occurred to me that making a will may not be quite so simple a matter as
I once thought it----"
He hesitated a moment, then went on:--"So I've come back to ask you the
meaning of the term 'proving a will.' What I really want to get at, old
man, is whether my wife, if she became a widow, would have to give any
actual legal proof of our marriage? Would she be compelled, I mean, to
show her 'marriage lines'?"
Wingfield hesitated. The question took him by surprise.
"I fancy that would depend," he said, "on the actual wording of the
will, but all that sort of thing is a mere formality, and of course any
solicitor employed by her would see to it. By the way, I suppose you
were married in Denmark?" He frowned, annoyed with himself for having
forgotten a fact with which he must have been once well acquainted. "If
you had asked me to be your best man," he added with a vexed laugh, "I
shouldn't have forgotten the circumstances."
Dering tipped the chair which he was bestriding a little nearer to the
edge of the table which stood between himself and Wingfield; a curious
look, a look half humorous, half deprecating, but in no sense ashamed,
came over his sensitive, mobile face.
"No," he said, at length, "we were not married in Denmark. Neither were
we married in England. In fact, there was no ceremony at all."
* * * * *
The eyes of the two men, of the speaker and of his listener, met for a
moment; but Wingfield, to the other's sudden uneasy surprise, made no
comment on what he had just heard.
Dering sprang up, and during the rest of their talk he walked, with
short, quick strides, from the door to the window, from the window to
the door.
"I wanted to tell you at the time, but Louise would not have it; though
I told her that in principle--not, of course, in practice--you
thoroughly agreed with me--I mean with us. Nay, more, that you, with
your clear, legal mind, had always realised, even more than I could do,
the utter absurdity of making such a contract as that of marriage--which
of all contracts is the most intimately personal, and which least
affects the interests of those outside the contracting parties--the only
legal contract which can't be rescinded or dissolved by mutual
agreement! Then again, you must admit that there was one really good
reason why we should not tell you the truth; you already liked Kate, and
Louise, don't you remember, used to play chaperon. Now, Kate's people,
you know----!"
All the humour had gone out of Dering's face, but the deprecating look
had deepened.
The lawyer made a strong effort over himself. He had felt for a moment
keenly hurt, and not a little angry.
"I don't think," he said quietly, "that there is any need of
explanations or apologies between us. Of course, I can't help feeling
very much surprised, and that in spite of our old theoretical talks and
discussions, concerning--well, this subject. But I don't doubt that in
the circumstances you did quite right. Mind you, I don't mean about the
marriage," he quickly corrected himself, "but only as to the concealment
from me."
He waited a moment, and then went on, hesitatingly: "But even now I
don't really understand what happened--I should like to know a little
more----"
Dering stayed his walk across the room, and stood opposite his friend.
He felt a great wish to justify himself, and to win Wingfield's
retrospective sympathy.
"I will tell you everything there is to tell!" he cried eagerly;
"indeed, it can all be told in a moment. My wife and I entered into a
personal contract together, which we arranged, provisionally, of course,
should last ten years. Louise was quite willing, absolutely willing...."
For the first time there came a defensive note in the eager voice. "You
see the idea--that of leasehold marriage? We used to talk about it, you
and I, of course only as a Utopian possibility. All I can say is that I
had the good fortune to meet with a woman with whom I was able to try
the experiment; and all I can tell you is--well, I need not tell _you_,
Wingfield, that there has never been a happier marriage than ours."
Again Dering started pacing up and down the room. "Louise has been
everything--everything--everything--that such a man as myself could have
looked for in a wife!"
"And has no one ever guessed--has no one ever known?" asked the other,
rather sternly.
"Absolutely no one! Yes, wait a moment--there has been one exception.
Louise told Gerda Hinton. You know they became very intimate after we
went to Bedford Park, and Louise thought Gerda ought to know. But it
made no difference--no difference at all!" he added, emphatically; "for
in fact poor Gerda practically left her baby to Louise's care."
"And that worthless creature, Jack Hinton--does he know too?"
