man has made his way into their house. I can well conceive that no honest, high-minded lady would do so.”
“It is not that at all.”
“But it is that. How can you tell me that it isn’t? And yet you would have me believe that I am not disgraced!” As he said this Trevelyan got up, and walked about the room, tearing his hair with his hands. He was in truth a wretched man, from whose mind all expectation of happiness was banished, who regarded his own position as one of incurable ignominy, looking upon himself as one who had been made unfit for society by no fault of his own. What was he to do with the wretched woman who could be kept from the evil of her pernicious vanity by no gentle custody, whom no most distant retirement would make safe from the effects of her own ignorance, folly, and obstinacy? “When is she to go?” he asked in a low, sepulchral tone—as though these new tidings that had come upon him had been fatal—laden with doom, and finally subversive of all chance even of tranquillity.
“When you and she may please.”
“That is all very well;—but let me know the truth. I would not have your mother’s house—contaminated; but may she remain there for a week?”
Stanbury jumped from his seat with an oath. “I tell you what it is, Trevelyan;—if you speak of your wife in that way, I will not listen to you. It is unmanly and untrue to say that her presence can—contaminate any house.”
“That is very fine. It may be chivalrous in you to tell me on her behalf that I am a liar—and that I am not a man.”
“You drive me to it.”
“But what am I to think when you are forced to declare that this unfortunate woman can not be allowed to remain at your mother’s house—a house which has been especially taken with reference to a shelter for her? She has been received—with the idea that she would be discreet. She has been indiscreet, past belief, and she is to be turned out—most deservedly. Heaven and earth! Where shall I find a roof for her head?” Trevelyan as he said this was walking about the room with his hands stretched up towards the ceiling; and as his friend was attempting to make him comprehend that there was no intention on the part of anyone to banish Mrs. Trevelyan from the Clock House, at least for some months to come—not even till after Christmas unless some satisfactory arrangement could be sooner made—the door of the room was opened by the boy, who called himself a clerk, and who acted as Trevelyan’s servant in the chambers, and a third person was shown into the room. That third person was Mr. Bozzle. As no name was given, Stanbury did not at first know Mr. Bozzle, but he had not had his eye on Mr. Bozzle for half a minute before he recognised the ex-policeman by the outward attributes and signs of his profession. “Oh, is that you, Mr. Bozzle?” said Trevelyan, as soon as the great man had made his bow of salutation. “Well;—what is it?”
“Mr. Hugh Stanbury, I think,” said Bozzle, making another bow to the young barrister.
“That’s my name,” said Stanbury.
“Exactly so, Mr. S. The identity is one as I could prove on oath in any court in England. You was on the railway platform at Exeter on Saturday when we was waiting for the 12 express ’buss;—wasn’t you now, Mr. S.?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Well;—as it do happen, it is something to me. And, Mr. S., if you was asked that question in hany court in England or before even one of the metropolitan bekes, you wouldn’t deny it.”
“Why the devil should I deny it? What’s all this about, Trevelyan?”
“Of course you can’t deny it, Mr. S. When I’m down on a fact, I am down on it. Nothing else wouldn’t do in my profession.”
“Have you anything to say to me, Mr. Bozzle?” asked Trevelyan.
“Well;—I have; just a word.”
“About your journey to Devonshire?”
“Well;—in a way it is about my journey to Devonshire. It’s all along of the same job, Mr. Trewillian.”
“You can speak before my friend here,” said Trevelyan. Bozzle had taken a great dislike to Hugh Stanbury, regarding the barrister with a correct instinct as one who was engaged for the time in the same service with himself, and who was his rival in that service. When thus instigated to make as it were a party of three in this delicate and most confidential matter, and to take his rival into his confidence, he shook his head slowly and looked Trevelyan hard in the face—“Mr. Stanbury is my particular friend,”
