After this extraordinary and terrible event there were a great many
conferences and explanations, which did little good as may be understood.
Dick's life--the part of it which had passed during his absence, the
wanderyear which had brought such painful consequences--was laid entirely
open, both to his own family and all the Warrenders. There was nothing
in it to be ashamed of--still he had wanted to keep that episode to
himself, and the consequence, of course, was that every detail became
known. He had thrown himself into the wild, disorderly population on the
edge of civilisation: people who lived out of reach of law, and so long
as they were not liable to the tribunal of Judge Lynch, did no harm in
the eyes of the community. There he had fallen in love, being clean and
of pure mind, and disposed to think everybody like himself, and married
in haste--a girl whom his tiresome proprieties had wearied at once, and
who did not in the most rudimentary way comprehend what to him was the
foundation of life. He shuddered, but could give no coherent account of
that time. She left him, inclosing him her "marriage lines" and a paper
declaring him to be free. And from that time until she had been brought
face to face with him in the vestry he had never seen her again. His old
father, whom Dick had been anxious to spare from any annoyance, and who
was too old to be present at the wedding, had to be called forth from
his retirement to hear the whole story; his eldest brother, who was
abroad, hurried home, to know what was meant by the paragraphs in the
papers, and what it was all about. No particular of bitterness was
spared to the unfortunate young man; the particulars of his conduct
were discussed at every dinner-party. Had there been collusion? had he
known all the time that the woman was not dead? Society did not quite
understand the want of accordance with conventional rules that had been
shown by everybody concerned. The wicked wife ought to have planned
this villainous trick as a way of vengeance against him: whereas it was
evident that she had meant only kindness, abandoned creature as she was.
And the poor bride, the unfortunate Miss Warrender, should with all her
family have sworn everlasting feud with him, whereas it was known that
Chatty took his part, and would say nothing but that they were very
unfortunate both. Women should not act like this, they should fly at
each other's throats, they should tear each other to pieces.
But if Chatty (backed up by her mother, it was said) showed undue
indulgence, this was not the case with her brother and sister. Theo's
keen temper had taken up and resented the whole matter almost with
violence. He had not only treated Cavendish, and the Cavendishes
generally, who were more important than the individual Dick, with
harsh contumely and enmity, refusing to hear any excuse, and taking
the occurrence as an insult to himself: but he had quarrelled with his
mother, who was disposed to forgive, and with still more vehemence with
Chatty, who made no pretence of any wrath, but believed Dick's story
fully, and would not hear anything against him. Chatty had a soft
obstinacy about her which nobody had known till now. She had not broken
down, nor hidden herself from her family, nor taken any shame to
herself. She had even received him, against the advice of everybody, in
a long interview, hearing everything over again, and fully, from his own
lips, and had kissed him (it was whispered) at parting, while her mother
and his sister looking on could do nothing but cry. There began after a
while to be many people who sympathised with these two unhappy lovers--who
were not so unhappy either, because they understood and had faith in each
other. But Theo made an open quarrel with his mother and sister after
this meeting. He was furious against both of them, and even against his
wife when it became known that she had gone to see and sympathise with
them. Warrender declared that he would consider any man his enemy who
spoke to him of Cavendish. He was furious with everything and everybody
concerned. He said that he had been covered with shame, though how no
one could tell. Lady Markland, who also was on the side of Dick, was
helpless to restrain her young husband. She too, poor lady, began to
feel that her lot was not one of unmixed good, nor her bed of roses.
Though the force of events had carried Theo over all the first drawbacks
to their marriage, he had never recovered the bitterness and exasperation
which these had given. He had not forgiven her, though he adored her,
for being still Lady Markland, and though he lived at Markland with her,
yet it was under a perpetual protest, to which in moments of excitement
he sometimes gave utterance, but which even in silence she was always
conscious of. His smouldering discontent burst forth on the occasion
given him by this _mariage manque_. The rage that filled him was not
called forth by Dick Cavendish alone. It was the outflow of all the
discontents and annoyances of his life.
And Minnie's outraged virtue was almost more rampant still. That Eustace
should have any connection with a scandal which had even got into the
newspapers, that a girl who was his sister-in-law should have got herself
talked about, was to Minnie a wrong which blazed up to heaven. "For
myself, I should not have minded," she said, "at least, however much I
minded I should have said as little as possible; but when I think that
Eustace has been made a gazing-stock to all the world through me--oh,
you may think it extravagant, but I don't. Of course, he has been made a
gazing-stock. 'Brother-in-law to _that_ Miss Warrender, you know'--that
is how people talk, as if it could possibly be his fault. I am sure he
bears it like an angel. All he has ever said, even to me, is, 'Minnie, I
wish we had looked into things a little more beforehand,' and what could
I say? I could only say you were all so headstrong, you would have your
own way."