"No, I don't think so; in fact I may say most decidedly not--but of
course Gerda may have told him, though for my part I don't believe that
husbands and wives share their friends' secrets. Still, you are quite at
liberty to tell Kate."
"No," said Wingfield, "I don't intend to tell Kate, and there will be no
reason for doing so if you will take my advice--which is, I need hardly
tell you, to go and get married at once. Now that you have come into
this money, your marrying becomes a positive duty. Are you aware that if
you were run over and killed on your way home to-day Louise would have
no standing? that she would not have a right to a penny of this money,
or even to any of the furniture which is in your house? Let me see, how
long is it that you have been"--he hesitated awkwardly--"together?"
Dering looked round at him rather fiercely. "We have been _married_ nine
years and a half," he said. "Our wedding day was the first of September.
We spent our honeymoon in Denmark. You remember my little legacy?"
Wingfield nodded his head. His heart suddenly went out to his
friend--the prosperous lawyer had reason to remember that hundred pounds
legacy, for ten pounds of it had gone to help him out of some foolish
scrape. But Dering had forgotten all that; he went on speaking, but
more slowly:
"And then, as you know, we came back and settled down in Gray's Inn, and
though we were horribly poor, perhaps poorer than even you ever guessed,
we were divinely happy." He turned his back to the room and stared out
once more at the greyness opposite.
"But you're quite right, old man, it's time we did like our betters!
We'll be married at once, and I'll take her off for another and a longer
honeymoon, and we'll come back and be even happier than we were before."
Then again, as abruptly as before, he was gone, shutting the door behind
him, and leaving Wingfield staring thoughtfully after him.
That his friend, that the Philip Dering of ten years ago, should have
done such a thing, was in no way remarkable, but that Louise--the
thoughtful, well-balanced, intelligent woman, who, coming as a mere girl
from Denmark, had known how to work her way up to a position of great
trust and responsibility in a City house, so winning the esteem and
confidence of her employers that they had again and again asked her to
return to them after her marriage--that she should have consented to
such--to such.... Wingfield even in his own mind hesitated for the
right word ... to such an arrangement--seemed to the lawyer an
astounding thing, savouring indeed of the fifth dimension.
No, no, he would certainly not tell Kate anything about it. Why should
he? He knew very well how his wife would regard the matter, and how her
condemnation would fall, not on Louise--Kate had become exceedingly fond
of Louise--no, indeed, but on Dering. Kate had never cordially "taken"
(a favourite word of hers, that) to Wingfield's friend; she thought him
affected and unpractical, and she laughed at his turned-down collars and
Liberty ties. No, no, there was no reason why Kate should be told a word
of this extraordinary, this amazing story.
* * * * *
On leaving Abingdon Street, Philip Dering swung across the broad
roadway, and made his way, almost instinctively, to the garden which lay
so nearly opposite his friend's office windows. He wanted to calm down,
to think things over, and to recover full possession of himself before
going home.
It had cost him a considerable effort to tell Wingfield this thing. Not
that he was in the least ashamed of what he and Louise had done--on the
contrary, he was very proud of it--but he had often felt, during all
those years, that he was being treacherous to the man who was, after
all, his best friend; and there was in Dering enough of the feminine
element--that element which Kate Wingfield so thoroughly despised in
him--to make him feel sorry and ashamed.
However, Wingfield had taken it very well, just as he would have wished
him to take it, and no doubt the lawyer had given thoroughly sound
advice. This unexpected, this huge legacy made all the difference.
Besides, Dering knew well enough, when he examined his own heart and
conscience, that he felt very differently about all manner of things
from what he had been wont to feel say ten years ago.
After all, he was following in the footsteps of men greater and wiser
than he. It is impossible to be wholly consistent. If he had been
consistent he would have refused to pay certain taxes--in fact, to have
been wholly consistent during the last ten years would have probably
landed him, England being what it is, in a lunatic asylum. He shuddered,
suddenly remembering that for awhile his own mother had been insane.
Still, as he strode along the primly kept paths of the Thames-side
garden, he felt a great and, as he thought, a legitimate pride in the
knowledge that in this one all-important matter, so deeply affecting his
own and Louise's life, he and she had triumphantly defied convention,
and had come out victorious.
