AFTER THE STORM.
As you sit in the bow-window of your comfortable lodging at your
favourite watering-place during your annual autumn holiday, your
breakfast finished and the _débris_ removed, the newspaper rustling
idly on your knees, and the first and pleasantest pipe of the day
between your lips, you look up and see the aspect of affairs in the
little street below very much changed from its normal state. The
pleasure-boats--the _Lively Nancy_, which sails so regularly at
eleven A.M. with a cargo of happy excursionists, and which arrives in
port at irregular intervals varying from one to three, laden with
leaden-coloured men and hopelessly-bedraggled fainting women; the
_William and Ellen_, in which you go out to catch codling and plaice;
and all the other little craft usually stationed on the beach--have
been bodily removed, their owners and touters are drinking rum and
smoking shag-tobacco in evil-smelling little public-houses, and their
customers have no notion of putting them into requisition. The
bathing-machines,--those cumbrous vehicles in which you have so often
made that dread journey into the ocean, after being bidden to "stand
by" while the horse gives his first awful jerk and afterwards dashes
you against the sides of your travelling-prison, while you catch
horribly-distorted glimpses of your wretched countenance in the
miserable little sixpenny looking-glass pendant from the rusty
nail and swinging here and there like a live thing convulsed,--the
bathing-machines have all been dragged from the spot where they
ordinarily stand like a row of hideous guardians of the coast, and
have defiantly taken possession of one side of the little main street.
The place where the German band subsidised by the town usually pours
forth its perpetual iteration of the "Faust" waltz is now covered with
roaring plunging waves, thick brown walls of water rearing their white
crests a hundred yards off, as if in survey of their ultimate goal,
tearing madly onward, gathering in size and strength at every stride,
and at length discharging themselves with a thunder-crash in a
blinding avalanche of spray. These 'waves, this roaring seething mass
of trembling turgid water, is the great attraction to-day. In vain the
monkey on the three-legged table clashes his cymbals, or plies the
ramrod of his gun with frantic energy; in vain the good-looking
Italian boy, his master, shows his gleaming teeth or touches his hat
to attract attention; in vain the Highlander blows discord into his
bagpipes until all the neighbouring dogs possessing musical ears are
howling in misery. Nobody cares for anything but the sea to-day; the
little parade is thronged with visitors all gazing seaward, all rapt
in attention on the boiling waters; at one point, where the waves dash
in and sweep over the solid masonry, boys rush in between the ebb and
flow, returning happy if they have escaped, happier if they have been
soaked by the spray. People look out all round and scan the horizon to
see if there be any craft in sight, inspired with that singular
feeling which only Rochefoucauld has dared to define, the feeling
which sends crowds to watch Blondin's walk upon the high-rope, or the
performances of a lion-tamer,--the feeling which, in a lesser extent,
originates the sensation-loving element in us, and which is about the
lowest in degraded human nature. Far away, at the end of the
worm-eaten sea-besoaked jetty, is a little cluster of fishermen in
dreadnaught and sou'-westers, patiently watching the weather, which to
them is no toy nor amusement, but that on which hang their hopes of
daily bread; and they will tell you if you ask them, that these big
breakers thundering on to the shore are the result of some great storm
that has taken place far away in the heart of the Atlantic; and that
though the tempest is probably over now, these creations of its fury,
these evidences of its wrath, will continue to roll and surge and foam
for days to come.
So it was with the Adullam-Street household and its surroundings. The
storm that had swept through it had been short, sharp, and decisive;
but the traces of its wrecking power were visible long, long after it
had past.
