So unsuspicious was Athelstan Taylor of the inner soul of a thorough-paced flirt that he thought he might indulge in a little subcutaneous paternal amusement, as of wider experience, at this young lady's seeming innocence of the constructions Mrs. Challis might attach to details of the story told in full. He nodded assent to his own insight. Oh yes!—he appreciated the position thoroughly; Judith might be sure of that!—and points below the surface as well. But these belonged to a part of the drama altogether of minor importance, seeing how foregone a conclusion it was that no such thing as flirtation between a daughter of the Hall and a stray scribbler was possible. The fact that Challis had quarrelled with his wife was on another footing altogether. May there not have been some other cause?
"Challis puts his wife's resentment down entirely to this matter of the opening of the letter?" The Rector's question comes after cogitation.
"Ye-es!—entirely, this time."
"H'm!—have there been other times?"
"He does not say so. That is not quite what I meant. I should have said that she seems to have accused him of untruthfulness before, or at least hinted at it. I don't gather that there has ever been a rupture between them. Don't let's walk fast, or we shall be back before I've told you what I am in it—I mean, what Mr. Challis wants me to do."
"I can come a little way on with you ... why, of course, he wants you to write to his wife and confirm his version of this picturesque event. That's it, isn't it?"
"That's it. But what use will it be?"
Now for all Athelstan Taylor's superior insight into the world and its ways, it had not so far presented itself to him that a letter from Miss Arkroyd to Mrs. Challis on this subject might be like a red rag to a bull. It crossed his mind now, and kept him silent until Judith repeated: "What use will it be?" Then he replied uneasily: "Do you know?—I don't feel the ground firm under my feet. I shouldn't like to advise off-hand. What does your mother think?"
"Oh, I haven't talked to mamma, beyond what I told you. You see—she's dear, of course; but she's a sieve. And these are Mr. Challis's affairs, not mine ... oh no!—I know he wouldn't mind my talking to you about them."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, I know! He would like me to talk to you, I'm certain."
"Would you mind talking to Bess about it? She's very sensible."
"I don't think Mr. Challis would like it. I am sure he would not mind you."
The Rector admitted this was possible, in his inner conscience. But he would make another suggestion: "Why not ask Addie what she thinks? She's coming to-morrow, on a visit to Lizarann."
"How is the little girl?"
"Getting on like a house on fire. But you will ask Addie? You needn't answer his letter yet, you know. At least, you needn't write to Mrs. Challis."
"Miss Fossett? Isn't she, though—isn't she somehow some sort of connection of Mrs. Challis?"
"Is she?"
"Or isn't it?... Oh, I know—it was a cousin of hers I met at the play. Mr. Challis hates her—the cousin. I didn't dislike her."
"She might know something...."
"I don't think Miss Fossett would see much of this—Mrs. Partridge, I think the name was. But Mrs. Partridge and Marianne are bosom-friends. So it might be worth...." She interrupted herself. "Only isn't Miss Fossett...?"
"Isn't she what?"
"Well, then, doesn't she feel very strongly on the Deceased Wife's Sister question?"
"What would that have to do with it?"
"You know he married his deceased wife's sister?"
"Eh?" said the Rector. "So he did." And then, thoughtfully: "I see—I see—I think I see."
"See what?"
"The reason why she took her children away. She thinks they are hers legally—thinks she has a right to them."
Judith evidently did not see the point involved, and the Rector had to explain that the children of an unmarried woman belong legally to their mother, and that probably Marianne, not being Challis's wife according to the law of the land, had imagined that her right to possession of them could be maintained in a law-court.
"But surely—it could!" said Judith.
"Ah, my dear young lady!"—was the answer—"little you know the amazing resources of legislation for deciding that the weaker party is in the wrong!"
But Judith did not want the conversation to become a review of the iniquities of Law, a subject on which she knew Athelstan Taylor was given to being in revolt against constituted authority. So she brought him back to the real issue before the house.
"You haven't told me what you think I ought to write, Mr. Taylor. Please don't send me away to ask somebody else!—that's such very cold comfort. Give me real advice. What can I say?"
It took a little time to decide, but was clear when it came. "The question, I take it, isn't whether the letter will do any good. I tell you honestly, I don't think it will. But Challis asks you to write, and that settles the matter. Well!—say you write at his request, and that he asks you to write exactly what happened. Do it as literally as possible."
"Say anything about how grieved I am—painful circumstances—hope to hear misunderstanding completely removed—anything of that sort?"
"Oh no!—no, on the whole, certainly not! Better keep off that as much as possible!"
"Won't it be rather like ... snuffing poor Mrs. Challis out, if I don't end up somehow?"
"Hm—well! Suppose we go so far as to hope this will help to remove ... to remove ... what seems a perfectly groundless misunderstanding. Stop it at that. Quite enough! And I say, Judith, look here! In writing to Mrs. Challis, don't you go and show that you've heard particulars of the row. Stick to the explanation of the letter-business. Don't on any account show you know she has left her home, or that he has told about it."
"Won't that be what Mr. Tomes calls suppressio veri?"
"Tut—tut! If it is, not sending the letter at all will be suppressio of still more veri. You stick to what Challis asks for, and let him be responsible. Married couples, when they quarrel, are kittle cattle to shoe behind. Now we must say good-bye, or one of us will be late for lunch."
They had overshot the point at which the path diverged to the Rectory, and it was time to hark back. But before Judith was out of hearing the Rector called after her.
"Tell poor Challis I'm writing to him. I shall go and see him when I get up to town—some time next week. Good-bye!"
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHALLIS'S INSIPID RETURN HOME. WHAT HAD IT ALL BEEN, THIS DREAM? OLD LINKS WITH BYGONES. HOW CONFESS, AND TO WHAT? OF A FIRE GOD GAVE FOR OTHER ENDS
Mr. Challis gave Lord Felixthorpe's chauffeur half-a-sovereign when he was landed at the Station. This was because he stood in such awe of that great man that he doubted if so haughty a soul would brook a tip at all. However, it not only brooked it, but changed it immediately for nine shillings in silver and eightpence in coppers and a glass of bitters at the Barleymow, opposite the Station. So Challis felt easy, and wondered to himself that so small a matter should disquiet him, with all his great perplexities on hand. How on earth did Napoleon Bonaparte contrive to exist?
However, all the perplexities came back in force as soon as he was off; indeed, he was almost sorry no small distraction occurred during his flight home. For he was alone nearly all the way to Euston; the many who nearly entered his carriage seeming to condemn him on inspection, and choosing every other carriage on its merits. The porter who put his valise on a cab at the terminus seemed callous and preoccupied; and the driver, when told to go to the nearest Metropolitan Station, struck him as too unsympathetic when he said: "Which will you have—King's Cross or Gower Street? It don't make no difference to me," not without some imputation of weakness of character. Also, this cabman appeared to form a lower opinion of his fare when the latter chose Gower Street than he would have had he chosen King's Cross.