The young man's thoughts suddenly took a softer, a more intimate turn;
he told himself, with intense secret satisfaction, that Louise was
dearer, ay, far dearer and more indispensable to him now than she had
been during the days when she was still the "sweet stranger whom he
called his wife." He remembered once saying to Wingfield that the ideal
mate should be the improbable, be able at once to clean a grate, to cook
a dinner, and to discuss Ibsen! Well, Louise had more than fulfilled
this early and rather absurd ideal.
From the day when they had first met and made unconventional
acquaintance, with no intervening friend to form a gossip-link of
introduction, Dering had found her full of ever-recurrent and enchanting
surprises. Her foreign birth and upbringing gave her both original and
unsuspected points of view about everything English, and he had often
thought, with good-humoured pity, of all those unfortunate friends of
his, Wingfield included, whose lot it had perforce been to choose their
wives among their own country-women.
Dering had not seen much of Denmark, but everything he had seen had won
his enthusiastic approval. Where else were modern women to be found at
once so practical and so cultivated, so pure-minded and so
large-hearted? Perhaps he was half aware that his heaven was of his own
creation, but that, in his present exalted mood, was only an added
triumph; how few human beings can evolve, and preserve at will, their
own stretch of blue sky!
Of course it was not always as easy as it seemed to be to-day; lately
Louise had been listless and tired, utterly unlike herself--even, he had
once or twice thought with dismay, slightly hysterical! But all that
would disappear, utterly, during the first few days of their coming
travels; and even he, so he now reminded himself, had felt quite unlike
his usual sensible self--Dering was very proud of his good sense--since
had come the news of this wonderful, this fairy-gift-like legacy.
The young man passed out of the garden, his feet stepping from the soft
shell-strewn gravel on to the wide pavement which borders the Houses of
Parliament. He made his way round swiftly, each buoyant step a challenge
to fate, to the Members' Entrance, and so across the road to the gate
which leads into what was once the old parish churchyard of Westminster.
It was still too cold to sit out of doors, and after a momentary
hesitation he turned into Westminster Abbey by the great north door.
Dering had not been in the Abbey since he was a child, and the spirit of
quietude which fills the broad nave and narrow aisles on early spring
days soothed his restlessness. But that, alas! only for a moment; as
soon as his busy brain began to realise all that lay about him, he was
filled with a sincere if half voluntarily comic indignation. It annoyed
him to feel that this national heritage was still a church; why could
not Westminster Abbey be treated as are the Colosseum in Rome and the
Panthéon in Paris? And so, as he sat down in one of the pews which
roused his resentment, he began to think over all the improvements which
he would effect, were he given, if only for a few days, a free hand in
Westminster Abbey!
Suddenly he saw, at right angles with himself, and moving across the
choir, a group of four people, consisting of a man, a woman, and two
children.
The man was Jack Hinton, the idle, ill-conditioned artist neighbour of
his in Bedford Park, to whom there had been more than one reference in
his talk with Wingfield; the children were Agatha and Mary Hinton, the
motherless girls of the Danish woman to whom Louise had been so much
devoted; and the fourth figure was that of Louise herself. His wife's
back was turned to Dering, but even without the other three he would
have known the tall, graceful figure, if only by the masses of fair,
almost lint-white hair, arranged in low coils below her neat hat.
Dering felt no wish to join the little party. He was still too excited,
too interested in his own affairs, to care for making and hearing small
talk. Still, a look of satisfaction came over his face as he watched the
four familiar figures finally disappear round a pillar. How pleased
Louise would be when he told her of his latest scheme, that of
commissioning the unfortunate Hinton to paint her portrait! If only the
man could be induced to work, he might really make something of his life
after all. Dering meant to give the artist one hundred pounds, and his
heart glowed at the thought of what such a sum would mean in the
untidy, womanless little house in which his wife took so tender and
kindly an interest.
