OF MARIANNE AT BROADSTAIRS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF A "DREADNOUGHT."
AND HOW SHE READ OF HER HUSBAND'S ACCIDENT ON ITS ARMOUR-PLATES, AND
AT ONCE STARTED FOR ROYD. BUT SUPPOSE THEY CALLED HER "LADY CHALLIS"!
Marianne Challis, or, as she preferred to be called, Craik, had
sentenced herself to an embittered life, and knew it. But she had, as
we have said, so much in her of the dogged tenacity and vengefulness
of a Red Indian brave that scarcely any idea of surrender had ever, so
far, entered her mind. Whenever the smallest suspicion of wavering had
approached its outskirts, during the year and a half of her residence
with her mother at Broadstairs, she had at once brought into the field
an auxiliary force, the consolation to her conscience that she was,
at least, no longer "living in sin" with the father of her children.
Even if her jealousy of what she found a satisfaction in calling his
"connection with" Miss Arkroyd--a phrase first used, dexterously, by
Charlotte Eldridge--had been ill-founded, which it wasn't, it would
have been a misapprehension to be thankful for, in that it had made her
alive to the heinousness of her immoral life, and qualified her to go
before the Bar of an Offended God, not only with mere lame apologies
for the existence of her two girls, but with a statement of account,
claiming payment of Joy over the Sinner that Repenteth. Where would
have been the use of pleading, before that Awful Throne, that she was
"only Kate's half-sister"?
This story knows that accusation will be brought against it of
"sneering" at things sacred; but let the accuser try to depict the
frame of mind of this poor lady without seeming to do so. Marianne had
accepted her mother's Choctaw Deity, a creation of the sullen vices
of her own mind, on the strength of an assurance that he was also the
God of the man who paid, in Syria, the penalty of the most intrepid
and magnificent attempt to touch the hearts of men the world has ever
known. Let him be sure that when he talks of "things sacred" he is
really holding those things sacred that that man was tortured to death
for proclaiming the truth of, two thousand years ago, and that he is
not exalting the comicalities of a Theologism.
But the outcome of it all was an embittered life for Marianne. And the
bitterness was bound to come out--could not be concealed. It showed
itself in severity towards her children to some extent, but very much
more in acrimony towards her mother. It was just as well, perhaps,
that the safety-valve existed. The worthy old lady would have been
quarrelling with some one else if she had not quarrelled with her
daughter; so it was all one to her.
This old lady was the soul of dissension and savage righteousness. It
must not be understood that what Bob called a "regular set-to between
Gran and the Mater" was of daily occurrence. Often a week would pass
without a battle-royal. But no hour ever passed without an exchange
of shots. Bob's reports to his father of the life at Belvedere Villa,
Broadstairs, were highly coloured, perhaps, but they enabled the author
to picture to himself a daily routine not far from the truth. When
Bob stated that Old Gran was all shaky-waky with rage to begin with,
and would pucker up and fly at a moment's notice if you didn't look
uncommon sharp, Challis accepted the first clause of the indictment
as a false diagnosis of the tremulousness of old age; the second as
realistic poetry; and the condition precedent of immunity at the end
as an admission that his son's own attitude was not always faultless.
When that young man said it was "pray, pray, pray, all day long," and
he didn't see the fun, his father perceived that his meaning was that
religious exercises were protracted beyond usage, for instance, of the
Deanery at Inchester; where, according to Bob, it was "once and done
with." Besides, the Dean didn't snuffle, and Old Gran did. Challis
remarked that Bob would have cut a poor figure as a Hindu Yogi, and
felt grateful in his heart to Dean Tillotson for not snuffling. It
might arrest a violent reaction on Bob's part against all Religion,
Law, Order, and Morality. For Challis would not trust anyone but
himself without the first; weak natures, like other people's, might
lose touch with the other three as well, and take to the secret
manufacture of melinite. He never suspected himself of a weak nature.