By the time Challis had described a large segment of the Inner Circle, and had waited a quarter of an hour at Gloucester Road for a Wimbledon train, he had resolved that nothing would ever induce him to try that route again. Then a distasteful thought struck him:—should he ever make the same journey again? "Much better not," said he to himself; and kept on repeating it to himself till he had found his seat in the Wimbledon train, the gear of which caught the phrase, and seemed to repeat it to itself all the way to East Putney.
He had wired to Marianne: "Am coming home on business may come to lunch but don't wait Titus." The "may come to lunch" struck him as making this "business" seem plausible, without definite disingenuousness. He wanted to account for himself, and to make his sudden return a very matter-of-course occurrence. One thing was odd about it—and it was odder still that it never struck him as odd—that he should be so solicitous about not giving his wife an unnecessary start. He was just what he had always been in respect of his constant consideration of Marianne's comfort in small matters, and had never admitted to himself that his affection for her had varied as a necessary result of his infatuation for Judith. Had it done so, of necessity? It may not have—or it may. Psychological problems need not occupy a narrative of facts. This is one that might easily land us in an attempt to formulate an exact Definition of Love. Better beware in time! Leave the question in a condition of Metaphysical Equilibrium.
How Challis would have welcomed, just at this turning-point of his relations with Marianne—scouting as he did the idea of a rupture, so far—a thorough heart-whole accolade at the front garden-gate of the Hermitage! What an all-important factor in the moulding of the days to come would have been an unqualified, unmitigated, unreserved embrace—even before the cabman! Such a one as Penelope would have given Ulysses, if he had come back recognizable: a greeting to send the memories of all Calypsoes flying like chaff before the wind! Yes—even the appearance of Penelope on the threshold, revealing that Ulysses was just in time for lunch, only he must make haste, as it had been kept back to the very last minute, and he must keep all his news till afterwards. Any little thing of this sort—a note, spelt anyhow—a scribble on the slate in the hall, where you can write messages if there's a pencil—the slightest tradition of a consciousness of tea-to-come on the part of the departed, when departing—even a caution that you are not to spill, because it's a clean tablecloth—anything, in fact, rather than the dull, neglected, flat reality of Challis's return!
Remembering how his last arrival at home had fallen through, he had organized a surprise in his own mind. He had so light a valise this time—one carries less wardrobe in hot weather—that it would be no encumbrance. He would discharge his cab, and let himself in with his latchkey.
The cabman's expression was one of dissatisfaction with his career, but acquiescence in fifty-per-cent. beyond the tariff. He said it was coming on a drizzle, and drove away. Then Challis had to give up the surprise. For the garden-gate was shut to and locked—"because of the boys," no doubt—and he had to ring. He kept his finger on the electric bell, to show that his mind was made up as to coming in; whereupon Harmood appeared bearing a key. Challis did not complain that she had not kissed him, but he did think she might have been warmer.
"Mrs. Challis never said, sir," was her brief testimony in reply to "Where was your mistress going?" The uncompromising roughness of "your mistress" may have widened the gulf between them. A suggestion that perhaps Mrs. Steptoe knew was met by the concession, "I could ask Mrs. Steptoe." Delay then resulted, as Mrs. Steptoe, though absolutely in ignorance, wished to produce a sort of meretricious effect of giving information, and had to make talk while she thought out spurious data.
"No, sir, I couldn't say Mrs. Challis ever said a word to me, not this morning. Not if you was to ask. But yesterday morning she did say, 'ash what there was of the chicken, and stew the scrag-end of the neck for the kitchen-dinner to-day...."
"Well!—and did she say where she was going? That's the point."
"I was coming to that, sir!" Mrs. Steptoe was reproachful. "The scrag-end of the neck for the kitchen-dinner to-day, because she might be going to Tulse Hill. And the young ladies would certainly be going to Mrs. Eldridge's all day. And this morning she says to me to have a piece of rump-steak in the house in case."
"In case I came." But Mrs. Steptoe had intended a complete sentence. Challis concluded: "That's where she's gone, I expect! And the children are away?"
"The young ladies, sir." Thus Harmood, the stickler for the proprieties. To whom Challis says, "Very well!—Get me some lunch—steak—anything!" and goes to his room to wash, leaving Mrs. Steptoe recapitulating.
Was ever a blanker home-coming? Challis began to suspect he would certainly make hay of his life, unless some deus ex machina came into it. Was he a dignus vindice nodus? He put the question aside to read accumulated letters, kept back by request. Then lunch was on table, and life seemed suddenly as usual. But no Marianne, so far!
The drizzle "it" had "come on" made a dreary outlook from the house, and a sense of the absence of the children a conscious cause of dreariness within. No consolation could be found in the distant voices of the two servants at loggerheads in the basement. "Probably one specific loggerhead," thought Challis, as he gave real thought and care to the filling of a pipe he meant to enjoy. Because a certain incisive repetition, which seemed to relate to the same theme, conveyed the idea of diametrically opposed opinions, intemperately advocated by street-door knocks. A lull would come when Harmood brought him a cup of coffee—fresh-made, he hoped—and he would then hint broadly that the discussion was needlessly audible. "Keep the kitchen-door shut" is the usual formula.
The coffee came. It was ower good for banning and ower bad for blessing, like Rob Roy; only certainly not so strong. So thought Challis to himself—all such thoughts are his, not the story's—as he submitted to it. But he found a satisfaction for the ban he had withheld, in an increased acerbity of manner in his allusion to the kitchen-door. He called it out to Harmood as she departed, having sipped the coffee in the interim. "Yes, sir," said Harmood, speaking as though butter would not melt in her mouth.
However, the kitchen-door closed, and the discussion went on as though both the knockers' families had had a baby. It would not interfere with the pipe.
What was all this that had happened? He found himself asking space this, as he watched the smoke curling away, and changing to the smell he meant to let out of the window before Marianne came back. Now that he was here again, in his old surroundings, he could live back into them, and think of that intoxication of last night—only last night!—as nothing but a strange, bewitching dream. Never was man more susceptible to surroundings than Challis. Turn where he might, some trifle or other brought back his old days to him.
There, upon the chimney-piece, in defiance of modern taste, were certain treasures that had never found a place on a dust-heap because of their various associations with "poor Kate." The parian candlesticks at either end—religiously mended whenever chipped, and one of them obliged to submit to a rivet—did he and Kate not buy them in Oxford Street, and were they not therefore precious? The Swiss haymakers, carved in wood, that were an early present of Marianne's to her sister, were they not—although, of course, they were not high art, and you might sneer at them—things Kate had valued, and on that account never to be discarded or forgotten? The ingenious ship under a glass cover, with chenille round its base, whose hull was muscle-shells, and whose rigging spun glass, was it not a precious inheritance of past ages, treasured with curses, because every time it was moved it tumbled over, and had to be taken from its shelter and made the subject of unskilful experiments with sealing-wax and gum-arabic? Each had its tale of a former time. And everything that said a word about Kate added a postscript about her sister.
