HOW CHALLIS COULDN'T BELIEVE MARIANNE WAS IN EARNEST. HOW HE SOUGHT
HER AND FAILED. THE EYES OF HOLY WRIT. THE DISGRACEFUL TRUTH. DEAR
MISS ARKROYD! WHY FIGHT AGAINST INFLICTED LIBERTY? GLENVAIRLOCH TO LET
"Will Mrs. Challis be back to lunch, sir?" Thus Harmood the respectful,
after giving a certain amount of attention to a series of concessions,
collectively called breakfast. Her mistress being absent, she was
taking advantage of Challis's readiness to submit to anything rather
than attend to the domesticities. Just like his fellow-males elsewhere!
She was fortified in the adoption of this course by the reflection that
she had given warning. And a servant who has given warning is a problem
not to be solved under the most subtle definition of Existence yet
formulated, even by Graubosch. She is not an Abstract Idea; would not
the butcher's bill diminish in that case? On the other hand, could any
concrete thing, worthy of the name, do so much in the way of leaving
coal-scuttles at stair-feet, or its black-leadin' brush in the empty
grate; or its dust-pan full of tea-leaves for when it should be ready
to begin sweeping; or the windows flaring wide open, and the door, and
all master's papers blowing about?
The story can't settle that point now, nor could Challis. It was
metaphysics, and Mr. Brownrigg's business. All the victim of Harmood's
qualified entity could distinguish was, for instance, that the
table-cloth was grudgingly disposed so as to cover one-third of the
table only. Being a tablecloth of huge bulk, with a court-train at each
corner, it refused, when quadrupled, to have anything stood on without
tumbling over; notably a needlessly small milk-jug, evolved from some
obscure corner to stint master in milk with. It wouldn't stand only
you held it; so, of course, it just slopped over. But, of course,
there was plenty of milk in the house, and the incident closed with
Harmood actually bringing The Milk itself, in the most matronly white
jug that ever was seen, that seemed to have thrown its whole soul into
stability, like Noah's wife in his Ark, who can be stood up on a rough
carpet cattle fall sideways on, knocking down their neighbours.
Need it be said that Challis's observation is followed in all this? It
shows a state of mind not fully alive to the reality of his position.
He was, in fact, pooh-poohing the idea that Marianne's action was
more than an outburst of ill-temper, the result--he admitted this--of
a perfectly natural resentment under the circumstances. Of an unjust
one--yes! He said this to himself again and again, but never exactly
located the injustice. He could perceive that this resentment was due
to gross misapprehension of the facts of the case, but he cautiously
avoided details of the misapprehension. He may have felt misgivings
that Marianne was not so very wrong, after all. Women can decide this;
no man's verdict has any weight in such a matter.
He attached a certain value to Harmood's concessions of warmed-up
coffee, and eggs which were a caution to poachers. He took no advantage
of them, or very little, as breakfast; but till they were finally
left to perish of cold neglect, he could postpone his answer to the
question, "What's to be done next?" However, it would have to be
answered some time. A cigar in the garden would help. There is nothing
like a cigar after breakfast to clear one's head. But first he must
answer that question of Harmood's. _Would_ Mrs. Challis and the young
ladies be back to lunch?
"Just ask Mrs. Steptoe again _exactly_ what your mistress said,"
Challis takes a pleasure in rubbing in the obnoxious expression.
Harmood's conduct has been detestable. But she is conscious, from Mr.
Challis's manner, of her success. From Mrs. Challis's she had been able
to form no opinion.
Mrs. Steptoe testified from the basement, and Harmood returned.
No--Mrs. Challis had said nothing but what had been reported last
night. She was taking the young ladies to their grandma's, and we was
not to expect her back.
"Back to lunch, or _what_?" Challis raises his voice over the question,
and Harmood refers to her authority, with an air of indifference to
trifles of this sort. Bald confirmation comes of the wording of the
message; no interpretation.
"Very well, then! Your mistress didn't say she _wasn't_ coming to
lunch. Of course she _is_ coming to lunch." Challis repulsed an attempt
of Mrs. Steptoe to entangle him in the problem of how some abhorrent
remainders from the larder--which she offered to show--might be best
utilized, and got away to that cigar in the garden, to think....
