Mrs. Warrender and her daughter came home in the early summer, having
lingered longer than they intended in the South. They had lingered for
one thing, because a long and strange interruption had occurred in the
letters from America. Dick had made them aware of his arrival there, and
of the beginning of his necessary business, into the details of which
naturally he did not enter. He had told them of his long journey, which
was not then so rapid as now, but meant long travelling in primitive
ways by waggons and on horseback, and also that he had found greater
delays and more trouble than he expected. In the spring he was still
lingering, investigating matters which he did not explain, but which
he said might very likely facilitate what he had to do and make the
conclusion more fortunate than he had anticipated. And then there came
a pause. They waited, expecting the usual communication, but it did
not come; they waited longer, thinking it might have been delayed by
accident, and finally returned home with hearts heavier than those with
which they went away. Theo came to meet them at the station, when they
arrived in London. He was there with his wife in the beginning of the
season. Mrs. Warrender's anxious looks, withdrawn for the moment from
Chatty, fell with little more satisfaction upon her son. He was pale
and thin, with that fretted look as of constant irritation which is
almost more painful to look at than the indications of sorrow. He put
aside with a little impatience her inquiries about himself. "I am well
enough,--what should be the matter with me? I never was an invalid that
I know of."
"You are not looking well, Theo. You are very thin. London does not
agree with you, I fear, and the late nights."
"I am a delicate plant to be incapable of late nights," he said, with a
harsh laugh.
"And how is Frances? I hope she does not do too much: and----"
"Come, mother, spare me the catalogue. Lady Markland is quite well, and
my Lord Markland, for I suppose it was he who was meant by your and----"
"Geoff, poor little fellow! he is at school, I suppose."
"Not a bit of it," said Warrender, with an ugly smile. "He is delicate,
you know. He has had measles or something, and has come home to his
mother to be nursed. There's a little too much of Geoff, mother; let us
be free of him here, at least. You are going to your old rooms?"
"Yes. I thought it might be a little painful: but Chatty made no
objection. She said indeed she would like it."
"Is she dwelling on that matter still?"
"Still, Theo! I don't suppose she will ever cease to dwell on it till it
comes all right."
"Which is very unlikely, mother. I don't give my opinion on the subject
of divorce. It's an ugly thing, however you take it; but a man who goes
to seek a divorce avowedly, with the intention of marrying again---- That
is generally the motive, I believe, at the bottom, but few are so bold as
to put it frankly on evidence."
"Theo! you forget Dick's position, which is so very peculiar. Could any
one blame him? What could he do otherwise? I hope I am not lax--and I
hate the very name of divorce as much as any one can: but what could he
do?"
"He could put up with it, I suppose, as other men have had to do--and be
thankful it is no worse."
"You are hard, Theo. I am sure it is not Frances that has taught you to
be so hard. Do you think that Chatty's life destroyed, as well as his own,
is so little? and no laws human or divine could bind him to--I don't
think I am lax," Mrs. Warrender cried, with the poignant consciousness
of a woman who has always known herself to be even superstitiously bound
to every cause of modesty, and who finds herself suddenly assailed as a
champion of the immoral. Her middle-aged countenance flushed with
annoyance and shame.
"No, I don't suppose you are lax," said Theo: but the lines in his
careworn forehead did not melt, and Chatty, who had been directing the
maid about the luggage, now came forward and stopped the conversation.
Warrender put his mother and sister into a cab, and promised to "come
round" and see them in the evening. After he had shut the door, he came
back and asked suddenly: "By the way, I suppose you have the last news
of Cavendish. How is he?"
"We have no news. Why do you ask? is he ill?"
"Oh, you don't know then?" said Warrender. "I was wondering. He is down
with fever, but getting better, I believe, getting better," he added
hurriedly, as Chatty uttered a tremulous cry. "They wrote to his people.
We were wondering whether you might not have heard."
"And no one thought it worth while to let us know!"
"Lady Horton thought if you did not know it was better to say nothing:
and that if you did it was unnecessary--besides, they are like me,
they think it is monstrous that a man should go off with an avowed
intention--they think in any case it is better to drop it altogether."
"Theo," said Chatty, in her soft voice, "can we hear exactly how he is?"
"He is better, he is going on well, he will get all right. But if you
should see Lady Horton----"
Lady Horton was Dick's elder and married sister, she who had stood by
him on the day that was to have been his wedding-day.
"I think we had better drive on now," Chatty said. And when Theo's
somewhat astonished face had disappeared from the window, and they were
rattling along over the stones, she suddenly said, "Do you think it should
have been--dropped altogether? Why should it be dropped altogether? I
seem to be a little bewildered--I don't --understand. Oh, mamma, I had
a presentiment that he was ill--ill and alone, and so far away."
