"I didn't mean that," says the downright one, pushing facts home. "I meant what I wrote at the end, on the back of the last sheet. It was all nonsense, you know; I never meant it."
"I didn't see the back of the last sheet. I read it in a great hurry just going in to dinner last night."
"Well!—it was there. Don't read it; burn it! Can't you get it now, and burn it for me to see? I would so much rather."
Challis should have replied that he had got the letter safe somewhere, he knew, and he would look it up after he had finished his half-pipe. The reprobates the story has referred to would have done so; would probably have gone the length of turning out their pockets, slapping themselves on those outworks; would even have said, being men of spirit, Dammy, madam, the Devil was in it if they could tell what had become of the letter! Come what might, they would have cut a figure! Challis cut none, or if he did it was a poor one. The fact is that, considered as a liar, he was good for nothing—had a very low standard of mendacity; and, indeed, had suffered so much over this affair of Judith that it was a luxury to him to say something, at last, without any reserves.
"It's burned already, Polly Anne. So you may be easy. Ta-ta!" He had said it before he remembered how unready he must perforce be with details.
"Oh!" rather curtly. "I suppose you lit your pipe with it? Very well!"
He had better have let misapprehension stand. Better that amount of false construction than the actual facts. But he must needs clear his character. "No, Polly Anne; it was really no fault of mine. It was the merest accident...." He stuttered over it; and she, seeing he had some tale to tell or reserve about it—but, to do her justice, without any idea of a lion in ambush—waited with patience. This, as you know, is the deadliest way in which stammered information can be received.
"It really was—you know how imp ... difficult it is to read by moonlight—and my wax vesta I lit to read it with was the last I had. It was when I threw it away—yes, when I threw it away it set fire to the letter. It burned my fingers, and I threw it on the ground." What a lame business! And he dared not mention Judith, and knew it.
Marianne's voice is changing a little as she repeats: "It burned your fingers, and you threw it on the ground?" She does not use the words "Please explain!" aloud. She merely leaves them unspoken.
But her husband has only begun saying "Yes ..." uneasily, when she cuts him short. "Were they dining by moonlight at Royd last night?"
"No—no—of course not! You don't understand...."
"I don't."
"I had read the letter myself just before dinner, and I missed reading the postscript, because it was late, and the dinner-gong sounded. This of the wax match was in the garden, after." It is coming slowly—the inevitable—and he is beginning to know it. Maybe Marianne sees the flush mounting on his face.
"I thought you never saw the back of the last sheet? Why did you want to read the rest again? Had I said anything wrong?"
"No, dear!—you don't understand. Listen...."
"Yes—go on!" Because what has to be listened to seems to hang fire However, it comes in the end.
"It was not I myself that wanted to read the letter again just then...."
"Who had read it before?"
"I didn't mean that, either, dear—do wait!"
"I am waiting ... tell me ... tell me at once!" Surely Marianne's breath came a little short on the last words, and she is leaning on the banister-rail perceptibly. His answer comes in the quick undertone of one who wishes to get something said that he would have been glad to leave unuttered.
"I was asked if I thought you would mind your answer to their invitation being shown, and I could not remember a word in the letter that I thought you could possibly object to my showing...."
"Who do you mean by 'they'?"
"The—the family. Lady Arkroyd...."
"My message was to Judith Arkroyd, who wrote to me. Do you mean her when you say they? Who else was there when she saw the letter?"
"No one."
"You had better tell me exactly what happened."
"I had. They had a party, and dancing going on. I went away to a quiet garden there is, to be out of the noise, and Miss Arkroyd was there. She had seen your letter arrive for me when the post came, and had seen me after reading it just before dinner, and seen me slip it in my pocket. She asked to be allowed to see it—I know with some idea of inducing you to change your mind and come, and I ... I may have been wrong, you know ... only remember I had not read the postscript you speak of ... well! I let her look at it."
"Then about the matches and the fire?"
"Just an accident. I held a match for her to read by, and it caught a gauze veil she had. It was just got clear in time to save her a bad burning. But the letter caught in the blaze, and was burned before I could save it. That is all!"
"Is that quite all?"
"Quite all!"
"It is quite enough. Good-night!"
"Oh, Polly Anne, Polly Anne!—don't think—don't believe?..."
"Go on. What?"
"... anything but what I've told you.... Oh, my dear!..."
But Marianne has left him, and is on her way upstairs. She is quite changed from the Polly Anne who was standing by the window but now. She walks stonily, and looks white. But her fortitude only lasts as far as the return of the staircase. As she turns, and knows that he can see her face from below, lighted as it is by the gas on the landing above, she breaks down altogether, and reaches her bedroom-door in a passion of hysterical tears.
"No—no—no—no!" she cries. "Take away your hands. Go away and leave me." For her husband has followed her, three steps at a time. He knows, and the knowledge is a knife in his heart, how wrong he has been; not in falling in love out of bounds—a thing he had no control over—but in showing that letter, which he could easily have refused to do. Passion and action live on opposite sides of the river. Now, what worlds would he give to find palliation for himself in his inner conscience!—it is the want of that that ties the tongue of his explanation to her. Yet he must qualify his contrition, if only that plenary admission of guilt would be taken to imply still more, and worse, to come.
"Polly Anne dearest, for God's sake don't run away with a false idea! A great deal too much is being made of a trifle. If you would only be patient with me!..."
"I am patient. Now tell—what is the false idea? Why is it too much? Why is it a trifle?—showing my letter to—to that woman before you had read it yourself!" She is killing her sobs as she speaks, and has a hard struggle. They are heads of a Lernæan Hydra.
"Don't be unfair to me, dear! I had read it, all except that one bit on the back. It was so easy to miss it!"
"I never do—things on the back of letters."
"It was stupid of me. But what you don't understand, dear, is that I wanted Miss Arkroyd to read your message herself. There was certainly nothing you could have minded her seeing in the letter itself."
"Indeed! How do you know?"
"Well!—I don't know; I think."
"And when you had put Miss Arkroyd out, what happened?"
"How do you mean 'what happened'?"
"Oh, don't tell me if you don't like! I am out of it!"
Now, Challis would have liked to be able to say, "It is by your own choice that you are out of it; and the whole of this misunderstanding has grown, through a good intention of this lady you hate, to bring you into it." But he had tied his own tongue. "It"—whatever it was—had ceased to exist for him now at Royd. And probably his future intercourse with Grosvenor Square would be limited to just such an allowance of formal calls as would draw a veil over strained relations, and silence suggestion of ostracism. His behaviour of the previous evening had created a no-thoroughfare; but the conversation had hardly arrived at the notice-board.
"Nothing happened; the burns were not bad." His words were almost true—the prevarication, in this form, of the slightest, but the notice-board was clearly legible by now. "We left the garden, and no more was said about the letter, because some men from the house joined us, talking politics."