At first it seemed quite impossible for Frank Churchill to understand
the extent of the misery which had fallen upon him. However roseate
might have been the dreams, in which he had indulged, of the blisses
of matrimony, he had lived too long in the world not to know that few
indeed were the couples whose lives were not checkered by some
occasional difference. These, he had been told, generally occurred in
the early portion of a matrimonial career, while the two persons were
each unaccustomed to the peculiarities of the other, and while
ignorance was, to a great extent, supported and backed up by obstinacy
and pride. The unwillingness of each to give way would eventually
result in a clash, whence would arise one of those domestic
differences popularly known as "tiffs," in which the actors, though
horribly wretched in themselves and disagreeable to each other, were
supremely ridiculous to the rest of the world, which either affected
to be blind or sympathising, and in either case was sniggering
in its sleeve at the absurdity of the scene. But these little
sparring-matches were usually of short duration; and though a constant
repetition of them might have a triturating effect upon the original
foundation of love and constancy, yet Churchill had noticed that long
before such a fatal result occurred, the sharp angles and points had
generally become gradually rounded off and rubbed down, and the
machine had begun to work harmoniously and with regularity. At all
events no open scandal took place. That open scandal, if not an actual
healer of wounds, is a rare anodyne to impulsive spirits and hearts,
thumping painfully against the tightened chain which day by day, with
corroding teeth, is eating its way into their core. Exposure,
publicity in the press, Mrs. Grundy--these are the greatest enemies of
the Divorce-Court lawyers; heavy though the list of cases standing
over for hearing may be, it would be fifty times heavier could the
proceedings be kept secret. Hundreds of couples now living together,
hating each other "with the hate of hell;" scowling, carping,
badgering, wearing, maddening, to desperation driving, from the hour
they rise till the hour they retire to rest and fall asleep,--the one
cursing his life, the other feebly bemoaning her fate, or openly
defiant, "each going their own way;" a state of being more horrible,
loathsome, and pitiable even than the other,--would be disunited, were
it not for the public scandal. "For the sake of the children," for the
scandal which would be entailed on their offspring, Mrs. Emilia will
not leave Mr. Iago; and so they continue to live together, while the
children are daily edified spectators of the manner in which their
father treats their mother, and listen to the constantly-renewed
expression of Mrs. Emilia's wish in reference to the possession of
that whip with which to lash the rascal (their father) naked through
the world.
The exposure--the public scandal! To no one had these words more
terror in their sound than to Frank Churchill. All his life he had
shrunk from every chance of notoriety: had gloried in being able to
work anonymously; not for the sake of shirking any responsibility, not
from the slightest doubt of the right and truth and purity of whatever
cause he might be advocating: but because, when he had shot his bolt,
and hit his mark, as he generally did, he could stand calmly by and
mark the result, without being deafened by empty pans or sickened by
false flattery. His horror of publicity had been extreme; he had
invariably refused all details of his history to contemporary
biographers, and had never been so deeply disgusted as when he saw
some of his work tracked home to its author by the gossipping
correspondent of a provincial paper. It was good work, too--work
creditable to his brain and his heart; yet had it been penny-a-lining
written to order, he could not have been more annoyed at being
accredited with it. And now the full garish eye of day was to be let
into the inmost recesses of his heart's sanctuary! "Break lock and
seal, betray the trust!" let the whole world revel in the details. A
domestic scandal, and one besmirching a man who, despite of himself,
had made some name in the world, and a woman whose triumphs had
rung through society, was exactly the thing which the "many-headed
beast" would most delight in prying into and bandying about. The
details?--there were no details; none, at least, which the world would
ever hear of, or which would give the smallest explanation of the
result. There was the fact of the separation, and nothing more; what
led to it must be the work of conjecture, and people would invent all
kinds of calumny about him; and--great Heaven!--about her. The lying
world, with its blistering tongue, would be busy with her name,
warping, twisting, inventing every thing--perhaps imputing shame to
her, to her whose shield he should have been, to her whom he should
have protected from every blow.
And here must be exhibited one of the flaws in Frank Churchill's
by-no-means-perfect character. His wife had taken a step which nothing
could excuse, had given way to her passion; and, in obedience to the
promptings of rage and jealousy, had done him an irreparable wrong,
and covered them both with a reproach which would cling to them for
life,--all this without any thing like adequate provocation on his
part; so that he had been shamefully treated, and, had he been
properly heroic, would have a fair claim upon your compassion, if not
your admiration. But the truth is he was anything but a hero;
notwithstanding the manner in which his hopes had been blighted and
his life wrecked, notwithstanding his having been deserted in that
apparently heartless way by his wife,--he loved her even then with a
passionate devotion; and when he thought of her, perhaps vilified and
calumniated, without her natural protector, wretched and perhaps
solitary, he had almost determined to fling his pride--nay, what he
knew to be his duty--to the winds, to rush after her and implore her
to come back to his home, and to do with him what she would. Of course
nothing could have been more degrading to him than such a proceeding,
and it was fortunate that good advice was coming to him in the person
of his mother.
