Warrender had a long conference with Dick Cavendish in the old library
at the Warren. Mr. Wilberforce, who had been sent for, came at once,
full of curiosity and excitement; and though Mr. Longstaffe could not be
had, the experience of the two clergymen, who knew all about marriage
registers and the proofs that were necessary, was of use in this curious
family crisis. It was all very important both to Chatty and to the family
in general, and Theo did his utmost to keep his attention to it, but his
thoughts were elsewhere. He was glad to be released, when all was done
that could be done by the little family commission. The result was a
kind of compromise. No one had any moral doubt that Dick was right, but
some higher sanction seemed to be necessary before he could be allowed
to take Chatty away. The ladies had to be called in to soothe and subdue
his impetuosity, to get him to consent to delay. Warrender scarcely
waited to see how it was settled. The impatience within him was not to
be controlled. His heart was at Markland, hot with anger and anxiety,
while he was forced to remain here and talk of other things. Yes, to be
sure, Chatty's good name, her happiness,--if she considered that her
happiness lay in that,--were important. It was important for Cavendish
too, if any one cared what was important for Cavendish: but good heavens!
not so important,--could any one suppose so for a moment?--as what had
happened, what might be happening, elsewhere. Old Joseph had stopped him
as he went through the hall to tell him that the little lord had run
off and got on his pony, and had gone home. He had gone home. It was a
relief for one thing, for Theo had felt that it would be impossible for
him to carry that little demon back with him in the dog-cart, as it
would have been his duty to do. But in another--how could he tell what
might be happening while he was kept there, amid maddening delays and
hesitations, looking over Dick Cavendish's papers? What could Dick
Cavendish's papers matter? A few days sooner or later, what could it
matter to Dick Cavendish? Whereas to himself--That boy might be lying
senseless on the road, for anything he knew; or, what was worse, he
might have got home and told his story. And the sting was that he had a
story to tell.
Warrender knew that he had done what he ought not to have done. He had
treated the child with a violence which he knew to be unmanly. He had
thrown him down, and stunned, and might have killed him. He did not deny
to himself what he had done. He would not deny it to her,--and he fully
expected that she would meet him with upbraidings, with anger. With
anger! when it was he who was the injured person,--he, her husband,
whose privacy was constantly disturbed and all his rights invaded
by her son. He turned this over and over in his mind, adding to the
accumulation of his wrongs, till they mounted to a height which was
beyond bearing. The fire blazed higher and higher as he kept on throwing
in fuel to the flames. It must come to some decision, he said to himself.
It was contrary not only to his happiness, but to his dignity, his just
position, to let it go on, to be tormented perpetually by this little
Mordecai at the gate, this child who was made of more importance than he
was, who had to be thought of, and have his wishes consulted, and the
supposed necessities of his delicate health made so much of. Geoff's
generosities, the constant sacrifices of which he was conscious, were
all lost upon his stepfather. He knew nothing of the restraint the child
put on himself, or of the wistful pain with which Lady Markland looked
on, divining more than she knew. All that was a sealed book to Theo. From
his side of the question Geoff was an offence on every point. Why should
he be called upon to endure that interloper always in sight,--never
to feel master in his own house? To be sure, Markland was not his
house, but Geoff's; but that was only a grievance the more, for he had
not wished to live in Markland, while his own house stood ready for his
own family, with plenty of room for his wife and children. There grew
upon Warrender's mind a great resolution, or, rather, there started up
in his thoughts, like the prophet's gourd, a determination, that this
unendurable condition of affairs should exist no longer. Why should he
be bound to Geoff, in whose presence he felt he was not capable of doing
himself justice, who turned him the wrong way invariably, and made him
look like a hot-tempered fool, which he was not? No, he would not endure
it longer. Frances must be brought to see that for the sake of her son
her husband was not always to be sacrificed. It should not continue.
The little girls must not grow up to see their father put in the second
place, to think him an irritable tyrant. No, it must not continue, not
for a day.
And there occurred to Theo, when he approached the gate of Markland,
something like the same experience which had befallen Geoff. He saw
going slowly along the bare avenue two figures, clinging closely
together,--as he had seen them a hundred times, though never without
jealousy, when he had no right to interfere. For a long time these walks
had been intermitted, and he had almost forgotten the irritation of the
past in this respect. But now it all surged back with an exasperation
entirely out of proportion to the offence. For the offence was no more
than this: that Lady Markland was walking slowly along, with Geoff
clinging with both hands to her arm, clasping it, with his head almost
on her shoulder, with a sort of proprietorship which made the spectator
frantic. He stopped the dog-cart and sprang down, flinging the reins to
the groom outside of the gate. The sight brought his resolution, his
rage, the fierce passion within him, to a climax. Yes, he had been
anticipated; that was clear. The story of all that had passed had been
poured into his wife's ear. She would meet him with reproaches, perhaps
with tears, pointing to the cut on her son's forehead. There came into
Theo's mind a maddening recollection that he himself had been cut on
the forehead for Geoff; but no one, not _she_ at least, would remember
that now. She would meet him furious, like a tigress for her cub; or,
worse, she would meet him magnanimous, forgiving him, telling him that
she knew it must have been an accident--whereas it was no accident. He
would make no pretence; he would allow that he had done it, he would
allow that he had meant to do it; he would make no further pretences,
and tolerate no pretences from this day.