These illuminations had been thrown on Belvedere Villa after Bob's
first visit there, a year since. This August he was acquiring more
dignified forms of speech, befitting a fifth-form boy. But he was
still capable of saying that he had seen "awfully little" of his
Governor these holidays. Indeed, if he had not gone with him to a
place in Derbyshire for a week, he would hardly have set eyes on
him. Then if his Governor was stopping on a week at this beastly
little place--Heaven knows why!--why shouldn't _he_? Why was _he_ to
go to Broadstairs? However, he went. And from Broadstairs he wrote
to his Governor, at Brideswell-Poulgreave, Derby, saying that Gran
was "as bad, if not worse, than ever," and provoked severe criticism
of his English in reply. He had his revenge, though, for he pelted
his Governor with samples of the same solecism, cut from current
literature, till the accumulations became quite formidable.
It may seem strange, but the story must record it, that almost the
only thing that gave poor Marianne any real pleasure during this
year-and-a-half in her mother's house was the reading from time to time
in the newspapers of the literary successes of "Titus"; for to her
he never ceased to be Titus. So self-contradictory was her frame of
mind that, when "Aminta Torrington" made such a sensation just after
Christmas, her bosom swelled with pride over the play's success, just
as though she herself had been by the author's side at the fall of the
curtain. Her curiosity was intense to know whether or not the name of
the actress who personated Aminta was her own or one assumed by that
detestable woman to whom she owed all her unhappiness. "Silvia Berens"
puzzled her, because it sounded familiar. But not sufficiently so to be
sure she had known it in those last days she had spent at the Hermitage.
It was a grievous vexation to have no one she could take into her
confidence. She would have shrunk from showing her inner mind to her
mother, even if there had been the slightest prospect of the old woman
knowing anything on dramatic or literary subjects; and when she threw
out a feeler to Charlotte Eldridge, that lady irritated her by taking
for granted that the pleasure she had expressed was a creditable
impulse of generosity, and not spontaneous at all. Just like Charlotte!
And all the while her pleasure was a reality she had a right to indulge
in--a luxury she could allow herself without any weak concession to
feelings she had destined to extinction.
For the fact is Marianne had never ceased to love the father of her
children. Can a woman ever succeed in doing so, except by hating him?
Now, Choctaw as she was, she was under no obligation to detest her
husband as long as she could fully gratify her hatred elsewhere. Judith
Arkroyd had the full benefit of it--drew the fire of her batteries on
herself. Oh, the hypocrisy of that letter the girl had the impertinence
to write to her! But _she_ saw through it. As for Titus, did she not
know him well enough to know he would be mere wax in the hands of a
designing woman like that? Oh yes!--_she_ knew how to flatter him, no
doubt! And how to make the best of herself, too. Charlotte could at
least sympathize about _that_; _she_ knew the sort this Judith was!
Indeed, Charlotte had been liberal in her realistic suggestions about
Judith, who may have been in some ways no better than she made her out,
but who was certainly short of the standard of depravity this moralist
vouched for in telegraph-girls, her _bêtes-noires_ in all that touched
the purity of the domestic hearth. Charlotte's sidelights on the Tophet
incident, as explained in "that hypocritical letter from the girl
herself," would have done credit to Paul de Kock.
Chewing this cud--or these cuds; which should it be?--would take the
poor woman so perilously near a fit of exculpation of Titus that
she was often forced to have recourse to the old story of their
consanguinity to keep her resentment up to the mark. Yes!--she
would--she could--go through a mental operation technically called
"forgiving" Titus. But go back to him? No! She had sinned, all those
years, in ignorance, and with a false ideal of her husband, who had now
fallen from his high estate. And look you!--it was not only this Judith
business. How about that other story? How about that Steptoe story,
not an hour's walk from here? She found the neighbourhood of Ramsgate
oppressive to her.
No--she could never go back to Titus, whatever happened. Not even if
this Bill that was to come into Parliament were to make marriages like
hers and Titus's lawful for the future. What was wrong was wrong, and
how the House of Lords could make it right was more than Marianne
could understand. She wasn't aware that it was the House of Lords that
originally made it wrong.
