THE FLEXIBLE MIND OF A PLEASED HUSBAND
As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of
the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs.
Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable
feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she
was.
The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, were quick for Allan's
face, resting fondly there during the seconds in which he was changing
from the dead astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal.
During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each
other's arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had
paused before her.
"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys
go back there to have it out!"
Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to
tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened
duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes. Her thoughts ran ahead to
Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a
slow-moving elder.
Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed
her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk.
"--and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite
confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm sure he would wish you
to know. Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as
he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply
them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of
view. But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful
case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless
chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his
mind at all well before thirty-five. Of course, divorce is an evil that,
broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life--no one
understands that better than your husband--and re-marriage after divorce
is usually an outrageous scandal--one, indeed, altogether too
common--sometimes I wonder what we're coming to, it seems to be done so
thoughtlessly--but individual instances are different--'exceptions prove
the rule,' you know, as the old saying goes. Now Harold is ready to
settle down, and the girl is of excellent family and all that--quite the
social and moral brace he needs, in fact."
Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled.
"But--you speak of your son, Harold--is he not already married?"
"That's it, my dear. You know what a funny, bright, mischievous boy
Harold is--even a little deliciously wild at times--doubtless you read
of his marriage when it occurred--how these newspapers do relish
anything of the sort--she was a theatrical young woman--what they call a
'show girl,' I believe. Humph!--with reason, I _must_ say! Of all the
egregious and inveterate showiness! My dear, she is positively a
creature! Oh, if they'd only invent a monocle that would let a young man
pierce the glamour of the footlights. I pledge you my word, she's--but
never mind that! Harold was a thoughtless, restless boy--not bad, you
know, but heedless. Why, he was quite the same about business. He began
to speculate, and of course, being brother Cyrus's nephew, his advantage
was considerable. But he suddenly declared he wouldn't be a broker any
more--and you'd never guess his absurd reason: simply because some stock
he held or didn't hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the
street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill! He said that this
brought him to his senses. He says to me, 'Mater, I've not met Mr. Sage,
you know, but from what I hear of him it would be irrational to place
myself in a position where I should have to experience emotion of any
sort at news of the old gentleman's taking-off. An event so agreeable to
the natural order of God's providence, so plausible, so seemly, should
not be endowed with any arbitrary and artificial significance,
especially of a monetary character--one must be able to view it
absolutely without emotion of any sort, either of regret or
rejoicing--one must remain conscientiously indifferent as to when this
excellent old gentleman passes on to the Golden Shore'--but you know
the breezy way in which Harold will sometimes talk. Only now he seems
really sobered by this new attachment--"
"But if he is already married--"
"Yes, yes--if you can call it married--a ceremony performed by one of
those common magistrates--quite without the sanction of the Church--but
all that is past, and he is now ready to marry one who can be a wife to
him--only my conscience did hurt me a little, and brother Cyrus said to
me, 'You see Linford and tell him I sent you. Linford is a man of
remarkable breadth, of rare flexibility.'"
"Yes, and of course Allan was emphatically discouraging." Again she was
recalling the fervour with which he had declared himself on this point
on that last day when he actually made her believe in him.
"Oh, the Doctor is broad! He is what I should call adaptable. He said by
all means to extricate Harold from this wretched predicament, not only
on account of the property interests involved, but on account of his
moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he holds deathlessly
to the indissolubility of the marriage tie, still it is unreasonable to
suppose that God ever joined Harold to a person so much his inferior,
and that we may look forward to the real marriage--that on which the
sanctity of the home is truly based--when the law has freed him from
this boyish entanglement. Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that
my boy can have a wife from his own class--and still have it right up
there--with Him, you know!" she concluded with an upward glance, as
Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost
steely--watched her as one might watch an ant. She had the look of one
whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great inner
tumult.
When her caller had gone she dropped back into the chair, absently
pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand--her bag and parasol on
the floor at her feet. One might have thought her on the point of
leaving instead of having just come. The shadows were deepening in the
corners of the room and about her half-shut eyes.
A long time she listened to the animated voices of the brothers. At last
the doors were pushed apart and they came out, Allan with his hand on
Bernal's shoulder.
"There's your bag--now hurry upstairs--the maid will show you where."
As Bernal went out, Nancy looked up at her husband with a manner
curiously quiet.
"Well, Nance--" He stepped to the door to see if Bernal was out of
hearing--"Bernal pleases me in the way he talks about the old
gentleman's estate. Either he is most reasonable, or I have never known
my true power over men."
Her face was inscrutable. Indeed, she only half heard.
"Mrs. Covil has been telling me some of your broader views on divorce."