But Marianne has gone stony. Her manner rejects the men from the house, who talked politics. "I s-see," she says, fully expressing the closure of her mind against all extenuations, palliations, evasions, or excuses. "The letter was burned, and there was an end of it."
"Exactly! An end of it!" He extended the phrase in his mind to his relations with Royd, and all belonging to them.
Marianne waited so incisively for anything further to be said by her husband, and he felt so certain that if the no-thoroughfare notice were disregarded, the trespassers would suffer penalties—his own being enforced disclosure of what would be injurious to both, and quite useless—that he was almost glad when his wife said stonily: "Your whisky is getting cold. Perhaps you had better take it." He answered drearily, "Perhaps I had," and went away, but not to the dining-room. He went to his own study, and sat there aimlessly, thinking, in the half-dark. Presently, making as little noise as possible, he went downstairs, put out the lights that had been left burning, and, going stealthily out at the front-door, went for a walk in the moonlight.
But that carefully mixed nightcap remained untouched, and was placed by Harmood on the sideboard, as an embarrassment difficult to dispose of where no man-servant was kept. And there it reproached its maker and its non-consumer in the morning.
CHAPTER XXXVI
HOW CHALLIS AND HIS WIFE PARTED. A DINNER AT THE CLUB, AND HIS RETURN FROM IT. WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOUR MISTRESS? A LETTER FROM MARIANNE CRAIK. DAMN CHARLOTTE ELDRIDGE!
There are no hours more miserable than the first ones of a day after a quarrel, or high tension akin to a quarrel. Next morning at the Hermitage found it full of silences and reserves. Mr. and Mrs. Challis were speaking with studied forbearance—even civility—towards one another. The children had been told to make less noise, and had made it, but had then been told to make still less, and so on, to the point of virtual extinction. Their mother had risen at her usual time, but looking ill, and had scarcely found fault with her usual spirit. And yet Harmood, whose intuitions the story is now following, observed that the butter had a flavour—namely, the one it so often has; and the eggs were the sort that won't boil. There is another sort, which has a passion for disintegration; but this time it was the former, which is worse; and yet they were accepted in silence. Harmood saw clearly that there had been words, and forthwith resolved to select this moment to give warning suddenly—a step she had been contemplating for some weeks. An up-to-date English servant respects herself more, or less, in proportion to the degree of confusion into which she can plunge her employers when she throws up her situation.
Mr. Challis had only waited—Harmood noticed—to see the children as they went out for an early walk, not to be in the hot sun too much. He kissed both affectionately, but his customary jokes with them were rather under his breath. He then went to his room, and presumably wrote something Harmood's inner consciousness was able to form a low opinion of, without perusal; for whenever she did out the study she mentally classed MS. literature as a lot of stuff.
Mrs. Challis transacted necessary household business, and went straight to her room, saying she was going out, and was not sure when she should be back. At the street-door she was stopped by Harmood, respectfully but firmly. Was she likely to be back before twelve? She couldn't say; why? Of course, because Miss Harmood wished to give warning, and if she did not do so before midday, she would have to pass twenty-four hours more under the roof that had sheltered her for three years at least. As Mrs. Challis might be out, she would prefer to give a month's warning forthwith.
Mrs. Challis did not show the panic Harmood had promised herself the sight of. On the contrary, she barely raised her eyebrows as she answered: "Certainly, Harmood! To-day is the twentieth," and was actually going out. But she paused an instant at a prefatory cough from the handmaiden. Had the latter any complaint to make? The answer renounced complaint, but with implication of generosity. "Very well!" said Mrs. Challis thereon. "I can't wait. The twentieth." And went away, leaving Harmood mortified.
She came back between twelve and one. She was heated with walking, but might have been crying, too. So Harmood thought when she let her in. She went upstairs, speaking to her husband outside his door. She had just come back from Charlotte's, she said. Was he there? Yes—he was, and came out at once to speak with her. He was amiable, but subdued. Had waited for her, in case there was anything—a vague expression, but conciliatory under the circumstances. There was certainly nothing—no doubt about it. Was he going out?—his coat suggested it. Yes; he would not be in to lunch. A letter had come by the second post, asking him to meet a man on business in the City at two. He would lunch at Scallopini's, and stay at his club, where he had promised to dine with his publisher and some authors at 7.30. But he would not come in late.
Then Marianne said coldly: "Don't hurry on my account."
He answered, as cheerfully as he dared—that is, not to seem to ignore the conditions: "You'll go to bed just the same, of course?"
Her reply was: "I shall go to bed." Nothing more. She went on to her own bedroom.
Challis could almost have sworn he heard a sob as the door closed. Was it so or not? He could not bear the doubt. He would risk it—go to her, throw himself at her feet, cry out in his misery for pardon for the past, and oblivion; for a pact of hope for the days and hours to come. If he could only have made his decision a few seconds sooner! But he just missed the chance, as Marianne opened her door and came back, stony.
"I forgot to tell you. Harmood has given warning."
"Harmood! Why—what on earth has the woman to complain of?"
"I can't say. I have given her no cause of complaint. She makes no complaint, as I understand."
"Well!—that is extraordinary! However, she's not indispensable. We can do without her. Only you'll have such a bother to find someone else."
Marianne said: "I don't think I shall." And Challis imagined that she referred to some possible servant or useful agency that she knew of. But the thought in her mind was different, as we shall see. Challis recalled her words afterwards. All that this talk of Harmood meant for him then was that a good impulse had been spoiled by it.
He looked at his watch, and found he would only just have time to get to town, get some lunch, and be ready for his appointment, which was an imperative one. He changed slippers for boots, and was ready. With his hand on the open street-door, he called out to his wife: "Good-bye, then! I'm off." Contrary to his expectation, she came downstairs.
"You are off," she said, repeating his words. "Good-bye, then!" And rather to his surprise she kissed him, saying: "Yes—then, good-bye!" All the manner of it was a little odd. But his instincts—may be mistaken ones—told him to let well alone. He replied with a warmer kiss than hers had been, and a moment after was on his way to East Putney Station. He was very uncomfortable about losing sight of her for so long. But, after all, it might give their relations a better chance of readjustment. Nothing like a pause!
A business colloquy of some warmth, with a reference to possible legal proceedings, was followed first by a pleasant afternoon at the Club, and next by a very informal dinner of six—of whom at least three were amusing dogs—and lastly by a saunter homewards with one of the amusing dogs, who wished him good-night at Gloucester Road Station. All these experiences were of the sort that brushes cobwebs from the mind, and Challis was feeling much freer at heart when, after midnight, his latchkey clicked in the front-door at the Hermitage, and admitted him to a silent house.
Well!—of course, a house is silent when everyone has gone to bed. What would you have?
Challis lighted his candle and gathered up his letters to read in his study. He went furtively up the two short stairflights, secretly hoping that Marianne would speak from her room to him; for, however quiet he was, she almost always heard him, the exceptions being when he was unusually late, and she very sound asleep. He paused a moment to favour the chance. Not a sound!
