9. The Defeat Of The Major
MAJOR FITZ-DAVID'S visitor proved to be a plump, round-eyed overdressed girl, with a florid complexion and straw colored hair. After first fixing on me a broad stare of astonishment, she pointedly addressed her apologies for intruding on us to the Major alone. The creature evidently believed me to be the last new object of the old gentleman's idolatry; and she took no pains to disguise her jealous resentment on discovering us together. Major Fitz-David set matters right in his own irresistible way. He kissed the hand of the overdressed girl as devotedly as he had kissed mine; he told her she was looking charmingly. Then he led her, with his happy mixture of admiration and respect, back to the door by which she had entered--a second door communicating directly with the hall.
"No apology is necessary, my dear," he said. "This lady is with me on a matter of business. You will find your singing-master waiting for you upstairs. Begin your lesson; and I will join you in a few minutes. Au revoir, my charming pupil--au revoir."
The young lady answered this polite little speech in a whisper--with her round eyes fixed distrustfully on me while she spoke. The door closed on her. Major Fitz-David was a t liberty to set matters right with me, in my turn.
"I call that young person one of my happy discoveries;" said the old gentleman, complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes electrified me. I said to myself; 'Here is a born prima donna--I will bring her out!' She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future Queens of Song. Listen! She is beginning her scales. What a voice! Brava! Brava! Bravissima!"
The high soprano notes of the future Queen of Song rang through the house as he spoke. Of the loudness of the young lady's voice there could be no sort of doubt. The sweetness and the purity of it admitted, in my opinion, of considerable dispute.
Having said the polite words which the occasion rendered necessary, I ventured to recall Major Fitz-David to the subject in discussion between us when his visitor had entered the room. The Major was very unwilling to return to the perilous topic on which we had just touched when the interruption occurred. He beat time with his forefinger to the singing upstairs; he asked me about my voice, and whether I sang; he remarked that life would be intolerable to him without Love and Art. A man in my place would have lost all patience, and would have given up the struggle in disgust. Being a woman, and having my end in view, my resolution was invincible. I fairly wore out the Major's resistance, and compelled him to surrender at discretion. It is only justice to add that, when he did make up his mind to speak to me again of Eustace, he spoke frankly, and spoke to the point.
"I have known your husband," he began, "since the time when he was a boy. At a certain period of his past life a terrible misfortune fell upon him. The secret of that misfortune is known to his friends, and is religiously kept by his friends. It is the secret that he is keeping from You. He will never tell it to you as long as he lives. And he has bound me not to tell it, under a promise given on my word of honor. You wished, dear Mrs. Woodville, to be made acquainted with my position toward Eustace. There it is!"
"You persist in calling me Mrs. Woodville," I said.
"Your husband wishes me to persist," the Major answered. "He assumed the name of Woodville, fearing to give his own name, when he first called at your uncle's house. He will now acknowledge no other. Remonstrance is useless. You must do what we do--you must give way to an unreasonable man. The best fellow in the world in other respects: in this one matter as obstinate and self-willed as he can be. If you ask me my opinion, I tell you honestly that I think he was wrong in courting and marrying you under his false name. He trusted his honor and his happiness to your keeping in making you his--wife. Why should he not trust the story of his troubles to you as well? His mother quite shares my opinion in this matter. You must not blame her for refusing to admit you into her confidence after your marriage: it was then too late. Before your marriage she did all she could do--without betraying secrets which, as a good mother, she was bound to respect-- to induce her son to act justly toward you. I commit no indiscretion when I tell you that she refused to sanction your marriage mainly for the reason that Eustace refused to follow her advice, and to tell you what his position really was. On my part I did all I could to support Mrs. Macallan in the course that she took. When Eustace wrote to tell me that he had engaged himself to marry a niece of my good friend Doctor Starkweather, and that he had mentioned me as his reference, I wrote back to warn him that I would have nothing to do with the affair unless he revealed the whole truth about himself to his future wife. He refused to listen to me, as he had refused to listen to his mother; and he held me at the same time to