THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Had he, Hugh Chiltern, been anathematized from all the high pulpits of
the world, Honora's belief in him could not have been shaken. Ivanhoe and
the Knights of the Round Table to the contrary, there is no chivalry so
exalted as that of a woman who loves, no courage higher, no endurance
greater. Her knowledge is complete; and hers the supreme faith that is
unmoved by calumny and unbelief. She alone knows. The old Chiltern did
not belong to her: hers was the new man sprung undefiled from the sacred
fire of their love; and in that fire she, too, had been born again.
Peter--even Peter had no power to share such a faith, though what he had
said of Chiltern had wounded her--wounded her because Peter, of all
others, should misjudge and condemn him. Sometimes she drew consolation
from the thought that Peter had never seen him. But she knew he could not
understand him, or her, or what they had passed through: that kind of
understanding comes alone through experience.
In the long days that followed she thought much about Peter, and failed
to comprehend her feelings towards him. She told herself that she ought
to hate him for what he had so cruelly said, and at times indeed her
resentment was akin to hatred: again, his face rose before her as she had
seen it when he had left her, and she was swept by an incomprehensible
wave of tenderness and reverence. And yet--paradox of paradoxes
--Chiltern possessed her!
On the days when his letters came it was as his emissary that the sun
shone to give her light in darkness, and she went about the house with a
song on her lips. They were filled, these letters, with an elixir of
which she drank thirstily to behold visions, and the weariness of her
exile fell away. The elixir of High Purpose. Never was love on such a
plane! He lifting her,--no marvel in this; and she--by a magic power of
levitation at which she never ceased to wonder--sustaining him. By her
aid he would make something of himself which would be worthy of her. At
last he had the incentive to enable him to take his place in the world.
He pictured their future life at Grenoble until her heart was strained
with yearning for it to begin. Here would be duty,--let him who would
gainsay it, duty and love combined with a wondrous happiness. He at a
man's labour, she at a woman's; labour not for themselves alone, but for
others. A paradise such as never was heard of--a God-fearing paradise,
and the reward of courage.
He told her he could not go to Grenoble now and begin the life without
her. Until that blessed time he would remain a wanderer, avoiding the
haunts of men. First he had cruised in the 'Folly, and then camped and
shot in Canada; and again, as winter drew on apace, had chartered another
yacht, a larger one, and sailed away for the West Indies, whence the
letters came, stamped in strange ports, and sometimes as many as five
together. He, too, was in exile until his regeneration should begin.
Well he might be at such a time. One bright day in early winter Honora,
returning from her walk across the bleak plains in the hope of letters,
found newspapers and periodicals instead, addressed in an unknown hand.
It matters not whose hand: Honora never sought to know. She had long
regarded as inevitable this acutest phase of her martyrdom, and the long
nights of tears when entire paragraphs of the loathed stuff she had
burned ran ceaselessly in her mind. Would she had burned it before
reading it! An insensate curiosity had seized her, and she had read and
read again until it was beyond the reach of fire.
Save for its effect upon Honora, it is immaterial to this chronicle. It
was merely the heaviest of her heavy payments for liberty. But what, she
asked herself shamefully, would be its effect upon Chiltern? Her face
burned that she should doubt his loyalty and love; and yet--the question
returned. There had been a sketch of Howard, dwelling upon the prominence
into which he had sprung through his connection with Mr. Wing. There had
been a sketch of her; and how she had taken what the writer was pleased
to call Society by storm: it had been intimated, with a cruelty known
only to writers of such paragraphs, that ambition to marry a Chiltern had
been her motive! There had been a sketch of Chiltern's career, in
carefully veiled but thoroughly comprehensible language, which might have
made a Bluebeard shudder. This, of course, she bore best of all; or, let
it be said rather, that it cost her the least suffering. Was it not she
who had changed and redeemed him?
What tortured her most was the intimation that Chiltern's family
connections were bringing pressure to bear upon him to save him from this
supremest of all his follies. And when she thought of this the strange
eyes and baffling expression of Mrs. Grainger rose before her. Was it
true? And if true, would Chiltern resist, even as she, Honora, had
resisted, loyally? Might this love for her not be another of his mad
caprices?
How Honora hated herself for the thought that thus insistently returned
at this period of snows and blasts! It was January. Had he seen the
newspapers? He had not, for he was cruising: he had, for of course they
had been sent him. And he must have received, from his relatives,
protesting letters. A fortnight passed, and her mail contained nothing
from him! Perhaps something had happened to his yacht! Visions of
shipwreck cause her to scan the newspapers for storms at sea,--but the
shipwreck that haunted her most was that of her happiness. How easy it is
to doubt in exile, with happiness so far away! One morning, when the wind
dashed the snow against her windows, she found it impossible to rise.
If the big doctor suspected the cause of her illness, Mathilde knew it.