"He is getting better, dear; he would think it best not to write to make
us anxious; probably he has been waiting on day by day. I will go to
Lady Horton to-morrow."
"And Lady Horton thinks it should be dropped altogether," said Chatty,
in a musing reflective tone. "She thinks it is monstrous--what is
monstrous? I don't--seem to understand."
"Let us not think of it till we get home, till we have a little calm
and--time."
"As if one could stop thinking till there is time!" said Chatty, with a
faint smile. "But I feel that this is a new light. I must think. What
must be dropped? Am not I married to him, mother?"
"Oh, my darling, if it had not been for that woman----"
"But that woman--my thoughts are all very confused. I don't understand
it: perhaps he is not married to me--but I have always considered that
I---- The first thing, however, is his health, mother. We must see at
once about that."
"Yes, dear; but there is nothing alarming in it, from what Theo says."
The rest of the drive was in silence. They rattled along the London
streets in all the brightness of the May evening, meeting people in
carriages going out to dinner, and the steady stream of passengers on
foot, coming from the parks, coming from the hundred amusements of the
new season. Chatty saw them all without seeing them; her mind was taken
up by a new strain of thought. She had taken it for granted that all was
natural, that Dick was doing the thing that it was right to do: and now
she suddenly found herself in an atmosphere of uncertainty to which she
was unaccustomed, and in which, for the moment, all her faculties seemed
paralysed. Was it monstrous? Ought it to have been dropped? She was so
much bewildered that she could not tell what to say.
Theo and his wife both "came round" in the evening; she with a fragile
look as of impaired health, and an air of watching anxiety which it was
painful to see. She seemed to have one eye upon Theo always, whatever
she was doing, to see that he was pleased, or at least not displeased.
It had been her idea to go to Lady Horton's on the way and bring the
last news of Dick. Much better, going on quite well, will soon be
allowed to communicate with his friends, was the bulletin which Lady
Markland took Chatty aside to give.
"He has not been able to write himself all the time. The people who have
taken care of him--rough people, but very kind, from all that can be
presumed--found his father's address, and sent him word. Otherwise for
six or seven weeks there has been nothing from himself."
This gave Chatty a little consolation. "Theo says--it is all wrong, that
it ought to be dropped," she said.
"Theo has become severe in his judgments, Chatty."
"Has he? he was always a little severe. He got angry"--Chatty did not
observe the look of recognition in Lady Markland's face, as of a fact
_connu_. She went on slowly: "I wish that you would give me your opinion.
I thought for a long time I was the first person to be thought of, and
that Dick must do everything that could be done to set us right. But now
it seems that is not the right view. Mamma hesitates,--she will not
speak. Oh, will you tell me what you think----!"
"About," said Lady Markland, faltering, "the divorce?"
"I don't seem to know what it means; that poor creature--do people think
she is--anything to him?"
"She is his wife, my dear."
"His--wife! But then I--am married to him."
"Dear Chatty, not except in form, a form which her appearance broke at
once."
Chatty began to tremble, as if with cold. "I shall always feel that I am
married to him. He may not be bound, but I am bound--till death do ye
part."
"My dear, all that was made as if it never had been said by the
appearance of the--wife."
Chatty shivered again, though the evening was warm. "That cannot be,"
she cried. "He may not be bound, but I am bound. I promised. It is an
oath before God."
"Oh, Chatty, it was all, all made an end of when that woman appeared.
You are not bound, you are free; and I hope, dear, when a little time
has passed----"
Chatty put up her hand with a cry. "Don't!" she said. "And do you
mean that he is bound to her?--oh, I am sorry for her, I am sorry for
her,--to one who has forsaken him and gone so far, so very far astray,
to one who has done things that cannot be borne, and not to me--by the
same words, the same words--which have no meaning to her, for she has
left him, she has never held by him, never; and not to me, who said them
with all my heart, and meant them with all my heart, and am bound by
them for ever and ever?" She paused a little, and the flush of vehemence
on her cheek and of light in her eye calmed down. "It is not just," she
said.
"Dear Chatty, it is very hard, harder than can be said."
"It is not just," said Chatty once more, her soft face falling into
lines in which Lady Markland saw a reflection of those which made Theo's
countenance so severe.
"So far as that goes, the law will release him. It would do so even here.
I do not think there is any doubt of that,--though Theo says,--but I
feel sure there is not any doubt."
"And though the law does release him," said Chatty, "and he comes back,
you will all say to me it must be dropped, that it is not right, that
he is divorced, that I must not marry him, though I have married him.