In his anger he was as swift and light as a deer. Their backs were
turned towards him, and they were too much absorbed in their talk to
hear his approach. He was close to them, on Lady Markland's other side,
before they heard anything. The mother and son looked up simultaneously,
and started as if they were but one being. At the sight of him she gave
a faint cry,--"Theo!"--and he unclasped her arm and slid from her in a
moment: which, though it was what he wished, made the fire burn still
higher in Warrender's heart.
"So," he said, with the harsh laugh of excited temper, "he has been
telling you his story. I knew he would."
"He has been telling me no story, Theo," said Lady Markland. "Oh yes, he
has been telling me that Mr. Cavendish----"
"Confound Mr. Cavendish! I am speaking of your boy, Lady Markland. He
has been telling you about the cut on his forehead."
She looked from the man to the child, growing pale. "He fell," she said
faltering. "But he says it does not hurt."
"The little liar!" cried Theo, in his excitement. "Why didn't you tell
your mother the truth?"
"Warrender!" said little Geoff, in a tone which conveyed such a warning
as Theo would not have taken from any man in the excited state of his
mind. The child was red with sudden indignation, but still he held fast
to his part.
"Geoff, run away home!" cried his mother, trembling. "Nurse will bathe
it for you: and papa,"--she had ventured to call her young husband by
this name since the birth of the babies,--"will give me his arm."
"I tell you he is a little liar," said Theo again. "He did not fall. I
threw him down. He thrust himself into the midst of my family affairs, a
meddling little fool, and I caught hold of him and threw him out of the
way. It is best that you should know the truth."
They stood all three in the middle of the bare road, the afternoon sun
throwing its level light into their eyes,--looking at each other,
confronting each other, standing apart.
"Theo," said Lady Markland, "I am sure you did not mean to hurt him.
It was--an accident, after all. And Geoff, I am sure, never meant to
interfere. But, indeed, you must not use such words of my boy."
"What words would you like me to use? He is the pest of my existence. I
want you to understand this once for all. I cannot go on in this way,
met at every turn by a rival, an antagonist. Yes, he is my rival in your
heart, he is my opponent in everything. I cannot turn round at my own
table, in my own house, without his little grinning face----" Here Theo
stopped, with a still harsher laugh. The startled faces of the mother
and son, the glance they gave at each other like a mutual consultation,
the glow of indignation that overcame Lady Markland's paleness, were all
apparent to him in a flash of meaning. "Oh, I know what you will say!"
he cried. "It is not my house; it is Geoff's. A woman has no right to
subject her husband to such a humiliation. Get your things together,
Frances, and come with me to my own house. I am in a false position
here. I will have it no longer. Let him have what is his right. I am
resolved that he and I shall not sleep again under the same roof."
"Theo, you cannot mean what you say. You can't be so---- If Geoff has
done anything wrong, he will beg your pardon. Oh, what is it, what is
it?" She did not ask her son for his version of the story with her lips,
but she did with her eyes, which exasperated Theo more and more.
"It does not matter what it is," he said. "It is not any temporary
business, to be got over with an apology. It is just this, that you
won't face what is inevitable. And it is inevitable. You must choose
between him and me."
Geoff had been overwhelmed by this sudden storm. He was so young to
play the hero's part. He was not above crying when such a tempest burst
upon him, and had hard ado to keep back his tears. But when he met his
mother's anguished imploring look, Geoff felt in his little forlorn
heart a courage which was more than man. "Warrender," he said, biting
his lips to keep them from quivering,--"Warrender, I say. As soon as the
holidays are over, I--I'll go to school. I'll--be out of the way."
"Oh, Geoff!" Lady Markland said, with a heartrending cry.
"It's--it's right enough, mamma; it's--quite right. I'm too old. I'm
too--Warrender, I'll be going back to school in about six weeks." Alas,
the holidays were just begun. "Won't that do?" said little Geoff, with
horrible twitchings of his face, intended to keep back the tears.