Damn interruptions!--no, he couldn't see anybody.... Stop! who was
it? Miss Harmood, who had not been explicit enough, now testified to
Mr. Eldridge; whereupon Challis asked her why she couldn't say so
at first? This was unjust and irrational; but Miss Harmood had given
warning, and felt partly disembodied. What did it matter to her?
It was John Eldridge, not very intelligible, but in much perturbation
at something. "Well--you see!--it was Lotty's idea he should come
round. Never would have entered his head himself! No sayin', though!"
This was a favourite expression of his, presenting him as a sage prone
to suspension of opinion, and open-minded.
After using it once or twice, he used his pocket-handkerchief, causing
Harmood to inquire whether Mr. Challis had called. He then stood over
the object of his visit, whatever it was, to ask, as an entirely new
idea, "How are you yourself, Master Titus?"
"_I'm_ all right, John. Won't you smoke?--that one at the end's very
mild." But Mr. Eldridge wouldn't smoke; it was too early in the
morning. Besides, he was late at the office. Challis avoided analysis
and comparison, and made essays towards explanation of the visit. "Any
more railway accidents?" said he.
"Wasn't that the day before yesterday?" Mr. Eldridge stopped polishing
his nose to ask this. Challis explained that it was quite recent
enough--he was in no hurry for more. He chose to suggest that the
question, which had absolutely no meaning whatever, was intended to
impute to him an unnatural lust for railway accidents. Mr. Eldridge
seemed at a loss, saying: "Now you're poking fun, Master Titus! None of
your larks!" Then he muttered to himself. "Thought so--thought so--day
before yesterday!"
It was evidently going to be a matter of patience. Challis knew why
his visitor had come, of course, but he was not going to supply him
with guidance. Perhaps it would be quickest and simplest to leave
him entirely alone. Then he would have to burst, or go. He chose the
former, after some vague soliloquy about not having inquests on Sundays.
"You don't object to my lookin' round to speak about it, Master Titus?"
"Not a bit, John! Please speak. What is it?"
A gentle reproachfulness was on Mr. Eldridge as he answered: "No--come,
I say, now--no gammon, suppose!" And Challis really commiserated
him. What a position to be in! To be sent round by your wife, in
the legitimate exercise of her omnipotence, to lecture a neighbour
believed to be involved in a quarrel with his! And that, too, when you
happen to have, from no fault of your own, but from predestination,
a short supply of words, and defective powers of construction.
Challis appreciated the position quite clearly, and decided to be
good-natured. After all, it was that detestable meddlesome Charlotte,
not her booby husband himself--most probably--that had organized this
expedition into his territory.
"All right, John!" said he. "No gammon, suppose! _I_ know what you want
to speak about. Marianne."
"Well, you know!" says John ruefully, "my idear was Charlotte should
come herself. Much better idear!"
"What for? Very happy to see her, of course!"
"Well, you know, Master Titus, that's just what I keep on sayin' to
Charlotte, that it's no concern of either of ours."
"Sharp chap!" This is interjected privately. So far as it reaches the
audience, it seems to be accepted as laurels. "Now, suppose you and
Charlotte were to take a holiday, and just leave me and Marianne to
fight it out our own way. _We_ shan't quarrel."
Mr. Eldridge became snugly confidential. "There, now, Master Titus,
isn't that exactly what I said to Lotty? The very words! 'You
leave them to fry their own fish,' I said." Challis thought of his
philosophical friends at Royd; here was a new definition of identity
wanted! "'You leave them to fry their own fish.' It's what I've been
sayin' all along. But when females get an idea, you may just talk to
'em. Nothin' comes of it...."
"What was her idea?"
"Me to come and talk it over in a friendly sort of way. Try to pave
the way to a good understanding.... Lots of expressions she used!..."
He paused to recall some. "... Oh ah!--I remember ... 'painful
misunderstanding'--that was one. And 'tact and delicacy.' She's a
clever woman, Lotty, that's a fact, Master Titus."