Coming in to pay her usual afternoon visit, the old lady walked
straight to the study, and after tapping lightly at the door with her
parasol-handle, she opened it and went in. She found her son seated at
his desk, his head buried in his hands, which were supported by the
projecting arms of the chair. His legs were stretched out before him,
and he seemed lost in thought. He did not change his position at his
mother's entrance, not until she addressed him by name; when, on
raising his head, she saw the dull whiteness of his cheeks, and the
bistre rings round his eyes. She noticed too that his hands shook, and
on touching them they were hot and dry.
"My boy," said the old lady, gently, "you're not well, I'm afraid!
what's the matter with you? too much of this horrid work, or--why,
good God, Frank, there are marks of tears on your face! What _is_ the
matter,--what _has_ happened?"
"Nothing, mother--nothing to me at least,--don't be alarmed, dearest;
I'm all right enough."
"Then Barbara's ill!" said Mrs. Churchill, rising from the seat she
had taken. "I'll go to her at once, poor thing--"
"You wouldn't find her, mother!" said Frank, in a very hollow voice.
"She's not upstairs; she's gone!"
"Gone! Gone where?" asked the old lady.
"Gone away--left me--gone away for ever!" and as the thought of his
desolation broke with renewed force upon him, his voice nearly failed
him, and it was with great difficulty that he prevented himself from
breaking down.
"Left you--gone away--eloped!" cried the old lady, in whose mind there
suddenly arose a vision of a yellow post-chaise, with four horses and
two postillions, and Barbara inside, with Captain Lyster looking out
of the window.
"No, no; not so bad as that," said Frank; "though horrible enough, in
all conscience;" and he gave his mother a description of the scene
which had occurred.
As Mrs. Churchill listened, it was plain to see that she was greatly
moved; her hands trembled, and tears burst from her eyes and stole
down her cheeks. As the story proceeded, two feelings were struggling
for the mastery within her--one, pity for her son; the other,
indignation at her son's wife. The old lady, although now so quiet and
retiring and simple, had lived in the world, and knew the ways and
doings, the ins and outs, of its denizens. She had had tolerable
experience of man's inconstancy, of his proneness to sin, of his
exposure to flattery, and liability to temptation. Had Frank confessed
some slight flirtation with a pretty girl, some beneficence towards a
female acquaintance of bygone times, she would have thought that
Barbara had acted with worse than rashness in taking so decided a
step; but now, when Frank told her that the letter which had provoked
the final eruption was one which--had he not been pledged by its
writer to be silent concerning, pledge given long before he had made
Barbara's acquaintance--might have been read before the world, she
believed her son fully, and could form no judgment too severe on
Barbara's conduct. She was no vain-glorious Pharisee, to tell of the
tithes she had given, the good she had done; no humbler-minded sinner
poured out a nightly tale of shortcomings and omissions to the Great
Father: but when she thought of her own married life, when she
recollected all Vance Churchill's frailties, all his drinking bouts
and intrigues, all his carelessness and idleness, his neglect of his
wife his pettish waywardness, and constant self-indulgence; when she
compared all this with Frank's calm, steady, laborious, good life, and
recollected that under all her provocation her husband had scarcely so
much as a harsh word from her, she felt that Barbara's conduct had
been outrageous indeed.
She said nothing at first, though her heart was full. With the tears
rolling down her cheeks, she rose from her chair, and, taking up her
position by her son, fell to smoothing his hair and passing her hand
lightly over his brow, as she had done--oh, how many thousand
times!--when he was a child; muttering softly, "My poor boy! oh, my
poor boy!" The gentler spirit which had taken possession of Frank just
before his mother's entrance grew and expanded under her softening
touch. He felt like some swimmer who, after a prolonged buffet with
the angry waves, feels his feet, and knows that a few more strokes
will bring him rest and home. There was a chance of nipping this
wretched scandal in its bud, which was much; there was a chance of
bringing his beloved to his side once more, which was all in all.
After a time he broke the silence, cautiously sounding the depths.
"Do you think there's any chance of this horrible business being put
straight, mother?" he asked.
"We are in the hands of God, my boy," replied the old lady, fervently.
"Time is the great anodyne. HE may think fit to have it all set right
in the course of time."
"Yes; but--I mean--you don't think it could be settled at
once--to-night, I mean?"
"If she were to come back to-night, which she will not, and confess
that her miserable pride and jealousy had driven her forth in a mad
fit, and were to ask pardon, and be as she ought to be--God
knows--humble and contrite, I would say let there be an end of it;
forget it all, and strive to live happier for the future. But if she
remains away to-night--well, I don't know what to say;" and the old
lady heaved a very intelligible sigh--a sigh which meant that in such
an event the worst had arrived.
"Yes," said Frank; his mind still dwelling on the little course he had
proposed to himself;--"yes, of course, you don't think it would be
right, then, to go to her--"
"Go to her!" echoed the old lady.
"Yes, go to her, and tell her how utterly wrong she had been--that
there was not the slightest foundation for her suspicions; and that
she had acted most unjustifiably in quitting her husband's house in
the manner she has done; and--"
Old Mrs. Churchill had been sitting as if petrified, with her lips
wide apart, during the delivery of this sentence; at this point she
thawed into speech.
"Are you mad, Frank? has your misfortune turned your brain? You
propose to go to her,--this woman, who has brought contempt on you--
and not only on you, on me and all our name,--and sue to her to come
back, and box her ears playfully, and tell her what a naughty girl she
has been! Do you imagine that this affair is any longer a secret, that
it has not been talked over already between Mrs. Schröder's maid and
your servants, between your servants and the tradespeople? Don't you
know that if your wife is absent from your house to-night, the doubt
will become a certainty, and that to-morrow the whole neighbourhood
will be ringing with it? No!" continued the old lady; "it has come,
and we must bear it. If that wicked girl--for I can't help feeling and
saying that she is wicked in her present course--sees her error and
repents, it will be your duty to forgive her and to take her back; but
as to your humbling yourself by going to her and asking her to return,
it's not to be thought of for a moment."
"I suppose you're right, mother," was all that Frank said--"I suppose
you're right: we'll wait and see whether she comes back to-night."
So they waited, mother and son, through that long evening. The day
died out, and the dusk came down, and the lamps were lighted in the
streets, and the pattering feet grew fewer and fewer; and still those
two sat without speaking, without moving, immersed in their own
thoughts; and still no Barbara returned. At length Mrs. Churchill,
remembering that her son had had no dinner that day, grew tenderly
solicitous about his health, and, crossing to him, raised his head and
pressed her lips to his, and begged him to rouse himself and eat. And
Frank, who felt himself gradually going mad with the one sad strain
upon his thoughts, said:
"No, mother--not here, at all events. I must shake this off, if only
for a few minutes, or I shall go out of my mind. I'll take a turn in
the air; and if I feel faint or to want any thing, I'll go to the Club
and get it. You go home and to bed, dearest; for you must be
thoroughly knocked up with all my worries, which you are compelled to
share; she won't come back to-night--it's all over now; and to-morrow
we must face the future, and see what we're to do with the rest of our
lives."
So they kissed again, and then went out together: Frank with a dead,
dull, wearying pain at his heart; and his mother, sad enough to see
him so sad, but with some little consolation mingled with her grief at
the feeling that this event was not unlikely to bring her and her son
more together again; to give her the chance of being in more frequent
and more affectionate communication with that being whom she
worshipped next to her Creator; of enjoying that to her inexpressible
delight, of having her son "all to herself" again.
Leaving the old lady at the door of her lodgings, Frank strode on at a
rapid pace, neither looking to the right nor to the left, seeing none
of the people by whom he passed, thinking of nothing but his lost
love. At length the long fasting he had undergone began to tell upon
him, he felt sick and faint, and determined to go to his Club to get
some refreshment,--not to the Flybynights; he could not have borne the
noisy racket, the bewildering chaff, of that circle of free-lances; so
he strode steadily down to Pall Mall, and turned into the
Retrenchment. Even that solemn temple of gastronomy and politics was
far too lively for him in his then mood. The coffee-room was filled
with a number of men who had dined late, many of whom, just returned
from their autumnal expeditions, and not having met for a couple of
months, had "joined tables," and were loudly talking over their
holiday experiences. All was light and lively and jolly; and Frank
felt, as he sat in the midst of them, like the death's-head at the
banquet. At one table close by his four men were sitting over their
wine, one of the number being rallied by the rest about his
approaching marriage. "You're a lucky fellow, by Jove, Hope!"
Frank heard one of them say; "I always said Miss Chudleigh was the
prettiest girl out since the Lexden's year." "What's become of the
Lexden--didn't she get married or something?" asked another. "Oh,
yes!" answered the first--"married a man who's a member here. I don't
know him; but a cleverish fellow, I believe. No tin--regular case of
spoons, they said it was." "Mistake that!" said the _fiancé_, whose
future father-in-law was a wealthy brewer; "spoons is all very well,
but it wants something to back it." "Ah, but it's not every one
that has your luck," said old Tommy Orme, who just then joined the
party--"nor, I will say, Hope it isn't every one that deserves it, by
Jove!" and on the Hope of that speech, old Tommy determined to borrow
a ten-pound note from his friend on the first opportunity. Frank
shuddered as he listened, and bent his head over his cutlet. "Was
there any thing in what those men had said?" he asked himself, as he
walked home. Could it have been that the state of comparative poverty
into which he had brought his wife had soured her temper, rendered her
jealous and querulous, and so disgusted her as to cause her to avail
herself of the first excuse which presented itself for returning to
her former life? It might be so, indeed. If a were, Frank was not
disposed to think of her very uncharitably: he knew the whole wealth
of love which he had bestowed upon her; but he thought that her
bringing-up might perhaps have rendered her incapable of appreciating
it; and he went to his solitary bed with a feeling of something more
than pity for his absent wife, after imploring peace to and pardon for
them both in his prayers.
The evening of the next day, however, found him in a very different
frame of mind. Not one word had been heard from Barbara; and the fact
of her absence, and the manner of her departure, had been thoroughly
well discussed throughout the neighbourhood. Early in the morning,
Frank, with the conviction that all must eventually be known, had
removed the seal from his mother's lips; and the old lady's
circumstantial account, softened as much as her conscience would
allow,--for she felt really more strongly than she had admitted about
Barbara's defection,--was detailed to various knots of fa-miller
friends throughout the day. The astonishment of the Mesopotamians was
immense; immense their horror, deep the condemnation they poured upon
the peccant one. The good women of the district could not realise what
had occurred. If Barbara had eloped, they would have had some slight
glimmering of it; though an elopement was a thing which in their idea
only occurred in highly aristocratic families. They had heard through
the medium of the newspapers, stories of post-chaise followed by
post-chaise speeding along the northern road, guilty wife and "gay
Lothario" (Mesopotamian phrase for cavalier villany varying from
seduction to waltzing) in the one, injured husband in the other. But
how a woman could take herself off, leave her home and her husband,
and send a servant for her things afterwards, my dear, as cool as if
she were going by the railway train,--that beat them altogether. But
though they could not understand, they could condemn, and did, in most
unmeasured terms. Whatever the motive might have been, and the most
energetic among them could not find in what was said any thing
particularly damnifying ("in what is said, my dear; but I'm sure there
must be something behind all this that we don't know of, but which
will come out some day"),--whatever the motive might have been, there
was the fact; that could not be got rid of or explained away: Mrs.
Frank Churchill had left her home and was not living with her husband.
What more or less could you make of that? Some of them had seen it in
her from the first.
There was something--one section said, in her eye, another in her
manner--which showed discontent, or worse. "Something" in her walk
which displeased many of them greatly--"as though the ground she trod
upon was not good enough for her," they said. And she who had held her
head so high, for whom none of them were good enough, had come to
this. Well, if being a fine lady and being brought up amongst great
people led to _that_, thank goodness they were as they were.
Mrs. Harding had been one of the earliest to receive old Mrs.
Churchill's confidence, and had been so much astonished and impressed
by what she heard, that she at once returned home and proceeded to
rouse her husband, then peacefully sleeping off his hard night's work.
It must have been something quite out of the common to have prompted
such a step, as George Harding was never pleased at having his
hard-earned rest broken in upon; but on this occasion his wife thought
she had a complete justification. So she went softly into the closed
room, undrew the curtains and let in the full morning sun; then she
shook the sleeper's shoulder and called "George!" Harding roused
himself at once and demanded what was the matter; he always had an
idea, when suddenly awakened from sleep, that something had happened
to the paper, either an Indian mail omitted, or a leader of the wrong
politics inserted, or something equally dreadful in its result; and he
had scarcely got his eyes fairly open, when his wife said, "Oh, my
dear, such a terrible thing for poor Churchill!"
"What do you mean?" asked George, broad-awake in an instant; "nobody
ill?"
"Oh, no, my dear; much better if it were. She's gone, my dear!"
"Who's gone; what on earth do you mean?" and then his wife told him
the story circumstantially. And after hearing it George Harding
dressed himself at once and went out to see his friend.
He found Churchill sitting in his little study, looking vacantly
before him. There were no signs of work on the desk, no book near him;
he had evidently been sitting for some time in a state of semi-stupor.
He was very pale; but he looked up at the opening of the door and
smiled faintly when he saw who it was. There was something so cheery
in dear old George Harding's presence, that it shed light wherever he
went, no matter how dark the surroundings: men who, as they knelt by
the coffins of their wives, had prayed to God to take them then and
there,--men who, contemplating the ruin sweeping down upon them,
had horribly suggestive thoughts of the laudanum-bottle or the
pistol-barrel,--had felt the dark clouds pass away at the sound of his
genial voice and the sight of his hopeful face. But there were tears
in George Harding's gray eyes as he took his friend's hand, and his
voice shook a little as he said, "My dear old Frank! my poor dear
fellow!"
"I'm hard hit, Harding, and that's the truth. You've heard all about
it, of course?" Frank asked nervously, fearing he might have again to
recount the miserable history.
"Yes, my wife has told me,--she heard it from your mother, I
believe,--and I came on at once. Do you know I'm horribly afraid,
Frank, that it was from your taking my advice that this quarrel took
place?"
"Your advice?"
"Yes, about tightening the curb. I told you, if you recollect, that I
thought there should be a greater amount of firmness and decision in
your manner to Mrs. Churchill, and--"
"Oh, you need not be anxious on that score; it must have come sooner
or later; and it's come sooner, that's all!"
"And what are you going to do?"
"Do? what do sensible men do when they have troubles? Grin and bear
them, don't they? And so shall I. I can't live alone; so I shall
instal my mother here again, and, I suppose, all will--will be pretty
much as it was eighteen months ago."
"I was afraid from what my wife said, that I should find you in some
such mood as this," said Harding sternly. "One would think you were
mad, Frank Churchill, to hear you talk such stuff. Don't you know that
Mrs. Churchill is as much your wife before God and man as she ever
was? Don't you feel that she has done nothing for which even the
wretched laws which we in our mighty wisdom have chosen to frame would
justify you in treating her in this way? I can understand it all;
you've been worked upon by the chatter and magging of these silly
women until you've lost your own calm common-sense. But don't you feel
now, Frank, that I'm right? Don't you feel that a fit of rage, a mere
wretched passing temper, is not the thing to separate those whom--you
know I use it in no canting sense--those whom God has joined together?
Don't you feel that it is your duty to go to her, or to send--I'll go
if you like, though it's not a very pleasant office--to point out to
her the miserable folly of this course, and to bring her back to her
proper place--her home?"
"My dear Harding," said Frank quietly, "I know you are sincere in your
advice, but it is impossible for me to take it. My wife has subjected
me to a very great outrage; and until that is explained and atoned
for, I will never look upon or speak to her."
Harding would have said something more, but Churchill raised his hand
in deprecation, and then changed the subject.