His mother went up to him, and kissed him passionately, and put him away
with her hand. "Go," she said. "Geoff, go, and wait for me in your room.
We must talk--alone; we must talk alone. Go. Go."
Geoff would have given much to throw himself into her arms, to support
and to be supported by her: but the child was moved beyond himself. He
obeyed her without a word, turning his back upon the combat, though he
would fain have stood by her in it. Warrender had taken no part in this;
he had made no response to Geoff's appeal. He was walking up and down
with all the signs of impatience, pale with passion and opposition. He
paused, however, as the boy went away, a solitary forlorn little figure
stealing along the avenue in silence, too dutiful even to look back. Lady
Markland stood, too, and looked after him, with a pang of compunction,
of compassion, of heart-yearning, which it would be impossible to put
into words. Her boy! who had been her chief, almost only companion for
years; who was more dear--was he more dear?--than any one; who was her
very own, all her own, with no feeling in his mind or experience in his
little consciousness that was not all hers,--and this man bade her send
him away, separate from her child: this--man. It is not safe for a union
when one of the parties thinks of the other as that man. All at once a
light had flashed up in Lady Markland's heart. She had been made very
soft, very submissive, by her marriage. She had married a young man,
younger than herself. She had seemed to herself ever since to be asking
pardon of him and of the world for doing so. But now his violence had
called her back to herself. She had not been too soft or submissive in
the old days. She had been a woman with a marked character, not always
yielding. The temporary seemed suddenly to disappear out of her life,
and the original came back. She stood for a moment looking after her
child, and then, being feeble of body, though waking up to such force of
mind, she went to a bench which stood on the edge of the road, and sat
down there. "If this is as you say, it is better that we should
understand each other," she said.
Her tone had changed. From the anxiety to soften and smooth everything,
the constant strain of deprecation and apology which had become habitual
to her, she had suddenly emerged into a composure which was ominous,
which was almost tragic. Even the act of sitting down, which was due to
her weakness, made her appear as if taking a high position, assuming an
almost judicial place. She did not intend it so, but this was the effect
it produced upon Warrender, stinging him more deeply still. He felt that
he was judged, that his wife had thrown off the yoke which he had made
so heavy, and that his chance of bringing her back to her subjection, and
of forcing her into the new and sudden decision which he called for, was
small. This conviction increased his fury, but it also made him restrain
the outward signs of it. He went after her, and stood in front of the
bench of which she had made a sort of judicial throne.
"You are right in that," he said. "Things have gone too far to return to
their old level. I must have my house to myself, and for that reason it
must be my own. I wish you to come with me to the Warren,--the children
and you."
"Your mother and your sisters are there," she said, fixing upon him a
steady look.
"What does that matter? There is room, I hope, at all times for the
master of the house."
"You ask me," she said, "to turn all my life upside down, to change my
habits and arrangements, at a moment's notice. But you have not told me
why. Have you told me? You have said that my little boy of twelve has
offended you, and that you knocked him down. Is that why I must change
my house, and all my life?"
The slow steadiness of her tone made him frantic; that, more than the
deliberate way in which she was putting him in the wrong.
"I have told you," he cried, "that I am in a false position altogether,
and that I will not bear it any longer! You ought to see that I am in a
false position. As for your little boy--of twelve----"
"What of him?" she asked, growing very pale, and rising again from her
seat.
"Only this one thing, Frances: that you can't serve God and mammon, you
know; you can't keep both. You must choose between him and me."
"Choose!" She sat down again suddenly, as if her strength had failed
her. "Choose! between Geoff, my little Geoff--my boy--my
baby--Geoff----"
There was a kind of ridicule in her voice, a ridicule which was tragic,
which was full of passion, which sounded like a scoff at something
preposterous, as well as an indignant protest.
"Your scorn does not make it different. Yes, Geoff, who is all that: and
me--between him and me."
For a moment they gazed at each other, having arrived at that decisive
point, in a duel of the kind, when neither antagonist can find a word
more to say. Lady Markland was very pale. She had been brought in a
moment from her ease and quiet, when she expected no harm, to what might
be the most momentous decision. She was still feeble, her nerves strained
and weak from the long tension at which they had been held. She had
clasped her hands together, and the fingers quivered. Her eyes seemed
to grow larger and more luminous as she looked at him. "Theo," she said
with a long breath. "Theo! do you know--what you are saying? Do you
mean--all that--all that?"
He thought he was going to get an easy, an unlooked-for victory; he
congratulated himself with a swift flash of premature triumph that he
had pushed matters to a crisis, that he had been so firm. "Yes," he
cried, "I mean it all! We can't go on longer as we are. You must choose
between him and me."
She kept looking at him, still without relaxing from that fixed gaze.