But if she did her duty towards the supposed instructions of Holy
Writ--which she did not doubt could be found somewhere, as her mother
was so positive about them--she might claim as a set-off the pleasure
of reading the literary columns of the daily Press in the hope of
coming on Titus's name. She did more reading in that year-and-a-half
than she had done in all the rest of her life put together. And as
she was not literate enough to skim, she had to plod; and plodding is
slow work in the columns of a voluminous Sunday paper--the largest
possible paper in the smallest possible type. But one does get a lot
for one's penny, whether it's _Lloyd's Weekly_, or the _Dispatch_, or
the _People_; and there's sure to be all the theatrical news and recent
publications, whichever you take. So Marianne pored intently over one
or the other, every Sunday afternoon, on the sofa; while her parent
dipped into sermons, or ran her eye through the Prayer-book, now and
then looking at the newspaper. Not, that is to say, in the mere cant
sense of the phrase, but glaring at it wolfishly over her own more
legible type, with a basilisk eye to slay the profane intruder. The
presence of the unhallowed secular abomination in the house on the
Lord's Day was a bone of contention between the mother and daughter;
but the old lady had had to give in, and every Sunday afternoon saw
strained relations in abeyance, and the tension of a skin-deep concord,
that might or might not last until the children should be allowed down,
and given the obnoxious thing to make boats of.
On this particular Sunday--the day following the events of last
chapter--Marianne's attention seemed deeper and more prolonged than
usual. She had found something that interested her. It was taxing her
apprehension severely, and she had no one to go to for enlightenment.
But it is not human to accept exasperation in silence, and Marianne
saw a prospect of relief in putting her mother's uselessness as an
informant on record. So she said, as though referring to a matter of
course, "I suppose it's no use asking _you_ what these Parliament
things mean," and went on reading.
Few people admit complete ignorance in any department without a
struggle. "Perhaps I know nothing about anything," said the old woman,
snarling meekly. "Perhaps I know more than you choose to think I
know. Now snap!" These last words claimed the position of a private
reflection made by a person of rare self-restraint in a den of mad
dogs. There was nothing unlike her mother in them, and Marianne left
them unnoticed, and continued:
"I suppose you don't know what is meant by 'an amendment to remove
from the Bill its retrospective character'?" For Marianne had got at
the report of the sitting of the House of Lords of two days since; and
though she had kept herself uninformed, intentionally, on the subject
related to, still, when she saw it all in print, her curiosity took the
bit in its teeth, and she read.
"It happens that you are entirely wrong, because it happens that that
is just the one thing I do happen to know. But I shall not talk about
it on this day." This resolution lasted quite three minutes, when the
speaker resumed, under a kind of protest that the little she had to say
wouldn't count. "You know perfectly well what Mr. Tillingfleet said in
his last letter about this wicked Bill business."
"What did he say?"
"You know perfectly well"
"I do not."
The self-denying ordinance of Sabbath silence became too hard to keep.
The old lady broke out, "You know perfectly well that Mr. Tillingfleet
said that, if this Bill was given a retrospective character, you would
have to be Mr. Challis's wife again, and live with him, whether you
liked it or not."
"I don't recollect that he said any such thing. I don't believe he
_did_."
"You can get his letter and look at it, if you doubt your mother's word
on Sunday." This was not an admission of fibs on week-days; it referred
to the intensification of unfiliality as a Sabbath vice. The speaker
closed her eyes and began saying nothing about the subject again, in
fulfilment of her manifesto.
Marianne ran her eyes over the scanty fringe of letters stuck in the
mirror-frame over the chimney-piece. Mr. Tillingfleet's business
handwriting was soon found. "He _does_ say no such thing," said she,
after reading it to herself. "What he says is absolutely and entirely
different."
"I am corrected. When you are quiet once more, perhaps you will kindly
tell me _what_ he says?"
"Grandmamma, I tell you plainly it is no use trying to make me out in a
temper, because I'm not...."
"Go on. I am accustomed to being snapped at."
