Dare left Slumberleigh Hall early the following morning, and drove up to
the rectory on his way to Vandon. After being closeted with Mr. Alwynn
in the study for a short time, they both came out and drove away
together. Ruth, invisible in her own room with a headache, her only
means of defence against Mrs. Alwynn's society, heard the coming and the
going, and was not far wrong in her surmise that Dare had come to beg
Mr. Alwynn to accompany him to Vandon--being afraid to face alone the
mysterious enemy intrenched there.
No conversation was possible in the dog-cart, with the groom on the back
seat thirsting to hear any particulars of the news which had spread like
wildfire from Vandon throughout the whole village the previous
afternoon, and which was already miraculously flying from house to house
in Slumberleigh this morning, as things discreditable do fly among a
Christian population, which perhaps "thinks no evil," but repeats it
nevertheless.
There was not a servant in Dare's modest establishment who was not on
the lookout for him on his return. The gardener happened to be tying up
a plant near the front door; the house-maids were watching unobserved
from an upper casement; the portly form of Mrs. Smith, the house-keeper,
was seen to glide from one of the unused bedroom windows; the butler
must have been waiting in the hall, so prompt was his appearance when
the dog-cart drew up before the door.
Another pair of keen black eyes was watching too, peering out through
the chinks between the lowered Venetian blinds in the drawing-room; was
observing Dare intently as he got out, and then resting anxiously on his
companion. Then the owner of the eyes slipped away from the window, and
went back noiselessly to the fire.
Dare ordered the dog-cart to remain at the door, flung down his hat on
the hall-table, and, turning to the servant who was busying himself in
folding his coat, said, sharply, "Where is the--the person who arrived
here yesterday?"
The man replied that "she" was in the drawing-room. The drawing-room
opened into the hall. Dare led the way, suppressed fury in his face,
looking back to see whether Mr. Alwynn was following him. The two men
went in together and shut the door.
The enemy was intrenched and prepared for action.
Mrs. Dare, as we must perforce call her for lack of any other
designation rather than for any right of hers to the title, was seated
on a yellow brocade ottoman, drawn up beside a roaring fire, her two
smart little feet resting on the edge of the low brass fender, and a
small work-table at her side, on which an elaborate medley of silks and
wools was displayed. Her attitude was that of a person at home,
aggressively at home. She was in the act of threading a needle when Dare
and Mr. Alwynn came in, and she put down her work at once, carefully
replacing the needle in safety, as she rose to receive them, and held
out her hand, with a manner the assurance of which, if both men had not
been too much frightened to notice it, was a little overdone.
Dare disregarded her gesture of welcome, and she sat down again, and
returned to her work, with a laugh that was also a little overdone.
"What do you mean by coming here?" he said, his voice hoarse with a
furious anger, which the sight of her seemed to have increased a
hundred-fold.
"Because it is my proper place," she replied, tossing her head, and
drawing out a long thread of green silk; "because I have a right to
come."
"You lie!" said Dare, fiercely, showing his teeth.
"Lord, Alfred!" said Mrs. Dare, contemptuously, "don't make a scene
before strangers. We've had our tiffs before now, and shall have again,
I suppose. It's the natur' of married people to fall out; but there's no
call to carry on before friends. Push up that lounge nearer the fire.
Won't the other gentleman," turning to Mr. Alwynn, "come and warm
himself? I'm sure it's cold enough."
Mr. Alwynn, who was a man of peace, devoutly wished he were at home
again in his own study.
"It is a cold morning," he said; "but we are not here to discuss the
weather."
He stopped short. He had been hurried here so much against his will, and
so entirely without an explanation, that he was not quite sure what he
had come to discuss, or how he could best support his friend.
"What do you want?" said Dare, in the same suppressed voice, without
looking at her.
"My rights," she said, incisively; "and, what's more, I mean to have
'em. I've not come over from America for nothing, I can tell you that;
and I've not come on a visit neither. I've come to stay."
"What are these rights you talk of?" asked Mr. Alwynn, signing to Dare
to restrain himself.