"Devilish clever, John! Everyone knows that. 'Tact and delicacy' is
a capital expression. It reminds me of Mrs. Chapone, but I don't
know why." John seemed flattered, and Challis continued, with some
disposition to laugh outright: "Look here, old chap! You and that
clever lady of yours may just as well be easy. You think Polly Anne
and I have quarrelled. But we haven't. And we shan't. I tell you, the
thing's out of the question. Sheer nonsense!"
Mr. Eldridge's idea of identity comes to the fore again. "Just what
I said--'reg'lar tommy rot.' Mrs. J. E., she agreed with me, down to
the ground. There was another expression she used, now! ... what the
dickens was it?... Oh, I know!--no, I don't.... Oh yes!--'parties God
had joined together let no man put asunder.' Nice feelin' about that!"
"Well!--no man's going to put anyone asunder this time, whether God
united them or the Devil. Don't you go and repeat that remark to Mrs.
J. E., John."
"No--no, Master Titus! Never say anything--never say a word!--that's
the rule. Never say the Devil--never say God; not before females.
Keep 'em snug! Good behaviour's paramount--can't be too particular!
Expression of my wife's.... I say, I must be runnin'."
"They'll be sending for you from the Office if you don't." Then, as
his visitor was departing by the front gate, he called to him from the
house-steps: "Sorry the missis and the kids aren't back. They went
to Tulse Hill yesterday. I'm going down there presently, only I've
some work to finish first." And Harmood overheard, and condemned her
employer for his contradictory testimony. "'Ark at him lying!" was the
candid form her censure took. Mrs. Steptoe, saying a word in arrest
of judgment, for the pleasure of gainsaying Harmood, was met by "Now,
didn't he say, only this minute, Mrs. Challis would be back to lunch?"
The question whether, when Mr. Challis remained to lunch at home,
as though he expected his wife's return, and immediately after took
his departure for Tulse Hill, he had not reconciled his apparently
conflicting statements, formed the subject of intemperate controversy
between Harmood and Mrs. Steptoe during the remainder of the afternoon.
* * * * *
No doubt Challis had treasured a hope in his heart that his wife and
the children would reappear. He succeeded, to his own satisfaction, in
pretending he had known they wouldn't, all along; and by the time he
had reached Tulse Hill Station, believed he had only remained to lunch
at Wimbledon to write important letters.
He rang more than once--two or three times more--at his
mother-in-law's, without any response. The first time someone, he
thought, looked from behind the blind of an upper window; and then two
voices, one dictatorial, the other compliant, conversed up and down the
staircase of Glenvairloch, for that was the name of Marianne's mother's
villa at Tulse Hill. The next-door neighbour lived at Bannochar.
At his second ring he suspected, at his third was convinced, that
non-admission was a _parti-pris_, in his case, at Glenvairloch. The
dictatorial voice had been, not Marianne's, but her parent's, who,
probably, had also been the scout at the window. If the household had
made up its mind not to admit him, what could he do? A scheme for
burglarious entry, suggested by a boy at large, in the hope of reward,
did not recommend itself. Even this boy asking the cook next door to
let him through, and him to climb through a back-winder, seemed a
lawless course to Challis's mind. He found, too, that this boy caused
the sudden appearance from space of other boys, and that as they
agglutinated round him, passers-by, apparently _crétins_, wanted to
know whether it was a fire. He saw no alternative but to give it up.
He did so, resolving to return next day. As it chanced, some pressing
appointments made the day after more convenient.
This time he went early in the morning, hoping to effect a surprise.
But he knew quite well that if no one else came to the door whose
admission was _de rigueur_, he was practically at the mercy of the
garrison. No portcullis need be lifted unless it chose.
A lucky chance befell, in the shape of a butcher-boy, who could not
well leave a pound of steak impaled on the gate rails, nor slip three
ounces of dripping into the letter-box. Taken into confidence by
Challis, he said: "They'll come along for me, you bet." He knew his
power, this butcher-boy; but he yelled as well as rang, from sweetness
of disposition, although not bound to yell by contract. Indeed, he also
shouted an exhortation: "Git them stockin's on, Hemmer, and come along!