"Next time he says so, you will perhaps refer him to me, Minnie. I think
I shall be able to answer Mr. Thynne!"
"Oh," cried Minnie, "by making a quarrel! I know your way of answering,
mamma. I tell Eustace if I had been at home it never, never could have
happened. I never cared about that man from the first. There was always
something in the look of his eyes: I told Eustace before anything
happened--something about the corner of his eyes. I did not like it when
I heard you had seen so much of him in town. And Eustace said then, 'I
hope your mother has made all the necessary inquiries.' I did not like
to say: 'Oh, mamma never makes any inquiries!' but I am sure I might
have said so. And this is what it has come to! Chatty's ruin,--yes, it
is Chatty's ruin, whatever you may say. Who will ever look at her,--a
girl who has been married and yet isn't married? She will never find any
one. She will just have to live with you, like two old cats in a little
country town, as Eustace says."
"If Mr. Thynne calls your mother an old cat, you should have better
taste than to repeat it," said Mrs. Warrender; "I hope he is not so
vulgar, Minnie, nor you so heartless."
"Vulgar! Eustace! The Thynnes are just the best bred people in the
world. I don't know what you mean. A couple of old ladies living in a
little place, and gossiping about everything,--everybody has the same
opinion. And this is just what it comes to, when no attention is paid.
And they say you have actually let him come here, let Chatty meet him,
to take away every scrap of respect that people might have had. He never
heard of such a mistake, Eustace says, it shows such a want of knowledge
of the world."
"This is going too far, Minnie; understand, once for all, that what
Eustace Thynne says is not of the least importance to me, and that I
think his comments most inappropriate. Poor Dick is going off to
California to-morrow. He is going to get his divorce."
Minnie gave a scream which made the thinly built London house ring, and
clasped her hands. "A DIVORCE!" she cried; "it only wanted this. Eustace
said that was what it would come to. And you would let your daughter
marry a man who has been divorced!"
Minnie spoke in such a tone of injured majesty that Mrs. Warrender was
almost cowed, for it cannot be denied that this speech struck an echo
in her own heart. The word was a word of shame. She did not know how to
answer; that her Chatty, her child who had come so much more close to
her of late, should be placed in any position which was not of good
report, that the shadow of any stain should be upon her simple head,
was grievous beyond all description to her mother. And she was far
from being an emancipated woman. She had all the prejudices, all the
diffidences of her age and position. Her own heart cried out against
this expedient with a horror which she had done her best to overcome.
For the first time she faltered and hesitated as she replied--
"There can be no hard-and-fast rule; our Lord did not do it, and how can
we? It is odious to me as much as to any one. But what would you have
him do? He cannot take that wretched creature, that poor unhappy girl."
"You mean that shameless, horrible thing, that abandoned----"
"There must be some good in her," said Mrs. Warrender, with a shudder.
"She had tried to do what she could to set him free. It was not her
fault if it proved more than useless. I can't prolong this discussion,
Minnie. Eustace and you can please yourselves by making out your
fellow-creatures to be as bad as possible. To me it is almost more
terrible to see the good in them that might, if things had gone
differently---- But that is enough. I am going to take Chatty away."
"Away! where are you going to take her? For goodness' sake don't: they
will think you are going after him--they will say----"
"I am glad you have the grace to stop. I am going to take her abroad. If
she can be amused a little and delivered from herself---- At all events,"
said Mrs. Warrender, "we shall be free from the stare of the world, which
we never did anything to attract."
"Going away?" Minnie repeated. "Oh, I think, and I am sure Eustace would
say, that you ought not to go away. You should live it down. Of course
people will blame _you_, they must, I did myself: but after all that is
far better than to be at a place abroad where everybody would say, Oh,
do you know who that is? that is Mrs. Warrender, whose eldest daughter
married one of the Thynnes, whose youngest was the heroine of _that_
story, you know about the marriage. Oh, mamma, this is exactly what
Eustace said he was afraid you would do. For goodness' sake don't! stay
at home and live it down. We shall all stand by you," said Minnie. "I am
sure Frances will do her very best, and though Eustace is a clergyman
and ought always to show an example, yet in the case of such near
relations--we----"
Mrs. Warrender only turned her back upon these generous promises, walking
away without any answer or remark. She was too angry to say anything:
and to think that there was a germ of reality in it all, a need of some
one to stand by them, a possibility that Chatty might be a subject for
evil tongues, made Chatty's mother half beside herself. It seemed more
than she could bear. But Chatty took it all very quietly. She was absorbed
in the story, more entertaining than any romance, which was her own
story. No thought of what divorce was, or of anything connected with it,
disturbed her mind. What Dick had to do seemed to her natural: perhaps
anything he had done in the present extraordinary crisis would have
seemed to her natural. He was going to put things right. She did not
think much for the moment what the means of doing so were, nor what in
the meantime her own position was. She had no desire to make any mystery
of it, to conceal herself, or what had happened. There was no shame in
it so far as Chatty knew. There was a dreadful, miserable mistake. She
was "very sorry for us both," but for herself less than for Dick, who
had suffered, she said to herself, far more than she, for though he had
done no wrong, he had to bear all the penalties of having done wrong,
whereas in her own case there was no question of blame. Chatty was so
much absorbed in Dick that she did not seem to have time to realise her
own position. She did not think of herself as the chief sufferer. She
fell back into the calm of the ordinary life without a murmur, saying
little about it. With her own hands she packed up all the new dresses,
the wealth of the pretty trousseau. She was a little pale, and yet she
smiled. "I wonder if I shall ever have any need for these," she said,
smoothing down the silken folds of the dresses with a tender touch.