"Do you know what you are asking?" she said again. "That I should give
up my child,--my first-born child, my little delicate boy, who has never
been parted from me. Was it ever heard of that a mother was asked to
give up her child?"
"They have done it," he said,--"you must know that,--when a higher claim
came in."
"Is there any higher claim? Every other is at our own choice, but this is
nature. God made it. It cannot change. There may be other--other"--she
faltered, her voice grew choked,--"but only one mother," she said.
"Other--other?" he cried. "What? To me there has been but one, as you
know. I have put all my chances in one. God made it? Has not God made
you and me one?--whom God has joined together--"
"Oh, Theo." She got up and came towards him, holding out her hands.
"One, to bear each other's burdens, to help each other; not to go
against nature, to abandon what is the first of duties. Theo! oh, help
me; do not make it impossible, do not rend me in two! What can I say to
you? Theo!" She tottered in her weakness; her limbs were not strong
enough to support her. But Warrender made no forward step. He did not
take the hands she held out to him. He had to be firm. It was now or
never, he said to himself.
"If we are ever to live happily together the sacrifice must be made. I
don't want to hurt you, Frances. If I seem harsh, it is for our good,
the good of both of us. Make up your mind. Can any one doubt what is
your first duty? It is to me. It is I that must settle what our life is
to be. It is you who must yield and obey. Are you not my wife? Spare
yourself farther pain, and me," he went on, with all the absolute and
cruel sincerity of youth. He made it up in his own mind that this was
the right thing to do, and steeled himself to resist the appeal of her
weakness, to see her flutter back to the hard bench, and drop down
there, unsupported, unaided. It was for the best, it was for her good,
to put things on a right footing at once and for always. After this,
never a harsh word, never an opposition, more.
Her husband thus having her to himself, standing before her, magisterial,
coldly setting down what her duty was, enforcing obedience,--he who
little more than a year ago---- She wavered back to her bare seat alone,
and sat there, looking up at him till his peroration came to an
end. In these few minutes many things flew through Lady Markland's
thoughts,--unspeakable offence, revolt against the unlovely duty
presented to her, a sudden fierce indignation against him who had thus
thrust himself into her life and claimed to command it. At that moment,
after all the agitation he had made her suffer, and before the sacrifice
he thus demanded of her, she could scarcely believe that she too had
loved him, that she had been happy in his love. It seemed to her that
he had forced himself upon her, taken advantage of her loneliness,
compelled her to put herself in his power. It had been all adoration,
boundless devotion, help, and service. And now it was command. Oh, had
he but said this before! Had he bidden her then choose between her
child and him, before-- And as she looked at him a wild ridicule added
itself to these other thoughts. To see him standing making his speech,
thinking he could coerce like that a woman like herself, thinking in his
youthfulness that he could sway any woman's heart like that, and cut
off the ties that vexed him, and settle everything for the good of
both! Heaven! to see him lifting up his authoritative head, making his
decision, expecting her to obey! Spare yourself, and me! That she should
refuse did not enter into his mind. She might struggle for a time, but
to what use? Spare yourself, and me! She could not help a faint smile,
painful enough, bitter enough, curving her lips.
"You speak at your ease," she cried, when his voice stopped. "It is easy
to make up your mind for another. What if I should refuse--to obey, as
you say? A wife's obedience, since you appeal to that, is not like a
servant's obedience or a child's. It must be within reason and within
nature. Suppose that I should refuse."
He had grown cool and calm in the force of his authority. The crimson
flushed to his face and the fire to his eye at her words. "Refuse--and I
have my alternative!" he cried. "I will never enter your house again nor
interfere in your concerns more."
Again they contemplated each other in a deadly pause, like antagonists
before they close for the last struggle. Then Lady Markland spoke.
"Theo, I have done all that a woman could do to please you, and satisfy
you,--all, and more than all. I will not desert my little boy."
"You prefer Geoff to me?"
"There is no preferring; it is altogether different. I will not give up
my child."
"Then you give up your husband?"
They looked at each other again,--she deadly pale, he crimson with
passion, both quivering with the strain of this struggle; her eyes
mutely refusing to yield, accepting the alternative, though she said no
more. And not another word was said. He turned on his heel, and walked
back down the avenue, with quick, swinging steps, without ever turning
his head. She watched him till he was out of sight, till he was out of
hearing, till the gate swung behind him, and he was gone. She did not
know how she was to get back to the house, over that long stretch of
road, without any one to help her, and thought with a sickening and
failing of her heart of the long way. But in this great, sudden,
unlooked-for revolution of her life she felt no weakness nor failing.
The revulsion was all the greater after the long self-restraint. For
the first time after so long an interval she was again herself.