Can't wait here till Sunday!"
But Emma was really up and dressed, for it was past three o'clock.
She took in the meat, and said she would ask, please, if Mrs. Challis
was in. Challis raised no objection, but walked into the house beside
her, for all that. You see, he was one of the family, however seldom
he visited his mother-in-law. And it does not come into practice for
a young servant to repulse an applicant for admission; under such
circumstances, Emma had admitted Mr. Challis more than once. How could
she turn on him and say, "You're not to come in this time"?
He had never been a frequent visitor at the house, though always
nominally--or we might say technically--welcome. There had been little
open warfare between him and its occupant since his first widowerhood,
when his scanty attendances at Divine Service, conceded during his
short period of married life, to keep the peace, were discontinued
altogether. His perdition had then become an article of the old lady's
faith; but she seemed to have decided that the Fires of Hell during
the remainder of Eternity would be a sufficient penalty for her
son-in-law's delinquencies, without the added sting of incivility from
herself when he occasionally found himself under her roof. Moreover,
Challis had made a great concession in surrendering Bob to Marianne.
His way of describing this surrender of his son was shockingly
blasphemous; in fact, he used to indulge in parallels founded on
recollections of his own short church-going experience in a way that
would have estranged his second wife and her mother for ever from him
had their information on the details of their own faith been equal to
their conviction that they held it. As it was, the impression sometimes
produced on their minds by Challis's irreverent whimsicalities was
that there must be the raw material of Salvation somewhere in a person
capable of repeating so many correct religious phrases. The story only
dwells on these things now because Challis did so as he sat waiting
for the appearance of his mother-in-law, and wondering what form her
indignation would take.
He had just recollected an occasion when, after a visit to the old
lady, he had said to his wife: "Really, Polly Anne, I think I produced
quite a devout impression on grandmamma to-day," and her unsuspicious
reply, "I thought you spoke very nicely, dear!" when the old lady
herself became audible in the lobby without, mixing an asthmatic cough
with reprimands to the servant.
"You _gurls_!" The speaker seemed for a moment almost
paralyzed by the force of her indignation against the class
she denounced. Then it burst forth in almost a shout--"WHY
couldn't-you-do-as-I-told-you-and-say-your-orders-were...?" and so on.
But the very vehemence of the fusillade that followed the artillery was
suicidal, for the cough cut short what might almost have been printed
as a continuous word. Then speech got a turn again, on a revised line,
"Why-can't-you-do-as-you're-TOLD?" the gunshot coming this time as a
wind-up. Variations followed, to the same effect.
Emma the gurl seemed of a timid and sensitive nature, prone to dissolve
in sobs and sniffs. Her defence, Challis gathered, was that he had
walked in through the kitchen-door, and that her troops were outflanked
by such an unusual move. He felt the defence was good, and that he
ought to help. He showed himself at the room-door.
"Don't scold Emma, grandmamma," said he. "It was no fault of hers. If
she had given me your message fifty times over, I should have come in
just the same. Where's Marianne?"
"Be good enough not to interfere between me and my servants." She had
a proper spirit, this old lady, and it was shown at intervals--short
ones. As she mellowed with age, these intervals grew shorter.
"Well!--blow Emma up if you like, but it was no fault of hers. Where's
Marianne?"
"Will you have the goodness to wait till I have done with this _gurl_?"
Challis returned into the drawing-room, and waited. Emma--he said to
himself--was catching it hot. He felt in his pocket to make sure of
half-a-crown, as a _solatium_, in case Emma showed him out.
Nothing lasts for ever. "Such a thing again, and you go!" was the last
shot from the old lady's citadel at the servant. And her first at
himself was, "Now _you_!" He accepted the challenge.
"Where is Marianne?" But an attack of coughing stopped the old woman's
reply; and when it subsided, and left him free to repeat his question,
he re-worded it, "Where is my wife?"
"My daughter is _not_ your wife."
"Very well, grandmamma, let's pretend she isn't. Where is your
daughter? Where's Marianne?"
"What do you want with her?" The speech and the speaker are sullen,
dogged, and in deadly earnest. If Challis plays any impish tricks--and
he isn't taking the old cat seriously; witness that malicious twinkle
in his eye!--there will be an explosion, and a bad one.
