The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“I cannot say that word.”

“Do you mean that, after all, I am to be thrown off like an old glove? I have had many dealings with men and have found them to be false, cruel, unworthy, and selfish. But I have met nothing like that. No man has ever dared to treat me like that. No man shall dare.”

“I wrote to you.”

“Wrote to me;⁠—yes! And I was to take that as sufficient! No. I think but little of my life and have but little for which to live. But while I do live I will travel over the world’s surface to face injustice and to expose it, before I will put up with it. You wrote to me! Heaven and earth;⁠—I can hardly control myself when I hear such impudence!” She clenched her fist upon the knife that lay on the table as she looked at him, and raising it, dropped it again at a further distance. “Wrote to me! Could any mere letter of your writing break the bond by which we were bound together? Had not the distance between us seemed to have made you safe would you have dared to write that letter? The letter must be unwritten. It has already been contradicted by your conduct to me since I have been in this country.”

“I am sorry to hear you say that.”

“Am I not justified in saying it?”

“I hope not. When I first saw you I told you everything. If I have been wrong in attending to your wishes since, I regret it.”

“This comes from your seeing your master for two minutes on the beach. You are acting now under his orders. No doubt he came with the purpose. Had you told him you were to be here?”

“His coming was an accident.”

“It was very opportune at any rate. Well;⁠—what have you to say to me? Or am I to understand that you suppose yourself to have said all that is required of you? Perhaps you would prefer that I should argue the matter out with your⁠—friend, Mr. Carbury.”

“What has to be said, I believe I can say myself.”

“Say it then. Or are you so ashamed of it, that the words stick in your throat?”

“There is some truth in that. I am ashamed of it. I must say that which will be painful, and which would not have been to be said, had I been fairly careful.”

Then he paused. “Don’t spare me,” she said. “I know what it all is as well as though it were already told. I know the lies with which they have crammed you at San Francisco. You have heard that up in Oregon⁠—I shot a man. That is no lie. I did. I brought him down dead at my feet.” Then she paused, and rose from her chair, and looked at him. “Do you wonder that that is a story that a woman should hesitate to tell? But not from shame. Do you suppose that the sight of that dying wretch does not haunt me? that I do not daily hear his drunken screech, and see him bound from the earth, and then fall in a heap just below my hand? But did they tell you also that it was thus alone that I could save myself⁠—and that had I spared him, I must afterwards have destroyed myself? If I were wrong, why did they not try me for his murder? Why did the women flock around me and kiss the very hems of my garments? In this soft civilization of yours you know nothing of such necessity. A woman here is protected⁠—unless it be from lies.”

“It was not that only,” he whispered.

“No; they told you other things,” she continued, still standing over him. “They told you of quarrels with my husband. I know the lies, and who made them, and why. Did I conceal from you the character of my former husband? Did I not tell you that he was a drunkard and a scoundrel? How should I not quarrel with such a one? Ah, Paul; you can hardly know what my life has been.”

“They told me that⁠—you fought him.”

“Psha;⁠—fought him! Yes;⁠—I was always fighting him. What are you to do but to fight cruelty, and fight falsehood, and fight fraud and treachery⁠—when they come upon you and would overwhelm you but for fighting? You have not been fool enough to believe that fable about a duel? I did stand once, armed, and guarded my bedroom door from him, and told him that he should only enter it over my body. He went away to the tavern and I did not see him for a week afterwards. That was the duel. And they have told you that he is not dead.”

“Yes;⁠—they have told me that.”

“Who has seen him alive? I never said to you that I had seen him dead. How should I?”

“There would be a certificate.”

“Certificate;⁠—in the back of Texas;⁠—five hundred miles from Galveston! And what would it matter to you? I was divorced from him according to the law of the State of Kansas. Does not the law make a woman free here to marry again⁠—and why not with us? I sued for a divorce on the score of cruelty and drunkenness. He made no appearance, and the Court granted it me. Am I disgraced by that?”

“I heard nothing of the divorce.”

“I do not remember. When we were talking of these old days before, you did not care how short I was in telling my story. You wanted to hear little or nothing then of Caradoc Hurtle. Now you have become more particular. I told you that he was dead⁠—as I believed myself, and do believe. Whether the other story was told or not I do not know.”

“It was not told.”

“Then it was your own fault⁠—because you would not listen. And they have made you believe I suppose that I have failed in getting back my property?”

“I have heard nothing about your property