The maid tended her day and night, and sought, with the tact of her
nation, to console and reassure her. The little woman next door came and
sat by her bedside. Cruel and infinitely happy little woman, filled with
compassion, who brought delicacies in the making of which she had spent
precious hours, and which Honora could not eat! The Lord, when he had
made Mrs. Mayo, had mercifully withheld the gift of imagination. One
topic filled her, she lived to one end: her Alpha and Omega were husband
and children, and she talked continually of their goodness and badness,
of their illnesses, of their health, of their likes and dislikes, of
their accomplishments and defects, until one day a surprising thing
happened. Surprising for Mrs. Mayo.
"Oh, don't!" cried Honora, suddenly. "Oh, don't! I can't bear it."
"What is it?" cried Mrs. Mayo, frightened out of her wits. "A turn? Shall
I telephone for the doctor?"
"No," relied Honora, "but--but I can't talk any more--to-day."
She apologized on the morrow, as she held Mrs. Mayo's hand. "It--it was
your happiness," she said; "I was unstrung. I couldn't listen to it.
Forgive me."
The little woman burst into tears, and kissed her as she sat in bed.
"Forgive you, deary!" she cried. "I never thought."
"It has been so easy for you," Honora faltered.
"Yes, it has. I ought to thank God, and I do--every night."
She looked long and earnestly, through her tears, at the young lady from
the far away East as she lay against the lace pillows, her paleness
enhanced by the pink gown, her dark hair in two great braids on her
shoulders.
"And to think how pretty you are!" she exclaimed.
It was thus she expressed her opinion of mankind in general, outside of
her own family circle. Once she had passionately desired beauty, the high
school and the story of Helen of Troy notwithstanding. Now she began to
look at it askance, as a fatal gift; and to pity, rather than envy, its
possessors.
As a by-industry, Mrs. Mayo raised geraniums and carnations in her front
cellar, near the furnace, and once in a while Peggy, with the
pulled-molasses hair, or chubby Abraham Lincoln, would come puffing up
Honora's stairs under the weight of a flower-pot and deposit it
triumphantly on the table at Honora's bedside. Abraham Lincoln did not
object to being kissed: he had, at least, grown to accept the process as
one of the unaccountable mysteries of life. But something happened to him
one afternoon, on the occasion of his giving proof of an intellect which
may eventually bring him, in the footsteps of his great namesake, to the
White House. Entering Honora's front door, he saw on the hall table a
number of letters which the cook (not gifted with his brains) had left
there. He seized them in one fat hand, while with the other he hugged the
flower-pot to his breast, mounted the steps, and arrived, breathless but
radiant, on the threshold of the beautiful lady's room, and there
calamity overtook him in the shape of one of the thousand articles which
are left on the floor purposely to trip up little boys.
Great was the disaster. Letters, geranium, pieces of flower-pot, a
quantity of black earth, and a howling Abraham Lincoln bestrewed the
floor. And similar episodes, in his brief experience with this world, had
not brought rewards. It was from sheer amazement that his tears ceased to
flow--amazement and lack of breath--for the beautiful lady sprang up and
seized him in her arms, and called Mathilde, who eventually brought a
white and gold box. And while Abraham sat consuming its contents in
ecstasy he suddenly realized that the beautiful lady had forgotten him.
She had picked up the letters, every one, and stood reading them with
parted lips and staring eyes.
It was Mathilde who saved him from a violent illness, closing the box and
leading him downstairs, and whispered something incomprehensible in his
ear as she pointed him homeward.
"Le vrai medecin--c'est toi, mon mignon."
There was a reason why Chiltern's letters had not arrived, and great were
Honora's self-reproach and penitence. With a party of Englishmen he had
gone up into the interior of a Central American country to visit some
famous ruins. He sent her photographs of them, and of the Englishmen, and
of himself. Yes, he had seen the newspapers. If she had not seen them,
she was not to read them if they came to her. And if she had, she was to
remember that their love was too sacred to be soiled, and too perfect to
be troubled. As for himself, as she knew, he was a changed man, who
thought of his former life with loathing. She had made him clean, and
filled him with a new strength.
The winter passed. The last snow melted on the little grass plot, which
changed by patches from brown to emerald green; and the children ran over
it again, and tracked it in the soft places, but Honora only smiled.
Warm, still days were interspersed between the windy ones, when the sky
was turquoise blue, when the very river banks were steeped in new
colours, when the distant, shadowy mountains became real. Liberty ran
riot within her. If he thought with loathing on his former life, so did
she. Only a year ago she had been penned up in a New York street in that
prison-house of her own making, hemmed in by surroundings which she had
now learned to detest from her soul.
A few more penalties remained to be paid, and the heaviest of these was
her letter to her aunt and uncle. Even as they had accepted other things
in life, so had they accepted the hardest of all to bear--Honora's
divorce. A memorable letter her Uncle Tom had written her after Peter's
return to tell them that remonstrances were useless! She was their
daughter in all but name, and they would not forsake her. When she should
have obtained her divorce, she should go back to them. Their house, which
had been her home, should always remain so. Honora wept and pondered long
over that letter. Should she write and tell them the truth, as she had
told Peter? It was not because she was ashamed of the truth that she had
kept it from them throughout the winter: it was because she wished to
spare them as long as possible. Cruellest circumstance of all, that a
love so divine as hers should not be understood by them, and should cause
them infinite pain!