He glanced at her door with an uncomfortable feeling he could not at first account for, a sense that it disclaimed an inmate. In a moment, however, he mastered the reason of that. Nothing so very unusual! Only that she had forgotten to put her boots out. Well!—this wasn't a hotel. How absurdly nervous he was, and fanciful!
He turned into his study and lighted his reading-candle, with the reflector. He would be there some time; there were so many letters. First he would open the window, though, to let the sweet night-air in. It was so overpoweringly hot.
Then he sat down to his desk and began upon his letters. One advertisement of no value. Two advertisements of no value. A thick letter from Nebraska to the author of his own first work, etc., etc., care of his publisher; that might be amusing. An enclosure of slip-cuttings; so might that.... Hullo!—what was the meaning of this? One to Mrs. Alfred Challis among his letters! Marianne had overlooked it. Odd, that!
But—but—but, that was not all! Another, and another to Mrs. Alfred Challis. Overlooked?—impossible! Utterly impossible! She must be still out. Where could she have gone? Did not she say she had been at Charlotte's in the morning? Where else could she go? Where else was there to go? Tulse Hill? Why—she was there yesterday!
He sat there a full two minutes, without dropping the letter he held when the thing amiss first caught him, or changing his posture of face or hand. He sat pursuing possibilities in thought, and overtaking none. Then, with sudden resolution in a face white as the envelope he dropped, he rose and went straight to his wife's room, lamp in hand. On the way a thought came—it was just a bare chance!—had she gone to bed early with a headache, saying she was not to be disturbed?—and had all these letters come by the last post? Not probable, certainly, but not impossible! At least, he would knock at her door before going in and waking her suddenly. She would be less surprised.
He tapped and heard nothing. He listened longer than need was, clinging artificially to hope. Then he opened the door and went in. There was no one in the room.
Was there nothing that would give him a clue at once? He could not think coolly yet; utterly useless with this nervous ague-fit on him! He knew it would subside in time, and he would be able to think. But for now, was there nothing?
For instance, in the appearance of the bed? Yes—something! Surely his recollection did not deceive him. Should not the bed, by rights, be "turned down," and be yawning, as it were, for its occupant? Would there not be, normally, some appearance of night-clothes; if not laid out on the coverlid as though courting their contents, at least beneath the pillow? He threw it aside; there was nothing.
On the dressing-table, then? Yes!—the brushes and combs were not there. They might be in the drawer, though. But how about those stoppered bottles? One was clear in his memory—square, with horizontal corrugations and a flat disc with a statement, hazarded by a writer in gold, that it contained eau-de-Cologne. Where was it? Not on that table, nor the chimney-piece. A great fear was on him that she had gone! Then it flashed upon him that if she had, she would have taken her jewels with her. Where did she keep them? In the top wardrobe-drawer. It would be locked, but he and she had a secret knowledge that one key opened all the drawers alike. He felt like an over-sensitive detective; but he got the key and opened it. The jewel-case was there, sure enough, but—not locked! He opened it, and saw at a glance that none of her favourites were there. Oh yes—she had gone! Marianne was gone—there was no doubt of it now!
He dropped back, feeling sick, on a chair, face to face with reality. Event agrees ill with men of Challis's temperament, the sort that can become unhealthily excited by the puppets of their own imagination. That railway accident yesterday was bad enough! But this—think of it!—at home, with the children to tell in the morning!
He tried to think—what next? Rouse the servants? Of course; but which servant? Nurse by preference, certainly. Procul absit Steptoe, and even Miss Harmood! He rose, feeling weak; and without his lamp, for all the house was navigable in the glorious moonlight, found his way to the nursery. Nurse slept in the little room just off it on the landing. But the rooms had a door between, in case of anything in the night. That is nurse's phrase, not ours.
Just as Challis was framing in his mind the question he should ask—and all forms that suggested themselves seemed to intensify the position—the thought crossed his mind that it would be a relief to see those youngsters asleep in the moonlight. Surely it would!—or, would it? He would risk it. He opened the nursery-door furtively, and stole in. But darkness reigned—curtain-darkness; shutter-darkness. Challis knew that little girls that sleep exposed to moonbeams suffer in some mysterious way—go blind, or go silly, or are witched away by bogles. He wasn't sure which. He tiptoed to the window, and could let in the light without noise, for, as it turned out, there was no shutter. What of the bed? He knew how nice they were in bed. All children are.
But the bed was empty.
Mrs. Steptoe, roused from her first sleep, which was about two hours old, and a promising sample, thought at first that she was back in Tallack Street, and that the noise was her lamented husband, the worse for liquor. Further revived, her decision that it might be thieves, and that her choice of action would lie between affecting sleep and calling "Police!" from the window, was short-lived; and she followed it up by referring her master's cries to fire. Harmood's consciousness passed through analogous phases, but with this difference: that the second one did not suggest immediate action. A servant who had just given warning might surely go on pretending to be asleep, unblamed. Was she there at all, technically?
However, the thought of the great terror "Fire!" brings the laziest from his bed. Neither waited to be sure that she was being called by name, but ran out on the landing above, belonging to the attics, to be encountered by Challis's voice from below, shouting madly, "What has become of your mistress? Where are the children? Where on earth are you all? Come down at once!" and so on.
Mrs. Steptoe's tremulous accents stopped him, but he could not catch what she said. "Come down here at once," he cried again, "and speak up plain. Where is your mistress, and the children?" He just got his voice under control for the question.
Mrs. Steptoe came down half-way. Her costume forbade a complete descent. "The mistress and the young ladies and nurse, sir?"
"Yes!—the mistress and the young ladies and nurse. Where are they? Speak quick!"
Mrs. Steptoe found voice enough to say: "Ain't they at Tulse Hill, sir?"
"That's what I want to know. Do you know?"
Mrs. Steptoe found some more voice. "Didn't the mistress say Tulse Hill, Harmood?" She asked the question of the unseen, above, not without recognition of her own necessity as a go-between. Direct communications from a house-and-parlour-maid, single, in a nightgown, could hardly be in order under the circumstances.
"Mrs. Challis said Tulse Hill, Mrs. Steptoe." The delicacy of the position is recognized, and the intercessor and mediator installed. Who repeats the words officially, and adds, as a mere human creature: "My word a mercy, what a turn it giv'!"
"What did your mistress say? When did she go? Did she leave no message?"
"Not with me, sir!" Then officially: "Did Mrs. Challis leave no message, Harmood?" Which, substituting as it does a name for an offensive designation, confirms and ratifies the claim to mediumship made by the speaker, who accordingly repeats the substance of Miss Harmood's communication from above, replacing the offensive designation in the text where it had been ignored in the original.
"The mistress didn't leave no message, sir, only a note. She was taking the young ladies to their grandmamma's, and we was not to expect her back."