"I hope so, my dear, when poor Dick comes back."
Then Chatty's smile gave way to a sigh. "They say human life is so
uncertain, mamma, but I never realised it till now. You cannot tell what
a day may bring forth. But it very, very seldom happens, surely, that
there are such changes as this. I never heard of one before."
"No, my darling, it is very rare: but oh, what a blessing, Chatty, that
it was found out at once, before you had gone away!"
"Yes, I suppose it was a blessing; perhaps it would have been wrong, but
I should never have left him, mamma, had we gone away."
"Oh, do not let us think of that; you were mercifully saved, Chatty."
"On my wedding day! I never heard that such a thing ever happened to a
girl before. The real blessing is that Dick had done nothing wrong. That
comforts me most of all."
"I don't know, Chatty. He ought perhaps to have taken better care: at
all events he ought to have let people know that he was a--that he was
not an unmarried man."
Chatty trembled a little at these words. She did not like him to be
blamed, but so far as this was concerned she could not deny that he was
in the wrong. It was the foundation of all. Had it been known that he
was or had been married, she would not have given him her love. But at
this Chatty flushed deep, and felt that it was a cruel suggestion. To
find that she was not married was an endless pain to her, which still
she could scarcely understand. But not to have loved him! Poor Dick! To
have done him that wrong over and above all the rest, he who had been so
much wronged and injured! No, no, neither for him nor for herself could
it be anything but profane to wish that. Not to have loved him! Chatty's
life seemed all to sink into gray at the thought.
"At all events," she said, returning to those easier outsides of things
in which the greatest events have a humble covering, and looking again
at her pretty gowns, "they can wait, poor things, to see what will
happen. If it should so be, as that it never comes right----"
"Oh, Chatty, my poor dear."
"Life seems so uncertain," said Chatty, in her new-born wisdom. "It is
so impossible to tell what may happen, or what a day may bring forth. I
think I never can be very sure of anything now. And if it never should
come right, they shall just stay in the boxes, mother. I could not have
the heart to wear them." She put her hand over them caressingly, and
patted and pressed them down into the corners. "It seems a little sad
to see them there, doesn't it, mamma, and I in my old gray frock?" The
tears were in her eyes, but she looked up at Mrs. Warrender with a little
soft laugh at herself, and at the little tragedy, or at least the
suspended drama, laid up with something that was half pathetic, half
ludicrous, in the wedding clothes.
Chatty suffered herself to be taken abroad without any very strong
opinion of her own. She would have been content to adopt Minnie's way,
to go back to Highcombe and "live it down," though indeed she was
unconscious of scandal, or of the necessity of living down anything.
There were some aspects of the case in which she would have preferred
that,--to live on quietly day by day, looking for news of him, expecting
what was to come. But there was much to be said on the other hand for
her mother's plan, and Chatty now, as at all times, was glad to do what
pleased her mother. They went off accordingly when the early November
gales were blowing, not on any very original plan, to places where a
great many people go, to the Riviera, where the roses were still blowing
with a sort of soft patience which was like Chatty. And thus strangely
out of nature, without any habitual cold, or frost, or rain, or anything
like what they were used to, that winter which had begun with such very
different intentions glided quietly away. Of course they met people
now and then who knew their story, but there were also many who did
not know: ladies from the country, such as abound on the Riviera, who
fortunately did not think a knowledge of London gossip essential to
salvation, and who thought Miss Warrender must be delicate, her colour
changed so from white to red. But as it is a sort of duty to be delicate
on the Riviera and robust persons are looked down upon, they did very
well, and the days, so monotonous, so bright, with so little in them,
glided harmlessly away. Dick wrote not very often, but yet now and then,
which was a thing Minnie had protested against, but then, mamma, Mrs.
Eustace Thynne said, _had_ always "her own ways of thinking," and if she
permitted it, what could any one say?