"As his wife, sir. I am his wife, as I can prove. I didn't come without
my lines to show. I didn't come on a speculation, to see if he'd a fancy
to have me back. No, afore I set my foot down anywheres I look to see as
it's solid walking."
"Show your proof," said Mr. Alwynn.
The woman ostentatiously got out a red morocco letter case, and produced
a paper which she handed to Mr. Alwynn.
It was an authorized copy of a marriage register, drawn out in the usual
manner, between Alfred Dare, bachelor, English subject, and Ellen, widow
of the late Jaspar Carroll, of Neosho City, Kansas, U.S.A. The marriage
was dated seven years back.
The names of Dare and Carroll swam before Mr. Alwynn's eyes. He glanced
at the paper, but he could not read it.
"Is this a forgery, Dare?" he asked, holding it towards him.
"No," said Dare, without looking at it; "it is right. But that is not
all. Now," turning to the woman, who was watching him triumphantly,
"show the other paper--the divorce."
"I made inquiries about that," she replied, composedly. "I wasn't going
to be fooled by that 'ere, so I made inquiries from one as knows. The
divorce is all very well in America; but it don't count in England."
Dare's face turned livid. Mr. Alwynn's flushed a deep red. He sat with
his eyes on the ground, the paper in his hand trembling a little.
Indignation against Dare, pity for him, anxiety not to judge him
harshly, struggled for precedence in his kind heart, still beating
tumultuously with the shock of Dare's first admission. He felt rather
than saw him take the paper out of his hand.
"I shall keep this," Dare said, putting it in his pocket-book; and then,
turning to the woman again, he said, with an oath, "Will you go, or will
you wait till you are turned out?"
"I'll wait," she replied, undauntedly. "I like the place well enough."
She laughed and took up her work, and, after looking at her for a
moment, he flung out of the room, followed by Mr. Alwynn.
The defeat was complete; nay, it was a rout.
The dog-cart was still standing at the door. The butler was talking to
the groom; the gardener was training some new shoots of ivy against the
stone balustrade.
Dare caught up his hat and gloves, and ordered that his portmanteau,
which had been taken into the hall, should be put back into the
dog-cart. As it was being carried down he looked at his watch.
"I can catch the mid-day express for London," he said. "I can do it
easily."
Mr. Alwynn made no reply.
"Get in," continued Dare, feverishly; "the portmanteau is in."
"I think I will walk home," said Mr. Alwynn, slowly. It gave him
excruciating pain to say anything so severe as this; but he got out the
words nevertheless.
Dare looked at him in astonishment.
"Get in," he said again, quickly. "I must speak to you. I will drive you
home. I have something to say."
Mr. Alwynn never refused to hear what any one had to say. He went slowly
down the steps, and got into the cart, looking straight in front of him,
as his custom was when disturbed in mind. Dare followed.
"I shall not want you, James," he said to the groom, his foot on the
step.
At this moment the form of Mrs. Smith, the house-keeper, appeared
through the hall door, clothed in all the awful majesty of an upper
servant whose dignity has been outraged.
"Sir," she said, in a clear not to say a high voice, "asking your
pardon, sir, but am I, or am I not, to take my orders from--"
Goaded to frenzy, Dare poured forth a volley of horrible oaths French
and English, and, seizing up the reins, drove off at a furious rate.
The servants remained standing about the steps, watching the dog-cart
whirl rapidly away.
"He's been to church with her," said the gardener, at last. "I said all
along she'd never have come, unless she had her lines to show. I ha'n't
cut them white grapes she ordered yet; but I may as well go and do it."
"Well," said Mrs. Smith, "grapes or no grapes, I'll never give up the
keys of the linen cupboards to the likes of her, and I'm not going to
have any one poking about among my china. I've not been here twenty
years to be asked for my lists in that way, and the winter curtains
ordered out unbeknownst to me;" and Mrs. Smith retreated to the
fastnesses of the house-keeper's room, whither even the audacious enemy
had not yet ventured to follow her.
