Jack gave what he considered to be an adequate account to Priscilla of
his interview with Mr. Liscomb. He did not, however, think it necessary
to tell her what that gentleman had said respecting the wisdom of their
separating until the case or cases should be heard, nor did he do more
than hint at the difficulties, which Mr. Liscomb had rather more than
hinted at, in the way of proving the profligacy of Marcus Blaydon. But
he thought it well to prepare her for the inevitable law’s delay; and
he was gratified at the sensible way she received the information that
three months would probably elapse before the case could come on for
hearing.
“It seems a long time, Jack,” she said. “But I don’t think that it would
be possible for us to have everything ready to go before the judge much
sooner. I have been thinking over the whole matter while you have been
away, and I see clearly, I think, that we shall have trouble in proving
that he went away straight from the gaol to that woman of your surmise.
How are we to get hold of Captain Lyman? and when we do get in touch
with him, how are we to get him to tell us all that he knows?”
“Yes, all that will take time,” said Jack. “The evidence on this point
may help us in the nullity suit, and in the divorce suit it would, of
course, be absolutely indispensable.”
There was a pause before she said doubtfully:
“I wonder if Mr. Liscomb suggested that our marrying in such
haste--within a few months of the news reaching me--would prejudice a
judge.”
“Of course he did; it was stupid of me to forget that,” replied Jack;
“very stupid, considering that I was thinking of it in the train on my
way home. He made a remark about the haste--indecent haste, he called
it.”
“And he gave it its right name,” said she. “That was a mistake on my
part, Jack; but don’t think that I’m sorry for it, or that I wouldn’t do
it again. Where should I be to-day if I had waited?”
“Would your father have insisted on your going to that man?”
“He would have tried to compel me--I am sure of that. In his eyes
a marriage is a marriage--for worse as well as better--it makes no
difference.”
“I’m glad that you think so. It lets me know that I did not make a
mistake in what I said to Liscomb on that point. But with reference to
the indecent haste point, surely any judge that is worth his salt will
see that nowadays and in certain circumstances three months are as
long as a year was in the old days--the Prayer-book days! It was in the
fellow’s power to send you a cablegram letting you know that he was safe
long before you had a chance of seeing a newspaper with the account of
the wreck and his heroic conduct. ‘Heroic conduct’ was in the heading, I
remember.”
“Yes; he’ll have to reply to the judge on that point. By the time Sir
Edward has done with him he’ll have to make a good many replies. Well,
we shall wait for the next move. But three months--if the people are
nasty to us it will seem a long time, Jack; you are right there.”
“You’ll not find that the law errs on the side of indecent haste. We
shall soon see how the people behave.”
He was quite right. The next day he glanced at the local paper, thinking
that it was quite possible the man might have gone without the delay of
an hour to make his statement public; but the paper contained no such
interesting item of news. The man was plainly still in consultation with
his solicitor.
In the course of the afternoon the road to the Manor was crowded with
vehicles bearing card-leavers for Mrs. Jack Wingfield. The two livery
stables at Framsby found the strain on their resources so severe as
to necessitate their collecting the fragments of their most ancient
vehicles and glueing them together in haste to respond to the demand for
carriages from people who had never been otherwise than impolite, if not
actually insolent, to Miss Wadhurst, but who now had a feeling that Mrs.
Jack Wingfield would make her husband’s money fly in _fêtes_. It would
never do for them to miss invitations to whatever festivities were
in the air through neglect on their part to take every reasonable
precaution to secure their being invited.
But when the footman had the same answer for all--namely, that Mrs. Jack
Wingfield was “not at home,” the feeling was very general that it was
rather too soon for Mrs. Jack Wingfield to give herself airs, though it
seemed that airs were to be looked for from her as inevitably as in an
opera by Balfe.
Another day brought the newspapers, but there was still no news, in even
the most enterprising of them all, bearing upon the incident which had
caused Mrs. Jack Wingfield to think that for some time at least she
would do well to be “not at home” to any visitors.