Was it not as well that last night's folly or delirium should rank as a dream?—was it not best? If only Destiny could have become a visible Rhadamanthus and driven the nail home, saying, "Now that's settled, Mr. Challis, and you are not to see Miss Arkroyd of Royd again," and he could have believed all his experiences of the last eight months hallucinations! But he could not do so without a warranty, and a strong one. He happened to know that Royd Hall was still there, in Rankshire; and that a week-end ticket was sixteen and sixpence. Let him try to make a dream of that, with Bradshaw ready to rise in evidence and denounce him! He could not but fail, with all the facts against him, in an attempt to quench his memories; but the more dreamlike and unreal they seemed to him, the less guilty he felt of duplicity towards Marianne. Other men might not have felt so; but this is his story, and we must take him as we find him.
Would any other man in like case have fashioned, as he did, the rough-hewn incidents of a scene in which he should make a clean breast of the whole tormenting dream to his wife, get absolution, and be once more his natural self, with no reserves? How on earth should he set about it? that was the thought that started it. Suppose he succeeded in saying, "Polly Anne, I'm a bad, wicked man, and I've been making love to Judith Arkroyd, and forgetting my duty to the wife of my bosom and her kids," would Marianne know what would be a correct attitude for an injured matron under her circumstances? Would she be able to say, perjured and forsworn and betrayer, and hence!—ere she did some correct thing or other? Not she! But suppose instead she were to say, "Just one minute, till I've done with Harmood, and I shall be able to listen to you.... Now, what is it?" what on earth would he do then with the position? Say it all over again, or try a variation, "You see before you a guilty et cetera," or something of that sort? No, no!—that would never do. Why, part of the awkwardness of the position was that the word guilty would overweight the confession so terribly. None of the substantial conditions of broken marriage-vows had been complied with, and it really would be difficult to know exactly what to confess to. How could he know that Charlotte Eldridge—for, dramatist that he was, he knew that lady down to the ground!—would not have dismissed the case with, "You see, my dear, there really hadn't been anything!"
And all the while the worst of it was that, according to his own canon of morals, there had been everything. He had profaned the temple of Love, soiled the marble floor, torn some chaplet from the altar; done something, no matter what, that was making him a secret-keeper from his wife; that would make him flinch from her gaze. Were other men all like that? No, certainly not! But then, they were not milksops, but Men of the World. Also, they worshipped at another temple, down the road, those merry satyrs; a temple where Pan and Silenus had altars.
No doubt this analysis of his own case, that Challis makes as he gets on with that pipe—near its end now—and waits to hear his wife's cab at the gate, would have clashed a good deal with his seeming reckless speech among men; speech he was apt to get himself a very bad name by, among precisians! But he was made up of oddities and paradoxes. Is any light thrown on him by what he is reported to have once said: "I can't see that it can matter how many wives—or whatever you like to call them—a man has, if he doesn't care twopence about any of them, and they all know it"? The funny part of this creed of Challis's about marriage and his fellow-men was that it caused them to ascribe to him precisely the same morals that he had ascribed to them; and that each one of them, whenever he chanced to speak of it in confidence to anyone he was not on his guard against, always appeared to disclaim attendance at the temple down the road for himself, personally; and, in fact, to suggest that he, exceptionally, had common decency in a corner somewhere.
No man will ever know—one may say that much safely—how far any other man is like himself. He is pretty sure to invent a curious monster for his fellow-man to be, based on all his own worst propensities; but utterly ignoring that mysterious impulse to fight against them which he has the egotism to call his better self. He credits himself, personally, with an inherent dislike of evil, and conceives that his fellow-man is kept in check by the Decalogue. He ascribes Original Sin to the race, and credits himself secretly with a monopoly of Original Virtue.
But it is unfair to go on moralizing in this way, merely because Marianne does not come back. The justification is that Challis spent such a long time in useless self-torment over his position; he all the while believing quite sincerely that real men of the world—say, broadly speaking, Mr. Brown and Lord Smith—practised double-dealers that they were in all that relates to womankind, would have dismissed the whole matter with an experienced smile. In the course of an hour, however, he endeavored to imitate the spirited demeanour of Mr. Brown and Lord Smith, and went away to his room to write.
He had to acknowledge that he could not fix his attention as Mr. Brown and Lord Smith would have done; but he made a fair show of writing, too—felt he had got to work again! Marianne would be back to tea; he was glad of that. He was distinctly not at all sorry to find he was glad of that. But he was a little annoyed that it had occurred to him to make the discovery—that he had not left the question dormant.
The noise in the kitchen below was almost inaudible in Challis's room, but a sense hung about of the remains of an engagement elsewhere. Challis was conscious that a dropping fire stopped when he rang the bell at four-thirty, to tell Harmood not to get the tea till her mistress came back. Harmood consented, provided that the obnoxious expression was withdrawn. Only she did not put it that way. What she said was, "To wait for Mrs. Challis, sir?" Had Challis answered, "Yes, your mistress!" she might have shown a proper spirit. But as he said, with discretion, "Exactly!" Miss Harmood consented to postpone tea. His phrase seemed to admit inexactness in the epithet "mistress."
But the young lady was going to make no suggestions. If Mr. Challis liked to go without his tea, let him! She was not going to attempt to influence anybody. The hours passed, and ink that might have perished on a penwiper became a permanent record of thoughts which their writer always doubted the value of the moment after writing them. But perhaps they were immortal? No one would ever know till the very end of Eternity.
Was that actually six o'clock? Well—she wouldn't come now till dinner! He considered a short walk before she turned up; but the drizzle was one of those all-pervading drizzles that despise umbrellas, and do the garden a world of good. One never goes out for a walk in those drizzles. He would have another pipe, and think it over—perhaps write a little more presently.
He would have done more wisely to write the little more at once—to remain hard and fast at his writing-table. For he had not been long over the second pipe when the summer sun, now on its way to roost, got a chance to peep through a cloud-rift, and straightway Wimbledon was aware it was the heart of a rainbow it could not see, however palpable it might be at Esher. Now, it chanced that just at the moment when the sudden prismatic glow flooded that vulgar, incorrigible drizzle, and clothed it in an undeserved radiance, Challis was watching the crystal beads that chased each other in a line along the under-edge of a sloping gutter above his window. He was wondering why they held on so tight—it was so seldom one dropped—when on a sudden they all became jewels, each with a little complete image of the sun in it, if they would only have stood still while one looked! And these jewels brought back a something to his mind. He felt it coming before he could define it: what was it going to be? Why, of course!—the gleaming beads or scales or spangles on Judith's dress, last night in the little garden with the funny name—what was it?——Tophet.
And then it all came back with a rush. He had contrived, in his home-surrounding, to dodge and evade, as it were, his memory of his folly of last night for a moment. He had now slipped unawares into his past; and malicious recollection had brought back this-and-that that was pleasant in it, but had closed the door against reminders of all that had been tedious and distasteful in his later married life. With no Marianne there in the flesh, to call attention to that morose and jealous temper she had developed in these later years, he had indulged in the luxury of forgetting it; and had repeopled the empty house with a cheerful version of its mistress, one that was exactly what the Marianne of old ought to have grown up into—not very clever, certainly—not Madame de Staël, by any means—but always good-humoured and ready to laugh at her own blunders, and gradually outgrowing that terrible vice of blood, that dire form of Christianity that made it a wonder to him how his new friend, that good parson-chap at Royd, should be tarred with the same feather. He had got into a backwater of the stream of life, and found a happy anchorage for a moment; and here came the torrent he had escaped, and caught him up and whirled him away with it, Heaven knows where! Little things make the great things of life, and no sooner was that miserable gew-gaw that was not even an expensive article brought across his mind by those jewel-drops flashing in the sun than he became again the heart-distempered victim of the image it brought with it—Judith in all her beauty, at its best in the moonlight. His incipient fit of reconciliation to his home had only been momentary, and the paroxysm of his disorder that upset it—how rightly he had spoken of it as a fool's passion!—sent him pacing to-and-fro across the room, catching at the empty air with nervous fingers, pressing them mercilessly on his eyes, as though he would crush out with them the beautiful image of the woman that bewitched him.
This sort of thing is not so uncommon as you, perhaps, think. You have read of it, of course—best told by Robert Browning, perhaps—how "the Devil spends a fire God gave for other ends." That was like to be Challis's case if this went on.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A BAD RAILWAY ACCIDENT. AND, AFTER ALL, MARIANNE WAS AT HOME. CHALLIS'S REPORT OF ROYD. BUT NO!—MARIANNE WOULDN'T HAVE JUDITH SLURRED OVER
Just as the cloud-rift closed and spoiled the rainbow a sound came of a cab approaching. Challis stopped in his restless pacing to-and-fro, and listened.... Yes!—the cab was stopping. That might be Polly Anne? The fact that his mind said "Polly Anne," by preference, showed that his relief at her arrival—for he was one of those who always fidget when folk are overdue—outweighed for the moment a feeling that he would be glad when he had passed the Rubicon of looking her in the face. He was conscious, though, as he ran downstairs to meet her, of a trace of the alacrity one shows as one enters the dentist's sanctum, to convince oneself one is really ready to have one's molar out. But before he got to the swing-round of the banister curve he knew it wasn't Marianne after all, this time!
Then, on the lower flight, he became conscious that it was that booby John Eldridge; saying, as one in indecision: "No—stawp a bit! I'll tell you in a minute," and then somehow contriving—as it were to fill out a pause for thought—a certain bubbling or wobbling noise, made with the end of his tongue between his lips. It was brief, for he soon added: "Suppose you was to tell him I was here! I can't see that any harm'll come o' that. What's your idea?"
But Harmood's idea, if she had one, remained concealed behind her professional manner; which was what the Sphinx's might have been, had the latter taken a house-and-parlourmaid's place. For, perceiving Challis on the stairs, she passed her visitor on to him without reply, merely saying: "Mr. Eldridge, if you was at home, sir." This formula left it open to her to cancel or ignore Mr. Eldridge if her employer thought fit to deny his own existence in the face of evidence.
"I am here," said Challis, descending. "Like the Duke's motto! Marianne isn't, but I'm expecting her every minute. Anything up?" This query related to a certain rosy uneasiness that hung about Mr. Eldridge's hesitation of manner.
"Oh no! No—nothing! Only Lotty said you were coming back to-day. Suppose we was to come in here!" "Here" was the front sitting-room, looking to the road. Harmood closed the street-door, and died respectfully away.
"By all means," said Challis. "Out with it, John!"
Mr. Eldridge struggled with obstacles to speech, which he endeavoured, by ostentatious clearing of the throat, to refer to chronic bronchitis. At last he got to "Mind you, Master Titus, it's ten to one there's nothing in it! But I thought it just as well to look in and tell you." Challis waited, with an ugly misgiving growing on him, till two words with a shock in them came, blurted out by the speaker, whom they left perturbed, mopping his brow and polishing his nose with his handkerchief. "Railway Collision!" said Mr. Eldridge. "Bad job! But don't you run away with the idea that...."
"That—that she—Marianne...."
"Ah! Well!—I tell you, Master Titus, I don't believe she was in the train."
"You know nothing about it! Why didn't you stay to find out?" Challis finds natural irritation with this booby's method an easement against the new strain on his powers of bearing anxieties. One good point about which is that Judith and Royd Hall vanish with a clean sweep. Face to face suddenly with a hideous possibility, that Marianne may be killed or maimed for life, he is completely back in his old life again, and knows nothing outside the tension of the moment. In a very few seconds he sees that his informant does know nothing; having evidently, when he witnessed or heard of this accident, become the slave of a singular and not uncommon idea that the sooner ill news is heard the better, and having rushed off with his without waiting for details or confirmation. Challis gives him up as quite useless as an informant. "Your cab's there?" he asks. And receiving an affirmative says with decision: "Wait till I get my boots on!"
Mr. Eldridge throws a bit of good counsel after him as he runs upstairs three steps at a time. "Don't you get in a stoo, Master Titus! Easy does it." He then retires into the parlour, and fidgets, variously. He drums on surfaces that offer themselves, feels about on his razor-farm for interesting incidents, whistles truncated tunes that do not last to identification-point, and frequently repeats, "Nothing to go by—nothing to go by—nothing to go by!" shaking his head and looking profound, till Challis comes quickly downstairs. He calls out to Harmood in some remote background that he is going out, and doesn't know when he'll be back.
The cabman is good for information, and coherent. A petroleum explosion on the train from Haydon's Road. Just coming into the Station, and hadn't slowed down enough. Guard injured—couldn't apply the brake. Train ran beyond platform, and collided with truck, shunting. What did they want to be shunting trucks for, with the train just due? Anyone might have known there might be a petroleum explosion, and the guard not be able to apply the brake. Or anything else, for that matter! Anyone hurt? Oh ah, yes!—people enough hurt, if you came to that. All right! You two gents, if you jumped in, should be at the Station in no time.
Did you ever have the ill-luck to be the seeker after a possible casualty in a railway accident? If you have you will be able to guess what Challis went through in the hour that followed. Fortunately for him, the crucial moment of inspection of the bodies of two women unknown, for identification, was soon over. To a certainty, neither was Marianne. So also the few cases too bad for immediate removal were soon decided about—some without visiting them; these having been able to give their names. And if Marianne had been among those who had started for home, whether injured or scot-free, she would have been met on the road. They would have been sure to see her, or she them.
Moreover, there were not many people in the train, and Mrs. Challis was well known at the Station. She was a constant passenger by this line, going to Tulse Hill via Streatham. The officials at the Station felt sure they would have seen her had she been in the train. No other train would follow for some time that Mrs. Challis could possibly come by. Probably she had missed her train at Tulse Hill. Good job too, for her, said public opinion.
So Mrs. Challis's husband, relieved, but with a swimming head, and very uncharitable feelings in his heart towards the originator of all this needless alarm, drove home beside that really very stupid person; and so far as his own condition of semi-collapse permitted it, gathered the story of his friend's share in the matter, and what he considered a justification of his action.
It appeared that Mr. Eldridge had accompanied his wife to Wimbledon Station, on her way to an evening appointment in London. As she was getting into the carriage, the train on the other line came in from Haydon's Lane. She said to her husband: "That's Marianne's train; she was going to Tulse Hill. You can drive her back in your cab. You'll find Titus at home. He was to be back to-day." Then, as her train left the platform, he saw a sudden blaze of fire from the guard's van of the other one; and the collision, as already described, resulted. A cooler or stronger judgment than John Eldridge's would no doubt have exhausted every source of information rather than jump at the conclusion that his friend's wife was necessarily among the injured because he could not find her among the survivors. His reasoning powers were not strong enough to stand by him through the panic of the scene that ensued, and he could see nothing for it but to convey the news of the supposed disaster to her husband.
Challis was inhospitable enough not to press him to come in and dine, and was so annoyed with his folly that he might not have done so even if less desirous of a quiet evening with the subject of all this alarm, who would no doubt appear in due course, though the best part of an hour late. He felt secure that nobody could be connected hypothetically with one mishap, and actually with another, on the same evening! Impossible! Mr. Eldridge seemed not so confident; for he said at parting, "Good-bye, Master Titus! Glad Marianne wasn't killed by this train!" and drove off to his own domicile.
The garden-gate was not locked; this was owing to Challis's return. For he always insisted that the front-door should be approachable, boys or no, when he was in residence. He got in with his latch-key, and going straight to the top of the kitchen-stairs, called out to Harmood, whose response came duly.
"Tell Mrs. Steptoe she must keep dinner back. Your mistress will be late."
"I beg your pardon, sir!"
"Tell—Mrs.—Steptoe she must keep—dinner—back!" Challis endorsed his mandate with forcible word-isolations, and gave fuller particulars of his reasons why. Harmood responded rather tartly:
"I beg your pardon, sir! Did you say Mrs. Challis?"
"Yes!"
"Mrs. Challis is come in, sir. Been in half-an-hour!"
"God bless me!" exclaimed Challis; and nearly added, "Why didn't you tell me?"—which would have been absurd. But he was saved from this by a voice from the floor above; Marianne's, unmistakably.
"Oh dear!—What are you shouting down in the kitchen for? Why can't you come up?"
"I'm coming, dear! When on earth did you come in?" His salute was cordial. Hers was ... well!—she might have done better. But then, you see, she knew nothing about all this excitement that was afoot. And never forget that Mrs. Steptoe's legend of Ramsgate always hung in her mind.
"I've been in this past half-hour. Why did you go out again? It makes things so late."
"I'll tell you directly. How on earth did you get here?"
"How on earth did I get here?" It is slowly dawning on her that something has happened. "I drove from the Station. Just as usual!... I suppose that's the children."
"But how came we not to meet you?"
"Who?"
"John Eldridge and I—driving down to Wimbledon."
"How can I tell? I've not been at Wimbledon. I came from East Putney, as I told you, in a cab. You'd better get ready for dinner."
"All right! But how came you to come by East Putney?"
Marianne always had an irritating way of treating her husband as though he were inaudible and invisible. No doubt she meant no harm by it. But husbands do feel secretly nettled sometimes if they are, as it were, held in abeyance by a waved hand, to await the end of a colloquy they are excluded from. Challis felt, at least, that he was very good-humoured not to be nettled.
"What has made the children so late? I said no later than six." So spoke the lady, eliciting revelations of delay caused by the children hiding themselves. Due public censure of the offence followed.
Challis had become himself again by soup-time. "Well, Polly Anne," said he, "you've never told me how you came to go by East Putney!" The trifling excitement over the child had such a thoroughly old-world flavour with it that he was very much at home again, and Royd Hall had slipped away to dreamland.
"Oh, I?" Marianne is not ill-humoured now. But she is, to a certain extent, enduring her lot. You know how that's done? "A little bit of stopping came out of my front tooth, and I had to go up to Kensington to get it seen to. Of course, I hadn't written, and Roots and Leaver kept me an hour and a half."
"What did he have to do?... painful?..."
"Oh no—nothing! He put some fresh stopping. Only a few minutes! What took you to Wimbledon?"
"Well—you see!—our excellent friend John Eldridge came and told me you were killed in the accident at Wimbledon Station...."
"Oh! Was there an accident?"
"Yes. Nobody we know in it. But two women killed and several injured. It was petroleum." He gave particulars of the accident, dwelling on the fact that the wrecked train was the one his wife would have been in if she had not been at the dentist's. "But I was at the dentist's," she said, with a certain implication in her voice of "So I don't see what you have to complain of."
However, it slowly dawned upon her that this was a case for recognition of the mercies of Providence. These were of two classes; one of which, known to her as Divine Forgiveness towards Sinners, on condition that they went to church, was an entirely different thing from certain good-natured impulses on the part of the Creator towards persons in difficulties, prompting special intervention on their behalf to save them from the blunders of Creation now that He had set it fairly going, and left it to shift for itself. He was, it appeared, very catholic in these impulses, as often as not giving non-churchgoers the benefit of His reserved rights of intervention in the caprices of the material universe. Challis believed that his wife used up all the theological liberality of which she was capable in ascribing let-offs of Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels to special interventions which could only postpone for a very short time their Eternal Damnation at the hands of the intervening power.
However, he was in no mood just now for laughing at her; so he let it be supposed that he acquiesced in what amounted to a suggestion that Providence had knocked out that bit of stopping from her front tooth in order to prevent her coming by that train. He kept absolute silence through her acknowledgment of her indebtedness to her Maker, being very careful not to allow his features to assume any expression whatever. For he had found by experience that absolute glumness, total suspension of speech and facial movement, with great caution and reserve in the use of the pocket-handkerchief, if resorted to, was almost a religious force in itself.
When the good lady had sufficiently discharged all her obligations in the proper quarter, another aspect of the case seemed to present itself. "But, my dear Titus, what a terribly anxious time you must have had!"
He would sooner have had this earlier. Providence could have waited. But—sooner now than never! "Why, my dear old girl," said he, "I was simply terrified out of my wits!" A hearty laugh came with this all the easier that it was his order of release from the ten-minutes' penal servitude he had just undergone in the cause of his wife's religious sensibilities. "Come now, old woman," he went on, "say you're sorry for giving me such a fright."
"Why—of course I'm sorry! What makes you suppose I'm not? I don't want to give you frights, I'm sure!" She paused a moment over the subject. Though she was not killed, it might touch her home-circle at some other point. "I wonder who the women were. Our laundress brings the Wash from Streatham. It might have been her coming to-day." She went on with particulars of the Wash; how it itself was centred at Wimbledon, but there was a succursale at Streatham, whence fine linen, got up, might be brought by rail. Challis interrupted:
"These two women I saw were not washerwomen."
"Oh dear!—were they ladies?" A note of alarm. Marianne had assumed that they were people. Challis strove not to seem to broach derision on the well-worn subject. He said seriously, "Ye-es, I think so." But then his inherent vice of mind got the better of him, and he added: "Not Duchesses, certainly! But ladies, yes! Perhaps they were Baronets' wives."