Meanwhile, Mr. Alwynn and Dare drove at moderated speed along the road
to Slumberleigh. For some time neither spoke.
"I beg your pardon," said Dare at last. "I lost my head. I became
enraged. Before a clergyman and a lady, I know well, it is not permitted
to swear."
"I can overlook that," said Mr. Alwynn; "but," turning very red again,
"other things I can't."
Dare began to flourish his whip, and become excited again.
"I will tell you all," he said with effusion--"every word. You have a
kind heart. I will confide in you."
"I don't want confidences," said Mr. Alwynn. "I want straight-forward
answers to a few simple questions."
"I will give them, these answers. I keep nothing back from a friend."
"Then, first. Did you marry that woman?"
"Yes," said Dare, shrugging his shoulders. "I married her, and often
afterwards, almost at once, I regretted it; but _que voulez-vous_, I was
young. I had no experience. I was but twenty-one."
Mr. Alwynn stared at him in astonishment at the ease with which the
admission was made.
"How long afterwards was it that you were divorced from her?"
"Two years. Two long years."
"For what reason?"
"Temper. Ah! what a temper. Also because I left her for one year. It was
in Kansas, and in Kansas it is very easy to marry, and also to be
divorced."
"It is a disgraceful story," said Mr. Alwynn, in great indignation.
"Disgraceful!" echoed Dare, excitedly. "It is more than disgraceful. It
is abominable. You do not know all yet. I will tell you. I was young; I
was but a boy. I go to America when I am twenty-one, to travel, to see
the world. I make acquaintances. I get into a bad set, what you call
undesirable. I fall in love. I walk into a net. She was pretty, a pretty
widow, all love, all soul; without friends. I protect her. I marry her.
I have a little money. I have five thousand pounds. She knew that. She
spent it. I was a fool. In a year it was gone." Dare's face had become
white with rage. "And then she told me why she married me. I became
enraged. There was a quarrel, and I left her. I had no more money. She
left me alone, and a year after we are divorced. I never see her or hear
of her again. I return to Europe. I live by my voice in Paris. It is
five years ago. I have bought my experience. I put it from my mind. And
now"--his hands trembled with anger--"now that she thinks I have money
again, now, when in some way she hears how I have come to Vandon, she
dares to came back and say she is my wife."
"Dare," said Mr. Alwynn, sternly, "what excuse have you for never
mentioning this before--before you became engaged to Ruth?"
"What!" burst out Dare, "tell Ruth! Tell _her_! _Quelle idée._ I would
never speak to her of what might give her pain. I would keep all from
her that would cause her one moment's grief. Besides," he added,
conclusively, "it is not always well to talk of what has gone before. It
is not for her happiness or mine. She has been, one sees it well,
brought up since a young child very strictly. About some things she has
fixed ideas. If I had told her of these things which are passed away and
gone, she might not,"--and Dare looked gravely at Mr. Alwynn--"she might
not think so well of me."
This view of the case was quite a new one to Mr. Alwynn. He looked back
at Dare with hopeless perplexity in his pained eyes. To one who
throughout life has regarded the supremacy of certain truths and
principles of actions as fixed, and recognized as a matter of course by
all the world, however imperfectly obeyed by individuals, the discovery
comes as a shock, which is at the moment overwhelming, when these same
truths and principles are seen to be entirely set aside, and their very
existence ignored by others.
Where there is no common ground on which to meet, speech is unavailing
and mere waste of time. It is like shouting to a person at a distance
whom it is impossible to approach. If he notices anything it will only
be that, for some reasons of your own, you are making a disagreeable
noise.
As Mr. Alwynn looked back at Dare his anger died away within him, and a
dull pain of deep disappointment and sense of sudden loneliness took its
place. Dare and he seemed many miles apart. He felt that it would be of
no use to say anything; and so, being a man, he held his peace.