Dering and Jack Hinton had never exactly hit it off together, though
they had known each other for many years, and though they had both
married Danish wives. The one felt for the other the worker's worldly
contempt for the incorrigible idler. Yet, Dering had been very sorry for
Hinton at the time of poor Mrs. Hinton's death, and he liked to think
that now he would be able to do the artist a good turn. He had even
thought very seriously of offering to adopt the youngest Hinton child, a
baby now nearly a year old; but a certain belated feeling of prudence,
of that common sense which often tempers the wind to the reckless
enthusiast, had given him pause.
After all, he and Louise might have children of their own, and then the
position of this little interloper might be an awkward one. Louise had
always intensely wished to have a child--nay, children--and now, if it
only depended on him, and if Nature would only be kind, she should have
her wish. Perhaps that would be the most tangible good this legacy would
bring them.
Dering left the Abbey by the door which gives access to the Cloisters.
There he spent half an hour in pleasant meditation before he started
home, for the place which he knew to be so much dearer to his wife than
to himself. Dering was a Londoner, the son of a doctor who had practised
for many years in one of the City parishes, and in his heart he had much
preferred the rooms in Gray's Inn which had been their first married
home to the trim little villa, of which the interior had acquired an
absurd and touching resemblance to that of a Danish homestead.
* * * * *
Those who declare that the borderlands of London lack physiognomy are
strangely mistaken. Each suburban district has an individual character
of its own, and of none is this more true than of Bedford Park.
Encompassed by poor and populous streets, within a stone's throw of what
is still one of the great highways out of the town, this oasis, composed
of villas set in gardens, has the tranquil, rather mysterious, charm of
a river backwater.
The amazing contrast between the stir and unceasing sound of the broad
High Road and the stillness of Lady Rich Road--surely the man who laid
out Bedford Park must have been a Cromwell enthusiast--struck Dering
with a sense of unwonted pleasure. As he put his latch-key in the front
door he remembered that his wife had told him that their young Danish
servant was to have that day her evening out. Well, so much the better;
they would have their talk, their discussion concerning their future
plans, without fear of eavesdropping or interruption.
Various little signs showed that Louise was already back from town.
Dering went straight upstairs, and, as he began taking off his boots, he
called out to her, though the door between his room and hers was shut:
"Do come in here, for I have so much to tell you!" But this brought no
answering word, and after a moment he heard his wife's soft footsteps
going down the house.
Dering dressed himself with some care; it had always been one of his
theories that a man should make himself quite as formally agreeable at
home as he does elsewhere, and he and Louise had ever practised, the one
to the other, the minor courtesies of life. Before going downstairs he
also tidied his room, as far as was possible for him to do so, and,
delicately picking up his dusty boots, he took them down into the
kitchen so as to save their young servant the trouble.
Then, at last, he went through into the dining-room, where he found
Louise standing by the table on which lay spread their simple supper.
She gave him a quick, questioning glance, then: "I saw you in the
Abbey," she said in a constrained, hesitating voice; "why did you not
come up and speak to us? Mr. Hinton was on his way to some office, and I
brought the children back alone."
"If I had known that was going to be the case," said Dering frankly, "I
should have joined you, but I had just been spending an hour with
Wingfield, and--well, I didn't feel in the mood to make small talk for
Hinton!"
He waited a moment, but she made no comment.
Louise had always been a silent, listening woman, and this had made her
seem, to eager, ardent Philip, a singularly restful companion.
He went on, happily at first, rather nervously towards the close of his
sentence, "Well, everything is settled--even to my will. But I found
Wingfield had to know--I mean about our old arrangement."
"Then you told him? I do not think you should have done that." Louise
spoke very slowly, and in a low voice. "I asked you if I might do so
before telling Gerda Hinton."
Dering looked at her deprecatingly. He felt both surprised and sorry. It
was almost the first time in their joint lives that she had uttered to
him anything savouring of a rebuke.
"Please forgive my having told Wingfield without first consulting you,"
he said at once; "but you see the absurd, the abominable state of the
English law is such that in case of my sudden death you would have no
right to any of this money. Besides, apart from that fact, if I trusted
to my own small legal knowledge and made a will in which you were
mentioned, you would probably have trouble with those odious relations
of mine. So I simply had to tell him."
Dering saw that the discussion was beginning to be very painful and
disagreeable; he felt a pang of impatient regret that he had spoken to
his wife now, instead of waiting until she had had a thorough change and
holiday.
Louise was still standing opposite to him, looking straight before her
and avoiding his anxious glances. Suddenly he became aware that her lip
was trembling, and that her eyes were full of tears; quickly he walked
round to where she was standing, and put his hand on her shoulder.
"I am sorry, very sorry, that I had to tell Wingfield," he said; "but,
darling, why should you mind so much? He was quite sympathetic; he
thoroughly understood; I think I might even say that he thoroughly
agrees with our point of view; but I fancy he felt rather hurt about it,
and I couldn't help wishing that we had told him at the time."
Dering's hand travelled from his wife's shoulder to her waist, and he
held her to him, unresisting but strangely passive, as he added:
"You can guess, my dearest, what Wingfield, in his character of
solicitor, advises us to do? Of course, in a sense it will be a fall
from grace,--but, after all, we shan't love one another the less because
we have been to a registry office, or spent a quarter of an hour in a
church! I do think that we should follow his advice. He will let me know
to-morrow what formalities have to be fulfilled to carry the thing
through, and then, dear heart, we will go off for a second honeymoon.
Sometimes I wonder if you realise what this money means to us both--I
mean in the way of freedom and of added joy."
But Louise still turned from him, and, as she disengaged herself from
the strong encircling arm, he could see the slow, reluctant tears
rolling down her cheek.
Dering felt keenly distressed. The long strain, the gallantly endured
poverty, the constant anxiety, had evidently told on his wife more than
he had known.
"Don't let's talk about it any more!" he exclaimed. "There's no hurry
about it now, after all."
"I would rather talk about it now, Philip. I don't--I don't at all
understand what you mean. It is surely too late for us now to talk of
marriage. The time remaining to us is too short to make it worth while."
Dering looked at her bewildered. Well as she spoke the language, she had
remained very ignorant of England and of English law.
"I will try and explain to you," he said gently, "why Wingfield has made
it quite clear to me that we shall have to go through some kind of a
legal ceremony----"
"But there are so few months," she repeated, and he felt her trembling;
"it is not as if you were likely to die before September; besides, if
you were to do so, I should not care about the money."
For the first time a glimmer of what she meant, of what she was
thinking, came into Dering's mind. He felt strongly moved and deeply
touched. This, then, was why she had seemed so preoccupied, so unlike
herself, of late.
"My darling, surely you do not imagine--that I am thinking ... of
leaving you?"
"No," and for the first time Louise, as she uttered the word, looked up
straight into Dering's face. "No, it was not of you that I was
thinking--but of myself...."
* * * * *
"Let us sit down." Dering's voice was so changed, so uneager, so cold,
that Louise, for the first time during their long partnership, felt as
if she was with a stranger. "I want to thoroughly understand your point
of view. Do you mean to say that when we first arranged matters you
intended our--our marriage to be, in any case, only a temporary union?"
He waited for an answer, looking at her with a still grimness, an
unfamiliar antagonism, that raised in her a feeling of resentment, and
renewed her courage. "Please tell me," he said again, "I think you owe
me the truth, and I really wish to know."
Then she spoke. And though her hands still trembled, her voice was quite
steady.
"Yes, Philip, I will tell you the truth, though I fear you will not like
to hear it. When I first accepted the proposal you made to me, I felt
convinced that, as regarded myself, the feeling which brought us
together would be eternal, but I as fully believed that with you that
same feeling would be only temporary. I was ready to remain with you as
long as you would have me do so; but I felt sure that you would grow
tired of me some day, and I told myself--secretly, of course, for I
could not have insulted you or myself by saying such a thing to you
then--I told myself, I say, that when that day came, the day of your
weariness of me, I would go away, and make no further demand upon you."
"You really believed that I should grow tired of you,--that I should
wish to leave you?"
Dering looked at her as a man might look at a stranger who has suddenly
revealed some sinister and grotesque peculiarity of appearance or
manner.