But on the afternoon of the third day a visitor called to whom she did
not deny herself. Her father was admitted and found himself awaiting her
coming in the library. She did not keep him waiting for long.
“Well, father, is not this a shocking business?” she said, before he had
even greeted her.
“A shocking business! A shocking business to find you still here,
Priscilla,” he said.
“Where should I be if not with my husband?” she said.
“Your husband! Your husband isn’t here; you know that well, my girl.”
“The only husband I have ever known is here. Please do not fancy that I
recognize as my husband that contemptible fraud to whom you gave me.”
“However badly he treated you, however grossly I was taken in by him, he
is still your lawful husband. Marriage according to the rites of the
Church is a sacred bond. It is not in the power of man to sever it. You
swore ‘for better for worse.’”
“I did not swear at all. That is one of the fictions of the Church
like the ‘Love, honour, and obey’ paragraph. Do you tell me that I must
honour a felon, love a trickster, and obey a blackguard?”
“It is God’s holy ordinance; you cannot deny that, however blasphemous
you may become in your words.”
“Do you tell me that it is God’s holy ordinance that I should worship
with my body a swindler--a man who only wanted to get me into his power
to prevent his swindling from sending him to the gaol that he deserved?
Do you think that it would be in keeping with the holy ordinance of God
for me to live with a wretch who made his scurrilous joke about the ring
he had just put on my finger a few minutes before the handcuffs were put
on his wrists?--a blackguard who went straight from the gaol to a woman
in America--who allowed the report of his heroic death--oh, how you laid
stress upon that heroic death of his, and called me indecent because I
was sincere enough to thank God for having delivered me from him!--he
allowed the report of his death to be published in order that he might
have a chance of blackmailing my husband.”
“Your husband! Your--I tell you, girl, that Marcus Blaydon is your
husband, and that so long as you remain under this roof John Wingfield
is your paramour. I warned you of him long ago. I did my duty as a
father by you in warning you that he did not mean to wed you; and didn’t
my words come true?”
Her face was scarlet and her eyes were blazing. She took a couple
of rapid steps toward the door; but when about to fling it open, she
managed to restrain herself. She stood there, breathing in short gasps,
looking at him but unable to speak for indignation.
“You are my father,” she managed to say at last; “I do not wish to turn
you out of this house; but if you utter such an accusation again in my
hearing, out of this house you will go--straight--straight! You have
made some horrible--some vile accusations against me--me, your daughter,
whom you placed in the power of that wretch, though I told you that I
never could love him--that I almost loathed him; but instead of showing
my poor mother the cruelty of which she was guilty, you backed her up
and compelled me to utter lies---lies that you knew were lies--in the
church. He uttered lies too; and yet, knowing all that you know, you are
still not afraid to call this duet of Ananias and Sapphira God’s holy
ordinance! I don’t know what your ideas of blasphemy are, but I know
that you have provided me with a very good example of what I should call
blasphemy.”
He gazed at her as he had never before gazed even when she had also
amazed him by the ease with which she got the better of him. He gazed
at her for some minutes, and then his head fell till his chin was on his
breast.
“Oh, God, my God! how have I sinned that my girl should turn out like
this?” he said in a firm voice, as if uttering a challenge to his God to
lay a finger upon a single weakness in his life that demanded so drastic
a punishment.
She watched him, and she had a great pity for him, knowing him to be
sincere in his belief in his own integrity and in the infallibility of
the ordinances of the Church.
“Father,” she said, “have you not read in the Bible that those who sow
the wind shall reap the whirlwind? I do not profess to know much about
the ways of God toward men--there are people who, while they tell me
one minute that His ways are past finding out, will, the next, interpret
with absolute confidence the most incomprehensible of His acts. But
I have taken note of some things that I have seen, and that is one
of them--the whirlwind harvest. Here we are to-day in this horrible
position--why? Because you compelled me to go to the church and make
promises, and utter falsehoods by the side of that man for whom I had no
feeling of love. If I had ever loved him, would the fact of his going to
gaol have made any difference to me? Not the least. It would only have
made me love him more dearly, knowing that my love would mitigate his
suffering. If I had loved him, would I not have been by his side the
moment he got his freedom? If I had loved him, would I have been capable
of loving someone else and of marrying that one within three months of
his death? The seed was sown, and this is the harvest. I feel for you
with all my heart; but I see the justice of it all--I even see that,
like every other woman, I have to pay dearly for my one hour of
weakness--for my one hour of falsehood to myself.”