Marianne flushed angrily. "Now, Titus, you know that's nonsense! How is it likely that both of them should be Baronets' wives, when there they were in the same train. And you know perfectly well no one ever said a word about Duchesses! So it's ridiculous!" But still a shot home seemed wanting, so after a pause Marianne ended up: "I suppose it was meant to be witty. Only if it's to be that, I shan't sit with you while you smoke."
"No, Polly Anne dear, it's not to be that. Never mind my chaff! I had the impression they were people in our own sort of position in life—might have been friends of ours, don't you know! But we shall hear fast enough."
This conversation had taken longer than appears by the story; because, at a repast, converse travels slowly. Steptoe, or her equivalent, has to be found fault with at intervals, deservedly. By this time the best end of the neck, and the difficulty of carving it, were things of the past. So also was a slight sub-ruction occasioned by Challis being disgusting about Anne Boleyn's neck, and the bungling executioner who wanted all his patients' necks to be jointed at the butcher's. It was an old joke of his that always enraged Marianne. But he had begged pardon, and the topic had vanished with its cause. This and some minor matters had made it coffee-time, when Marianne threatened to retire and leave Challis to enjoy his pipe alone.
She did not do so, being assuaged by her husband's seeming acceptance of social distinctions. But it rankled, too, as will be seen by the first thing she says to him as he settles down to his pipe. "Duchesses, indeed!"
If it were fine they would be out in the garden at the back. Only the drizzle is there still. But it keeps very close, too, and we must have the window wide open. The lamp won't blow out if we stand it away on the sideboard. This sideboard is the one that was bought—such a bargain!—for Great Coram Street. Those rings on the drawers that swing—handles to pull them open and find the corkscrew—are the rings that Bob in his infancy was permitted to use as knockers in a drama he was the hero of—a postman who delivered letters at very short intervals indeed. Oh, how his surroundings of this evening stung Challis with memories of his past! How they drove home to him the need to keep at bay those outlying fires—or wild beasts, were they?—that had made an inroad on his present.
If he could only have been a Roman Emperor now! Had he not read lately somewhere how Hadrian had married two Persian Princesses—real ones!—two at once!—as cool as a cucumber? Oh dear!...
What is that Marianne is saying? "You're not the one to talk, Titus!"
"Talk about what, Polly Anne?" His first puff, with this, and he is in great comfort and good-humour! The wild beasts are standing over.
"About Duchesses and Baronets' wives! Just look at your Grosvenor Squares!" There is little or no ill-humour here. Rather it might be called concession to good-humour; an admission of her husband's friends to their talk as permanent objects—forgiven objects, certainly—of critical raillery. No harm meant!
And if there were, Challis would ignore it, rather than have his pipe spoilt. "Don't let's talk about them," he says. "Let's talk about our Grosvenor Squares."
"Your Grosvenor Squares!"
"My Grosvenor Squares, then! Polly Anne shall have her own way." And then he had to stifle at birth a most excruciating thought: "If I had only just succeeded in keeping my accursed folly under, I might now have continued, 'You know, Polly Anne dear, they might be your Grosvenor Squares, too, and nothing would please me better. Why not be jolly?'" How could he make such a speech now? His only chance of a real tranquil life was to keep as far away from the source of his disturbance as possible. He succeeded in suffocating the thought, and repeated, "Let's talk about my Grosvenor Squares."
Marianne's reply was a grudging sound. "Well!—and how are they?" The unspoken addendum seemed to be: "I suppose I must say something. What do you make of this, my minimum? Take it!"
But Challis was in for pretending that all was well, and the world unsullied by what Mr. Riderhood called "offences giv' and took." Everybody was very well at Royd, he testified. Only this time the house-party was so over-powering that he had not seen nearly so much of the family as on the previous occasion. In fact, some of the members he had hardly spoken to—a statement so intensely true that it brought his veracity up to a reasonable average.
"Of course," he said, "I was obliged to talk a bit to the old boy. Just as he was obliged to compliment the celebrated author on his last book. But I never got on the subject on which he is really interesting, the inner life of the Feudal System...."
"Which is...?" said Marianne. Who, on being offered "William the Conqueror" as a substitute for his System, added: "Oh, I know! We used to say him, 'William the Conqueror, one thousand and sixty-six.'" Challis continued:
"Last time we had quite a long talk over it, and I'm not at all sure that we don't agree in the long run. He contends that the ideal of Feudalism...."
"What's that?"
"Same as the Feudal System ... that the ideal of Feudalism, properly understood, is quite the noblest...."
"I beg your pardon, dear! Just one moment! Yes—Harmood! ... what? You must come near and speak louder.... Well!—I suppose he must have eightpence. But tell him another time I shall go to Cowdery's, because they did them for sixpence. You haven't twopence in coppers, have you, dear?" Challis had, and the incident, whatever it was, closed. Marianne's economical instincts, needed in old days, had survived their necessity overmuch.
But the ideal of Feudalism didn't get properly understood that time. Challis left it, and began somewhere else: "Her ladyship I scarcely talked to at all, which I was sorry for, as I don't dislike her, and I fancy she knew some people named Nettlefold when I was a boy." He was quite aware of careless construction, fraught with suspicion of imbecility; it really didn't matter. "As for Sibyl...."
"Do you mean Judith?"
"I mean Sibyl. I fancy she'll end by marrying that Lord Felixthorpe. They are always about in his motor together. By-the-bye, I hardly know how to thank that chap. He lent me his motor to the station this morning. I like him. He's too good for Sibyl."
But Marianne's attention has been caught by the honey in a flower on the way. "I don't understand these people and their ways," she says. "But I suppose it's all right if it's a motor. Charlotte says because of the chauffeur."
Challis's sense of the ludicrous gets the upper hand. "I should have thought the chauffeur would be too much preoccupied," says he. "Anyhow, I shouldn't be at all surprised to hear they were engaged, any day. As for the party itself, there were some very interesting people this time, and some most interesting talk on abstruse subjects after dinner."
But the lady felt she would rather hear Mrs. Eldridge on the meaning of the word "abstruse" before she ventured out of her depth about it. A queer word, that! Also, she does not mean to have Judith elided in this way. "What about the other one?" she says bluntly.
There it was!—the gist of the whole situation in a nutshell. What about the other one? As Challis laid down his pipe, half-smoked—a strange thing for him—he was aware that, without being absolutely tremulous, it would not do for him to bring his teeth very near together without touching, or they would chatter. They must be either clutched or parted. It is just possible that people exist who have never had this experience.
CHAPTER XXXV
OF MUTUAL MISTRUST. HANDSOME JUDITH! BUT MARIANNE HAD NO WISH TO PRY INTO HER AFFAIRS. HOW MATTERS WERE COMFORTABLER. PLEASE BURN THAT POSTSCRIPT! CHALLIS'S EXPLANATION. HOW IT FAILED, AND HE WENT FOR A WALK
People go on making believe a thing is true which each knows to be false, or vice versa, a very long time. But when each believes the other thinks he knows nothing about the matter—or everything about it, as may suit his case best—reciprocal deception will have a still longer life. And longer still when each believes the other thinks that he believes ... and so on across and across ad infinitum, in shuttlecock flights! Our own belief is that if this topic were discussed by Senior Wranglers, one or more of them would say something intelligible, which we can't, about the term of mutual deception increasing as the square of the distance of the shuttlecock flights, or their number. The first sounds best.
At what stage of the labyrinth of reciprocities were Mr. and Mrs. Challis left when the gentleman laid down his pipe? Perhaps, considering that one has other uses for one's brain, it is safest to leave that question unanswered. But there was this difference between them—that Mrs. Steptoe's Ramsgate tale had made of Marianne's mind a fruitful soil for suspicion; while Titus's, apart from a tendency to detect the influence now and again of Charlotte Eldridge, was disposed to acquit his wife of any ingenuity in cultivating crops of the weed—indeed, of very few mental subtleties of any sort whatever. She was to him the incarnation of stupidity and abstract goodness, a solid substratum of which was an article of faith with him, reconcilable with any amount of little tempers, or big ones. And this faith went the length of supposing that Polly Anne credited him with it, and knew it would prevent him imagining that she could think him capable of believing that she could foster suspicions against him. Simple and intelligible!
But the nervous tremor that seized on Challis when he laid his pipe down just now was too palpable to leave reciprocal deceptions intact, unless accounted for as foreign to the subject. Therefore, when Marianne recognized the abnormal nature of the pipe-movement by saying, with the mien of an answer-seeker, "Are not you going to finish your pipe?" he felt that some intrepidity was called for, for both their sakes.
"Fancy I got a little chill in the damp ... oh no!—I changed everything. Besides...."
"Besides-what?"
"Well—it was such an awful business, you know! Why, when we were driving down to the station, how was I to know I shouldn't find you burned to a cinder? Just fancy!—Polly Anne!"
"You wouldn't have cared," says Marianne, softening. This was an improvement, and none the worse for the serious note in Challis's voice as he referred again to his relief when he knew the alarm had been for nothing. Nevertheless, in a sense, he was glad it was true that he had gone through strain enough to account for fifty nervous ague-fits. But he felt a dreadful hypocrite for all that! Just fancy!—availing himself of the incident to cover his embarrassment in answering a plain question about his young lady friend. But his duplicity was really for Marianne's sake as well as his own. Come now!
"I tell you what, Tite: you must have a regular good strong hot toddy to-night, with plenty of lemon. I'll make it for you." This was good—almost Coram Street again! Why spoil it? "I can't think what could possess you to go catching cold at the station. It didn't do any good." But she improved it: "You must have it after you're in bed, and you must have my duvet." Challis made no immediate protest against this policy, but the prospect of a June night under a duvet can never be tempting, even when one anticipates the sleep of a clear conscience. He was, however, really grateful, kissing a rather improved countenance his wife advanced on application: this phrase is taken from his mind, which had taken it, more suo, from the moneylender's column in the Times.
"It isn't anything; I've no objection to the toddy, though. Now, tell me some more about your mother ... about the dentist ... anything ... oh, by-the-bye! one of my letters was from Bob. It's upstairs.... I'll go and fetch it."
"Never mind it now! Or I can send Harmood. You didn't answer my question."
"Let me see—what was the question? No, don't ring! Harmood won't know where to find it. Besides, I don't want her fishing about among my papers." And the obstinate man went, and came back with the letter. If he hoped that the previous question was going to lapse, he was mistaken.
"The question was about your friend Miss Arkroyd." She took Bob's letter, opened it, and made a pretence of looking at it. But she left her restatement, with all the force it had gathered by delay, for his consideration while she did so.
He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at Bob's letter. The exact thing that crossed his mind as he did so was that he had now a new box of wax vestas in his pocket. But, then, he had had to quash the thought that suggested it. "That's a portrait of the new second master putting on his trousers," said he. "What about my friend Miss Arkroyd, Polly Anne dear?... No, that's not his real name. Pitt's his real name.... Rev. Iairus Pitt.... Oh, well!—boys will be boys, you know...."
But Marianne was not to be turned from her purpose by the Rev. Iairus Pitt, whose parents had not baptized him considerately. "Is it all settled about her going on the stage?... handsome Judith?"
So strangely had last night's image of Judith—or, rather, her identity—cancelled her previous one of the stage aspirant, that Challis all but exclaimed, "Oh, of course!—she was going on the stage. Actually I had forgotten that!" For he had forgotten it—Estrild and all!—in the outbreak of fever in which he had so completely forgotten himself and his position and his duties. But he kept to himself what would have been unintelligible to Marianne; not without a feeling of relief that her question had reminded him of an aspect in which Judith could be easily discussed by both, without any arrière pensée.
"Handsome Judith," said he seriously and equably as he resumed his seat, "has given up all idea of going on the stage. That's at an end."
"Oh!" A short and thick exclamation, very conclusive.
"I shall have to find someone else to play Estrild if I finish the play...."
Mrs. Challis was considering. "She's going to be married, of course," she said.
"H'm!—I've no reason to suppose she is."
"You said her sister was?"
"I said something about Sibyl and Lord F. Yes!—but they're not twins, you know, she and Judith!"
"I know that. Really, Tite, I'm not the goose you always try to make me out! Besides, twins don't, invariably: sometimes one dies of a broken heart."
"Judith won't die of a broken heart when her sister marries," says Challis dryly.
"I understand. But, Tite dear, do consider! A married sister younger than herself!"
"Miss Arkroyd isn't the sort of party to contract matrimony in order to walk in front of her sister at Court. Besides, there might not be another coronet handy, to walk in front with."
"What sort of party is she, then?" Challis thought to himself that a certain class of stupidity makes as formidable a cross-examiner, sometimes, as cleverness itself. Getting no immediate reply, his wife repeated, "Well!—what sort?"
"She's a problem; that's the expression nowadays. I'm not sure it isn't as good as another."
"Never mind the expression! You know you admire her very much."
"I do. But, you see, Polly Anne?—she won't act Estrild. So where are we?" What a boon Estrild, recollected just in time, had been in this conversation!
"What excuse does she give for backing out?" The speaker's grim attitude towards suggested breach of faith grated on her husband. But that was all in the day's work—the bad day's work!
"I think I'll have another pipe.... Oh yes!—I'm feeling all right again now; it was nervous, after that horrible affair at the station.... I'll fill it up new, and then I'll tell the whole story."
"I have no wish to pry into Miss Arkroyd's affairs. However, tell me if you like."
"Not if you don't like!" Challis is again puffing in comfort at this point, and, to our thinking, matters are going easier. No particular reply comes from Marianne, and he assumes a disclaimer, saying, "All right, Polly Anne! I'll go on. It seems that the Great Idea had something to do with it...."
"Let's see!—that's the Fine Art turn-out...."