"What do I want with her? Why, of course, to come back and live in Sin
with me, like a dutiful wife. Stop a bit, though, grandmamma! Perhaps
you don't know about Marianne's letter--the letter she left for me when
she bolted off yesterday! Do you, or don't you?"
"I refuse to be catechized. I am in my daughter's confidence, and I
know exactly what she has written and what she has not written." The
suggestion was that Challis's report would be untrustworthy. She seemed
to warm to her subject. "Marianne has told me _everything_, and she has
my fullest concurrence in the step she has taken."
"Then I suppose," says Challis, with irritation, for the old lady's
fangs are beginning to tell, "that you are giving your 'fullest
concurrence' to her carrying away my children?"
The inverted commas in Challis's voice are caught at. "Yes--you may
sneer, and you may repeat my words! You may despise me, Mr. Alfred
Challis, because I am only an old woman. But I tell you this, and you
can believe it or not, as you like--that in the eyes of Holy Writ those
children are _not_ yours, and any lawyer will tell you they are not
yours."
"I don't see how more than one lawyer can vouch personally for the
paternity of either of the kids."
"I don't understand you."
"Never mind! Try to understand this, and tell my wife: that whether the
children are mine or anyone else's--even the most respectable legal
firm's in the City!--they are _legally_ mine, and I intend to have them
back."
"You know as well as I do that they are _not_ legally yours. You know
as well as I do that when you married Kate's sister you were committing
an act forbidden in Holy Writ, and expressly condemned by Our Lord
Himself. You know that your children are illegitimate children, and
contrary to the Act of Parliament. Do not pretend you are ignorant of
this, Alfred Challis. Be truthful for once!"
"I suppose my copy of the Bible isn't a recent edition; I must get one
brought up to date. Or I might order one from the _Times_ Book Club....
Oh no!--no doubt all you say is correct. I shall find the passage."
A misunderstanding occurred here, owing to the old lady's deafness.
An image generated in her mind had to be dispersed, of a Club of
Freethinkers who had a copy of the Scriptures, certainly, but kept it
in the passage, reserving the library shelves for Mock Litanies and the
like. Challis's tendency to regard the whole thing as a joke revived
somewhat over this. "No, no, grandmamma," said he, with something like
a laugh; "no one has had anything to say against the Book Club, so
far, on the score of Unsoundness. You misunderstood me. All I meant to
say was that my recollections of Holy Writ seem to want polishing up.
No doubt you're right! But the notion of Marianne having any right to
appropriate _my_ children--_our_ children--why, the idea is simply too
ridiculous to bear speaking of!"
"You can ask any lawyer."
"What lawyer ever told you such rubbish?"
"Mr. Tillingfleet."
"Mr. Tillingfleet deserves to be struck off the Rolls. When did Mr.
Tillingfleet make this precious statement?"
"I suppose you fancy you know better than Mr. Tillingfleet?"
"When did he tell you this?"
"I can show you his letter if you like." Letter produced. Challis
muttered that _he_ didn't want to see it. But he took it, and made a
visible parade of superficial reading, until he came to the end, when
he appeared to re-read the last paragraph. He then went back, and
re-read from the beginning, half aloud, skipping words.
"'Dear Madam reply to your esteemed ... hm-hm ... regret must repeat
advice ... _re_ matrimonial status ... hm-hm ... in no case can
marriage of man with deceased wife's sister hold good in law, however
pledged parties hold themselves ... hm-hm ... consequently legal
dissolution impossible no legal contract existing ... old friend of
late Mr. Craik ... excuse ... delicate position ... your daughter
... counsel moderation ... jealousy may be justified ... may be
groundless....' Sensible chap, Tillingfleet!"
The widow of the late Mr. Craik snorted. "He was my husband's legal
adviser," said she. How could he be other than a sensible chap?--said
the snort. "Perhaps you will be kind enough to give your attention to
what he says about Marianne's children."