"Where's the note?... Did she name any time?" To this Miss Harmood, overstepping delicacy, and speaking, as it were, with the direct voice, replies:
"Mrs. Challis said no time, sir, but you would know. She took her things to stay, and the young ladies, and went about three."
"About three." Mrs. Steptoe confirms, adding: "The note is left on the 'all-table." This anticipates the question on Challis's lips, and also reinstates delicacy, making further direct communication unnecessary.
Challis says abruptly, "You had better get back to bed, both of you!" and goes to bring the lamp from the bedroom. He sees at once that he had overlooked the letter, which must have been at the bottom of the handful he brought up. Of course, it would be, if it was written before three. All those later letters would have hidden it.
Yes—there it was, directed to "Mr. Challis" and nothing else. He brought to the surface a memory of having noticed it at first, and thought it a tradesman's account or a begging application. Now he could see the handwriting. He could not have said whether he was more anxious or afraid to open it. Perhaps the former, so great was his wish to know how it would begin. But it had no definite beginning, such as letters usually have.
"You do not really care for me, so I have made up my mind to leave you—it is all at an end between us, for you do not really care for me—now you can go away to Miss Arkroyd if she will have you—it will not be bigamy, and you know why—I am Kate's sister, and we cannot be legally Man and Wife—mamma has said so all along.
"Oh, Titus, how could you show that letter—could I have acted by you like that?—to show it to that woman to read before you—think if it had been me—my letter showed to some gentleman you half knew, and me not seen it first—oh, Titus—but it is good-bye.
"Besides, I know, because of the garden all by yourselves—Charlotte says so."
Challis started to his feet as he read these words. "I knew it—I knew it!" he cried to the empty air. "Oh, damn that woman!—with all my heart and soul, damn that woman!" He added, without circumlocution, words to the effect that if ever a woman of infamous character existed, she was one. It seemed to soothe him; and after pacing the room once or twice with the letter in his hand, he came back to the lamp, and went on reading:
"Charlotte says so—only it is only the sort of thing I mean—I have no accusation to make—you must believe what I say—it is what I know you feel I go by—and I think most women would, too. If you had cared for me you could not have done it, but though you have behaved so to me I shall try to forgive you, though I have quite made up my mind that we must part.
"Dear Titus, I know I have often been short-tempered, but that is another thing—now good-bye.
"Affectly. yours,
"Marianne Craik."
The name was on the fourth line of the last page, though a postscript followed. Challis broke out impatiently into a sort of painful half-laugh, as his eye caught his wife's maiden name. "What folly!" cried he. "What sheer, unqualified folly! Polly Anne!—just fancy! Why—she is my wife: nothing can make her anything else." And then he went on to the postscript.
"Postscript.—I have taken away the children, because they are my own. You can ask Mr. Tillingfleet—because he told me—I suppose a lawyer knows——" Here the writing turned sideways, running up the paper-edge: "It is no use your coming to see me—my mind is made up." Then a further continuation, rather illegible on the paper-edge, Challis made out to be: "I will not say, God forgive you, because you do not believe in God."
Challis sat still after reading this, becoming calmer, and thinking. At last he said: "It's all nonsense! Polly Anne will come back fast enough when I've got the kids back. She can't keep them." He seemed quite satisfied of it.
He thought he should not sleep if he went to bed. But he did both, and was a sad man in an empty house when he awoke late from a happy oblivion, and slow remembrance came.
CHAPTER XXXVII
HOW CHALLIS COULDN'T BELIEVE MARIANNE WAS IN EARNEST. HOW HE SOUGHT HER AND FAILED. THE EYES OF HOLY WRIT. THE DISGRACEFUL TRUTH. DEAR MISS ARKROYD! WHY FIGHT AGAINST INFLICTED LIBERTY? GLENVAIRLOCH TO LET
"Will Mrs. Challis be back to lunch, sir?" Thus Harmood the respectful, after giving a certain amount of attention to a series of concessions, collectively called breakfast. Her mistress being absent, she was taking advantage of Challis's readiness to submit to anything rather than attend to the domesticities. Just like his fellow-males elsewhere! She was fortified in the adoption of this course by the reflection that she had given warning. And a servant who has given warning is a problem not to be solved under the most subtle definition of Existence yet formulated, even by Graubosch. She is not an Abstract Idea; would not the butcher's bill diminish in that case? On the other hand, could any concrete thing, worthy of the name, do so much in the way of leaving coal-scuttles at stair-feet, or its black-leadin' brush in the empty grate; or its dust-pan full of tea-leaves for when it should be ready to begin sweeping; or the windows flaring wide open, and the door, and all master's papers blowing about?
The story can't settle that point now, nor could Challis. It was metaphysics, and Mr. Brownrigg's business. All the victim of Harmood's qualified entity could distinguish was, for instance, that the table-cloth was grudgingly disposed so as to cover one-third of the table only. Being a tablecloth of huge bulk, with a court-train at each corner, it refused, when quadrupled, to have anything stood on without tumbling over; notably a needlessly small milk-jug, evolved from some obscure corner to stint master in milk with. It wouldn't stand only you held it; so, of course, it just slopped over. But, of course, there was plenty of milk in the house, and the incident closed with Harmood actually bringing The Milk itself, in the most matronly white jug that ever was seen, that seemed to have thrown its whole soul into stability, like Noah's wife in his Ark, who can be stood up on a rough carpet cattle fall sideways on, knocking down their neighbours.
Need it be said that Challis's observation is followed in all this? It shows a state of mind not fully alive to the reality of his position. He was, in fact, pooh-poohing the idea that Marianne's action was more than an outburst of ill-temper, the result—he admitted this—of a perfectly natural resentment under the circumstances. Of an unjust one—yes! He said this to himself again and again, but never exactly located the injustice. He could perceive that this resentment was due to gross misapprehension of the facts of the case, but he cautiously avoided details of the misapprehension. He may have felt misgivings that Marianne was not so very wrong, after all. Women can decide this; no man's verdict has any weight in such a matter.
He attached a certain value to Harmood's concessions of warmed-up coffee, and eggs which were a caution to poachers. He took no advantage of them, or very little, as breakfast; but till they were finally left to perish of cold neglect, he could postpone his answer to the question, "What's to be done next?" However, it would have to be answered some time. A cigar in the garden would help. There is nothing like a cigar after breakfast to clear one's head. But first he must answer that question of Harmood's. Would Mrs. Challis and the young ladies be back to lunch?
"Just ask Mrs. Steptoe again exactly what your mistress said," Challis takes a pleasure in rubbing in the obnoxious expression. Harmood's conduct has been detestable. But she is conscious, from Mr. Challis's manner, of her success. From Mrs. Challis's she had been able to form no opinion.
Mrs. Steptoe testified from the basement, and Harmood returned. No—Mrs. Challis had said nothing but what had been reported last night. She was taking the young ladies to their grandma's, and we was not to expect her back.