The words shot from her lips with the crispness of an arrow, going
straight to the bull's-eye.
He glanced quickly at her, the hint of a frown drawing about his eyes.
"Mrs. Covil should have been more discreet. The authority of a priest in
these matters is a thing of delicate adjustment--the law for one may not
be the law for all. These are not matters to gossip of."
"So it seems. I was thinking of your opposite counsel to Mrs. Eversley."
"There--really, you know I read minds, at times--somehow I knew that
would be the next thing you'd speak of."
"Yes?"
"The circumstances are entirely different--I may add that--that any
intimation of inconsistency will be very unpleasing to me--very!"
"I can see that the circumstances are different--the Eversleys are not
what you would call 'important factors' in the Church--and besides--that
is a case of a wife leaving her husband."
"Nance--I'm afraid you're _not_ pleasing me--if I catch your drift. Must
I point out the difference--the spiritual difference? That misguided
woman wanted to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her
pride--her vanity--by certain alleged attentions to other women,
concerning the measure of which I had no knowledge. That was a case
where the cross must be borne for the true refining of that dross of
vanity from her soul. Her husband is of her class, and her life with him
will chasten her. While here--what have we here?"
He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when he prepared a
sermon.
"Here we have a flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual
miscegenation--that's it!--why didn't I think of that phrase
before--spiritual miscegenation. A rattle-brained boy, with the
connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance
with a person inferior to him in every point of view--birth, breeding,
station, culture, wealth--a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad
to relinquish her so-called rights for a sum of money. Can that, I ask
you, be called a _marriage?_ Can we suppose an all-wise God to have
joined two natures so ill-adapted, so mutually exclusive, so repellent
to each other after that first glamour is past. Really, such a
supposition is not only puerile but irreverent. It is the conventional
supposition, I grant, and theoretically, the unvarying supposition of
the Church; but God has given us reasoning powers to use fearlessly--not
to be kept superstitiously in the shackles of any tradition whatsoever.
Why, the very Church itself from its founding is an example of the
wisdom of violating tradition when it shall seem meet--it has always had
to do this."
"I see, Allan--every case must be judged by itself; every marriage
requires a special ruling--"
"Well--er--exactly--only don't get to fancying that you could solve
these problems. It's difficult enough for a priest."
"Oh, I'm positive a mere woman couldn't grapple with them--she hasn't
the mind to! All she is capable of is to choose who shall think for
her."
"And of course it would hardly do to announce that I had counselled a
certain procedure of divorce and re-marriage--no matter how flagrant the
abuse, nor how obvious the spiritual equity of the step. People at large
are so little analytical."
"'Flexible,' Mr. Browett told his sister you were. He was right--you
_are_ flexible, Allan--more so than I ever suspected."
"Nance--you _please_ me--you are a good girl. Now I'm going up to
Bernal. Bernal certainly pleases me. Of course I shall do the handsome
thing by him if he acts along the lines our talk has indicated."
She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had taken two hours
before, when Aunt Bell came in, dressed for dinner.
"Mercy, child! Do you know how late it is?"
"What did you say, Aunt Bell?"
"I say do you know how late it is?"
"Oh--not too late!"
"Not too late--for what?"
There was a pause, then she said: "Aunt Bell, when a woman comes to make
her very last effort at self-deception, why does she fling herself into
it with such abandon--such pretentious flourishes of remorse--and
things? Is it because some under layer of her soul knows it will be the
last and will have it a thorough test? I wonder how much of an arrant
fraud a woman may really be to herself, even in her surest, happiest
moments."
"There you are again, wondering, wondering--instead of accepting things
and dressing for dinner. Have you seen Allan?"
"Oh, yes--I've been seeing him for three days--through a glass, darkly."
Aunt Bell flounced on into the library, trailing something perilously
near a sniff.
Bernal came down the stairs and stood in the door.
"Well, Nance!" He went to stand before her and she looked up to him.
There was still light enough to see his eyes--enough to see, also, that
he was embarrassed.
"Well--I've had quite a talk with Allan." He laughed a little
constrained, uneasy laugh, looking quickly at her to see if she might be
observing him. "He's the same fine old chap, isn't he?" Quickly his eyes
again sought her face. "Yes, indeed, he's the same old boy--a great old
Allan--only he makes me feel that I have changed, Nance."
She arose from her chair, feeling cramped and restless from sitting so
long.
"I'm sure you haven't changed, Bernal."
"Oh, I must have!"
He was looking at her very closely through the dusk.
"Yes, we had an interesting talk," he said again.
He reached out to take one of her hands, which he held an instant in
both his own. "He's a rare old Allan, Nance!"