Dare continued talking volubly of how he would get a lawyer's opinion at
once in London; of his certainty that the American wife had no claim
upon him; of how he would go over to America, if necessary, to establish
the validity of his divorce; but Mr. Alwynn heard little or nothing of
what he said. He was thinking of Ruth with distress and
self-upbraiding. He had been much to blame, of course.
Dare's mention of her name recalled his attention.
"She is all goodness," he was saying. "She believes in me. She has
promised again that she will marry me--since yesterday. I trust her as
myself; but it is a grief which as little as possible must trouble her.
You will not say anything to her till I come back, till I return with
proof that I am free, as I told her? You will say nothing?"
Dare had pulled up at the bottom of the drive to the rectory.
"Very well," said Mr. Alwynn, absently, getting slowly out. He seemed
much shaken.
"I will be back perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow morning," called
Dare after him.
But Mr. Alwynn did not answer.
* * * * *
Dare's business took him a shorter time than he expected, and the same
night found him hurrying back by the last train to Slumberleigh. It was
a wild night. He had watched the evening close in lurid and stormy
across the chimneyed wastes of the black country, until the darkness
covered all the land, and wiped out even the last memory of the dead day
from the western sky.
Who, travelling alone at night, has not watched the glimmer of light
through cottage windows as he hurries past; has not followed with
keenest interest for one brief second the shadow of one who moves
within, and imagination picturing a mysterious universal happiness
gathered round these twinkling points of light, has not experienced a
strange feeling of homelessness and loneliness?
Dare sat very still in the solitude of the empty railway carriage, and
watched the little fleeting, mocking lights with a heavy heart. They
meant _homes_, and he should never have a home now. Once he saw a door
open in a squalid line of low houses, and the figure of a man with a
child in his arms stand outlined in the door-way against the ruddy light
within. Dare felt an unreasoning interest in that man. He found himself
thinking of him as the train hurried on, wondering whether his wife was
there waiting for him, and whether he had other children besides the one
he was carrying. And all the time, through his idle musings, he could
hear one sentence ringing in his ears, the last that his lawyer had said
to him after the long consultation of the afternoon.
"I am sorry to tell you that you are incontestably a married man."
Everything repeated it. The hoofs of the cab-horse that took him to the
station had hammered it out remorselessly all the way. The engine had
caught it up, and repeated it with unvarying, endless iteration. The
newspapers were full of it. When Dare turned to them in desperation he
saw it written in large letters across the sham columns. There was
nothing but that anywhere. It was the news of the day. Sick at heart,
and giddy from want of food, he sat crouched up in the corner of his
empty carriage, and vaguely wished the train would journey on for ever
and ever, nervously dreading the time when he should have to get out and
collect his wandering faculties once more.
The old lawyer had been very kind to the agitated, incoherent young man
whose settlements he was already engaged in drawing up. At first,
indeed, it had seemed that the marriage would not be legally
binding--the marriage and divorce having both taken place in Kansas,
where the marriage laws are particularly lax--and he seemed inclined to
be hopeful; but as he informed himself about the particulars of the
divorce his face became grave and graver. When at last Dare produced the
copy of the marriage register, he shook his head.
"'Alfred Dare, bachelor and English subject,'" he said. "That 'English
subject' makes a difficulty to start with. You had never, I believe, any
intention of acquiring what in law we call an American domicil? and,
although the technicalities of this subject are somewhat complicated, I
am afraid that in your case there is little, if any, doubt. The English
courts are very jealous of any interference by foreigners with the
status of an Englishman; and though a divorce legally granted by a
competent tribunal for an adequate cause might--I will not say would--be
held binding everywhere, there can be no doubt that where in the eyes of
our law the cause is _not_ adequate, our courts would refuse to
recognize it. Have you a copy of the register of divorce as well?"
"No."
"It is unfortunate; but no doubt you can remember the grounds on which
it was granted."
"Incompatibility of temper, and she said I had deserted her. I had left
her the year before. We both agreed to separate."
The lawyer shook his head.
"What's incompatibility?" he said. "What's a year's absence? Nothing in
the eyes of an Englishman. Nothing in the law of this country."