"Back to lunch, or what?" Challis raises his voice over the question, and Harmood refers to her authority, with an air of indifference to trifles of this sort. Bald confirmation comes of the wording of the message; no interpretation.
"Very well, then! Your mistress didn't say she wasn't coming to lunch. Of course she is coming to lunch." Challis repulsed an attempt of Mrs. Steptoe to entangle him in the problem of how some abhorrent remainders from the larder—which she offered to show—might be best utilized, and got away to that cigar in the garden, to think....
Damn interruptions!—no, he couldn't see anybody.... Stop! who was it? Miss Harmood, who had not been explicit enough, now testified to Mr. Eldridge; whereupon Challis asked her why she couldn't say so at first? This was unjust and irrational; but Miss Harmood had given warning, and felt partly disembodied. What did it matter to her?
It was John Eldridge, not very intelligible, but in much perturbation at something. "Well—you see!—it was Lotty's idea he should come round. Never would have entered his head himself! No sayin', though!" This was a favourite expression of his, presenting him as a sage prone to suspension of opinion, and open-minded.
After using it once or twice, he used his pocket-handkerchief, causing Harmood to inquire whether Mr. Challis had called. He then stood over the object of his visit, whatever it was, to ask, as an entirely new idea, "How are you yourself, Master Titus?"
"I'm all right, John. Won't you smoke?—that one at the end's very mild." But Mr. Eldridge wouldn't smoke; it was too early in the morning. Besides, he was late at the office. Challis avoided analysis and comparison, and made essays towards explanation of the visit. "Any more railway accidents?" said he.
"Wasn't that the day before yesterday?" Mr. Eldridge stopped polishing his nose to ask this. Challis explained that it was quite recent enough—he was in no hurry for more. He chose to suggest that the question, which had absolutely no meaning whatever, was intended to impute to him an unnatural lust for railway accidents. Mr. Eldridge seemed at a loss, saying: "Now you're poking fun, Master Titus! None of your larks!" Then he muttered to himself. "Thought so—thought so—day before yesterday!"
It was evidently going to be a matter of patience. Challis knew why his visitor had come, of course, but he was not going to supply him with guidance. Perhaps it would be quickest and simplest to leave him entirely alone. Then he would have to burst, or go. He chose the former, after some vague soliloquy about not having inquests on Sundays.
"You don't object to my lookin' round to speak about it, Master Titus?"
"Not a bit, John! Please speak. What is it?"
A gentle reproachfulness was on Mr. Eldridge as he answered: "No—come, I say, now—no gammon, suppose!" And Challis really commiserated him. What a position to be in! To be sent round by your wife, in the legitimate exercise of her omnipotence, to lecture a neighbour believed to be involved in a quarrel with his! And that, too, when you happen to have, from no fault of your own, but from predestination, a short supply of words, and defective powers of construction. Challis appreciated the position quite clearly, and decided to be good-natured. After all, it was that detestable meddlesome Charlotte, not her booby husband himself—most probably—that had organized this expedition into his territory.
"All right, John!" said he. "No gammon, suppose! I know what you want to speak about. Marianne."
"Well, you know!" says John ruefully, "my idear was Charlotte should come herself. Much better idear!"
"What for? Very happy to see her, of course!"
"Well, you know, Master Titus, that's just what I keep on sayin' to Charlotte, that it's no concern of either of ours."
"Sharp chap!" This is interjected privately. So far as it reaches the audience, it seems to be accepted as laurels. "Now, suppose you and Charlotte were to take a holiday, and just leave me and Marianne to fight it out our own way. We shan't quarrel."
Mr. Eldridge became snugly confidential. "There, now, Master Titus, isn't that exactly what I said to Lotty? The very words! 'You leave them to fry their own fish,' I said." Challis thought of his philosophical friends at Royd; here was a new definition of identity wanted! "'You leave them to fry their own fish.' It's what I've been sayin' all along. But when females get an idea, you may just talk to 'em. Nothin' comes of it...."
"What was her idea?"
"Me to come and talk it over in a friendly sort of way. Try to pave the way to a good understanding.... Lots of expressions she used!..." He paused to recall some. "... Oh ah!—I remember ... 'painful misunderstanding'—that was one. And 'tact and delicacy.' She's a clever woman, Lotty, that's a fact, Master Titus."
"Devilish clever, John! Everyone knows that. 'Tact and delicacy' is a capital expression. It reminds me of Mrs. Chapone, but I don't know why." John seemed flattered, and Challis continued, with some disposition to laugh outright: "Look here, old chap! You and that clever lady of yours may just as well be easy. You think Polly Anne and I have quarrelled. But we haven't. And we shan't. I tell you, the thing's out of the question. Sheer nonsense!"
Mr. Eldridge's idea of identity comes to the fore again. "Just what I said—'reg'lar tommy rot.' Mrs. J. E., she agreed with me, down to the ground. There was another expression she used, now! ... what the dickens was it?... Oh, I know!—no, I don't.... Oh yes!—'parties God had joined together let no man put asunder.' Nice feelin' about that!"
"Well!—no man's going to put anyone asunder this time, whether God united them or the Devil. Don't you go and repeat that remark to Mrs. J. E., John."
"No—no, Master Titus! Never say anything—never say a word!—that's the rule. Never say the Devil—never say God; not before females. Keep 'em snug! Good behaviour's paramount—can't be too particular! Expression of my wife's.... I say, I must be runnin'."
"They'll be sending for you from the Office if you don't." Then, as his visitor was departing by the front gate, he called to him from the house-steps: "Sorry the missis and the kids aren't back. They went to Tulse Hill yesterday. I'm going down there presently, only I've some work to finish first." And Harmood overheard, and condemned her employer for his contradictory testimony. "'Ark at him lying!" was the candid form her censure took. Mrs. Steptoe, saying a word in arrest of judgment, for the pleasure of gainsaying Harmood, was met by "Now, didn't he say, only this minute, Mrs. Challis would be back to lunch?"
The question whether, when Mr. Challis remained to lunch at home, as though he expected his wife's return, and immediately after took his departure for Tulse Hill, he had not reconciled his apparently conflicting statements, formed the subject of intemperate controversy between Harmood and Mrs. Steptoe during the remainder of the afternoon.
No doubt Challis had treasured a hope in his heart that his wife and the children would reappear. He succeeded, to his own satisfaction, in pretending he had known they wouldn't, all along; and by the time he had reached Tulse Hill Station, believed he had only remained to lunch at Wimbledon to write important letters.
He rang more than once—two or three times more—at his mother-in-law's, without any response. The first time someone, he thought, looked from behind the blind of an upper window; and then two voices, one dictatorial, the other compliant, conversed up and down the staircase of Glenvairloch, for that was the name of Marianne's mother's villa at Tulse Hill. The next-door neighbour lived at Bannochar.