my promise to keep his secret. When Starkweather wrote to me, I had no choice but to involve myself in a deception of which I thoroughly disapproved, or to answer in a tone so guarded and so brief as to stop the correspondence at the outset. I chose the last alternative; and I fear I have offended my good old friend. You now see the painful position in which I am placed. To add to the difficulties of that situation, Eustace came here this very day to warn me to be on my guard, in case of your addressing to me the very request which you have just made! He told me that you had met with his mother, by an unlucky accident, and that you had discovered the family name. He declared that he had traveled to London for the express purpose of speaking to me personally on this serious subject. 'I know your weakness,' he said, 'where women are concerned. Valeria is aware that you are my old friend. She will certainly write to you; she may even be bold enough to make her way into your house. Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a secret, on your honor and on your oath. 'Those were his words, as nearly as I can remember them. I tried to treat the thing lightly; I ridiculed the absurdly theatrical notion of 'renewing my promise,' and all the rest of it. Quite useless! He refused to leave me; he reminded me of his unmerited sufferings, poor fellow, in the past time. It ended in his bursting into tears. You love him, and so do I. Can you wonder that I let him have his way? The result is that I am doubly bound to tell you nothing, by the most sacred promise that a man can give. My dear lady, I cordially side with you in this matter; I long to relieve your anxieties. But what can I do?"
He stopped, and waited--gravely waited--to hear my reply.
I had listened from beginning to end without interrupting him. The extraordinary change in his manner, and in his way of expressing himself, while he was speaking of Eustace, alarmed me as nothing had alarmed me yet. How terrible (I thought to myself) must this untold story be, if the mere act of referring to it makes light-hearted Major Fitz-David speak seriously and sadly, never smiling, never paying me a compliment, never even noticing the singing upstairs! My heart sank in me as I drew that startling conclusion. For the first time since I had entered the house I was at the end of my resources; I knew neither what to say nor what to do next.
And yet I kept my seat. Never had the resolution to discover what my husband was hiding from me been more firmly rooted in my mind than it was at that moment! I cannot account for the extraordinary inconsistency in my character which this confession implies. I can only describe the facts as they really were.
The singing went on upstairs. Major Fitz-David still waited impenetrably to hear what I had to say--to know what I resolved on doing next.
Before I had decided what to say or what to do, another domestic incident happened. In plain words, another knocking announced a new visitor at the house door. On this occasion there was no rustling of a woman's dress in the hall. On this occasion only the old servant entered the room, carrying a magnificent nosegay in his hand. "With Lady Clarinda's kind regards. To remind Major Fitz-David of his appointment." Another lady! This time a lady with a title. A great lady who sent her flowers and her messages without condescending to concealment. The Major--first apologizing to me--wrote a few lines of acknowledgment, and sent them out to the messenger. When the door was closed again he carefully selected one of the choicest flowers in the nosegay. "May I ask," he said, presenting the flower to me with his best grace, "whether you now understand the delicate position in which I am placed between your husband and yourself?"
The little interruption caused by the appearance of the nosegay had given a new impulse to my thoughts, and had thus helped, in some degree, to r estore me to myself. I was able at last to satisfy Major Fitz-David that his considerate and courteous explanation had not been thrown away upon me.
"I thank you, most sincerely, Major," I said "You have convinced me that I must not ask you to forget, on my account, the promise which you have given to my husband. It is a sacred promise, which I too am bound to respect--I quite understand that."
The Major drew a long breath of relief, and patted me on the shoulder in high approval of what I had said to him.
"Admirably expressed!" he rejoined, recovering his light-hearted looks and his lover-like ways all in a moment. "My dear lady, you have the gift of sympathy; you see exactly how I am situated. Do you know, you remind me of my charming Lady Clarinda. She has the gift of sympathy, and sees exactly how I am situated. I should so enjoy introducing you to each other," said the Major, plunging his long nose ecstatically into Lady Clarinda's flowers.
I had my end still to gain; and, being (as you will have discovered by this time) the most obstinate of living women, I still kept that end in view.