"I shall not go on if you talk like that."
"_I_ have no wish to hear the letter again. Don't read it if you don't
want to. I know perfectly well what's in it." The venerable lady then
murmured to herself, most offensively, "Three little Liver Pills."
It was one of her practices to sketch correctives for controversial
opponents, the doses increasing in proportion to the degree of
diversity of opinion.
Marianne, armed with a combative immobility of face and monotony of
accent, read aloud from Mr. Tillingfleet's letter. "'The retrospective
action of the measure now before Parliament will, if carried, seriously
affect the relations of Sir Alfred Challis and your daughter. It will
undoubtedly determine the technical legitimacy of their children, and
give their _de facto_ father a legal right to their guardianship.'
There!" says Marianne in conclusion, replacing the letter in the
looking-glass.
But her mother rallies her forces with asperity against the assumptions
of this monosyllable, saying enigmatically that she is "not going to be
'there'd.'" It is ridiculous, she says, to pretend that she said that
Mr. Tillingfleet said there was anything in the Bill to compel anyone
to do anything. But, for all that, Marianne would have to live with her
husband again, or go without her children.
Marianne walked up and down the room over this, chafing. She couldn't
believe such disgraceful injustice was possible. Besides, if the
Bill passed ever so, Titus would never have the meanness to take her
children from her. To think that, all this year past, he could have
married that girl at any moment, and then to have a right to his
children!
Grandmamma said she would never be the least surprised at any
freethinker committing bigamy. All freethinkers committed something, or
many things, for that matter, avoiding felony from motives of policy.
"He knows that his children are contrary to the Act of Parliament now,
and that he's no right to them, and that's why he keeps his distance.
You'll see, Marianne, that it will be quite another story if this
wicked Bill passes."
"I don't believe it. Anyhow, it hasn't passed yet! Besides, the
amendment was withdrawn."
"Well!"
"Well, of course! Then the Bill won't have a retrospective character."
But the old lady was too sharp to fall into this topsy-turvy view of
the case, and presently succeeded in convincing her daughter of her
mistake. However, Perplexity was only scotched, not killed. "Suppose
Titus had married this girl already, I mean, and the Bill passes, which
of us would be his wife? I don't see how any amount of retrospects
could unmarry _them_." Thus Marianne; and her mother can't meet the
difficulty off-hand.
But consideration lights on a solution. "It would make your children
legitimate, and he would claim them," says she, with the sort of glee
in ambush people feel over a fellow-creature caught in a legal man-trap.
But Marianne's short sight is often clear sight. "What rubbish!" says
she. "If Miss Arkroyd had a baby.... No!--I don't care, Grandmamma.
She wouldn't be Titus's wife, if she married him at all the churches
in London, and you know it.... Yes!--I say again, if she had a baby,
Titus would have two legitimate families at once, and she would be his
Law-wife, and I shouldn't. It's silly!"
Those who read the Debates on this question at the time--it is not so
long ago all this happened--will remember that arguments akin to this
one of Marianne's repulsed the forlorn hopes of the Bill's opponents,
and clinched its retrospective character. What has happened to women
who had married their sister's husbands, and been superseded by a
"lawful" wife, before the passing of this Bill, the story knows not.
Have the husbands been convicted of retrospective bigamy?
But this story has little more concern with the intricacies of
difficult legislation in this matter than with those that have arisen
in any other coercion by Law of the private lives of the non-aggressive
classes. It is hopeless, apparently, to look forward to a day when the
guiding rule of the law-giver will be non-interference with all but
molestation; but one may indulge in satisfaction at each removal from
the Statute Book of an enactment that infringes it.
Marianne's last speech, recorded above, shows a curious frame of mind.
She had thrust her husband away from her in a fit of jealousy--not an
ill-grounded one, by any means--and had bolstered up her conscience
by what she more than half suspected to be a false pretext; but
one in which she felt sure of the support of Grundydom in Great
Britain, _passim_. How if this new legislation, or abrogation of old
legislation, should undermine the fortress of her powerful allies, and
leave a small and unconsidered band of bigots to fight the battle of
an imaginary consanguinity? Those are not the words of her mind--only
the gist of her thought. What she said to herself was that now there
was to be an Act of Parliament everyone would go round the other way.