At his second ring he suspected, at his third was convinced, that non-admission was a parti-pris, in his case, at Glenvairloch. The dictatorial voice had been, not Marianne's, but her parent's, who, probably, had also been the scout at the window. If the household had made up its mind not to admit him, what could he do? A scheme for burglarious entry, suggested by a boy at large, in the hope of reward, did not recommend itself. Even this boy asking the cook next door to let him through, and him to climb through a back-winder, seemed a lawless course to Challis's mind. He found, too, that this boy caused the sudden appearance from space of other boys, and that as they agglutinated round him, passers-by, apparently crétins, wanted to know whether it was a fire. He saw no alternative but to give it up. He did so, resolving to return next day. As it chanced, some pressing appointments made the day after more convenient.
This time he went early in the morning, hoping to effect a surprise. But he knew quite well that if no one else came to the door whose admission was de rigueur, he was practically at the mercy of the garrison. No portcullis need be lifted unless it chose.
A lucky chance befell, in the shape of a butcher-boy, who could not well leave a pound of steak impaled on the gate rails, nor slip three ounces of dripping into the letter-box. Taken into confidence by Challis, he said: "They'll come along for me, you bet." He knew his power, this butcher-boy; but he yelled as well as rang, from sweetness of disposition, although not bound to yell by contract. Indeed, he also shouted an exhortation: "Git them stockin's on, Hemmer, and come along! Can't wait here till Sunday!"
But Emma was really up and dressed, for it was past three o'clock. She took in the meat, and said she would ask, please, if Mrs. Challis was in. Challis raised no objection, but walked into the house beside her, for all that. You see, he was one of the family, however seldom he visited his mother-in-law. And it does not come into practice for a young servant to repulse an applicant for admission; under such circumstances, Emma had admitted Mr. Challis more than once. How could she turn on him and say, "You're not to come in this time"?
He had never been a frequent visitor at the house, though always nominally—or we might say technically—welcome. There had been little open warfare between him and its occupant since his first widowerhood, when his scanty attendances at Divine Service, conceded during his short period of married life, to keep the peace, were discontinued altogether. His perdition had then become an article of the old lady's faith; but she seemed to have decided that the Fires of Hell during the remainder of Eternity would be a sufficient penalty for her son-in-law's delinquencies, without the added sting of incivility from herself when he occasionally found himself under her roof. Moreover, Challis had made a great concession in surrendering Bob to Marianne. His way of describing this surrender of his son was shockingly blasphemous; in fact, he used to indulge in parallels founded on recollections of his own short church-going experience in a way that would have estranged his second wife and her mother for ever from him had their information on the details of their own faith been equal to their conviction that they held it. As it was, the impression sometimes produced on their minds by Challis's irreverent whimsicalities was that there must be the raw material of Salvation somewhere in a person capable of repeating so many correct religious phrases. The story only dwells on these things now because Challis did so as he sat waiting for the appearance of his mother-in-law, and wondering what form her indignation would take.
He had just recollected an occasion when, after a visit to the old lady, he had said to his wife: "Really, Polly Anne, I think I produced quite a devout impression on grandmamma to-day," and her unsuspicious reply, "I thought you spoke very nicely, dear!" when the old lady herself became audible in the lobby without, mixing an asthmatic cough with reprimands to the servant.
"You gurls!" The speaker seemed for a moment almost paralyzed by the force of her indignation against the class she denounced. Then it burst forth in almost a shout—"Why couldn't-you-do-as-I-told-you-and-say-your-orders-were...?" and so on. But the very vehemence of the fusillade that followed the artillery was suicidal, for the cough cut short what might almost have been printed as a continuous word. Then speech got a turn again, on a revised line, "Why-can't-you-do-as-you're-told?" the gunshot coming this time as a wind-up. Variations followed, to the same effect.
Emma the gurl seemed of a timid and sensitive nature, prone to dissolve in sobs and sniffs. Her defence, Challis gathered, was that he had walked in through the kitchen-door, and that her troops were outflanked by such an unusual move. He felt the defence was good, and that he ought to help. He showed himself at the room-door.
"Don't scold Emma, grandmamma," said he. "It was no fault of hers. If she had given me your message fifty times over, I should have come in just the same. Where's Marianne?"
"Be good enough not to interfere between me and my servants." She had a proper spirit, this old lady, and it was shown at intervals—short ones. As she mellowed with age, these intervals grew shorter.
"Well!—blow Emma up if you like, but it was no fault of hers. Where's Marianne?"
"Will you have the goodness to wait till I have done with this gurl?"
Challis returned into the drawing-room, and waited. Emma—he said to himself—was catching it hot. He felt in his pocket to make sure of half-a-crown, as a solatium, in case Emma showed him out.
Nothing lasts for ever. "Such a thing again, and you go!" was the last shot from the old lady's citadel at the servant. And her first at himself was, "Now you!" He accepted the challenge.
"Where is Marianne?" But an attack of coughing stopped the old woman's reply; and when it subsided, and left him free to repeat his question, he re-worded it, "Where is my wife?"
"My daughter is not your wife."
"Very well, grandmamma, let's pretend she isn't. Where is your daughter? Where's Marianne?"
"What do you want with her?" The speech and the speaker are sullen, dogged, and in deadly earnest. If Challis plays any impish tricks—and he isn't taking the old cat seriously; witness that malicious twinkle in his eye!—there will be an explosion, and a bad one.
"What do I want with her? Why, of course, to come back and live in Sin with me, like a dutiful wife. Stop a bit, though, grandmamma! Perhaps you don't know about Marianne's letter—the letter she left for me when she bolted off yesterday! Do you, or don't you?"
"I refuse to be catechized. I am in my daughter's confidence, and I know exactly what she has written and what she has not written." The suggestion was that Challis's report would be untrustworthy. She seemed to warm to her subject. "Marianne has told me everything, and she has my fullest concurrence in the step she has taken."
"Then I suppose," says Challis, with irritation, for the old lady's fangs are beginning to tell, "that you are giving your 'fullest concurrence' to her carrying away my children?"
The inverted commas in Challis's voice are caught at. "Yes—you may sneer, and you may repeat my words! You may despise me, Mr. Alfred Challis, because I am only an old woman. But I tell you this, and you can believe it or not, as you like—that in the eyes of Holy Writ those children are not yours, and any lawyer will tell you they are not yours."
"I don't see how more than one lawyer can vouch personally for the paternity of either of the kids."
"I don't understand you."
"Never mind! Try to understand this, and tell my wife: that whether the children are mine or anyone else's—even the most respectable legal firm's in the City!—they are legally mine, and I intend to have them back."
"You know as well as I do that they are not legally yours. You know as well as I do that when you married Kate's sister you were committing an act forbidden in Holy Writ, and expressly condemned by Our Lord Himself. You know that your children are illegitimate children, and contrary to the Act of Parliament. Do not pretend you are ignorant of this, Alfred Challis. Be truthful for once!"