"Yes; the new Art and Craft affair—Sibyl's. There was a family row when she proposed to put up her name, with 'Limited' after it, over a shop in Bond Street." He went on, and narrated briefly how Sibyl had met her parents' remonstrances by saying that if Judith went on the stage, she didn't see for her part why she shouldn't conduct a business. Especially as it was distinctly understood that mechanics would not be employed; only craftsmen. Also that the articles sold would not be things, but art-products. Also that they would be curiously wrought. How the Bart. had interrupted her, to ask what on earth she meant by Judith going on the stage! For the most palpable and visible things would go on in the family under the worthy gentleman's nose, and he be never a penny the wiser. "Then," said the narrator, "Judith was summoned, and there was a scene. The upshot was that both the young ladies being of age, and having a right to go their own way, it seemed at first that each would certainly carry out her intention, in spite of their parents' remonstrances. But maturer reflection showed Sibyl, whose sisterly feelings run high...."
"They don't hit it off?"
"Exactly!... showed Sibyl that if she made her own compliance with her parents' wishes contingent on Judith throwing up the play-acting...."
"I see," said Marianne very perceptively; adding, as an under-word, "There was the lord, too."
"It was what John Eldridge would have called a wipe for Judith. And, as you say, Lord Felixthorpe might have flinched at a stage sister-in-law."
"I didn't say so, but it was what I meant." An uncomfortable look comes on Marianne's face, as though something had crossed her mind. She says disconnectedly, "Tite dear!"—with a new intonation out of place at this juncture, but immediately after cancels it. "Never mind!—at least, never mind now! Go on about Judith."
Challis glanced sharply at her, puzzled by her words and their manner. But he let them pass, and continued: "Anyhow, Judith has given up the stage, and there is to be no shop with 'Sibyl Limited' over it."
"What do you suppose you will do about the play?"
"I must leave it alone for a little, and see how matters shape themselves. You see, the play was written for Judith Arkroyd, and you can't think what a job it will be to think another identity—Silvia Berens, for instance—into the part. Or Thyrza Shreckenbaum."
"I really am sorry for you, Titus. After writing things all over again and making alterations! Oh dear!" Marianne thought to herself, should she get up and go across the rug to her husband and kiss him? But then a memory must needs cross her mind—that story of the Ramsgate wedding—never cleared up! Till that was done, her rôle of domestic affection stopped short of gratuitous kissing. Some day she would get at that story, and know all about it.
Meanwhile matters were comfortabler; no doubt of it! That odious play-acting business was at an end—at least, so far as Judith, who was the vicious quitch in it, was concerned. Titus might have as much Silvia Berens as he liked; she knew that would be all safe. Also, Marianne misinterpreted her husband's visible reluctance to talk of Judith, at first, as an excusable disgust with the young lady herself for the trick she had played him. He had got to speak of her freely enough at last. This was because, as a matter of fact, his sense of his surrounding relations was growing on him, and each moment was feeling comfortabler than its predecessor.
Challis finished his pipe, and they chatted of other matters. Then followed a good deal about the railway accident, and Challis talked learnedly about the flashpoints of petroleums. They seemed quite agreed that if it could only be established beyond a doubt that neither of them had ever seen or spoken to any one of the sufferers, or their relations or belongings, the calamity would come within the category of common accidents in newspapers, that happen every day somewhere, and can't be helped. But Marianne was terribly afraid that the guard, who was burned nearly to a cinder, must be the red-nosed guard who looked in at her carriage in the morning and asked if she had dropped a pair of double eyeglasses. That would bring it painfully near home.
Mr. Eldridge's impulsiveness and some of his individualities were reviewed. It was impossible to acquit him of having given his friend a perfectly unnecessary fright; but we would not dwell on it, for look at the excellence of his heart! This quality was always saving John from censure, which would have been dealt out unsparingly to the possessor of a bad one. It is extraordinary what an affliction you can be to your friends, with impunity, when once your intrinsic goodness is an established fact.
Even grandmamma was pacifically talked over—a thing that happened rarely enough. Marianne had not been very long with her, as, while they were at lunch, the tooth-stopping came out, and she knew that if it was not replaced the tooth would come on aching. These interesting particulars came gradually, as Marianne brewed the promised toddy. Challis had declined to have it in bed, as quite uncalled for by his malady, which he maintained, truly enough, no doubt, was purely a nervous affection.
But he never drank that toddy!
For when it was ready, Marianne said: "It's so hot I can't touch it. You'll have to wait."
"All right," he said. "I shall be a few minutes yet. I dare say I'll have another half-pipe to make up three. Don't you stop, old girl!"
Marianne yawned. "Well, perhaps I may as well go. I've had a good deal of running about, and I'm sleepy. Good-night, dear; don't burn your mouth!" She was more her old self than she had been for a long time. For, you see, she had seen—but slowly—that her cloud had cleared away. Challis's own feeling that—for him—Judith must cease, had worked itself into speech that his wife had merely supposed to relate to the chute of the projected drama. It was a good wind that blew Judith away, whatever quarter it blew from.
She went close to her husband, giving him the right piece of her face to kiss. "Which tooth was it?" said he. She showed him, tapping it. "It's a very little hole," he said, "and a good tooth!" She replied: "That's why Mr. Leaver says it should be stopped with gold. Now, good-night, dear! Drink the toddy, and don't be very late!"
Now, if only this woman had just gone straight away to bed and slept! And if that man, who had fully sworn to himself—mind you!—that the thing he had to do was to thrust his past delirium behind him, had but smoked his pipe, drunk his toddy, slept and waked next day a wiser man, might not the whole of the silly story have passed into oblivion, and left this prosy tale of ours without a raison-d'être? Quite possible! But, then, no such thing happened.
For Marianne seemed to hang fire and hesitate over her departure. She paused as she passed the open window; the sweet air, now that the rain had stopped, was pleasant after so much smoke. "What a beautiful moonlight night it's come out!" she said. But the moonlight grated on her husband. That moon was only a day older and a shade smaller than the full orb shining on the little Tophet garden and that Calypso of last night, robed in a stellar universe of moonsparks. Why need the rain-rack, flying northward after doing the garden so much good, leave conscious guilt exposed to the sight of Artemis—or Hecate—who knew all about it yesterday? Why not have gone on raining a little longer?
Marianne took another view. She said again, "How lovely the moon is, Tite!" in an unusual way for her. For she was not given to romantic sentiments. Her husband read in her manner a recognition of their rapprochement; for such it was, though no official recognition had been bestowed on distance, its condition precedent. He went and stood beside her; and, for her sake as well as his own—so he thought—gazed on the moon with all the effrontery of those experienced reprobates, Mr. Brown and Lord Smith. He forsook the toddy to do so, having just tried it with his fingers, and decided it could be touched with safety.
They stood side by side at the window; a minute or more, maybe. Then she said, almost as though conscious of some unscheduled ratification: "That'll do, dear! Now suppose I go to bed. The toddy will be cold." He followed her to the foot of the stairs, to endorse the cordiality of his send-off. There she kissed him again, but said, rather puzzling him: "I know you've forgiven me, Tite dear!"
He was moved as well as puzzled. "But, my dearest girl," said he, "what have I to forgive?"
"What I said in my letter." Whatever this woman's faults were, she was always downright.
"But, dear old goose, what did it all come to? You couldn't get away from home just now, or something. What did it matter? That was all right!" Oh, how he wished he could have added, "Come next time"! But, alas!—that was all over now; reasons why jostled each other in his brain. No more Royd!