"I shall be delighted to meet Lady Clarinda," I replied. "In the meantime--"
"I will get up a little dinner," proceeded the Major, with a burst of enthusiasm. "You and I and Lady Clarinda. Our young prima donna shall come in the evening, and sing to us. Suppose we draw out the menu? My sweet friend, what is your favorite autumn soup?"
"In the meantime," I persisted, "to return to what we were speaking of just now--"
The Major's smile vanished; the Major's hand dropped the pen destined to immortalize the name of my favorite autumn soup.
"Must we return to that?" he asked, piteously. "Only for a moment," I said.
"You remind me," pursued Major Fitz-David, shaking his head sadly, "of another charming friend of mine--a French friend--Madame Mirliflore. You are a person of prodigious tenacity of purpose. Madame Mirliflore is a person of prodigious tenacity of purpose. She happens to be in London. Shall we have her at our little dinner?" The Major brightened at the idea, and took up the pen again. "Do tell me," he said, "what is your favorite autumn soup?"
"Pardon me," I began, "we were speaking just now--"
"Oh, dear me!" cried Major Fitz-David. "Is this the other subject?"
"Yes--this is the other subject."
The Major put down his pen for the second time, and regretfully dismissed from his mind Madame Mirliflore and the autumn soup.
"Yes?" he said, with a patient bow and a submissive smile. "You were going to say--"
"I was going to say," I rejoined, "that your promise only pledges you not to tell the secret which my husband is keeping from me. You have given no promise not to answer me if I venture to ask you one or two questions."
Major Fitz-David held up his hand warningly, and cast a sly look at me out of his bright little gray eyes.
"Stop!" he said. "My sweet friend, stop there! I know where your questions will lead me, and what the result will be if I once begin to answer them. When your husband was here to-day he took occasion to remind me that I was as weak as water in the hands of a pretty woman. He is quite right. I am as weak as water; I can refuse nothing to a pretty woman. Dear and admirable lady, don't abuse your influence! don't make an old soldier false to his word of honor!"
I tried to say something here in defense of my motives. The Major clasped his hands entreatingly, and looked at me with a pleading simplicity wonderful to see.
"Why press it?" he asked. "I offer no resistance. I am a lamb--why sacrifice me? I acknowledge your power; I throw myself on your mercy. All the misfortunes of my youth and my manhood have come to me through women. I am not a bit better in my age--I am just as fond of the women and just as ready to be misled by them as ever, with one foot in the grave. Shocking, isn't it? But how true! Look at this mark!" He lifted a curl of his beautiful brown wig, and showed me a terrible scar at the side of his head. "That wound (supposed to be mortal at the time) was made by a pistol bullet," he proceeded. "Not received in the service of my country--oh dear, no! Received in the service of a much- injured lady, at the hands of her scoundrel of a husband, in a duel abroad. Well, she was worth it." He kissed his hand affectionately to the memory of the dead or absent lady, and pointed to a water-color drawing of a pretty country-house hanging on the opposite wall. "That fine estate," he proceeded, "once belonged to me. It was sold years and years since. And who had the money? The women--God bless them all!--the women. I don't regret it. If I had another estate, I have no doubt it would go the same way. Your adorable sex has made its pretty playthings of my life, my time, and my money--and welcome! The one thing I have kept to myself is my honor. And now that is in danger. Yes, if you put your clever little questions, with those lovely eyes and with that gentle voice, I know what will happen. You will deprive me of the last and best of all my possessions. Have I deserved to be treated in that way, and by you, my charming friend?--by you, of all people in the world? Oh, fie! fie!"
He paused and looked at me as before--the picture of artless entreaty, with his head a little on one side. I made another attempt to speak of the matter in dispute between us, from my own point of view. Major Fitz-David instantly threw himself prostrate on my mercy more innocently than ever.
"Ask of me anything else in the wide world," he said; "but don't ask me to be false to my friend. Spare me that--and there is nothing I will not do to satisfy you. I mean what I say, mind!" he went on, bending closer to me, and speaking more seriously than he had spoken yet "I think you are very hardly used. It is monstrous to expect that a woman, placed in y