"I suppose my copy of the Bible isn't a recent edition; I must get one brought up to date. Or I might order one from the Times Book Club.... Oh no!—no doubt all you say is correct. I shall find the passage." A misunderstanding occurred here, owing to the old lady's deafness. An image generated in her mind had to be dispersed, of a Club of Freethinkers who had a copy of the Scriptures, certainly, but kept it in the passage, reserving the library shelves for Mock Litanies and the like. Challis's tendency to regard the whole thing as a joke revived somewhat over this. "No, no, grandmamma," said he, with something like a laugh; "no one has had anything to say against the Book Club, so far, on the score of Unsoundness. You misunderstood me. All I meant to say was that my recollections of Holy Writ seem to want polishing up. No doubt you're right! But the notion of Marianne having any right to appropriate my children—our children—why, the idea is simply too ridiculous to bear speaking of!"
"You can ask any lawyer."
"What lawyer ever told you such rubbish?"
"Mr. Tillingfleet."
"Mr. Tillingfleet deserves to be struck off the Rolls. When did Mr. Tillingfleet make this precious statement?"
"I suppose you fancy you know better than Mr. Tillingfleet?"
"When did he tell you this?"
"I can show you his letter if you like." Letter produced. Challis muttered that he didn't want to see it. But he took it, and made a visible parade of superficial reading, until he came to the end, when he appeared to re-read the last paragraph. He then went back, and re-read from the beginning, half aloud, skipping words.
"'Dear Madam reply to your esteemed ... hm-hm ... regret must repeat advice ... re matrimonial status ... hm-hm ... in no case can marriage of man with deceased wife's sister hold good in law, however pledged parties hold themselves ... hm-hm ... consequently legal dissolution impossible no legal contract existing ... old friend of late Mr. Craik ... excuse ... delicate position ... your daughter ... counsel moderation ... jealousy may be justified ... may be groundless....' Sensible chap, Tillingfleet!"
The widow of the late Mr. Craik snorted. "He was my husband's legal adviser," said she. How could he be other than a sensible chap?—said the snort. "Perhaps you will be kind enough to give your attention to what he says about Marianne's children."
"About our children, certainly!" Challis continued, reading more distinctly. "'With regard to your other question as to the relative claims of your son-in-law and daughter to the guardianship of their children, I am personally of opinion that as no legal marriage exists, the children are technically illegitimate, and this technical illegitimacy would bar any claim to guardianship on the part of Mr. Challis. How far any claim for maintenance could be sustained is another question, Mrs. Challis's object being, as I understand, to withdraw the children entirely from their father. On the justifiability of such a course I do not understand that my opinion is asked.' Sensible fellow, Tillingfleet!" said the reader. But with so plain a meaning that his hearer caught him up sharply.
"What do you mean to imply?"
"That Mr. Tillingfleet thinks you and Marianne a couple of fools. He all but says that your behaviour is unjustifiable, in his opinion...."
"His opinion was not asked."
"So he says. Hadn't you better ask him?"
"Certainly not. He does not know how you have behaved to your wife. It is a matter of which she alone can judge."
"How have I behaved to my wife?"
"You know, as well as I do."
"No doubt, and a great deal better. But you don't know as well as I do."
"I do not wish to talk any further. Have you anything further to say?"
"I wish to see Marianne and the children, and to know when they are coming home."
"I am here to speak for Marianne. She refuses to see you, or to give up her children to you. You will gain nothing by remaining here."
"Come, grandmamma, do be a little Christian-like, and help to make things comfortable again...."
"Christian-like indeed! What next?"
"Perhaps I used the wrong word. Couldn't you manage a little Heathenism for once, and be jolly? At any rate, grandmamma, tell me what the accusation is. The worst criminals are allowed to hear the indictment." Challis was just a shade uncandid in this, because he believed he knew the worst of the indictment. But he excused his conscience on the score of his right to any means of finding out whether his character, sadly soiled by that unfortunate letter business, had not been well smudged over with soot by Mrs. Eldridge into the bargain.
This conversation will have shown that grandmamma, though she had achieved a narrow-mindedness of a very choice quality, while preserving a virgin ignorance of the meaning of the popular teaching, or perversion of teaching, by which vernacular bigotries are usually fostered and nourished, was by no means a stupid person when she had an end to gain. Whether her end in the present case was the final separation of Marianne from her husband may be questioned. A working hypothesis of her motives might be that she merely wished to pay her son-in-law out for the slights he was always heaping—as she knew, while she could not understand or answer them—on her cherished booth in Vanity Fair. Whatever her ultimate object, she was unable to resist the opportunity of hitting hard that the culprit's application to hear the indictment afforded her.
"What the accusation is!" she echoed derisively. "Ask your Miss Judith what the accusation is. Ask her, and then look me in the face, Mr. Alfred Challis!" The old lady seemed quite vain of this formula of denunciation, for she picked up the missile and reloaded her arbalest. "Ask your fashionable friends—oh yes!—they look the other way, no doubt, but they have eyes in their heads, and can see for all that. Ask them, and then look me in the face, Mr. Alfred Challis! Ask your neighbours...."
"Mrs. Charlotte Eldridge?" asked Challis sharply.
"No, Alfred Challis!—not Mrs. Charlotte Eldridge only, but all the neighbours—ask them all! Ask them to say what they've seen...." But the good lady lost the luxury of her climax this time, because Challis interrupted.
"Could you mention any responsible householder who would tell me what I am accused of? I could call on my way back." Being thoroughly angry himself, he naturally spoke in a way that he knew would exasperate. This dry kind of speech was like a red rag to a bull in this old lady's case. Nothing is more infuriating than one's adversary's apparent contentment with mere words, left alone with their syntax, to shift for themselves. It makes one so conscious of one's own war-whoops, and one's occasional faulty expression of meaning, during attacks of uncontrolled anger.
"I am prepared for any evasion and prevarication from you, Alfred Challis. But I was not prepared—no, I was not prepared—for such an unblushing statement that you are kept in ignorance. Have I not told you plainly—have I not told you repeatedly—that this Miss Judith Arkroyd is what is complained of? Have I disguised anything? What I have said is the shameful, disgraceful truth. The truth, Alfred Challis! Down on your knees and acknowledge it!" A bouquet of vital doctrines essential to salvation hung about this; the attitude of kneeling was especially telling. More of the same sort followed.
When a lull came, Challis spoke. "Am I to see Marianne, or am I not?" said he. "I am convinced she is here, and I have a right to see her." The old woman kept glum silence, and he repeated his words. Then she said: "You shall not see her. It is no use. You had better go." He then said, "I know she is here, because I saw her blue silk sunshade in the entry," and left the room, as though to verify his observation. At the stair-foot he paused, and called aloud to his wife: "Polly Anne, Polly Anne! Are you there?" No answer came, and then the old woman came running out, quite inarticulate with rage and coughing.
"Listen to me," said he, and his manner stopped her. "I am going. But you will do well to pay attention to what I am going to say to you. If you repeat any impudent falsehoods about Miss Arkroyd or any other lady—yes!—whether you make them yourself or get them from any other pigsty or gutter, you will place yourself within reach of the law. You had better talk to Tillingfleet about it. He seems a sensible chap. At any rate, he will be able to tell you that people have been ruined before now by the damages they have had to pay for circulating filthy slanders without foundation. So be careful, grandmamma! Good-night!"
He had been so self-restrained up to the moment when his anger broke out in speech that his worthy mother-in-law was taken completely aback by it. She remained so until the door closed behind him. It was then too late for any demonstration, and the disappointed guardian of family morals fell back into the house gobbling like a turkey-cock. Challis found Emma at the garden-gate, and gave her her half-crown of consolation. He received the impression that she had been sent out with orders to warn Martha and the children should they return, and head them off in time to prevent a meeting. He was afterwards sorry he had not entered into conversation with this girl, and made a friend of her. But the truth is it was impossible for his mind to receive the idea that his wife's resolution would be a lasting one; and he felt confident of a penitent letter in a day or two, and an amende honorable to himself, whether he deserved one or not, for suspicions which he persisted in looking at as false per se, although one or two circumstances, quite outside their radius, might be coaxed into court by a malicious prosecution to testify against him. Any other anticipation was mere nightmare.
But a day passed, and another, and many postmen's knocks, each with its exasperation of hope frustrated; and many cabs, that might have ended in the voices of the children shouting to the cabman, by permission, which gate to stop at. And a loneliness indescribable, so unlike the happy empty days one gets for work now and again when one's housemates troop away to some assured haven elsewhere, and write every day, if it's only a postcard. How Challis envied the splendid self-absorption of our old friend the cat! How he envied the sound of a happy freedom in the chronic controversy of the kitchen; always the same controversy, but possibly on various subjects! How happy the tradesmen's boys seemed!—how callous to the smallness of the orders!
Every day he wrote a line to Marianne, ignoring all that had passed. She would give way in time. If he persevered, one day she would be unable to resist the temptation to reply; it would be a sort of hypnotic suggestion, mechanically brought about. It was on the day after his last visit to Tulse Hill that he made up his mind to try whether a letter to Judith would not procure one from her that would do some good. It could not make matters worse.
Oh, this strangely compounded clay, Man!—that any story should have to tell it! But it is true, too. This Alfred Challis, who, face to face with such grim reality of wreck at home, had as good as escaped from subjection to the witchcraft that had brought it about, had no sooner taken up his pen to write to its author, than he was again subject to the experience that has been spoken of as the soul-brush. All his consciousness—which was intense—of his own folly could not prevent him attaching a special force to the first words of his letter. Surely "Dear Miss Arkroyd" might have been a pure formality, just as much as "Dear Grandmamma" would have been if he had brought himself to write to that veteran practitioner in discord-brewing. It was no such thing. A magic hung about the three words, with a suggestion in it of a phrase of music, or a whiff of burnt incense. The image of Judith crept back promptly into his mind at permission given, suggesting disloyalties to his hope that Marianne would quarrel with her mamma, and take a reasonable view of the position—come back and reinstate life.
Why, in heaven's name—he half asked himself—if it was to be like this, if Marianne was going to persist in her unreasonable jealousy, should not he take advantage of the freedom she forced upon him, of the legal pretext of an irregular marriage that assumed the right of Law and Usage to cancel a promise given and taken mutually, believed by each giver to come from the heart of the other? He would have flung from him angrily any suggestion of an advantage to come to himself from capping to a dirty Orthodoxy—the words are his, not the story's—from any joining in the World's dance; any acquiescence in the mops and mows of the Performing Classes; any obeisance to a great organization which—when it suited him—he chose to consider a mere mechanism for keeping the funds up and the fun going, and the distribution among the sanctioned of unlimited stars and garters and loaves and fishes. But if it were forced upon him in the face of his persistent repudiation of it, if the other contracting party flaunted it in his face, might not he avail himself of this pretext?—use a disgraceful shuffle in the service of truth? Was he not almost in honour bound to do so, to that lady from whom his evasive declaration of passion had elicited what was at least a strong disclaimer of indifference to himself?
But Challis only half asked himself these questions, because he knew the answer. He knew that he knew the difference between Right and Wrong, and he knew that his wife had Right on her side—not much, but some—and he suspected that he had Wrong on his—not some, but much. So he finished his letter to Judith and posted it.
Judith wrote in answer to Challis's letter, and he forwarded an enclosure it contained, addressed to his wife. It was returned to him, torn in three or four pieces, by the next post. He joined it up and read it, and thought it the most sweet, conciliatory, angelic human document he had ever read. But, then, he was a man!
He went more than once to Tulse Hill after this, without succeeding in seeing Marianne. The third time he found the house empty, placed in the hands of an agent, who said in reply to all inquiries that his instructions were limited to dealing with the house. He was, he said, a House-Agent. But he would undertake that letters should be forwarded. He evidently enjoyed being civil, so satiated was he with the offensiveness of his position.
Mrs. Eldridge called on him as a peacemaker, having in tow her husband, who winked at him over her shoulder, uninterpretably. He said to her, subduing his anger well: "I would not have seen you, Charlotte Eldridge, if there had not been something I have been wishing to say to you. I cannot prove it, but I am as certain of it as that I stand here that it is you that have poisoned my wife's mind against me, and have filled it with every sort of nasty misinterpretation of a perfectly innocent friendship. You have known absolutely nothing of the lady whom you have thought fit to malign as a means of maligning me.... No, I know I have no means of knowing that you have ever said a single word against her. But my object in seeing you is to tell you that I am convinced that you have. I am convinced that Marianne has shown you my correspondence without any warranty—and for that she may be to blame—and that you have read into it meanings she never would have dreamed of ascribing to it, left to herself. I am, in short, sure that it is you—you—you at the bottom of all this mischief, and I tell you honestly that after you have left this door I shall not be sorry if I never see you or hear of you again. Good-bye!"
Mrs. Eldridge had thrown in denials; and when her husband, moved to eloquence, had interposed with "Come, I say now, Master Titus, ain't 'nasty misinterpretation' coming it rather strong?" had briefly directed him to be quiet till he was spoken to. She had then placed herself on oath, offering an extemporized solemnity if called on. "I am ready to go down on my knees here and now, Alfred Challis, and to call on God, who will one day be your judge and mine, to bear witness that this is a cruel falsehood! He knows"—here she threw in upper-case type freely—"that all my wish, all my effort, has been towards conciliation and peace...."
At this point Challis interrupted her, saying curtly: "Then your efforts have not been very successful. I do not see that we shall gain anything by talking any more about it. Good-bye again!" This occurred before the exodus from Glenvairloch, or Challis might have been less unconciliatory, with an eye to keeping open a possible channel of communication with his wife, even though it would involve communication with a woman whom he now thoroughly detested.