To her that included the thought that the old catchwords that had done
duty for so long would begin to ring false when brought into collision
with that powerful agency, a Parliamentary majority. Since she had been
dwelling so constantly on the subject she had more than once found
herself face to face with impeachments of well-worn arguments derived
from Scripture; notably when she found that one Biblical denunciation
treated a marriage with a woman who might have one day become her
husband's Deceased Wife's Sister, but who would not have been so when
he married her, unless he had waited for that _sine qua non_, his
wife's death. Thoughts of this sort strengthened and multiplied as
the time drew nearer for this Parliamentary discussion, and here was
the Bill apparently going to become Law, and by a backhanded thrust
to make her Titus's "Law-wife" again, as well as what her own heart
in some mysterious way proclaimed her to be--namely, his _real_ wife,
whatever that meant! She was certainly in a very curious, confused,
self-contradictious frame of mind, was Marianne.
Perhaps her contradiction and confusion had never been much greater
than on this Sunday afternoon, where the story has left her for so
long, feverishly pacing up and down the room, after puzzling her poor
stupid head trying to follow the Debate, and make some sense of it.
She had succeeded in finding out that the Bill was nearly through
Parliament, and that it would affect her and Titus more than she had
conceived possible hitherto. She was working herself up into a state
of bitten lips and sobs kept in abeyance. Her mother was not the person
to encourage this sort of thing. "If you must prowl, Marianne," said
she, "can't you go and prowl somewhere else?"
Her daughter may have shown her state of mind; for as she returned to
her sofa, her amiable mother added, "If you are going to sniff and make
a scene, Marianne, you had better have the children down." The old
woman was sitting with her eyes shut, and really had very slight data
to go on.
"Whatever Titus was, at least he wasn't unkind!" said Marianne tartly.
But she touched the bell-handle, and its sound was followed by the
prompt appearance of Mumps and Chobbles, now no longer known by those
names, which had been to some extent their father's private property.
The younger child came into the room shouting, with jumps as emphasis,
"Now we may have the Thunday papers to make boats of, long ones and
short ones."
The construction of a Navy had been a great _pièce de résistance_
at the Hermitage in old days. The vessels had weak points; notably
that when the deck was flattened out on completion, the cut-water was
apt to part amidships, unless firmly held together by a neighbouring
shipwright, or stuck together with a pin. But this last practice was
looked upon with suspicion, as hardly legitimate. The question does
not arise, so far as we are aware, at Chatham or Devonport; as in no
case are ships first constructed with decks analogous to the bottoms of
wine-bottles seen from within, and levelled down before launching.
Traditions of bygone Dockyards naturally survived, and gave rise to
controversy. Marianne was always in dread of some painful reminder of
the past during ship-building. But it kept the children quiet; so,
though she had not seen the whole of the paper, owing to the difficulty
of analyzing that Debate, she conceded it to the Contractors.
Now, a practice obtained between them quite at variance with the
care and foresight usually shown in the placing of new ships on the
stocks. If in any of the Government Dockyards it is common for the
actual length of a ship to remain an open question until the moment of
construction, it should surely be made the subject of a question in
Parliament! Mumps and Chobbles, having obtained the paper, differed
about the length of the first hull to be put in hand. Chobbles
preferred a normal full sheet, alleging that vessels built of two
sheets were only just seaworthy, owing to weakness of the backbone.
Mumps was ambitious, advocating a ship of huge length, made with two
full sheets. Chobbles opposed this scheme on the ground that, if
pushed, such a vessel would collapse, or go scrunch. Mumps, however,
had set her heart on it.
"Papa _thaid_ it wouldn't go scrunch--not if we sticked it over in
the middle--not if we pulled bofe the edges across--not if we doo'd
like viss." Mumps ended an imperfect description with a practical
demonstration of how the vessel might be strengthened in the middle if
some of the length were sacrificed. "Overlap" was the word she wanted.