He had not raised his head all the time that she was speaking, nor did
he do so until several moments had passed. He seemed to be considering
her words and to be finding that there was something in them, after all.
But when he looked up there was not much sign of contrition in his face.
“Whatever you may say, there’s no blinking facts, and you know as well
as I do what are the facts that face you to-day,” he said, shaking a
vehement fist, not as if threatening her, but only to give emphasis to
his words. “The facts are, first, that you are the lawful wife of
Marcus Blaydon, and secondly, that you are not the lawful wife of
John Wingfield, and that if you persist in living with him you are his
mistress.”
She opened the door this time, but not vehemently.
“Go away,” she said, “go away. I might as well have kept silent. I
shall work out my own salvation in the face of your opposition and the
opposition of the world.”
“Your salvation? Woman, it is your own damnation that you are working
out in this house--this house of sin!”
He took a few steps toward the door and then wheeled round.
“One more chance I give you,” he said. “Come with me now, and you will
only be asked to resume your former life. I will not insist on your
joining your husband--only come away from this house.”
“Go away, go away,” she said, without so much as glancing at him.
Only one moment longer did he stay--just long enough to say:
“May God forgive you, Priscilla.”
He contrived, as so many pious people can in saying those words, to
utter them as if they were a curse. They sounded in her ears exactly as
a curse would have sounded.
And then he tramped away.
Jack came to her shortly afterwards.
“You have no news for me, I suppose?” he said.
“No news, indeed. The old story.”
“You knew what to expect. I think that the best thing we can do is to
clear off from this neighbourhood as soon as we can. Until the matter
is settled one way or another we should feel more comfortable among
strangers.”
“I am perfectly happy here, my dear Jack,” she said. “I am so confident
that we are doing what is right, I do not mind what people may say.
Perhaps we should do well to go when your mother is strong enough to
learn what has happened. That is the only thing that I dread--telling
her the story.”
He shook his head sadly.
“That will be the worst moment of all,” he said slowly. “Thank heaven
there is no possibility of our having to tell her anything for some
time. She is far from well to-day.”
That same evening Jack received from Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb a
copy of the opinion of the astute Sir Edward on their case. It was not
voluminous, but it was very much to the point. It was in favour of an
application for a decree of nullity in respect of the marriage
with Blaydon, on the grounds, first, that the man had made false
representations (ante-nuptial); secondly, that he had deserted his wife,
making no attempt to see her after his release from gaol; and,
thirdly, that he had taken no step to contradict the report, so widely
circulated, of his death, thereby making her believe that she was at
liberty to enter into a second contract of marriage. Failing success to
have the marriage nullified, there were some grounds for trying for
a divorce. In this case it would of course be necessary to prove
misconduct.
On the whole, Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb were inclined to think that
the court would consider favourably the application for a nullity decree
on the ground that the man and the woman had never lived together--the
lawyers made use of a legal phrase--and that the latter had good reason
to believe, owing to the default of the former, that she was a
widow when she contracted her second marriage. Of course the
misrepresentations (ante-nuptial) of the man, though of no weight in
an ordinary case of divorce or separation, might in a petition for a
nullity decree be worth bringing forward. They also thought that the
fact of the man’s being convicted of a crime against property (always
looked on seriously by a judge and jury), and of his being arrested
practically in the church porch after the marriage ceremony, would
influence a court favourably in respect of the petitioner.
“They have never misled a client by an over-sanguine opinion, I should
say,” remarked Jack when he had read to her the letter of Messrs.
Liscomb and Liscomb.