"But the divorce was granted. It was legal. There was no question,"
said Dare, eagerly. "I was divorced in the same State as where I
married. I had lived there more than a year, which was all that was
necessary. No difficulty was made at the time."
"No. Marriage is slipped into and slipped out of again with gratifying
facility in America, and Kansas is notorious for the laxity prevailing
there as regards marriage and divorce. It will be advisable to take the
opinion of counsel on the matter, but I can hold out very little hope
that your divorce would hold good, even in America. You see, you are
entered as a British subject on the marriage register, and I imagine
these words must have been omitted in the divorce proceedings, or some
difficulty would have been raised at the time, unless your residence in
Kansas made it unnecessary. But, even supposing by American law you are
free, that will be of no avail in England, for by the law of England,
which alone concerns you, I regret to be obliged to tell you that you
are incontestably a married man."
And in spite of frantic reiterations, of wild protests on the part of
Dare, as if the compassionate old man represented the English law, and
could mould it at his pleasure, the lawyer's last word remained in
substance the same, though repeated many times.
"Whether you are at liberty or not to marry again in America, I am
hardly prepared to say. I will look into the subject and let you know;
but in England I regret to repeat that you are a married man."
Dare groaned in body and in spirit as the words came back to him; and
his thoughts, shrinking from the despair and misery at home, wandered
aimlessly away, anywhere, hither and thither, afraid to go back, afraid
to face again the desolation that sat so grim and stern in solitary
possession.
The train arrived at Slumberleigh at last, and he got out, and shivered
as the driving wind swept across the platform. It surprised him that
there was a wind, although at every station down the line he had seen
people straining against it. He gave up his ticket mechanically, and
walked aimlessly away into the darkness, turning with momentary
curiosity to watch the train hurry on again, a pillar of fire by night,
as it had been a pillar of smoke by day.
He passed the blinking station inn, forgetting that he had put up his
dog-cart there to await his return, and, hardly knowing what he did,
took from long habit the turn for Vandon.
It was a wild night. The wind was driving the clouds across the moon at
a tremendous rate, and sweeping at each gust flights of spectre leaves
from the swaying trees. It caught him in the open of the bare high-road,
and would not let him go. It opposed him, and buffeted him at every
turn; but he held listlessly on his way. His feet took him, and he let
them take him whither they would. They led him stumbling along the dim
road, the dust of which was just visible like a gray mist before him,
until he reached the bridge by the mill. There his feet stopped of their
own accord, and he went and leaned against the low stone-wall, looking
down at the sudden glimpses of pale hurried water and trembling reed.
The moon came out full and strong in temporary victory, and made black
shadows behind the idle millwheel and open mill-race, and black shadows,
black as death, under the bridge itself. Dare leaned over the wall to
watch the mysterious water and shadow run beneath. As he looked, he saw
the reflection of a man in the water watching him. He shook his fist
savagely at it, and it shook its fist amid a wavering of broken light
and shadow back at him. But it did not go away; it remained watching
him. There was something strange and unfamiliar about the river
to-night. It had a voice, too, which allured and repelled him--a voice
at the sound of which the grim despair within him stirred ominously at
first, and then began slowly to rise up gaunt and terrible; began to
move stealthily, but with ever-increasing swiftness through the deserted
chambers of his heart.
No strong abiding principle was there to do battle with the enemy. The
minor feelings, sensibilities, emotions, amiable impulses, those
courtiers of our prosperous days, had all forsaken him and fled. Dare's
house in his hour of need was left unto him desolate.
And the river spoke in a guilty whisper, which yet the quarrel of the
wind and the trees could not drown, of deep places farther down, where
the people were never found, people who--But there were shallows, too,
he remembered, shallow places among the stones where the trout were. If
anybody were drowned, Dare thought, gazing down at the pale shifting
moon in the water, he would be found there, perhaps, or at any rate, his
hat--he took his hat off, and held it tightly clinched in both his
hands--his hat would tell the tale.