"Then we must have wafers," said Chobbles. Because otherwise, you see,
the ship might come in half, and founder--who knows?--with all on board.
"You may have wafers if you won't quarrel," said the mother of the
shipwrights. And wafers being obtained from her writing-desk, a threat
of violence from Mumps was withdrawn, and overlooked.
Now it so chanced that, the newspaper being large and difficult to
control, Chobbles, as principal, gave instructions to Mumps to hold
the two sheets the long ship was to be made from as directed, while
she herself stuck the two together, cautiously advancing across the
paper on her knees. A more mature shipwright would have wafered the
two corners first, and distributed the remaining wafers over the space
between, so as to make the most of them. As it turned out, Mumps
shifted her corner while Chobbles was yet half-way, and when Chobbles
completed, dismay ensued. For the paper didn't lie straight, and all
the wafers were used up. Words followed, and recriminations. Mumps
maintained that she had held on to her corner loyally, unwaveringly;
Chobbles that she could not have done so, because she herself had
selected a passage in large type as the point Mumps was to remain
faithful to. She was in a position to show that if her little sister
had adhered to her instructions, the accident would not have happened.
"What are those children fighting about?" said their Grandmamma, who
had fallen asleep--had been snoring, in fact--and who waked suddenly.
"It all comes, Marianne, of your letting them play on Sunday afternoon.
When I was a child I should have been writing out the sermon, and well
whipped if I couldn't recollect it...." And so forth.
"What's all that noise about, children?" said their mother. "If you
can't make less I shall ring for Martha to take you back to the
nursery. Be quieter!"
Chobbles plunged straight into indictment, Mumps into justification.
"I said, 'Hold the corner to Motor Car,' and Mumps didn't."... "I
_did_ held it to Motor Car, and never leaved it loose one minute."...
"You did _not_ hold it to Motor Car, or it would be up against Motor
Car now."... "Be-because you shov-oveled it all crooked, and it wors
your fault and it worsn't my fault" ... and more to the same effect,
came mixed with heart-broken lamentations over the ruin of the great
ship's chances; for all the wafers but two were licked and used, and
the wobble of the raw material was too disheartening for any attempt to
be made to rectify it.
"It just serves you right for quarrelling about it," said Grandmamma
savagely, taking a mean advantage of the difficulties youth has in
convicting maturity of defective reasoning. "And it serves _you_ right,
Marianne, for letting the children have the horrible things at all."
She went on to point out that all the benefit of Afternoon Service was
lost if contact with such profanities was permitted afterwards.
Meanwhile Marianne, painfully conscious that in these days she could
not say, as of old, "What would your father say if he heard you quarrel
like that?"--for fear of complications--went to the children, still
at daggers drawn over the newspaper on the floor, to make an official
investigation of the facts.
Did not the story note, a page ago, that she had altogether missed
a sheet of the paper? She had, and it was an important one; the one
containing the very Latest Intelligence and Stop-the-press News.
And the words "Motor Car," chosen by Chobbles as a finger-guide
for her small sister, formed part of the following piece of Latest
Intelligence:--"_Fatal Motor-Car Accident._--An accident, which has
already caused one death, and which it is feared may have other fatal
results, occurred yesterday morning at Royd, in Rankshire, close to the
seat of Sir Murgatroyd Arkroyd, Bart., some years since Member for the
County. The car, the property of Lord Felixthorpe, Sir Murgatroyd's
son-in-law, was turning a sharp corner near the picturesque and
interesting spot known as 'The Abbey Well,' when the deceased, a man
known as 'Blind Jim,' stepped incautiously into the middle of the
road, so suddenly that the promptest action of the chauffeur in his
application of the brake could not avert a catastrophe. Unfortunately,
as the car swerved, one of its occupants, a gentleman whose name had
not transpired at the moment of writing, rose to his feet in his
apprehension that a mishap was impending, and was thrown violently
into the road, falling on his head. He was conveyed to Royd Hall
insensible, but we understand that hopes are confidently entertained of
his recovery. We are glad to be able to add that the lady who was the
other occupant of the car, Miss Judith Arkroyd, the eldest daughter of
Sir Murgatroyd, had the good fortune to sustain no injury beyond the
inevitable shock attendant on so tragic an occurrence." Jim's death was
rather taken for granted in this paragraph; no doubt the wire on which
it was founded had felt the greater importance of the motorists. No one
ever knew who sent it. In such cases, no one ever does.