“And I am sure that they have found that plan to be the wisest,” said
she. “But I think that they rather incline to the belief that we shall
succeed.”
“From all that I have heard respecting them I feel that they have in
this case expressed what they would consider to be an extraordinarily
roseate opinion of our prospects,” said he. “I wonder what move the
other side will make next, and I wonder also if his advisers will take a
sanguine view of his prospects. Did you gather from anything your father
said that the fellow had been with him?”
“He said nothing definite on that point; but how should my father know
anything of what has happened unless he had seen Marcus Blaydon?” said
Priscilla. “He is, as we knew he would be, on the side of Blaydon. Just
think of it! He is on the side of the wretch who did his best to wreck
my life--who shortened my mother’s life and made its last months to be
months of misery instead of happiness--who allowed that false report of
his death to go about uncontradicted so that I should run the chance of
finding myself in the midst of the trouble that has come to me now--my
father takes the side of that man against us, simply because of his
superstition as to the sanctity of the marriage service according to the
Church of England! He does not consider for a moment that the sacredness
of marriage is to be found only in the spirit in which the marriage is
entered into. He does not ask himself how there can be any element of a
holy ordinance in a fraud.”
Jack Wingfield was a man. He had been wise enough to refrain from
considering the question of marriage either from the standpoint of a
sacrament--the standpoint assumed by the Church of Rome--or from
the standpoint of a symbol of the mystical union of Christ and the
Church--the standpoint assumed by the Church of England. He had, as a
matter of fact, never thought about marriage as a mystery, or the symbol
of a mystery. It had only occurred to him that these assumptions, though
professed by the Church within the Church, were ignored by the Church
outside the Church. The Church of Rome refused to recognize divorce; but
had frequently permitted it. It called marriage between an uncle and a
niece incest, but sanctified it in the case of a royal personage. The
Church of England, with its reiteration about every marriage being
indissoluble by man, having been made by God, smiled amiably at the
Divorce Court and petted _divorces_. The Church did not attempt to
assign a mystic symbolism to divorce; and though it had for years
affirmed that the marriage of a man with the sister of his deceased wife
was incest, yet Parliament and every sensible person had assured
the Church that this view was wrong, and the Church, after a little
mumbling, like giants Pope and Pagan at the mouth of their cave, had
submitted to be put in the wrong.
Jack Wingfield being a student--a newspaper student--of contemporary
history, was aware of the numerous standpoints from which marriage is
discussed, with well-assumed seriousness, by people whom he suspected of
having their tongues in their cheeks all the time; but, as has just
been stated, he had never himself given a thought to the mysticism of
marriage or the symbolism of a wedding. He felt that it was enough for
him to know that when his time came to fall in love with a girl and to
desire to make her his wife, if the girl consented, he would marry her
according to the law of the land, and she would be his wife.
Well, this had all come about; he had fallen in love and he had married
the girl according to the law of the land; and was there anyone to say
that she was not his wife or that he was not her husband? Of course he
knew that there were quite a number of people who would say so; but
what was their opinion worth? If she was the wife of someone else, she
should, in the opinion of these people, leave him and go to someone
else--yes, go to live with that swindling scoundrel--go to be the
perpetual companion of a felon and a trickster who had shown his
indifference to her and to all that she had suffered as his victim. What
was the value of the opinion of people who should, with eyes turned up,
assert the doctrine of the sacredness of marriage, and the necessity
of acting in the case of himself and Priscilla in sympathy with their
doctrines? These were the people who regard the conduct of Enoch Arden
with abhorrence. Was he not actually allowing his wife to “live in sin”
with the man who had supplanted him?
No; Priscilla and he had married in good faith, and they should be
regarded by all sensible and unprejudiced people as man and wife. There
was no man living, worthy of the name of a man, who would not call him a
cur if he took any other view of the matter than this.
The idea of his handing over that girl to be dealt with by a felon
according to his will, simply because the rascal had succeeded in
getting the better of her father and mother...
Jack Wingfield laughed.
“Let him come and take her,” he said to himself.