"About our children, certainly!" Challis continued, reading more
distinctly. "'With regard to your other question as to the relative
claims of your son-in-law and daughter to the guardianship of their
children, I am personally of opinion that as no legal marriage
exists, the children are technically illegitimate, and this technical
illegitimacy would bar any claim to guardianship on the part of Mr.
Challis. How far any claim for maintenance could be sustained is
another question, Mrs. Challis's object being, as I understand, to
withdraw the children entirely from their father. On the justifiability
of such a course I do not understand that my opinion is asked.'
Sensible fellow, Tillingfleet!" said the reader. But with so plain a
meaning that his hearer caught him up sharply.
"What do you mean to imply?"
"That Mr. Tillingfleet thinks you and Marianne a couple of fools. He
all but says that your behaviour is unjustifiable, in his opinion...."
"His opinion was not asked."
"So he says. Hadn't you better ask him?"
"Certainly not. He does not know how you have behaved to your wife. It
is a matter of which she alone can judge."
"How have I behaved to my wife?"
"You know, as well as I do."
"No doubt, and a great deal better. But you don't know as well as I do."
"I do not wish to talk any further. Have you anything further to say?"
"I wish to see Marianne and the children, and to know when they are
coming home."
"I am here to speak for Marianne. She refuses to see you, or to give up
her children to you. You will gain nothing by remaining here."
"Come, grandmamma, do be a little Christian-like, and help to make
things comfortable again...."
"Christian-like indeed! What next?"
"Perhaps I used the wrong word. Couldn't you manage a little Heathenism
for once, and be jolly? At any rate, grandmamma, tell me what the
accusation is. The worst criminals are allowed to hear the indictment."
Challis was just a shade uncandid in this, because he believed he knew
the worst of the indictment. But he excused his conscience on the score
of his right to any means of finding out whether his character, sadly
soiled by that unfortunate letter business, had not been well smudged
over with soot by Mrs. Eldridge into the bargain.
This conversation will have shown that grandmamma, though she
had achieved a narrow-mindedness of a very choice quality, while
preserving a virgin ignorance of the meaning of the popular teaching,
or perversion of teaching, by which vernacular bigotries are usually
fostered and nourished, was by no means a stupid person when she had
an end to gain. Whether her end in the present case was the final
separation of Marianne from her husband may be questioned. A working
hypothesis of her motives might be that she merely wished to pay her
son-in-law out for the slights he was always heaping--as she knew,
while she could not understand or answer them--on her cherished booth
in Vanity Fair. Whatever her ultimate object, she was unable to resist
the opportunity of hitting hard that the culprit's application to hear
the indictment afforded her.
"What the accusation is!" she echoed derisively. "Ask your Miss Judith
what the accusation is. Ask _her_, and then look me in the face, Mr.
Alfred Challis!" The old lady seemed quite vain of this formula of
denunciation, for she picked up the missile and reloaded her arbalest.
"Ask your fashionable friends--oh yes!--they look the other way, no
doubt, but they have eyes in their heads, and can see for all that. Ask
_them_, and _then_ look me in the face, Mr. Alfred Challis! Ask your
neighbours...."
"Mrs. Charlotte Eldridge?" asked Challis sharply.
"_No_, Alfred Challis!--not Mrs. Charlotte Eldridge only, but _all_ the
neighbours--ask them _all_! Ask them to say what _they've_ seen...."
But the good lady lost the luxury of her climax this time, because
Challis interrupted.
"Could you mention any responsible householder who would tell me what
I am accused of? I could call on my way back." Being thoroughly angry
himself, he naturally spoke in a way that he knew would exasperate.
This dry kind of speech was like a red rag to a bull in this old lady's
case. Nothing is more infuriating than one's adversary's apparent
contentment with mere words, left alone with their syntax, to shift
for themselves. It makes one so conscious of one's own war-whoops,
and one's occasional faulty expression of meaning, during attacks of
uncontrolled anger.
"I am prepared for any evasion and prevarication from you, Alfred
Challis. But I was not prepared--no, I was _not_ prepared--for such an
unblushing statement that you are kept in ignorance. Have I not told
you plainly--have I not told you repeatedly--that this Miss Judith
Arkroyd is what is complained of? Have I disguised anything? What I
have said is the shameful, disgraceful _truth_. The TRUTH, Alfred
Challis! Down on your knees and acknowledge it!" A bouquet of vital
doctrines essential to salvation hung about this; the attitude of
kneeling was especially telling. More of the same sort followed.