The overlap amidships just hid all but the first three lines; and
when Marianne examined it, with a view to remedying the miscarriage,
she attached no more importance to "Fatal Motor Accident," in large
capitals, than to any other mishaps the newspaper world gets killed in.
There are always accidents! But in the course of a laborious detachment
of the last two or three wafers, to be employed in reconstruction if
gummy enough, the words "Royd in Rankshire" were uncovered, and caught
her eye.
"Stop, children!--don't fuss and worry. I want to read this.... Royd
Hall in Rankshire."... The last words were said to herself in relief of
thought, not as information for the children, who didn't matter.
"_What's_ that about Royd in Rankshire?" Grandmamma waked suddenly, and
put a good deal of side on her snarl, provisionally, not knowing how
much acrimony might turn out to be needed.
"Wait till I've read it, and I'll tell you."
"Oh, don't tell me if you don't like. It's no concern of mine."
Nevertheless, Marianne, after reading through the paragraph to
herself--during which the old lady affected perusal of a sermon--took
her anxiety to hear for granted, and read it through aloud. It met with
the comment:
"I suppose that's what you grunted at, the first time?"
"Suppose what's what I grunted at ... oh! 'had the good fortune to
sustain no injury,' do you mean? Well, Grandmamma, I suppose you
wouldn't expect me to cry my eyes out if...."
"If 'handsome Judith' got her beauty spoiled--is that it?"
"I shouldn't cry my eyes out. I wonder who her other gentleman was, in
the car! I'm glad it wasn't Titus, at any rate."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, mamma, how can you be such a fool, when Bob heard from his father
only yesterday, at that place in Derbyshire; he got the letter this
morning." Bob had been at Broadstairs a week at this date, and, in
pursuance of a policy of avoiding his grandmother on Sundays, when she
was liable to malignant forms of piety, had started early in the day to
walk to Canterbury--his beloved Tillotson was staying there with an
ecclesiastical relative--where he would stop the night, and whence he
would walk back next day, accompanied probably by Tillotson. Well!--it
was only eighteen miles!
Marianne was as sure that her husband was safe, leagues away from
Royd Hall, yesterday morning, as she was that she had packed off Bob
with sandwiches and cake after an early breakfast twelve hours ago,
and that he and Tillotson were enjoying Choral Services and Purple
Emperors alternately to their hearts' content. She was satisfied--not
reasonably; but then, it was comfortable to be unreasonable--that he
had posted the letter as soon as it was written; and as it reached on
Sunday, it was posted on Saturday. What could be clearer?
She was so comfortable about it that she re-read the paragraph once or
twice, not quite without a kindling hope that Miss Arkroyd's motoring
about with a gentleman unnamed might "mean something"--mean something,
that is, that would end the chapter of Titus's admiration for, or
"connection with," Miss Arkroyd. It didn't matter which you called it.
One thing was clear enough. The injured man was a stranger to the
purveyor of the news; not the owner of the car, just mentioned, nor any
other of the _habitués_ of Royd Hall, all of whom would be well known
in the neighbourhood. Oh yes!--that was all right. She hoped, however,
that if he was an aspirant to Miss Arkroyd's hand, he was not seriously
damaged, so as to diminish his probabilities of success. As for "Blind
Jim," she was sorry for him, with a general feeling that "handsome
Judith" was responsible for his mishap, but without any definite
recollection of him. She may never have heard him mentioned at all,
for Mrs. Steptoe was not communicative about her brother; and although
Challis had certainly made Lizarann's acquaintance before Marianne left
her home, it was only on that last day of his abruptly terminated visit
to Royd. And that was all ancient history by now.
