PAST PARDON
Patience and sweetness of disposition may not only be driven beyond
endurance; they may be knocked outside in, knocked into their own
antitheses. And one need not go to crime or even to sin to find
offences which no amount of abstract angelicalness could readily
forgive or ever forget. It is a sufficiently bad offence, if not an
actual iniquity, to bring well-to-do people into public derision
through an act of flagrant thoughtlessness and unparalleled social
barbarity. But if the people are not only well-to-do, but well and
honourably known, and relatives by your marriage, who have been more
than kind to you, you could scarcely expect a facile pardon. Sincerity
apart, they would be more than mortal if they so much as pretended to
forgive you out of hand, and little less than divine if they did not
tell you at once what they thought of you, and thereafter ignore you
until time healed their wounds.
Woman of infinite sweetness though she was, Lady Bligh was mortal, not
divine; and she showed her clay by speaking very plainly indeed, as
the carriage swept out of the Park, and by speaking no more (to
Gladys) that day. A good deal of cant is current about people whose
anger is violent ('while it lasts'), but short-lived ('he gets over it
in a moment'); but it is difficult to believe in those people. If
there be just cause for wrath, with or without violence, it is not in
reason that you can be in a rollicking good humour the next minute.
That is theatrical anger, the anger of the heavy father. Lady Bligh,
with all her virtues, could nurse the genuine passion--an infant that
thrives at the breast. Indeed, it is probable that before the end of
the silent drive to Twickenham (Alfred never opened his clenched teeth
all the way) this thoroughly good woman positively detested the
daughter whom she had just learnt to love. For it is a fallacy to
suppose that the pepper-and-salt emotion of love and hatred in equal
parts is the prerogative of lovers; you will find it oftener in the
family.
What penitence Gladys had expressed had been lame--crippled by an
excuse. Moreover, her tone had lacked complete contrition. Indeed, if
not actually defiant, her manner was at least repellent. She had been
spoken to hotly; some of the heat was reflected; it was a hot moment.
As for her excuse, it, of course, was ridiculous--_qua_ excuse.
She had seen her oldest--indeed, her only--girl friend, Ada
Barrington. Ada (Gladys pronounced it 'Ida') was another squatter's
daughter; their fathers had been neighbours, more or less, for many
years; but Ada's father owned more stations than one, was a wealthy
man--in fact, a 'woollen king.' Gladys had known they were in Europe,
but that was all. And she had seen Ada cantering past, but Ada had not
seen her. So she had '_coo-ee'd_.' What else was there to be done?
Gladys did not exactly ask this question, but she implied it plainly.
As it happened, if she had not '_coo-ee'd_,' she never would have seen
Ada again, to a certainty; for the Barringtons had taken a place in
Suffolk, and were going down there the very next day. That was all.
Perhaps it was too much.
Silence ensued, and outlasted the long drive. What afterwards passed
between the young husband and wife did not, of course, transpire.
There was no further expression of regret than the very equivocal and
diluted apology comprehended in the Bride's excuses; indeed, Lady
Bligh and her daughter-in-law never spoke that night; nor did Alfred
attempt to mediate between them. As a matter of fact, his wife had
told him--with a recklessness that cut him to the heart--that, this
time, she neither expected nor deserved, nor so much as desired, any
one's forgiveness; that now she knew what she had feared before, that
she was hopeless; that--but the rest was wild talk.
Next morning, however, Alfred went to Lady Bligh with a letter, one
that Gladys had received by the early post. It was an invitation from
the Barringtons, the wording of which was sufficiently impulsive and
ill-considered. Ada besought her darling Gladys to go stay with them
in Suffolk immediately, on the following Saturday, and for as many
days as she could and would; and the invitation included the darling's
husband in a postscript.
'An extraordinary kind of invitation!' observed Lady Bligh, handing
back the letter.
'Ignorance,' said Alfred laconically.
'Did you meet the people out there?'
'Only this girl's brother; the others had been in Europe some time. I
thought him a very pleasant fellow, I remember, though his contempt
for me and for all "home" birds was magnificent.'
'Well,' said Lady Bligh, 'it is hardly the kind of invitation that
Gladys can accept. Is it?'
'She refuses to think of it,' Alfred answered, with a frown that
rather puzzled Lady Bligh. 'But I hope she will change her mind. I
wish her to go.'
His mother was silent for more than a minute. 'Does the letter say
Saturday?' she then inquired.
'Yes.' Alfred gazed steadily in his mother's face as though he would
search her inmost thoughts. 'Yes, it says Saturday. And it is on
Saturday that the Lord Chief is coming down to stay over Sunday, is it
not? I thought so. I very much wish I could induce her to go.'
'Not on that account, my boy, I hope?' Lady Bligh seemed slightly
embarrassed.
'Partly,' said Alfred, speaking firmly and distinctly, but not
without an effort; 'partly on that account, but by no means
altogether.'
'She could not go without you,' remarked Lady Bligh; 'and they do not
ask you civilly, to say the least of it.'
'She _could_ go without me,' returned Alfred emphatically. 'What's
more, I want her to. It's she that won't hear of it. These are quite
old and intimate friends of Gladys and her father. She might easily
spend a week with them alone, without me. Mother--I think she would
like it so, if only she would go! They are probably free-and-easy,
roughish folks, and it would do her good, a week with them. There
would be no restraints--nay, she has observed none here, God
knows!--but there there might be none to observe. She could do and say
what she liked. She would hurt no one's feelings. She would scandalise
no one. And--do you know what, mother?--I have got it into my head
that when she came back she would see the difference, and appreciate
your ways here more than she ever might otherwise. I have got it into
my head that one week of that kind, just now, would open her eyes for
good and all. And I think--there might be no more relapses! Yes, I
thought that before; but I was wrong, you see--after yesterday!
Besides, this week would bring us within a few weeks of Scotland; and,
after Scotland, we shall have our own little place to go to--I have
almost settled upon one. But if I went with her, restraint would go
with her too.'
His voice had broken more than once with emotion. He commanded it with
difficulty, and it became hard and unnatural. In this tone he added:--
'Besides--it would be more comfortable for every one if she were not
here with the Lord Chief Justice.'
'Do not say that--do not think that!' said Lady Bligh; but faintly,
because her heart echoed his sentiment.
'Oh, there's no disguising it--my wife's dynamite!' said Alfred, with
a short, harsh laugh. 'Only an explosion is worse at one time than at
another.' He went hastily from the room, neither of them having
referred more directly to the scandalous scene in the Park.
He went straight to his wife, to try once more to coax her into
accepting the Barringtons' invitation. But it was of no use. She
would not listen to him. She would go nowhere without her husband; she
should write that to Ada plainly.
Later in the morning, Lady Bligh, of her own deliberate design, came
in contact with her daughter-in-law. Gladys attempted escape. Lady
Bligh caught her by the hand.
'You are angry, Gladys!'
Gladys said nothing.
'I don't think _you_ are the one to be angry,' Lady Bligh said,
nettled by the other's sullen manner.
Gladys raised her eyes swiftly from the ground; they were filled with
bitterness. 'Haven't I a right to be what I like with myself?' she
cried. 'I am angry with no one else. But I shall never forgive
myself--no, nor I won't be forgiven either; I am hopeless! I feared it
before; now I know it. Let me go, Lady Bligh!'
She broke away, and found a quiet spot, by-and-by, among the trees by
the river.
'If only I were in _there_!' cried Gladys, out of the tumult of shame
and rebellion within her. 'In there--or else back in the Bush! And
one is possible and easy; and the other is neither!'
By a single grotesque act she had brought her happiness, and not hers
alone, to wreck and ruin!