"Even if you _have_ suffered injury, dear lady," he said--"I don't say
you haven't--isn't it possible to forgive? Remember, forgiveness is a
divine virtue, enjoined on us all, and especially on a woman towards the
man she has married. Only think! How many women have to practise
it--every day, all the world over!"
"Ah, well!" I said, and walked to the door.
The Bishop walked with me, urging me, as a good daughter of the Church,
to live at peace with my husband, whatever his faults, and when my
children came (as please God they would) to "instil into them the true
faith with all a mother's art, a mother's tenderness," so that the
object of my marriage might be fulfilled, and a good Catholic become the
heir to Castle Raa.
"So the Church can do nothing for me?" I said.
"Nothing but pray, dear lady," said the Bishop.
When I left him my heart was in fierce rebellion; and, since the Church
could do nothing, I determined to see if the law could do anything, so I
ordered my chauffeur to drive to the house of my father's advocate at
Holmtown.
The trial in the trees was over by this time, and a dead crow tumbled
from one of the tall elms as we passed out of the grounds.
Holmtown is a little city on the face of our bleak west coast, dominated
by a broad stretch of sea, and having the sound of the waves always
rumbling over it. Mr. Curphy's house faced the shore and his office was
an upper room plainly furnished with a writing desk, a deal table, laden
with law books and foolscap papers, a stiff arm-chair, covered with
American leather, three or four coloured engravings of judges in red and
ermine, a photograph of the lawyer himself in wig and gown, an
illuminated certificate of his membership of a legal society, and a
number of lacquered tin boxes, each inscribed with the name of a
client--the largest box bearing the name of "Daniel O'Neill."
My father's advocate received me with his usual bland smile, gave me his
clammy fat hand, put me to sit in the arm-chair, hoped my unexpected
visit did not presage worse news from the Big house, and finally asked
me what he could do.
I told my story over again, omitting my sentimental grievances and
coming quickly, and with less delicacy, to the grosser facts of my
husband's infidelity.
The lawyer listened with his head aside, his eyes looking out on the sea
and his white fingers combing his long brown beard, and before I had
finished I could see that he too, like the Bishop, had determined to see
nothing.
"You may be right," he began. . . .
"I _am_ right!" I answered.
"But even if you _are_, I am bound to tell you that adultery is not
enough of itself as a ground for divorce."
"Not enough?"
"If you were a man it would be, but being a woman you must establish
cruelty as well."
"Cruelty? Isn't it all cruelty?" I asked.
"In the human sense, yes; in the legal sense, no," answered the lawyer.
And then he proceeded to explain to me that in this country, unlike some
others, before a woman could obtain a divorce from her husband she had
to prove that he had not only been unfaithful to her, but that he had
used violence to her, struck her in the face perhaps, threatened her or
endangered her life or health.
"Your husband hasn't done that, has he? No? I thought not. After all
he's a gentleman. Therefore there is only one other ground on which you
could establish a right to divorce, namely desertion, and your husband
is not likely to run away. In fact, he couldn't. It isn't to his
interest. We've seen to all that--_here_," and smiling again, the lawyer
patted the top of the lacquered box that bore my father's name.
I was dumbfounded. Even more degrading than the fetters whereby the
Church bound me to my marriage were the terms on which the law would
release me.
"But assuming that you _could_ obtain a divorce," said the lawyer, "what
good would it do you? You would have to relinquish your title."
"I care nothing about my title," I replied.
"And your position."
"I care nothing about that either."
"Come, come," said the lawyer, patting my arm as if I had been an angry
child on the verge of tears. "Don't let a fit of pique or spleen break
up a marriage that is so suitable from the points of property and
position. And then think of your good father. Why did he spend all that
money in setting a ruined house on its legs again? That he might carry
on his name in a noble family, and through your children, and your
children's children. . . ."
"Then the law can do nothing for me?" I said, feeling sick and sore.
"Sorry, very sorry, but under present conditions, as far as I can yet
see, nothing," said the lawyer.
"Good-day, sir," I said, and before he could have known what I was doing
I had leapt up, left the room, and was hurrying downstairs.
My heart was in still fiercer rebellion now. I would go home. I would
appeal to my father. Hard as he had always been with me he was at least
a man, not a cold abstraction, like the Church and the law, without
bowels of compassion or sense of human suffering.