When a lull came, Challis spoke. "Am I to see Marianne, or am I not?"
said he. "I am convinced she is here, and I have a right to see her."
The old woman kept glum silence, and he repeated his words. Then she
said: "You shall not see her. It is no use. You had better go." He then
said, "I know she is here, because I saw her blue silk sunshade in the
entry," and left the room, as though to verify his observation. At
the stair-foot he paused, and called aloud to his wife: "Polly Anne,
Polly Anne! Are you there?" No answer came, and then the old woman came
running out, quite inarticulate with rage and coughing.
"Listen to me," said he, and his manner stopped her. "I am going. But
you will do well to pay attention to what I am going to say to you.
If you repeat any impudent falsehoods about Miss Arkroyd or any other
lady--yes!--whether you make them yourself or get them from any other
pigsty or gutter, you will place yourself within reach of the law. You
had better talk to Tillingfleet about it. He seems a sensible chap.
At any rate, he will be able to tell you that people have been ruined
before now by the damages they have had to pay for circulating filthy
slanders without foundation. So be careful, grandmamma! Good-night!"
He had been so self-restrained up to the moment when his anger broke
out in speech that his worthy mother-in-law was taken completely
aback by it. She remained so until the door closed behind him. It was
then too late for any demonstration, and the disappointed guardian of
family morals fell back into the house gobbling like a turkey-cock.
Challis found Emma at the garden-gate, and gave her her half-crown of
consolation. He received the impression that she had been sent out
with orders to warn Martha and the children should they return, and
head them off in time to prevent a meeting. He was afterwards sorry he
had not entered into conversation with this girl, and made a friend
of her. But the truth is it was impossible for his mind to receive
the idea that his wife's resolution would be a lasting one; and he
felt confident of a penitent letter in a day or two, and an _amende
honorable_ to himself, whether he deserved one or not, for suspicions
which he persisted in looking at as false _per se_, although one or
two circumstances, quite outside their radius, might be coaxed into
court by a malicious prosecution to testify against him. Any other
anticipation was mere nightmare.
But a day passed, and another, and many postmen's knocks, each with its
exasperation of hope frustrated; and many cabs, that might have ended
in the voices of the children shouting to the cabman, by permission,
which gate to stop at. And a loneliness indescribable, so unlike the
happy empty days one gets for work now and again when one's housemates
troop away to some assured haven elsewhere, and write every day, if
it's only a postcard. How Challis envied the splendid self-absorption
of our old friend the cat! How he envied the sound of a happy freedom
in the chronic controversy of the kitchen; always the same controversy,
but possibly on various subjects! How happy the tradesmen's boys
seemed!--how callous to the smallness of the orders!
Every day he wrote a line to Marianne, ignoring all that had passed.
She would give way in time. If he persevered, one day she would be
unable to resist the temptation to reply; it would be a sort of
hypnotic suggestion, mechanically brought about. It was on the day
after his last visit to Tulse Hill that he made up his mind to try
whether a letter to Judith would not procure one from her that would do
some good. It could not make matters worse.
Oh, this strangely compounded clay, Man!--that any story should have to
tell it! But it is true, too. This Alfred Challis, who, face to face
with such grim reality of wreck at home, had as good as escaped from
subjection to the witchcraft that had brought it about, had no sooner
taken up his pen to write to its author, than he was again subject to
the experience that has been spoken of as the soul-brush. All his
consciousness--which was intense--of his own folly could not prevent
him attaching a special force to the first words of his letter. Surely
"Dear Miss Arkroyd" might have been a pure formality, just as much as
"Dear Grandmamma" would have been if he had brought himself to write to
that veteran practitioner in discord-brewing. It was no such thing. A
magic hung about the three words, with a suggestion in it of a phrase
of music, or a whiff of burnt incense. The image of Judith crept back
promptly into his mind at permission given, suggesting disloyalties
to his hope that Marianne would quarrel with her mamma, and take a
reasonable view of the position--come back and reinstate life.