I know now what will happen. There will be Minnie and Theo,--and even
mamma will hesitate, and her voice will tremble. And I don't know if
I will have strength to hold out," she cried, with a sudden burst of
tears. "I have never struggled or fought for myself. Perhaps I may be a
coward. I may not have the strength. If they are all against me, and no
one to stand by me, perhaps I may be unjust too, and sacrifice him--and
myself."
This burst of almost inaudible passion from a creature so tranquil and
passive took Lady Markland altogether by surprise. Chatty, so soft, so
simple, so yielding, driven by cruel fate into a position so terrible,
feeling everything at stake, not only her happiness but the life already
spoiled and wasted of the man she loved, feeling too that on herself
would depend the decision of all that was to follow, and yet seized by
a prophetical terror, a fear which was tragic, lest her own habit of
submission should still overwhelm all the personal impulse, and sweep
away her very life. The girl's face, moved out of all its gentle
softness into the gravity almost stern which this consciousness brought,
was a strange sight.
"I do not count for much," said Lady Markland. "I cannot expect you to
think much of me, if your own sister, and your brother, and even your
mother, as you fear, are against you: but I will not be against you,
Chatty. So far as I can I will stand by you, if that will do you any
good."
"Oh yes, it will do me good," cried Chatty, clasping her hands; "it does
me good already to talk to you. You know I am not clever, I don't go
deep down into things," she added after a moment. "Minnie always said I
was on the surface: but I never thought until to-day, I never thought--I
have just been going on, supposing it was all right, that Dick could set
it all right. And now it has burst upon me. Perhaps after all mamma will
be on my side, and perhaps you will make Theo----" here she paused
instinctively, and looked at her sister-in-law, feeling in the haste and
rush of her own awakened spirit a sudden insight of which she had not
been capable before.
Lady Markland shook her head. She was a little sad, a little overcast,
not so assured in her gentle dignity, slightly nervous and restless,
which was unlike her. "You must not calculate on that," she said.
"Theo--has his own way of looking at things. It is right he should.
We would not wish him to be influenced by--by any one."
"But you are not--any one."
"No, indeed. I am no one, in that point of view. I am his wife, and
ought to take my views from him, not he his from me; and besides," she
said, with a little laugh, "I am, after all, not like an old acqu--not
like one he has known all his life, but comparatively new, and a stranger
to his ways of thinking--to any of his ways of thinking--and only learning
how he will look at this and that; you don't realise how that operates
even when people are married. Theo has very distinct views--which is
what he ought to have. The pity is that--I have lived so much alone--I
have too. It is a great deal better to be blank," she said, laughing
again. Her laugh was slightly nervous too, and it seemed to be intended
for Theo, whose conversation with his mother had now paused, and who was
occasionally glancing, not without suspicion, at his wife and sister
in the corner. Did she laugh to make him think that there was nothing
serious in their talk? She called to him to join them, making room upon
the sofa. "Chatty is tired," she said, "and out of spirits. I want to
try and amuse her a little, Theo, before Mrs. Warrender takes her away."
"Amusement is the last thing we were thinking of," he said, coming
forward with a sort of surly opposition, as if it came natural to him to
go against what she said. "My opinion is that she should go down to the
country at once, and not show at all in town this season. I don't think
it would be pleasant for any of us. There has been talk enough."
"There has been no talk that Chatty need care for," said Lady Markland
quietly; "don't think so, pray don't think so. Who could say anything of
her? People are bad enough in London, but not so bad as that."
"Nevertheless, mother," said Theo, "I think you and I understand each
other. Chatty and you have been enjoying yourselves abroad. You never
cared for town. It would be much better in every sense that you should
go home quietly now."
"We intended nothing else," said Mrs. Warrender, with a slight irritation,
"though I confess I see no reason. But we need not discuss that over
again. In the end of the week----"
"But this is only Monday. You cannot have anything to keep you here for
days. I think you should go to-morrow. A day's rest is surely enough."
"We have some people to see, Theo."
"If I were you I would see nobody. You will be sure to meet with
something unpleasant. Take Chatty home, that is far the best thing
you can do. Frances would say the same if she had not that unfortunate
desire to please everybody, to say what is agreeable, which makes women
so untrustworthy. But my advice is, take Chatty home. In the
circumstances it is the only thing to do."
Chatty rose from where she had been seated by Lady Markland's side. "Am
I to be hidden away?" she said, her pale face flushing nervously. "Have
I done anything wrong?"
"How silly to ask such questions. You know well enough what I mean. You
have been talked about. My mother has more experience; she can tell you.
A girl who has been talked about is always at a disadvantage. She had
much better keep quite quiet until the story has all died away."
"Mother," cried Chatty, holding out her hands, "take me away then
to-night, this moment, from this horrible place, where the people have
so little heart and so little sense."