IN THE EVENING
But this was a trial to search out every part of Rose's nature. She had
too much faith for sickness, death, or even terrible physical pain, to
be to her in any sense a poisoned wound. There are women like Rose whose
inner life can only be in peril from the pain and shame of the sin of
others. To them it is an intolerable agony to be troubled in their faith
in man.
Lady Charlton, swept out of the calm belonging to years of gentle
actions and ideal thoughts into a storm of indignation and horror, might
have lost all dignity and discretion if she had not been checked by
reverence for the dumb anguish and misery of her favourite daughter. She
had some notion of the thoughts that must pass in Rose's mind, now dull
and heavy, now alert and inflicting sudden deep incisions into the
quivering soul. Marriage had been to them both very sacred. They hated,
beyond most good women, anything that seemed to materialise or lower the
ideal. If there can be imagined a scale of standards for the relations
of men and women, of which Zola had not touched the extremity at one
end, the first place at the other extremity might be assigned to such
Englishwomen as Rose and her mother. The most subtle and amazingly high
motives had been assigned to Lord Charlton's most ordinary actions, and
happily he had been so ordinary a person that no impossible shock had
been given to the ideal built up about him. And it had not been
difficult or insincere to carry on something of the same illusion with
regard to the man who had won the Victoria Cross and had been very
popular with Tommy Atkins. David Bright's very reserves, the closed
doors in his domestic life, did not prevent, and indeed in some ways
helped, the process. The mother had known in the depth of her heart that
Rose was lonely, but then she was childless. Rose had never, even in
moments when the nameless mystery that was in her home oppressed her
most in its dull, voiceless way, tried to tell her mother what she did
not herself understand. Sir David had been courteous, gentle, attentive,
but never happy. Rose knew now that he had always been guiltily afraid.
Lady Charlton had had a few moments' warning of disaster, for she was
horrified at the change in Rose's face when she met her at the door of
the church after Evensong. She herself had been utterly soothed and
rested by the beauty of the service. There was so much that fitted in
with all her ideals in mourning the great soldier. Little phrases about
him and about Rose flitted through her mind. Widows were widows indeed
to Lady Charlton. Rose would live now chiefly for Heaven and to soothe
the sorrows of earth. She did not say to herself that Rose would not be
broken-hearted and crushed, nor did she take long views. If years hence
Rose were to marry again her mother could make another picture in which
Sir David would recede into the background. Now he was her hero whom
Rose mourned, and whose loss had consecrated her more entirely to
Heaven; then he would unconsciously become in her mother's eyes a much
older man whom Rose had married almost as a child. There would be
nothing necessarily to mar the new picture if all else were fitting.
But the peace of gentle sorrow had left Rose's face, and it wore a look
her mother had never seen on it before. The breath of evil was close
upon her; it had penetrated very near, so near that she seemed evil to
herself as it embraced her. She was too dazed, too confused to remember
that Divine purity had been enclosed in that embrace. What terrified her
most was the thought that had suddenly come that possibly the unknown
woman in Florence had been the real lawful wife, and that her own
marriage had been a sin, a vile pretence and horror. For the first time
in her life the grandest words of confidence that have expressed and
interpreted the clinging faith of humanity seemed an unreality. Rose had
never known the faintest temptation to doubt Providence before this
miserable evening. She resented with her whole being the idea that
possibly she had been the cause of the grossest wrong to an injured
wife. And there was ground in reason for such a fear, for it seemed
difficult to believe that any claim short of that of a wife could have
frightened Sir David into such a course. The other and more common view,
that it was because he had loved his mistress throughout, did not appeal
to her. Vice had for her few recognisable features; she had no map for
the country of passion, no precedents to refer to. It seemed to Rose
most probable that Sir David had believed his first wife to be dead
when he married her; that, on finding he was mistaken, his courage had
failed, and that he had carried on a gigantic scheme of bribery to
prevent her coming forward. This view was in one sense a degree less
painful, as it would make him innocent of the first great deception, the
huge lie of making love to her as if he were a free man. The depths and
extent of her misery could be measured by the strange sense of a bitter
gladness invading the very recesses of her maternal instinct, and
replacing what had been the heartfelt sorrow of six years. "It is a
mercy I have no child!" she cried, and the cry seemed to herself almost
blasphemous.
When she came out of the church it was raining, and the wind blowing. It
was only a short walk to her own house, and she and her mother had made
a rule not to take out servants and the carriage for their devotions.
She would have walked on in total silence, but her mother could not bear
the suspense.
"Rose, what is it?" she cried, in a tone of authority and intense
anxiety. After all it might be easier to answer now as they battled with
the rain.
"I don't know how to tell you, mother. Mr. Murray has been with me and
shown me the will. There was some one all the time who had some claim on
him. She may have been his real wife--I know nothing except that since
we have had John Steele's fortune David has always paid her an income
and now has left her a very great deal and me very little. That would
not matter--God knows it is not the poverty that hurts--but the thing
itself, the horror, the shame, the publicity. I mind it all, everything,
more than I ought. I----" She stopped, not a word more would come.