She resumed the reconstruction question quite at ease in her mind; if
anything, with a sense of something not unpleasant having happened.
Further search yielded two or three more wafers, and the ship was
completed and launched. But the resistance, to shearing-force, of the
bolts that held the fore and aft parts together had not been properly
calculated. A dissension between the owners led to an attempt to drag
her two ways at once, and--to use very un-nautical language--she gave
at the wafers. Mumps, seized with despair, was told that if she roared
and stamped, she shouldn't be allowed to make ships at all; and her
mother, to show that she was in earnest, picked up the shattered
vessel, and proceeded to re-embody it as the Sunday paper. But a
something caught her eye, and she read again.
A moment after Grandmamma, rousing herself wrathfully, exclaimed,
"What is all this horrible noise about? Those children had better go
upstairs. I tell you they _shall go_, Marianne; I won't have the noise
any longer!" and began pulling the bell to summon Martha, the nurse.
She must have taken a sound that came from her daughter for protest or
remonstrance; for she stormed on, heedless that the voice of the two
children had changed from mere unruliness to terror. "It's no use your
saying 'yow,' because I tell you I won't have it. On Sunday afternoon,
too!... _What?_" She turned furiously, but her fury gave place to alarm
as she caught sight of her daughter, ashy white, gasping to speak, but
speechless; clutching with one hand the paper that had been the ship,
pointing to something in it with the other.
Then Marianne found a voice, or a voice she hardly knew as her own, to
cry out chokingly, "Oh, Titus, Titus!--dying!" She relinquished the
paper to her mother, saying, "Oh yes--here!--oh, here! Look, look! ..."
still pointing, and then covering her eyes, with a cry of despair: "He
is dying--dying! Oh, children, children, your father will die, and I
shall not be beside him!"
"You fool!" said the old lady. "Don't go on like a mad thing.
Before the children!" She was scared, but it must be admitted she
showed discipline. "You might at least be quiet while I read it....
No!--_Wait_, Martha!... can't you see? ... you servants never
_can_ see...." She took the paper to the window--for the light was
failing--and read to herself. After a minute, she said abruptly, "Ho!"
and then _sotto voce_, "He'll die in her arms, at any rate." And then
this venerable woman--let us hope with an affectation of indifference
to the fate of her son-in-law, contrived something nearly approaching
a snigger as an accompaniment to the remark, aloud, "_He_ won't die!
_You_ needn't fret yourself. Handsome Judith will see that he's
properly doctored up." Leniency might have supposed this an attempt
to strengthen her daughter against her trouble by appealing to her
resentment. If so, it was an impolitic one. For Marianne, apparently as
a response, said decisively, "I shall go to him at once," and seemed to
mean it.
"Don't be an idiot! You can't pay for your ticket. You haven't any
money, and _I_ shan't give you any." But it seemed that Marianne had
money, so this attempt to hinder her departure only hastened it. She
was not one to submit to coercion tamely. To be brief, she put a few
necessaries in a bag, hugged her children well, consoling them as best
she could, begged that the news should be kept from Bob till more was
known--for this Marianne, with all her faults, had a strong leaven of
family affection--and caught the quick train for London.
She would have travelled all night had there been a train. As it was,
she was up very early at the Hotel, got a poor breakfast, and left
Euston by the first express, before eight o'clock struck. Would Titus
be alive on her arrival?
For the item of "Stop-the-press News" that had caught her eye, and
thrown a light on the paragraph she had just read, ran as follows:
"Name of gentleman thrown from motor-car yesterday morning at Royd, Sir
Alfred Challis, well-known author and playwright; condition precarious,
but not despaired of."
In the greatest stress of trouble absurd thoughts hang about like imps,
and vex one with their insignificance. All through that five hours'
rail Marianne was plagued with the question:--Suppose those people
chose to address her as "Lady Challis," what should she do?