Why, in heaven's name--he half asked himself--if it was to be like
this, if Marianne was going to persist in her unreasonable jealousy,
should not he take advantage of the freedom she forced upon him, of
the legal pretext of an irregular marriage that assumed the right of
Law and Usage to cancel a promise given and taken mutually, believed
by each giver to come from the heart of the other? He would have flung
from him angrily any suggestion of an advantage to come to himself from
capping to a dirty Orthodoxy--the words are his, not the story's--from
any joining in the World's dance; any acquiescence in the mops and
mows of the Performing Classes; any obeisance to a great organization
which--when it suited him--he chose to consider a mere mechanism for
keeping the funds up and the fun going, and the distribution among the
sanctioned of unlimited stars and garters and loaves and fishes. But
if it were forced upon him in the face of his persistent repudiation
of it, if the other contracting party flaunted it in his face, might
not he avail himself of this pretext?--use a disgraceful shuffle in the
service of truth? Was he not almost in honour bound to do so, to that
lady from whom his evasive declaration of passion had elicited what was
at least a strong disclaimer of indifference to himself?
But Challis only half asked himself these questions, because he knew
the answer. He knew that he knew the difference between Right and
Wrong, and he knew that his wife had Right on her side--not much, but
some--and he suspected that he had Wrong on his--not some, but much. So
he finished his letter to Judith and posted it.
Judith wrote in answer to Challis's letter, and he forwarded an
enclosure it contained, addressed to his wife. It was returned to him,
torn in three or four pieces, by the next post. He joined it up and
read it, and thought it the most sweet, conciliatory, angelic human
document he had ever read. But, then, he was a man!
He went more than once to Tulse Hill after this, without succeeding
in seeing Marianne. The third time he found the house empty, placed
in the hands of an agent, who said in reply to all inquiries that
his instructions were limited to dealing with the house. He was, he
said, a House-Agent. But he would undertake that letters should be
forwarded. He evidently enjoyed being civil, so satiated was he with
the offensiveness of his position.
Mrs. Eldridge called on him as a peacemaker, having in tow her husband,
who winked at him over her shoulder, uninterpretably. He said to
her, subduing his anger well: "I would not have seen you, Charlotte
Eldridge, if there had not been something I have been wishing to say to
you. I cannot prove it, but I am as certain of it as that I stand here
that it is you that have poisoned my wife's mind against me, and have
filled it with every sort of nasty misinterpretation of a perfectly
innocent friendship. You have known absolutely nothing of the lady
whom you have thought fit to malign as a means of maligning me.... No,
I know I have no means of knowing that you have ever said a single
word against her. But my object in seeing you is to tell you that I am
convinced that you have. I am convinced that Marianne has shown you
my correspondence without any warranty--and for that she may be to
blame--and that you have read into it meanings she never would have
dreamed of ascribing to it, left to herself. I am, in short, sure that
it is you--you--you at the bottom of all this mischief, and I tell you
honestly that after you have left this door I shall not be sorry if I
never see you or hear of you again. Good-bye!"
Mrs. Eldridge had thrown in denials; and when her husband, moved to
eloquence, had interposed with "Come, I say now, Master Titus, ain't
'nasty misinterpretation' coming it rather strong?" had briefly
directed him to be quiet till he was spoken to. She had then placed
herself on oath, offering an extemporized solemnity if called on. "I am
ready to go down on my knees here and now, Alfred Challis, and to call
on God, who will one day be your judge and mine, to bear witness that
this is a _cruel falsehood_! He knows"--here she threw in upper-case
type freely--"that all my wish, all my effort, has been towards
conciliation and peace...."
At this point Challis interrupted her, saying curtly: "Then your
efforts have not been very successful. I do not see that we shall gain
anything by talking any more about it. Good-bye again!" This occurred
before the exodus from Glenvairloch, or Challis might have been less
unconciliatory, with an eye to keeping open a possible channel of
communication with his wife, even though it would involve communication
with a woman whom he now thoroughly detested.