Lady Charlton could only make broken sounds of incredulous horror. When
they crossed the brilliantly lighted hall the mother suddenly seemed
much older, and Rose, for the first time, bore all the traces of a
great, an overpowering sorrow.
"It wasn't natural to be so calm," thought the maid, who had been with
her since her girlhood, as she helped her to take off her cloak. "She
didn't understand at first. It's coming over her now, poor dear, and
indeed he was a real gentleman, and such a husband! Never a harsh
word--not one--that I ever heard, at least."
It was some time before Lady Charlton could be brought to believe it
all, and then at first she was overwhelmed with self-blame. Her mind
fastened chiefly on the fact that she had allowed the marriage without
settlements. Then the next thought was the horror of the publicity, the
way in which this dreadful woman must be heard of and talked about. Lady
Charlton's broken sentences had almost the feebleness of extreme old age
that cannot accept as true what it cannot understand. "It seems
impossible, quite impossible," she said. She was very tired, and Rose
wished it had been practicable to keep this knowledge from her till
later. She knew that her mother was one of those highly-strung women
whose nerve power is at its best quite late at night. As it was, Lady
Charlton had to dress for dinner and sit as upright as usual through the
meal, and to talk a little before the servants. Rose appeared the more
dazed of the two then, though her mind had been quite clear before.
There was nothing said as soon as they were alone, but, as if with one
accord, both glanced at each of the many letters brought by the last
post, and, if it were one of condolence, laid it aside unread. The
butler had placed on a small table two evening papers, which had notices
of the memorial service for Sir David Bright, and one had some lines "In
Memoriam" from a poet of considerable repute. Rose, finding the papers
at her elbow, got up and changed her chair. It was not till they had
gone up to their rooms and parted that Lady Charlton felt speech to be
possible. She wrapped her purple dressing-gown round her and went into
Rose's room. She found her sitting in a low chair by the fire leaning
forward, her elbows pressed on her knees, her face buried in her hands.
Then, very quietly and impersonally, they discussed the situation. With
a rare self-command the mother never used one expression of reprobation;
if she had done so, Rose could not have spoken again. It seemed more and
more, as they spoke in the two gentle voices, so much alike in tone and
accent, in a half pathetic, half musical intonation; it seemed as they
sat so quietly without tears, almost without gestures, as if they
discussed the story of another woman and another man. There were some
differences in their views, and the mother's was ever the hardest on the
dead man. For instance, Rose believed through all that another will
existed, although she was convinced that she should never see it. Her
mother's judgment coincided with the lawyer's; the soldier would have
made the change, if it were made at all, before starting for the war.
No, the whole thing had been too recently gone into; it was so short a
time since the codicil had been added. Of that codicil, too, Lady
Charlton's view was quite clear. She thought the object of adding it had
been to save appearances. "As long as you live in this house, furnished
as well as possible, people will forget the wording of the will, or they
will think that money was given to you in his lifetime to escape the
death duties."
Like many idealists and even mystics, both mother and daughter took
sensible views on money matters. They did not undervalue the fortune
that had gone; they were both honestly sorry it had gone, and would have
taken any reasonable means to get it back again. Only Rose allowed that
possibly there might have been some claim in justice on the woman's
part; she could not frame her lips to use the words again. Without
"legal wife" or any such terms passing between them, they were really
arguing the point. Lady Charlton had not the faintest shadow of a doubt
"the woman was a wicked woman, and the wicked woman, as wicked women do,
had entrapped a" (the adjective was conspicuous by its absence) "a man."
Such a woman was to be forgiven, even--a bitter sigh could not be
suppressed--to be prayed for; but it was not necessary to try to take a
falsely charitable view of her, or invent unlikely circumstances in her
defence. It was a relief to the darkest of all dark thoughts in Rose's
mind, the doubt of the validity of her own marriage, to hear her mother
settling this question as she had settled so many questions years ago,
by the weight of personal authority.
At last the clock on the stairs below told them that it was two in the
morning, and Lady Charlton had to leave London by an early train. She
was torn between the claim of her youngest married daughter, who was
laid up in a lonely country house in Scotland, and that of Rose in this
new and miserable trouble.
"I could telegraph to Bertha that I can't come," she said suddenly.
"But I am afraid she would miss me."
"No, no," murmured Rose firmly, "Bertha needs you most now; you must
go," and then, fearing her mother might think she did not want her
quite, quite enough, "I shall look forward to your coming back soon,
very soon."
"Could you--could you come and sleep in my room, Rose?" They were
standing up by the fireplace now.
"If you like mother, only it will be worse for me to-morrow night." They
both looked away from the fire round the room--the room that had been
hers since the first days after the honeymoon.
Then at the same moment Lady Charlton opened her arms and Rose drew
within them, and leant her fair head on her mother's shoulder. So they
stood for a few moments in absolute stillness.
"God bless you, my child," and Rose was left, as she wished, alone.