,--as a brave
man will resolve to bear any evil for which there is no remedy. But a
more wretched man than he was after the first week of bitterness could
hardly be found. Fortitude has no effect in abating such misery other
than what may come from an absence of fretful impatience. The man who
endures all that the tormentors can do to him without a sign, simply
refuses to acknowledge the agonies inflicted. So it was with Caldigate.
Though he obeyed with placid readiness all the prison instructions, and
composed his features and seemed almost to smile when that which was to
be exacted from him was explained, he ate his heart in dismay as he
counted the days, the hours, the minutes, and then calculated the amount
of misery that was in store for him. And there was so much more for him
to think of than his own condition. He knew of course that he was
innocent of the crime imputed to him;--but would it not be the same to
his wife and child as though he had been in truth guilty? Would not his
boy to his dying day be regarded as illegitimate? And though he had been
wrongly condemned, had not all this come in truth from his own fault?
And when that eternity of misery within the prison walls should have
come to an end,--if he could live through it so as to see the end of
it,--what would then be his fate, and what his duty? He had perfect
trust in his wife; but who could say what two years might do,--two
years during which she would be subjected to the pressure of all her
friends? Where should he find her when the months had passed? And if she
were no longer at Folking, would she come back to him? He was sure,
nearly sure, that he could not claim her as his wife. And were she
still minded to share her future lot with him, in what way should he
treat her? If that horrid woman was his wife in the eye of the law,--and
he feared though hardly knew that it would be so,--then could not that
other one, who was to him as a part of his own soul, be his wife also?
What would become of his child, who, as far as he could see, would not
be his child at all in the eye of the law? Even while he was still a
free man, still uncondemned, an effort had been made to rob him of his
wife and boy,--an effort which for a time had seemed to be successful.
How would Hester be able to withstand such attempts when they would be
justified by a legal decision that she was not his wife,--and could
not become his wife while that other woman was alive? Such though