The weeks and months slipped by. Their letters, after that first one,
were such as she had always received from them: accounts of the weather,
and of the doings of her friends at home. But now the time was at hand
when she must prepare them for her marriage with Chiltern; for they would
expect her in St. Louis, and she could not go there. And if she wrote
them, they might try to stop the marriage, or at least to delay it for
some years.
Was it possible that a lingering doubt remained in her mind that to
postpone her happiness would perhaps be to lose it? In her exile she had
learned enough to know that a divorced woman is like a rudderless ship at
sea, at the mercy of wind and wave and current. She could not go back to
her life in St. Louis: her situation there would be unbearable: her
friends would not be the same friends. No, she had crossed her Rubicon
and destroyed the bridge deep within her she felt that delay would be
fatal, both to her and Chiltern. Long enough had the banner of their love
been trailed in the dust.
Summer came again, with its anniversaries and its dragging, interminable
weeks: demoralizing summer, when Mrs. Mayo quite frankly appeared at her
side window in a dressing sacque, and Honora longed to do the same. But
time never stands absolutely still, and the day arrived when Mr. Beckwith
called in a carriage. Honora, with an audibly beating heart, got into it,
and they drove down town, past the department store where Mr. Mayo spent
his days, and new blocks of banks and business houses that flanked the
wide street, where the roaring and clanging of the ubiquitous trolley
cars resounded.
Honora could not define her sensations--excitement and shame and fear and
hope and joy were so commingled. The colours of the red and yellow brick
had never been so brilliant in the sunshine. They stopped before the new
court-house and climbed the granite steps. In her sensitive state, Honora
thought that some of the people paused to look after them, and that some
were smiling. One woman, she thought, looked compassionate. Within, they
crossed the marble pavement, the Honourable Dave handed her into an
elevator, and when it stopped she followed him as in a dream to an
oak-panelled door marked with a legend she did not read. Within was an
office, with leather chairs, a large oak desk, a spittoon, and portraits
of grave legal gentlemen on the wall.
"This is Judge Whitman's office," explained the Honourable Dave. "He'll
let you stay here until the case is called."
"Is he the judge--before whom--the case is to be tried?" asked Honora.
"He surely is," answered the Honourable Dave. "Whitman's a good friend of
mine. In fact, I may say, without exaggeration, I had something to do
with his election. Now you mustn't get flustered," he added. "It isn't
anything like as bad as goin' to the dentist. It don't amount to shucks,
as we used to say in Missouri."
With these cheerful words of encouragement he slipped out of a side door
into what was evidently the court room, for Honora heard a droning. After
a long interval he reappeared and beckoned her with a crooked finger. She
arose and followed him into the court room.
All was bustle and confusion there, and her counsel whispered that they
were breaking up for the day. The judge was stretching himself; several
men who must have been lawyers, and with whom Mr. Beckwith was exchanging
amenities behind the railing, were arranging their books and papers; some
of the people were leaving, and others talking in groups about the room.
The Honourable Dave whispered to the judge, a tall, lank, cadaverous
gentleman with iron-grey hair, who nodded. Honora was led forward. The
Honourable Dave, standing very close to the judge and some distance from
her, read in a low voice something that she could not catch--supposedly
the petition. It was all quite as vague to Honora as the trial of the
Jack of Hearts; the buzzing of the groups still continued around the
court room, and nobody appeared in the least interested. This was a
comfort, though it robbed the ceremony of all vestige of reality. It
seemed incredible that the majestic and awful Institution of the ages
could be dissolved with no smoke or fire, with such infinite
indifference, and so much spitting. What was the use of all the pomp and
circumstance and ceremony to tie the knot if it could be cut in the
routine of a day's business?
The solemn fact that she was being put under oath meant nothing to her.
This, too, was slurred and mumbled. She found herself, trembling,
answering questions now from her counsel, now from the judge; and it is
to be doubted to this day whether either heard her answers. Most
convenient and considerate questions they were. When and where she was
married, how long she had lived with her husband, what happened when they
ceased to live together, and had he failed ever since to contribute to
her support? Mercifully, Mr. Beckwith was in the habit of coaching his
words beforehand. A reputable citizen of Salomon City was produced to
prove her residence, and somebody cried out something, not loudly, in
which she heard the name of Spence mentioned twice. The judge said, "Take
your decree," and picked up a roll of papers and walked away. Her knees
became weak, she looked around her dizzily, and beheld the triumphant
professional smile of the Honourable Dave Beckwith.
"It didn't hurt much, did it?" he asked. "Allow me to congratulate you."
"Is it--is it all over?" she said, quite dazed.
"Just like that," he said. "You're free."
"Free!" The word rang in her ears as she drove back to the little house
that had been her home. The Honourable Dave lifted his felt hat as he
handed her out of the carriage, and said he would call again in the
evening to see if he could do anything further for her. Mathilde, who had
been watching from the window, opened the door, and led her mistress into
the parlour.
"It's--it's all over, Mathilde," she said.
"Mon dieu, madame," said Mathilde, "c'est simple comme bonjour!"
End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill