As they sat there by the fire in the half-dark, resting after their journey, his mind, like hers, went off on old times. Presently he shook off his own burden of memories with, "Well!—I suppose I ought to be on the move."
"Don't hurry away. It's not much past five yet, and they can make dinner half-past seven. You've plenty of time."
The flicker of the fire has the best of what is left of the light of a dull day; it shows two faces serious enough, certainly, but not sad. They are dwelling on the same past, each from its own point of view; but their owners are really happy to eke out a little more time in the half-light, each knowing the heart of the other. They are glad dinner at St. Vulgate's can be half-past seven; it is half-an-hour longer to be together, and really those people in the train had made it impossible to talk.
"I shan't see you again for ever so long, Yorick, unless you and Bessy change your minds and come up earlier."
"You must manage a visit to Royd in July."
"If I can!—it depends. But...."
The Rector glanced shrewdly up. "But anything particular?" said he.
"Well, Yorick, yes! Something particular. Only I don't know how to say it." As she sits there, a little flushed—or is it only the firelight?—one hand a face-rest, the other coaxing the burning coals into groups with a persuasive poker, the question that suggests itself is the old one—how comes she to be an old maid? A six-and-thirty maid, at any rate!
"I know what it's about, Addie. It's the Bill, and the Bishop."
"Yes, dear old boy." This was a great relief. "Now, do tell me, what shall you do?"
"You mean if the Bill passes?"
"Yes."
"I shall do nothing. Why should I?"
"Not even if Dr. Barham...?"
"Dr. Barham can do nothing. He can only remonstrate. What was it he said to Lady Arkroyd?"
"That if the Bill passed it would be his duty to point out to you that your relations ... well!—your relation with Bessy had altogether changed since the Act; and that for a clerk in holy orders to keep house with any single lady not his sister by parentage would be ... well!—would not do at all."
"And what did Lady Arkroyd say to the Bishop?"
"Not herself; it was the Duchess. Only she told me. What the Duchess said was, 'I hope if you do, the Reverend Athelstan will bring a suit against you for libel, and make you smart for it.' Dr. Barham won't speak to her Grace now."
"Dr. Barham would be quite within his rights. No action for libel could possibly lie. Any remonstrance on a matter of morality within his diocese must be a Bishop's privilege. Besides, a written letter would hardly constitute publication...."
"Dear old Yorick! I wonder why men are so fond of talking law to women, as if they knew by nature and women didn't. Never mind the law! It isn't that.... Don't you see how disagreeable it would be for Bessy?"
"No—I don't know that I do. I don't see why Bess need bother herself about it...."
"Hm...!"
"Oh—well—yes! Yes, I do—of course I do! It would be detestable for Bess."
"You see I'm right?"
"Oh yes, absolutely. It was only my perversity." A self-excusing, deprecatory shoulder-shrug. Peccavit confitetur is its import. Then he breaks into a good-humoured laugh. "After all, you know, there's always a way out of the difficulty."
Something brings a sudden exclamation from Adeline Fossett. "Yes, what?—but go on!" She has risen from her seat, and stands with her hands pressed close together, and eyes of expectation fixed on his. "Oh, Yorick!—is it—is it.... Oh, I do hope ... is it the one I've thought of?" She hesitates. He hesitates.
"That depends on what you have thought," he says at last. But with a suspicion that they may have thought alike, too.
"Oh, if I dared guess!... I don't know; dare I?...—yes, I will—I don't care!..."
"Go on!"
"If the Bill passes, you know ... then ... then ... you and Bessy to get married! Was that your idea, Yorick? Oh, do tell me!"
"Why, of course it was."
Miss Fossett throws herself back in her chair again, with a deep sigh as of relief. "Oh dear, how nice that would be!" she says. But she is taking it all to heart, and her eyes are full of tears. The Rector is very cool over it.
"It would be a way out of the difficulty," he says. "Not a bad one, perhaps. Better, at any rate, than Bess having to turn out and leave the children. They are quite like her own, you see. And it wouldn't make any difference." This is not quite understood, apparently, and he adds: "Everything would go on exactly as usual."
Miss Fossett had a sort of feeling that it might be possible to parade an unlover-like attitude too far. Athelstan surely might warm up a little. He had spoken as he might have done if marriage were a new hat. It would, or wouldn't, fit. "You would ... like it, though—wouldn't you?" she asked, in a rather frightened sort of way.
"It would suit me very well. I shouldn't like the only other expedient—marrying somebody else to make up a possible housekeeping. We both should know exactly why we had done it, and we should gain the end proposed. It would rather be for Bess to decide if she would like such a very prosaic arrangement."
"You mean chilly?"
"No, I don't. We're not chilly now, Bess and I. And we never quarrel. The temperature wouldn't go down because we had deferred to the opinion of our diocesan." He drew out his watch, "I must go.... Don't think I'm not in earnest, Addie. If the Bill passes, I might have to ask Bess to settle the point. I should do it for the sake of the children. The worst of it would be that if she negatived the idea, we might be uncomfortable afterwards. As for her leaving the children, of course that's out of the question. And I couldn't have her carry them off, like poor Challis's wife.... I must go." He got up to depart.
"I'm disappointed, Yorick," said Adeline.
"What at, Addie?"
"Why, of course she wouldn't have you on those terms."
"Just consider! If you were in her place?"
"Well—I wouldn't! Not on those terms." She seemed to mean every syllable.
The Rector stood in the passage, buttoning his overcoat. "Poor Challis!" said he, going back on the conversation. "They've made a knight of him! I shall go and look for him before I go back. I fancy he's back in town."
"You know I don't agree, Yorick?"
"What about?"
"About 'poor Challis.'" These words were said in inverted commas. "I told you, don't you remember, that I had heard all about it from the other side—from Charlotte Eldridge."
"Yes, but you were biassed against him, because of his deceased wife's sister marriage. You know you were!"
"Well!—wasn't I right?" But there is an amused twinkle in the Rector's eye, which is understood. "Oh no, Yorick, no!—it's quite a different thing...."
"Before and after an Act of Parliament, is that it?"
But Adeline has run her ship on the sands, and must back off. "It's impossible to compare the two cases," she says. "Do you know, if you are to be at St. Vulgate's by seven-thirty, you'll want a cab. You can't carry what you're pleased to call your little valise and get there by then. Do take a cab, Yorick!"
"Fifty-five minutes does it," says Yorick. "And I've got fifty-seven. I've a great mind to spend the odd two reading you a little homily about consistency...."
"Go away. Good-bye." A cordial shake of the hand is all that forms permit, and it seems such a shame!
One reason why it was impossible to compare the two cases was a perfectly clear one, to the thinking of Miss Fossett's innermost heart. But she kept it tight locked up there.
In the old days, when all her forecasts of life took her own practical exclusion from it for granted, and wrote celibacy large on every page of her record-volume, her great dream had been to unite her beloved friend Bessy Caldecott to that dearest of all possible young fellows, her brother Gus's friend Athelstan. Adeline was a little prone to playing at Providence, and—don't you see?—Bessy was so good and sound, and so much better altogether than that showy little sister of hers. So, what wonder, when Athelstan led the family minx, Sophy, to the altar, that Adeline rather than otherwise wished that the earth would open and swallow the altar? She would have resented the idea that any personal feeling entered into the matter.
Even so in these new days, with all this change, she could and did believe that she could see her old girl friend the wife of her old boy friend, without any feeling but sheer rejoicing that Yorick had married the right sister after all. And this feeling entered strangely into her real views on the Deceased Wife's Sister question. Catechized closely, she might have confessed to a belief in real wives, with a sub-creed that marriage with a sister of one was somehow a worse desecration of a sacrament than marriage with a second cousin, for instance, or a mere female undefined. There was no evidence to show that Challis hadn't married the right sister first. If he hadn't, of course the "living in Sin" business had come off in the first act of his drama, and nothing was needed but an Act of Parliament to qualify the parties to live in purity, ungrundied.
At any rate, those were the lines on which Miss Fossett would have justified her friend's defiance of his Bishop. And when Yorick had referred to that other way of solving his problem—marriage with the female undefined—she had shut any hint of that female being defined as herself into the very core of her heart with a snap.
CHAPTER XLIII
CHALLIS'S VISIT TO THE RECTORY. A VISIT TO JIM AT THE WELL. HOW LIZARANN WAS AT THE SEASIDE. ST. AUGUSTIN'S SUMMER. HOW THEY MET SALADIN. HOW CHALLIS TOLD ALL
"Have him down here if you like, Athel," said Miss Caldecott to her brother-in-law on the first of August, a little over three months later. "I shall be in London with Phœbe and Joan. So it can't matter to me. Only I think he ought to be on honour."
"How do you mean, aunty?"
"You know what I mean. On honour not to."
"Not to what?" But Aunt Bessy wasn't going to answer questions on the subject, whatever it was. So she closed her eyes in harmony with an expressive lip-pinch, and said finis dumbly to this chapter of the conversation. However, she began another.
"Apart from that, I don't like his tone," said she.
"I know you don't." This meant that the Rector didn't want the second chapter. He harked back to the first. "Perhaps Sir Challis will promise not to," said he.
"I don't see how you can ask him." This was said very dryly, and the speaker indicated that it was an ultimatum by going on with a letter she was writing.
For Miss Caldecott was a sort of inverse Charlotte Eldridge. To the latter lady, as we know, the mention of a lady and gentleman, as such, and such only, was as the sound of battle to the warhorse. The former was very apt to petrify if the conversation went outside the limits of the neuter gender without stipulating for a strict neutrality on the part of the other two. A hint of what Mrs. Protheroe called "going on" on the part of properly—or improperly—qualified masculines and feminines was enough to make Aunt Bessy discover that we must be getting back, and begin looking for those children's gloves.
Why Adeline Fossett had yearned to link the lives of this lady and her friend Yorick was very difficult to guess. That, however, does not belong to the story at present. Its business is with the lady and gentleman responsible for the little bit of frigidity it has just recorded.
When Athelstan Taylor called at the Hermitage in April, just after Challis's arrival in England, he threw out, in thoughtless hospitality, a suggestion that the latter should pay him a visit in the Autumn. The invitation was jumped at, and the Rector perceived afterwards that there might have been a reason for this, to the possibility of which he was at the moment not sufficiently awake. But he was too honourable to go back on his word.
If he had felt sure enough of his ground he might have spoken frankly to Challis, and put him off till some time when Judith's absence from the Hall was a certainty. But he had not enough to go upon for that. He found out the poverty of his case by attempting a letter to Challis. "My dear Challis—You know me, and I know you will excuse my speaking plainly...." And then had to think what the plain speech was to be. He considered "I know that you and Miss Arkroyd are quite within your rights when, etc.," and "I think your wife's strange conduct has left you free to take advantage of what I should otherwise regard as a legal shuffle, etc."; and "I know you would not avail yourself of my hospitality to, etc."; and even "I can't have you making love to Judith Arkroyd while you are staying at the Rectory, etc."; but concluded by rejecting them all—he liked the last best—and tearing his letter to fragments.
He ended by saying to himself: "These are not young people, to be chaperon'd and guardianed. If they are in earnest, they will not be kept apart by not having Challis at my house. And the more I see of Challis the better my chance of influencing him towards the wiser course." A little sub-commune with his soul as to whether he was quite sure he was not being influenced by his relations with the county-families and the Bishop confirmed him, and Challis came down to Royd Rectory early in August. Thus it had come about that the Rector and his guest, one day in the middle of that month, were walking about in an early-morning garden—breakfast is very early at the Rectory when its master is by himself there—using up their subjects of conversation; or, rather, perhaps we should say, chat.
You know what a fool one always is about that, when one goes to stay with a friend; how one gets gravelled for lack of matter, and the old subjects have to do a second time, and more. Challis had come down from London by a late train the night before—too late to indulge in arrears of common topics then and there. That slaughter of the innocents had been postponed till next day.
"How's our poor friend blind Samson and his small daughter?" The recollection of Lizarann—more than a twelvemonth past, mind you!—twinkles in the speaker's face as he blows a cloud from his invariable cigar.
"Lizarann's getting on capitally, according to the latest accounts. Samson's become a public character, and is making himself useful as a sort of human pump. Do you want a large bucket of water?"
"Not at this moment. But I may some time. Why?"
"When you do, Samson will wind you one up from under the chalk, as fine a bucket of water as you'll find in the country. It isn't good for gout, certainly. But otherwise it's perfect. Not the ghost of a microbe!"
"Perhaps the microbes were gouty, and died of it. An image of a well presents itself to me, with Samson everlastingly raising water, and villagers bearing it away in pails."
"You've got it exactly. We'll pay Samson a visit."
"Of course we will. I like the idea of Samson at the well-head.... But, I say, Reverend Sir!..."
"What's the question?"
"How about the little wench? Samson's little wench."
"I told you. She's getting on capitally...."
"That's just what I mean. What business has a little wench to be getting on capitally? Has she been ill?"
"I should hardly put it that way. No—I think I may say she hasn't exactly. But this chest-delicacy made the womankind and the doctor a little uneasy. On the whole we thought it best to send her down to Chalk Cliff to get a good dose of sea air. It appears to be setting her up."
Challis glanced shrewdly at the Rector's face of discomfort. "Sea air's the thing," he said. "Does wonders!" And both felt very contented with the effect of imaginary sea air on imaginary human lungs.
That remark we made, a page ago, about the way one uses up one's material for talk so heedlessly, was made with a reservation. It should only be applied to causeries, not to serious debate of deep interest. There are two distinct strata of conversation with all people; the things that interest us generally are the top stratum; those that touch us are the second. Go a little deeper, and you will reach those that put us on the rack. Only, when it comes to that, is it conversation any longer? What is it?
These two men had plenty to talk about in the top stratum—enough to fill the day out had they chosen. But the Rector had no intention of leaving the second untouched, and no fear of digging down to the third, if need were. There was, however, no need for either yet awhile. Both might remain in abeyance, under a silent pact, as long, at least, as the sun shone. Serious talk-time comes with lamps and candles. Once in the day Challis was conscious of the thinness of the crust of the second stratum. On their way to visit Jim's well-head he asked his companion whereabouts it was. "Half-way between the village and the Hall," was the reply—"perhaps rather nearer the Hall than the village. Oh yes—certainly nearer!" Challis asked—to make talk, for he knew the answer to his question—whether the family were there now. "Miss Arkroyd isn't," said the Rector.
"I have never seen blind Samson, you know," said Challis. "Only the little cuss." The recollection of Lizarann brought a twinkle to his face. To his companion's, none. Who, however, says gravely: "She was a dear, amusing little thing."
Blind Samson is on duty. The blaze of a sun, low enough to make long shadows, shows the wreck of a man, his face bronzed now by its glare through a hot summer and the congenial effort of the well-handle. A little way off you would not know the eyes saw nothing, but for their never flinching from the sunlight that strikes full upon them. Going nearer, you would know them for dead. So too, if his legs were hidden as he leans on the bearing-post, puffing placidly at his pipe, you would judge him a fine sample and a strong, well cast indeed for the part of Samson.
"Jim's a popular chap in these parts," says the Rector as they draw near. "Our barber in the village tells me he always looks forward to Mr. Coupland's weekly visit. Every Saturday Jim goes to him—in spite of a fiction he indulges in that he can shave himself—to be ready for church on Sunday."
"I thought you said the other day—I mean last April—that he was a worse heathen than myself?"
"So he is. But he has made a compromise with his Maker—whom he disapproves of strongly otherwise—on the score of music. He is a tremendous addition to the village choir. I fancy he was always musical, but his blindness has developed the faculty."
"Well—it must be water in the desert for poor Jim. Here we are, I suppose?"
A dog came down the path of worn bricks, set on edge, that leads to the well. He is Jim's dog, and very important, for he conducts Jim to the well and back daily, in Lizarann's absence. But the actual importance of this dog, though great, is as nothing compared to his conviction of it. This, if it does not amount to a belief that he turns the well-handle, lays claim to reserved powers of veto over, or permission conceded to, Jim's interference with the water-supply. He smells every applicant for water carefully, to see that all is right, and he glances into every bucket before it leaves the well-head, and occasionally tastes the contents, as though in search of microbes. In his opinion it is entirely owing to him that the well has not been poisoned by bicyclists, who are afraid to stop and effect their wicked purposes because of the promptitude with which he runs out and barks at them. He appears to sanction Challis and the Hector, and to explain them, obligingly, to his principal—or perhaps we should say employee.
"I caught the sound of ye, coming down the road, master," says Jim. "You're a glad hearing to a man, a marning like this. A sight for sore eyes, as the saying is." Which was said with such a serene, unconscious confidence that it almost imposed on his hearers. Jim didn't let the Rector's hand go at once. "Nothing further, I lay?" said he anxiously.
"Not since yesterday, Jim. I thought the letter a good one. I've brought it back in my pocket.... We're talking about his little girl, Challis, down at Chalk Cliff.... This is Sir Alfred Challis, Jim, a friend of Lizarann's."
Jim seemed puzzled for a few seconds, perhaps not recalling the name in its present form; then experienced illumination. "Ay, sure, sir!... I lost my bearings for the moment.... The little lassie, she's talked of you many's the time. But that'll be a while back?"
"Over a twelvemonth, Jim," says Challis, and his inner soul adds, "And what a twelvemonth!" But he has to talk about the child. "I'm sorry she's not here, Jim," he says, and means it. "We made great friends, your little lassie and I did. She said she liked me better than she did her aunt."
Jim laughed delightedly. "There never was love lost between the lass and her Aunt Priscilla. They weren't cut out for berth-mates." Nevertheless, he didn't want to leave his sister quite out in the cold. "Priscilla's a good-hearted woman, ye know, too, when all's told. But she's had some bad times ... a bad husband...." He hesitated on his condemnation, and went for palliation instead. "Well!—perhaps that's too hard a word. Poor Bob Steptoe!—he'd have made a better end but for his drawback. He took a good rating as a cobbler." Jim paused, perplexed by some reminiscence. "I don't hear much nowadays of my sister Priscilla; not since I come down here. I make out she's in service with a lady at Wimbledon." The fact is, Jim and Aunt Stingy were drifting apart by tacit consent.
Challis ought to have been able to contrive a reminder that Aunt Stingy was his cook. He began by saying: "Of course—with my wife. She's our cook at the Hermitage." That wouldn't do, clearly. Try again! "She's our cook at home." He wasn't at all sure this wasn't worse. He decided on, "She cooks for me, you know, when I'm in London," but threw up entrenchments against possible surprises by changing the subject. "So your little maid's gone to the seaside?"
Jim forgot Aunt Stingy with avidity. "Ah! for sure she has!" said he. "My little lass! But she's coming back early next month. Ask the master!"
"Early next month, Jim. That's the fixture." Is there a trace of cheerful reassurance in the Rector's voice? Yes—just enough to produce misgiving in Jim. It has to be stifled in its birth. Jim treads bravely over the cinder-traps—the fires smouldering underground. "Ye see, gentlemen," he says, "it's this way: If my lassie comes back afore September, there'll maybe be a spell of sunshiny weather fit for a lassie to see her Daddy a mile down the road. Belike, too, stop a little to bear him company, in the best o' the day. Many a September month have I known, early morning apart, to compare with the rarest days of the summer."
"They call it a summer, you know, Jim. St. Augustin's summer." So says Challis; and he is ready to supply any climatic record to please Jim. "Sometimes the thermometer has been known to stand at ninety in the shade."
Jim is greatly impressed, and very happy over this. He sees before him, in imagination, a fortnight or three weeks of matchless weather, with Lizarann beside him. His soul laughs; indeed, his lungs join chorus. "What did the doctor say again, master?" says he.
But Athelstan's face is one of concern. The doctor's report had been, alas! that the effect of the sea air would very likely begin to tell on the patient when she got back. She would, no doubt, be better when she got back to her father, about whom she was fidgety. This doctor kindly vouched for the same thing having happened several times in like cases.
Challis watched his friend as he made out the best tale he could. Do you remember Challis's first appearance in this story, and how we spoke of him as perceptive? He was that, and all sorts of little intimations constantly reached him, by mysterious telegraphies, of concurrent events—things many would miss altogether. No wonder he read between the lines of Athelstan Taylor's version of the doctor's report! No wonder!—for any but a blind man would have detected in the Rector's serious face how little he believed the well-worn forms of speech folk use to keep the hearts of others alive, in case—just this one time—a real change for the better should come, or the last new remedy should fulfil the promises of the ream of testimonials it was wrapped in when we bought it. But the Rector threw as much hope as he dared into his telling, and did well, on the whole. And Jim was satisfied for now.
A little later, when the two were starting to go back to the Rectory by a roundabout way, having left Jim attending to the demands for water of an influx of applicants, Athelstan Taylor said to Challis: "I felt quite ashamed of myself just now.... What for? Why, for talking all that stuff to Jim about poor little Lizarann! But what can one do? There's nothing to be gained by plunging the poor fellow in despair, as long as any hope remains of her outgrowing it."
"You mean there is some hope, then?"
"Some." That was all the Rector said.
"I see. But is it to be a long job?"
"Probably not—probably not. But she may live for some little time yet—with care. I don't know how much Jim knows or suspects."
"Where is she now actually?"
"It's called the Browne Convalescent Home, at Chalk Cliff, in Kent. Sidrophel—I should say Pordage—said he saw no object in sending her to a mild lowering place at this time of year. What she wanted was the sea-air, and he is very much in love with Chalk Cliff. Well!—one smells the seaweed there."
"It's the iodine, I suppose." Challis's mind travelled to his own children, who were, he hoped, soaking in the iodine, wallowing in the sand, wading in the shallows, and not keeping their things out of the water. Should he ever see Mumps and Chobbles again? Possibly. Suppose he were to meet them years hence, lengthened and completed, at Girton, perhaps—even engaged; who can tell?—would they know him again? His thoughts rushed swiftly, more suo, to the construction of all sorts and conditions of social horrors, beginning with an improbable evening party with Chobbles in the foreground, and her married sister, and a fiendish necessity for explaining to a dazzling lady who was charmed with both of them, that they were his children by his former marriage—the very identical Mumps and Chobbles he had so often told her about! But that dream was soon sent packing, although the dazzling lady said, with a pleasant, graceful contempt for all correlatives of Grundy: "You must come and see me, you two dear girls! Do let's be German, and take no notice of things. Never mind the orkwidities, as my husband calls them." A worse phantasm followed. Two girls in mourning beside a grave, and "Marianne, daughter of James and Sarah Craik," on the headstone. So vivid was the impression that the words were on his lips: "Mumps and Chobbles, don't you know me?" He shook it off, denouncing its intrinsic absurdity, even while he admitted he had no justification for doing so. Marianne would die, and so would he, and neither would be beside the other when the hour came.
"Am I going too quick for you?" said the Rector. He had broken into his tremendous stride, as he was always apt to do when not checked. Challis admitted his limitations, and suggested that they might go easily up this hill. As this hill was a short-cut across a curve of the road, and the path over it was zig-zagged, and landslipped, and fern-grown, besides seeming to consist almost entirely of rabbit-holes, it was not a hill to go up easily, in any literal sense. But Challis had only intended to suggest moderation. He gave his whole soul to avoiding burrows, and reached solid ground alive. As he approached the top, alongside of his companion, he was aware of a huge dog, blue-black against the sky, on the ridge in front of them. Saladin appeared to be waiting for them, and to have time on his hands. Whistled to, he condescended to trot towards them, the sooner to meet. Interrogated as to his reasons for being there by himself, he kept silence, but smelt his questioners.
Perhaps he wasn't by himself. Surmise inclined to the supposition that the carriage was in the neighbourhood; probably Lady Arkroyd, driving back from Thanes, said the Rector. But attentive listening established carriage-wheels on the road from Furnival—the opposite direction.
"It's Miss Arkroyd coming from the station. She was coming by the two-forty from Euston." So spoke Challis.
The Rector looked full at him. "How did you know?" said he. He seemed a good deal surprised.
"Because she told me," said Challis. He in his turn seemed surprised at the surprise of the other, and interrogation remained on the face of both. Saladin seemed able to wait.
After a moment the Rector said suddenly: "Because she's been away at her sister's—Brayle Court, you know—the Felixthorpes'."
"Yes; why not? She told me three weeks ago she was coming to-day. She drove to Bletchley from Brayle."
Athelstan Taylor's face was a funny mixture of perplexity and mild reproach, not without confidence in his companion. "But why didn't you say so?" said he.
"You mean when you mentioned her just now—just before we came to Jim? Well!—because I didn't want to spoil our walk.... There's the carriage!"
The carriage was there, in the road some distance below, and was whistling for Saladin. He appeared to accept the whistle as a courtesy on its part, intended to keep him au fait of its movements and whereabouts. Otherwise he had a short time at his disposal, and would pass it in giving sanction and encouragement to his present companions. The horses' hoofs and the whistle passed and grew less in the distance, but Saladin remained undisturbed and statuesque.
"No," said Challis; "I didn't want to spoil our walk. Indeed, I'm in two minds if I shouldn't do better to say nothing at all about it."
"About what?"
"Well!—that's just the point. However, as I've leaked out this much, I suppose I may as well tell. About myself and Judith Arkroyd."
"Oh dear!" said the Rector, "I had been supposing—I mean I had been beginning to hope—that was all at an end...."
Saladin had no more time to spare for nonsense of this sort. He went with a rush—the rush of a sudden whirlwind—crashing through mere valueless briar and fern like gossamer; but suggesting that it was for their sakes, not his, that he steered clear of timber-trees. The carriage, still audible, became aware of him, and stopped whistling.
"I want to tell you all about it on my own behalf. And I suspect Judith will on hers." So Challis spoke, when the lull came. He then went on to tell all that this story has told, and it may be more. And the narrative lasted all the way back to the Rectory.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE RECTOR'S OPINION, AND WHY IT CARRIED NO WEIGHT. OF THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER, AND WHY CHALLIS DOUBTED IT. YET THE RECTOR TOLERATED HIS IMPIETY
The Rector sat in his usual chair in the library smoking his usual after-dinner pipe, his only concession to tobacco. It served a turn now—harmonized his life with that of his friend, who, of course, sat on the other side of the rug, that both might be conscious of an empty grate. One pays this tribute in the summer, to the comfort the warmth would have been had it been winter. Or is it a survival of some ancestral fire-worship?
It was Challis's second pipe in the day that he was lighting, but his fourth smoke. He looked as though something narcotic were wanting, if he were to sleep in the night ahead of him. His forehead throbbed, the Rector felt convinced. Else why did that restless, nervous hand skim it over, from side to side, then press the closed eyelids below as though to squeeze a pain out?
He had told the whole of his story, ending it up during dinner, and doing poor justice to the efforts of the Rectory cook. Athelstan Taylor had listened nearly in silence, not saying how much he had already heard, or had guessed, of the way things had gone since his attempted intercession with Mrs. Challis. Challis's absences from England, and the chance that their London visits never coincided, had kept them apart until his visit to London three months since. On that occasion they did little more than arrange that Challis should visit the Rectory "as soon as he could get away." And he couldn't—or at least didn't—"get away" till August. But nothing that he had told his friend had occasioned the latter the least surprise.
"Well!—that's all," said he, as he lighted his pipe.
The Rector's face was all strength and pity as he sat looking at his storm-tossed friend. He remained silent awhile over it. Challis could not hurry him to speech. However, there was the whole evening ahead.
At last he spoke. "That's quite all, is it? Very good. Now, I can't and won't recommend any course to you, because, my dear man, you are under an hallucination, and you wouldn't pay the slightest attention to anything I suggested. But I'll tell you, if you like, what I shall say to Judith Arkroyd if she comes to me for advice."
"What?"
"I shall say, 'Don't!'"
"Don't go on with it, that is?"
"Exactly. I shan't mince matters. I shall tell the girl flatly that I think she's doing wrong...."
"But why—but why? Surely if she is, I am. Or more so! Far more so!"
"Do you suppose I regard you as a responsible agent?"
"I don't think you do. But I am one, for all that. What shall you say to Judith?"
"That I do regard her as a responsible agent. I shall entreat her not to consent to such a mad scheme. I shall try to make her see the folly of acting under panic in a matter of such vital importance. I shall tell her plainly, as I told you an hour ago, that I think your wife's action has been justifiable, although it has been violent and exaggerated. I admit that, you know...."
"And I think that it has been violent and exaggerated, but admit that it has not been altogether unjustifiable. Isn't that the difference between us, Rector?"
"Precisely. Well!—I shall say so to Judith. And I shall put it this way to her. 'If before God and your conscience you can disclaim all share in what has come about, if you have never by word or look been guilty of an attempt to make this man's plighted faith to his wife a wavering one, then it may be you may marry him and not live to repent it. But if it is otherwise, you may be sowing by such a marriage the seeds of a remorse that may last you a life-time.'..."
Challis interrupted him. "Judith is absolutely unconscious...." he began.
"Exactly, exactly, exactly!" said the Rector, nodding in a comfortable, we-understand-all-that sort of way. "But, about this sort of thing, sometimes a young lady's standard of unconsciousness is low. You must excuse me if I try—it's a toss-up if I succeed—to make her probe her soul to its lowest depths."
"My dear Yorick!—excuse my boning Miss Fossett's name again; but it does suit you so exactly—My dear Yorick, whatever you do or say will be right—shall be right. That's the rule of the game. All I say is, don't make Judith imagine herself to have been guilty of a treacherous scheme that never entered her mind. She assures me...." He hesitated.
"Well!—she assures me that until that unfortunate—or mind you!—it may prove fortunate—failure in self-restraint ... suppose we call it!..."
"Call it anything you like, as long as you feel properly ashamed of it."
Challis accepted the rule of the game he had just laid down loyally, and continued, "Until that moment she had not the slightest idea that I had ever entertained...." Again a hesitation.
"Precisely!" said the Rector. Both went as near a laugh as the contexts permitted, and then Challis said, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "Well!—it's no use talking." But his friend meant to say more. "It may be no use," said he. "But I've picked up—in the pulpit, I suppose—the old vice of the sermon-monger, and I like to have my say out...."
"I didn't mean you were to stop," interjected Challis.
"Then I shall go on, as per contract." He appeared to put semi-levities aside with the finished pipe he laid down, and stood facing Challis as he sat. Standing so, he looked so much the build of a soldier that his cloth, so obnoxious to Challis, almost became regimentals. He resumed, very earnestly, "I shall say this, too, to Judith—no!—don't be afraid I shall be cruel to her. Why!—haven't I known her since she was a little tot, and sat on my knee?... I shall tell her that to me marriage is a sacrament just as solemn as any mutual undertaking where each party is in earnest and believes in the earnestness of the other ... yes!—even as contracts about darling money—and that no antecedent relation of the couple can flaw the pledge once given ... yes!—I am prepared to go any length; but never mind that now.... And I shall tell her this:—that however obstinate and wrong-headed your wife's conduct may have been, just in so far as it has been provoked by any misconduct of yours or hers—just so far are you morally guilty in contemplating any step which will make the position irretrievable."
Challis broke into his momentary pause. "Do you really mean, soberly and seriously, that you think Marianne's dragging the children away—my Chobbles was like your Joan, you know, Yorick!—do you think her catching at a legal pretext to deprive me of them has not given me a free hand? What right has Marianne to condemn me to a loveless and lonely life...?"
"Stop, Challis—stop! Stop on the legal pretext! At what age of the world has man, the strong, scrupled to catch at legal pretexts to secure the betrayal and confusion of woman, the weak? Legal pretexts, mind you, whose iniquity stinks in every legal phrase that relates to her, in every statute that he has framed and she has had no hand in! How many legal pretexts are there in the whole of them that a woman can catch at to her own advantage? One turns up now and again, in a rare conjunction of circumstances, and hey presto!—we are all on the alert to blame the woman who does it."
"You're quite right," said Challis ruefully. "It's melancholy to think how keenly alive one is to other folks' sinfulness when one suffers by it personally; loses one's Chobbles, for instance. I was fond of the young person, you see, Yorick! Besides, there's Mumps. And even Bob she contrives to stint me of. Either that, or the boy drifts away from his sisters."
"You should have thought of all that when you...."
"Made a fool of myself?"
"Quite so. By-the-bye, Challis, have you asked yourself—supposing that you ratify this folly of yours, as I understand you propose to do—what you mean to tell Bob to account for the new order of things?"
"Yes, frequently."
"And have you answered the question?"
"No, I have not."
"Do you see any prospect of answering it?"
"None whatever!"
"Very well, Challis! Now listen. It appears to me that you are going to take a step you are this much ashamed of, that you cannot look your own son in the face about it. And you are doing this confessedly in case the passing of an Act of Parliament should make that step impossible at a future time. You know perfectly well that—Judith apart—you would welcome that Act of Parliament, because it would give you back your children, and at least pave the way to a reconciliation with their mother.... Yes, it would! The 'living in Sin' twaddle would die a natural death before an Act of Parliament; your excellent mother-in-law's teeth would be drawn, and your wife would come to her senses as soon as the two little girls were delivered at Wimbledon by a judicial order. Once you two were face to face—just think of it!—do you suppose old times wouldn't come to the rescue?"
The Rector was hitting hard. He could see it in the compressed lips, the nostril and eyelid and brow that would not be still, in the face that was hard to control at the best of times. Why could he not keep to his artillery? Why send his troops into the enemy's country, bristling with ambuscades? Why bring Judith's image back, when all the strength of his case lay in revival of the days gone by?
But he did, possibly because he could not conceive of a passion for one woman dwelling in the same heart with an affection for another. He could not measure the force of the personal factor in Judith. He had never been under fire.
"And see," he went on injudiciously—"see what it is you look to gain when you have cut yourself finally adrift from almost everything that has been precious to you in the past. What are the chances of happiness for a couple so assorted? Think of your difference of age!... well!—perhaps that's the least important point ... think of the difference in the habits of a life-time, of the sort of life Judith has been accustomed to, of the way her pride may suffer ... and not only hers—yours too—yours too, my dear Challis, in a thousand ways! Consider this too; what right have you to take for granted that she will ever be forgiven by her family? You say they are now at daggers drawn. What claim have you to ask such a sacrifice of her as the surrender of her relations with her parents and all the associations of her childhood? Think of it!"
A moment after he perceived he had pushed his argument too far. Challis said firmly, "I accept Judith's readiness to make this sacrifice as a sure proof of her feelings towards myself. I see in it a guarantee of a happiness far beyond my deserts. It is because she is ready to give up so much for me and risk her whole life in my keeping that I am rushing the position. I cannot have her think hereafter that our union was made impossible by my remissness—by my fainéantise—at a critical time."
The Rector walked uneasily about the room. "Oh dear," said he, "I wish to Heaven that Bill would get itself brought into the Lords and rejected, tout à l'improviste, before you could arrange this madness. Then you would have a cool twelvemonth to think it over in. And perhaps you would both come to your senses."
"And perhaps—d'autant plus à l'improviste—that Bill would pass the Lords and become law. How should I seem then to the girl who is ready to throw all away for me now? Do you conceive that I should be able to console myself for the wrong I had done by dragging back to my home a wife whose jealousy ... I must call it so—poor Polly Anne!..."
"What else can you call it?"
"There's no other word in the dictionary. What was I saying? ... oh, a wife whose jealousy would by that time have every justification. Where would the happiness be in all that, and for whom?"
"In no case can you hope for an immediate reconstitution of your old home life. You, Challis—excuse me—have stirred up too much mud for the pool to become clear in a moment. But remember Disraeli's phrase—the 'magic of patience.'"
"A good phrase, a very good phrase! I am game for any amount of Hope, dear Yorick—hypothetical Hope, of a state of things that will never come about! If it did, I might get some sort of consolation out of it. What would Judith?"
The Rector was handicapped by his disbelief in Judith, whom he did not credit with overmuch heart; certainly not with one that would break on slight provocation. He could not say anything of this to this passionate fool of a man, over head and ears in love. Or he might have replied, "Don't you fret about Judith. She'll be all right enough." As it was, he could only keep closed lips, and pace about the room. Challis continued:
"And, after all, we are leaving the most probable possibility of the lot quite out in the cold. Suppose the mad scheme—Judith's marriage with me—does not come off, and the Bill passes. Suppose that I am inconsequent enough to jump at the new-fledged legal powers of depriving Marianne of her children, after damning her uphill and down for doing the very same thing herself; suppose me with my family back on the hearth—crying and frightened probably—and never a mother to see to them! Suppose, in fact, that Marianne stands to her guns! How then?"
"Other men have been in the same position before now." Perhaps the speaker was thinking of himself.
"Can you name a case in which no substitute for the mother existed, and the father was not at liberty to provide one? Please exclude salaried employees from the answer."
"Oh, I wasn't going to go that length. Heaven forbid!"
"You must observe," Challis continued, "that divorce a vinculo is only available if my wife arranges about the co-respondent. I can't!" He added in a voice that showed how strangely racked his feelings were, "Poor Polly Anne!—she wouldn't the least know how to set about it."
"I'm horribly sorry for you, Challis," said the Rector. "I am indeed! I would go the length of wishing that bigamy could be sanctioned, in certain cases, only that you are quite the wrong man for it. You wouldn't enjoy it."
"Have I not a foretaste of its horrors?" said Challis. "You see, Yorick dear, when Love comes in at the door, Patriarchal ideas fly out at the window. Jacob was a cucumber. I'm not!"
"Well!—Jacob must have loved Rachel, after a fashion. Seven years!... consider!..."
"Oughtn't it to be read 'weeks,' perhaps? Criticism is very accommodating about the seven days of Creation. Make it weeks." The conversation became irrelevant.
But after a good deal more talk of the same sort, an hour later, Challis said, "You're not a consistent Rector, do you know! You said when we began that you couldn't and wouldn't advise me. And you have substantially advised me to tell Judith to-morrow that we must leave the forelock of opportunity alone, and just take our chance of a permanent veto on matrimony, if that Bill goes through the Lords."
"Well!—yes! At least, it comes to the same thing. It has leaked out in conversation what I should have said to you if I had thought you would take my advice...."
"Which would have been...?"
"Which would have been, 'On no account take an irrevocable step under pressure.' Believe me, Challis, if you do this thing, and this Bill never becomes law at all, and then you live to repent of the knot you have tied indissolubly, the thought hereafter that you gave way to a needless panic will make remorse tenfold more bitter."
"Are not you, when you say that, allowing a disbelief in the Bill's passing to influence you?"
"I may be, a little. But not nearly so much as I am by a belief I must try to explain to you ... well!—it's none so easy. But I thought I had succeeded in explaining it to myself too." He paused a few seconds, then got clearer. "It's something like this. I can't conceive that any retrospective clause of the Act could declare valid a marriage the illegitimacy of which the parties themselves had acknowledged during the period of its legal invalidity. Do you see?... You would very likely word it more clearly than I can."
"No—that's as clear as daylight. But I am not prepared to acknowledge the illegitimacy of my marriage with Marianne."
"How can you act upon it, to the extent of marrying another woman, without acknowledging it?"
"If I were not under compulsion to acknowledge it, should I ever have thought of marrying the other woman? I plead coercion. Marianne dissolved our marriage. I had no hand in it."
"Coercion or no," said the Rector, "it comes to the same thing. No retrospective clause could declare valid a marriage that had been voided by one of the parties yielding to a coercion quite within the rights of the other to impose. Not that I'm sure there isn't a sort of general legal usage, that no one can claim legal advantage from the illegality of his own action."
"I see," said Challis. "Heads, deceased sister's husband wins. Tails, deceased wife's sister loses! But how would such an interpretation of retrospective action affect me and Judith?"
"Why, clearly! If the Bill passed ever so, your marriage with Marianne would remain void. It would class with any other contract, illegal at the time, whose illegality had been subsequently acknowledged and acted on. I heard once of a curious case in point. Two young people had got married, knowing nothing of a consanguinity between them, owing to an old family quarrel. The girl was really a very much junior aunt of the young man; their respective mothers, daughters of the same father, having been born forty years apart. Of course, the children of this atrocious marriage were illegitimate."
"Did they part when they found it out?"
"Oh dear no! They brazened it out—said the meaning of the term 'aunt' was clear. Aunts had fronts, and so forth. The gentleman calls his wife aunty to this day, I believe. Perhaps you've seen the people? They've a large property in the South Riding of Yorkshire."
But Challis hadn't, and didn't know their name when mentioned. He seemed more interested in his own affairs. "If I understand you," said he, "your advice is—not to marry, in view of the possibility of this new enactment not acting retrospectively in cases of couples disunited by mutual consent, at a time when law held that no union existed. Let's pretend my consent was given, this time, for argument's sake."
"You have stated the case admirably. That is my advice. Wait!"
"You have a beautiful confidence, Yorick, in Acts of Parliament—before they are made! Would it be reinforced or weakened, I wonder, by a perusal of the Statutes at Large? Doesn't an element of hopefulness come in?"
"Hm—well—perhaps! That's my advice, anyhow. And that's the advice I shall give to Judith Arkroyd, if she comes to consult me. I shan't volunteer anything."
"I wish I could think as you do—about the effect of the Act. I mean." Challis's manner was to the last degree fitful and uneasy. "I mean I wish I could be sure it would leave the question open."
The Rector, returning to his friend's side after one of his walks about the room, laid his strong hand on his shoulder, and the sense of its strength was welcome. "Challis, Challis!" said he, earnestly, "can you not read in your own words how well you know that you are acting under panic? Ask your heart—ask your conscience—if a wish for an extension of time would be possible in a mind really made up—a mind really believing such a step as you propose to take a right and honourable one! Confess that the reason you would be glad of a respite is that you are none so sure, after all, that what you do is the wisest course for either yourself or your wife; or, for that matter, for Judith."
Challis seemed for a moment puzzled about his meaning. Then he said, "Do you mean that you doubt the reality of my—of my love for Judith?" He seemed half ashamed of it, too!
"I mean that I think you are besotted about her—bewitched by her woman's beauty—the slave of an inclination you may live to repent one day in sackcloth and ashes. Well!—one can understand it all, down to the ground. You are not the first...."
Challis flushed a little angrily, and began, "Do you mean that Judith is...." He hesitated.
The Rector caught his meaning, and interrupted him. "A flirt?" said he. "No—I didn't mean that; though, mind you, I can't give the young lady complete absolution on that score. What I meant was that mighty few men in the world get through life without knowing all about this sort of thing from experience. Perhaps your catching the fever so late in life, after two marriages, makes the case exceptional. However, as I told you, I don't regard you as a rational being at present; so I won't preach."
He had not removed his hand from Challis's shoulder, and the action of the latter as he turned away and, crossing to the window, looked out at the starlit night, had its shade of protest in it, though it could not be said that he had exactly shaken the hand off.
Athelstan Taylor waited a moment, looking half sorry, half amused, but not the least disposed to weaken his words. Then he followed his friend to where he stood looking out, and said as he replaced his hand—only that this time he laid his arm fully across the shoulder—"Remember the compact, my good man, remember the compact! I'm to say what I like."
"You are to say what you like, dear Yorick, and soften nothing. You think me a fool, and I am one. But the fact that my folly is carried nem. con. won't get me out of the difficulty it has got me into. Blame it as you will—but your blame won't answer the question I ask myself every hour of the day: what sort of value will Judith set on the love of a man who hung fire about carrying out his pledges till it was too late, on the miserable plea that it was ten chances to one another twelvemonth of vacillation might be possible? What right has any man to put expediencies, calculations of chance, the unforeseen outcomes of this or that, against the well-being of the woman he is all the while coolly asking to give herself away to him? No, Yorick, I haven't got it in me to go and say to Judith, 'I love you; it is true. But if I wed you now, while we know we are free to wed, and then some time repentance comes, it will be a bitter thought to me that—had I waited' ... et cetera—don't you see?"
"My dear Challis, I am no match for the eloquence of a gifted author who is pleading the cause of his own inclinations...."
"Even when he ends up with 'et cetera'?"
"Even then. But remember this—that what I am saying to you now is scarcely meant as urging definite action upon yourself. It may have seemed so in form, but my actual meaning has been to show the sort of advice I shall give Judith if I have the good fortune to speak with her in time; if, that is, she gives me the right to speak by speaking first herself. I shall do the same with the Bart. and her ladyship. If they don't take me into their confidence, I shall presume they don't want me to share it."
"Talk to Judith by all means. But Judith won't counsel delay—I feel sure of it—if she supposes that I shall think she has done so for my sake. She knows perfectly well that the readier she is to sacrifice herself for me, the keener I shall be to confiscate the knife. If she were to plead against this hasty action that she herself felt insecure in it—would rather run the risks, on the chances—that would be quite another matter. But she won't do that."
"If it comes to cross-fires of reciprocal misgivings and misunderstandings—or understandings, if you like—between you and Judith Arkroyd, I give up, and there's an end on't!" The Rector's laugh made the atmosphere happier. "But I'm afraid my general conclusion is that man is never at a loss for good reasons for doing anything he wants to do, especially when it involves a lady."
"You may be right. But it's a horrible perplexity."
Athelstan Taylor was lighting candles for bed. For it was past midnight. As he took Challis's hand to say good-night, he said to him: "We superstitious, old-world, out-of-date folk, priests and the like, are in the habit of praying to be guided right in horrible perplexities. Is it any use...?"
"Well!—plenty of use as far as my good-will to feel with you is concerned? But to my inner vision, none! To my thought, Omnipotence is already doing everything—everything everywhere—and I don't see how I could put up a prayer to the Top Bloke ... pardon my using an expression you object to...."
"Not at all. Go on."
"... A prayer to guide me right without appearing to suggest either that He was already guiding me wrong, or that the Bottom Bloke—no one can possibly object to that—had usurped his functions."
Strange to say, the Rector seemed not the least shocked. On the contrary, he laughed. "All right, old chap," said he. "You leave yourself in the hands of the Top Bloke. He'll see to it all right. Good-night!" But he looked back as he opened his bedroom door to say, "Keep the gas on till you have the electric light."
CHAPTER XLV
HOW CHALLIS AND JUDITH MET AGAIN AT TROUT BEND, AND TALKED IT OVER. HOW SHE CRIED OFF, FEELING SECURE. AND OF THE ARRANGEMENT THEY MADE. OF A CENTENARIAN WHO GOT HALF-A-SOVEREIGN
It was early morning at Trout Bend, and the man who sat on the moss-grown beechen root this story told of—more than a year ago now—was turning over in his heart all that had come about in that short time, and trying to say to himself point-blank that it was no fault of his own. He succeeded in saying it—said it aloud in words, that there should be no doubt at all about it. He said it twice, in fact, and seemed in the end dissatisfied.
Every little incident of the day's life seemed to throw doubt on the point. The discordant jay that shrieked in the thicket as good as cried out "Liar!" and fluttered away disgusted. The squirrel that paused half-way up the beech-trunk had an air of shocked reproach in his very large and startled eye, and when he moved again seemed to want to get out of the way as soon as possible, and to mix with sincere Society again. The fish that leaped in the pool had come to the surface this time, clearly, to say to Challis: "We have met before, and my life has not changed. Yours has, and you have only yourself to thank for it! Why need you leave your native waters uncompelled?"
Challis denied the suggestion his own mind had made. He had had to share in what followed; his exodus from those waters had been compulsory. Or, rather, was it not true that the waters had drained away from him, and left him to find another pool downstream, or die unnourished on the dry sands? But it was a metaphor that rang false, and he dismissed it impatiently; the more so that some mental distortion, akin to the one he invented the strange name for, must needs intrude an unwarranted image of an angler with rod and line, and rouse him to an indignant denial of that angler's identity. Whose fault soever it was, it was none of Judith's.
And as he thought this, there she was herself, crossing the little plank bridge where the convict dropped the ring, and found it again so many years too late.
He was on his feet in a moment, and on his way to meet her. He had a double-barrelled kiss ready on his lips, supposing the coast clear at the moment of their meeting. Saladin, who was present, was in confidence, and didn't count. Botheration take that old woman gathering sticks!—did she matter?
Judith thought so, evidently, and payment had to wait. "Company!" said she. She was looking as beautiful as ever—more so! "She's a hundred and two, I believe," she added. "But one has to lay down a rule in these matters, and stick to it." She was referring to the old woman, who most likely neither saw nor heard, or if she did, only harked back to eighty years ago, and thought, "Why not?"
All Challis's cloud of doubt and self-reproach vanished as her consolatory hand lay in his arm. Something of her masterful nature was in the touch of it, communicable through nerve-currents. It reassured him, and he could respond to its pressure, old woman or no!
It was an arranged meeting: much taken for granted. Conversation to go on presently where our last meeting left it. Meanwhile, short recognitions of current event.
"When did you come?"
"The day before yesterday."
"The voice of gossip cannot say you followed me down here. Not that it would matter!"
"I fancy we are pretty transparent." Challis dismissed the matter as a slight interest only. "Are we peaceful at the Hall?"
"Oh—well! One short row—a very small one! It's rather unfortunate that some people who were expected have cried off. And another gang had just gone. So my dear parents ... to whom I am really devoted; and they are so good and upright and that sort of thing ... what was I saying about them?—oh yes!—my dear parents and I were alone. It was unlucky." Challis threw up his eyebrows very slightly, and made a barely audible note of interrogation through closed lips. She replied to it: "Yes—the usual sort of thing." And they walked on slowly arm in arm, not speaking.
Presently the lady resumed, seeming always the more talkative of the two: "Compulsory truce this evening, I suppose. Most likely Sibyl and Frank, who, I understand, is ridiculous about Sib. Besides, Mr. What's-his-name is coming ... what is his name?"...
"Tell me who he is, and I'll see if I know."
"Oh dear!—man that talks metaphysics...."
"Of course! Brownrigg. Well!—he's coming this afternoon, so we've only time for a very short allowance of Family Life. I suspect Brownrigg of having an Attraction down here, but I can't for the life of me find out who it is!"
"Attractions are feminine?"
"Always."
"Otherwise I should have thought it might be the Rector."
"The Reverend Athelstan—dear good man! Oh no—it's a lady! It always is. But did the Reverend speak of Broadribb—Brownrigg?"
"I've got an impression that he has been at the Rectory more than once—considerably more. Couldn't exactly say why?"
"There's nothing feminine there—at the Rectory."
Challis was beginning, "Oh yes!—there's ..." when Judith's outburst of laughter cut him short.
"Dear Aunt Bessy! She's forty.... Oh yes, I know she's worthy!" She laughed more than need was; then recovered her gravity, and said, as though she feared her laughter might have grated on her companion: "Not to laugh at the good lady?—is that it? Very well." Judith's mockery for once seemed just short of charming to her lover, to whom it was usually one of her happiest contrasts to Marianne's unsympathetic reverence for so many things her husband's derision classed as beadledom. This time he would have preferred that the time-honoured practice of making game of old maidenhood should have been touched with a lighter hand. There was suggestion of a consciousness of this in Judith's next words: "It was your fault, you know, Titus, for hinting at Brownrigg. It was quite too funny."
Her fascination reasserted itself; indeed, its wavering had been of the slightest, and had not lasted long enough for acknowledgment. "I admit it was a laughable notion," said Challis. "However, I don't think an enchantress is necessary in this case. Athelstan Taylor would account for anything, and you know he is liberality itself towards all new ideas. He told me yesterday he thought Graubosch a most interesting personality."
"Did you—you say you had come yesterday?"
"No—the night before."
"You and the great Yorick—isn't that what his friend Miss Foster calls him?—haven't been talking of Graubosch all that time?"
"Fossett. Oh dear no! We have been talking chiefly of...." A pause. "... Well!—of our affairs."
"Meaning yours and mine. Eh bien!—and what says Sir Oracle?... No, no!—no irreverence, indeed!... oh no!—you said nothing. But you have such a mobile countenance." A shade of protest had been detectable, presumably, in Challis's face, and he had disclaimed it.
"Meaning your affairs and mine," said he, with only a pooh-pooh smile for the sub-colloquy. "Sir Oracle is in opposition."
"I knew he would be—dear good man! You'll tell me I'm sneering, I know—but I'm not—if I say...."
"What?"
"That his is such a beautiful unworldly character. I can tell you exactly what he said to you."
"Then, dearest, I needn't tell you. Fire away!"
"He said we must on no account take an irrevocable step in a hurry; and must trust to Providence to keep His eye on the Lords when the division comes, and make sure of a majority against the Bill."
"He said something not very unlike it. A good shot! But he never suggested that Providence was disposed to consider our interests. I must admit that I don't see why Providence should. My own attitude has hardly been conciliatory." Challis then went on to give a fairer version of what the Rector had said. As he spoke, a touch of scorn came on the beautiful face beside him, and grew and grew. And he fancied the pressure of the hand on his sleeve lightened.
"A thorough business man's view!" said Judith, when he stopped. "Scarcely so unworldly on the whole as our good Yorick generally is! I don't know, though, whether I ought to say that. Beautiful unworldly characters manage their affairs unselfishly only because...."
"Because they think Providence will act as their agent? Is that what you were going to say?"
"Well!—they always boast that it pays best in the long run. Anyhow, this clearly was the business view. To the business mind, with its faith in Law and Order and Representative Government and things, nothing can be clearer. You and Marianne have cried off a compact Law and Order condemned, while you still had a right to do so. Is it creditable that the New Act will tie you together again, willy-nilly?"
"Dearest!—try to see my difficulty. Don't think me cowardly or politic; only believe that it is a difficulty to me, and a serious one. Suppose us wedded—to-morrow—before the passing of the Act, anyhow! Suppose that when it comes it legitimates retrospectively every marriage that was not acknowledged void by both parties while it was still an unlawful one!"
Judith withdrew her hand and looked away. "Have you not acknowledged the illegitimacy of yours?" she said coldly.
"In a sense I have." Challis was evidently flinching under his consciousness of his position.
"I do not like 'in a sense,' Titus. Is Marianne your wife or not?"
"Listen to me, dearest!" He would have replaced her hand in his arm, but she withstood his doing so, partly qualifying her resistance by a pretence of finding Saladin's whistle. He continued pleadingly: "Think what it would be for me if at some future time my two little girls were to suffer from a reproach their brother does not share, and charge me with giving my boy a better hold on the world than they could lay claim to...."