“Will he be hard like that?”
“I can hardly tell myself whether it would be hard. I hardly know what I should feel it my duty to do in such a position myself. I have deceived him.”
“No!” she exclaimed.
“Yes; I have deceived him. Coming to him as I did, I gave him to understand that there was nothing wrong;—nothing to which special objection could be made in my position.”
“Then we are deceiving all the world in calling ourselves man and wife.”
“Certainly we are; but to that we had made up our mind! We are not injuring all the world. No doubt it is a lie—but there are circumstances in which a lie can hardly be a sin. I would have been the last to say so before all this had come upon me, but I feel it to be so now. It is a lie to say that you are my wife.”
“Is it? Is it?”
“Is it not? And yet I would rather cut my tongue out than say otherwise. To give you my name is a lie—but what should I think of myself were I to allow you to use any other? What would you have thought if I had asked you to go away and leave me when that bad hour came upon us?”
“I would have borne it.”
“I could not have borne it. There are worse things than a lie. I have found, since this came upon us, that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned. To cherish you, to comfort you, to make the storm less sharp to you—that has already been my duty as well as my pleasure. To do the same to me is your duty.”
“And my pleasure; and my pleasure—my only pleasure.”
“We must cling to each other, let the world call us what names it may. But there may come a time in which one is called on to do a special act of justice to others. It has come now to me. From the world at large I am prepared, if possible, to keep my secret, even though I do it by lying;—but to this one man I am driven to tell it, because I may not return his friendship by doing him an evil.”
Morning school at this time of the year at Bowick began at half-past seven. There was an hour of school before breakfast, at which the Doctor did not himself put in an appearance. He was wont to tell the boys that he had done all that when he was young, and that now in his old age it suited him best to have his breakfast before he began the work of the day. Mr. Peacocke, of course, attended the morning school. Indeed, as the matutinal performances were altogether classical, it was impossible that much should be done without him. On this Saturday morning, however, he was not present; and a few minutes after the proper time, the mathematical master took his place. “I saw him coming across out of his own door,” little Jack Talbot said to the younger of the two Clifford boys, “and there was a man coming up from the gate who met him.”
“What sort of a man?” asked Clifford.
“He was a rummy-looking fellow, with a great beard, and a queer kind of coat. I never saw anyone like him before.”
“And where did they go?”
“They stood talking for a minute or two just before the front door, and then Mr. Peacocke took him into the house. I heard him tell Carstairs to go through and send word up to the Doctor that he wouldn’t be in school this morning.”
It had all happened just as young Talbot had said. A very “rummy-looking fellow” had at that early hour been driven over from Broughton to Bowick, and had caught Mr. Peacocke just as he was going into the school. He was a man with a beard, loose, flowing on both sides, as though he were winged like a bird—a beard that had been black, but was now streaked through and through with grey hairs. The man had a coat with frogged buttons that must have been intended to have a military air when it was new, but which was now much the worse for wear. The coat was so odd as to have caught young Talbot’s attention at once. And the man’s hat was old and seedy. But there was a look about him as though he were by no means ashamed either of himself or of his present purpose. “He came in a gig,” said Talbot to his friend; “for I saw the horse standing at the gate, and the man sitting in the gig.”
“You remember me, no doubt,” the stranger said, when he encountered Mr. Peacocke.
“I do not remember you in the least,” the schoolmaster answered.
“Come, come; that won’t do. You know me well enough. I’m Robert Lefroy.”
Then Mr. Peacocke, looking at him again, knew that the man was the brother of his wife’s husband. He had not seen him often, but he recognised him as Robert Lefroy, and having recognised him he took him into the house.
Part III
VII
Robert Lefroy
Ferdinand Lefroy, the man who had in truth been the woman’s husband, had, during that one interview which had taken place between him and the man who had married his wife, on his return to St. Louis, declared that his brother Robert was dead. But so had Robert, when Peacocke encountered him down at Texas, declared that Ferdinand was dead. Peacocke knew that no word of truth could be expected from the mouths of either of them. But seeing is believing. He had seen Ferdinand alive at St. Louis after his marriage, and by seeing him, had been driven away from his home back
