Proper pride

Mrs. Mayhew was most decidedly the clever woman of the family. Not only had she brains, but an unusual allowance of common sense, and a kind heart to boot. She was dark and good-looking, like most of the Fairfaxes, and inherited no small share of their force of character and determination. Having no brother of her own, she had always appropriated her cousin Reginald as such, since he, at the ripe age of six, had made impassioned love to her, a grown-up young lady of seventeen. She absolutely ruled all the men of her family (husband included) with a mild and gracious sway, always with the notable exception of her cousin “Regy.” His head had never yet bent under her yoke, and he had the audacity to differ from her on many vital subjects, and held the heresy that “it was for man to command, woman to obey, all else confusion.” Nevertheless he possessed a place in Mrs. Mayhew’s heart second only to that occupied by her husband and children.

Mrs. Mayhew was never happier than when she was managing other people’s affairs, for which she had a singular aptitude. To do her justice, she meddled with the very best intentions, and her hands were always full. She was the confidante of lovers’ quarrels, of matrimonial differences untold: from the servant out of place to a girl jilted by her intended, all came to Mrs. Mayhew, and to them she lent a ready ear, her sympathy, and assistance. Her only serious trouble was her rapidly-increasing tendency to embonpoint, and she sighed when she ordered each new dress to be made with an increasing width of waist. Her weakness, her particular pet vanity, were her hands and feet; and certainly she had every reason to be proud of them.

“Tell Helen she has the prettiest foot in London, and she’ll ask you to stay for a month,” was one of Geoffrey’s impudent remarks; and he also declared that knitting, to which she was much addicted, was merely a framework supplied by her vanity, in order to flourish about and show off her hands.

She was sitting at the fire one dripping February afternoon knitting the following thoughts into a stocking:

“This is the 8th. Let me see” (referring to a paper on her knees), “the Alligator sails on the 26th. Not much time to be lost. I must make one desperate effort to try to reunite this wretchedly headstrong young couple. I’ll take Norman down to Southsea next week for change of air for his cough, and once established in our old lodgings I can easily carry on operations.”

Here her husband entered, and she laid her plans before him.

“Go to Southsea, my dear, by all means, but whatever it may do for Norman’s cough, I don’t think it will be of much use as far as Alice and Reginald are concerned. There is no answer yet from the army chaplain. The detectives are no wiser than we are ourselves. Besides which, that old scorpion, Miss Fane, has Alice talked out of all her senses by this time, be sure.”

“But I anticipate a great deal from an unexpected meeting, nevertheless. I’ll get Alice over from Sandown to spend a few days, and ‘you shall see what you shall see.’ You know that she and Miss Fane are there, and have taken a house till April.”

“Please yourself and you please me; but I have a conviction that your little plot will be no go. Reginald’s temper is like what the Irish cook said of your own: ‘That you were a good Christian lady, but when you were riz, you was riz;’ and he is very much riz indeed.”

“Well, I can’t wonder at it, I must say. You would have been, to say the least of it, annoyed if I had, after being married to you a few months, called you a hypocrite and deceiver, and left you, after throwing you my wedding-ring; you knowing yourself to be entirely innocent of any blame all the time.”

“Yes, very true; but no such volcano as this certificate ever burst out in your home. Pray what would you have done, or say you would have done, in such a case?”

“I would have trusted you, Mark.”

“Humph.” What an extraordinary amount of unbelief a grunt can convey.

“Ah well, perhaps you would. Such trust is, however, much easier in theory than in practice. Make some allowance for Alice, poor girl, although we all know she is in the wrong. It’s a bad business—a bad business.”

So saying, he opened his paper with an impressive rustle and buried himself in the news of the day.

A fortnight had passed. The Mayhews were domiciled at Southsea, and Alice had come over to stay with them for a few days after an immense amount of coaxing, and finally being “fetched.” She was as deaf as an adder to all Helen’s eloquent reasoning and remonstrances, and even Mark was out of patience with her at last. She had been primed by Miss Fane with answers to every argument, and had given her her most solemn promise never to yield an inch until the certificate was thoroughly disproved. There had been a letter from her husband to Helen, saying he was coming down on Monday to bid “Good-bye,” as he was to sail the following Thursday; and he mentioned that he wished to have an interview with his wife, so that her being on a visit at the Mayhews’ was most convenient. She was not told of his probable arrival, in case it should scare her away. She knew that he was shortly going to India, but where he was, or when he was going, she had no means of knowing, and was too proud to ask, and Helen was far too angry with her to offer any gratuitous information.

On Monday afternoon Helen and Alice were sitting in the drawing-room, the latter pouring out tea at a low gipsy table, and looking very fair, girlish, and lovely in a thick black damassé silk of most artistic cut, with lace ruffles at her throat and wrists. Helen, lounging opposite in a capacious armchair, was reading aloud tid-bits from The World, and occasionally glancing towards the door.

Norman and Hilda, with scrambling feet and buttered fingers, were making Alice’s life a burden to her; and she was by no means so tolerant of these young aggravations as her husband would have been.

“More sugar; more sugar, Alice!” cried Norman, passing a very sloppy cup recklessly towards her.

“No, my dear Norman; I gave you two lumps.”

“Give me another two, for I have fished them out and eaten them. Come, look sharp!”

“Norman!”

“If you don’t I’ll take that arrow out of your hair and pull it all down, and you’ll see how nice you’ll look if visitors come.”

“If you do——” began Alice indignantly. Just at this crisis the door opened and admitted Mark, Geoffrey, and Reginald.

The children made a violent charge towards the latter.

“Uncle Regy, Uncle Regy! where have you been all this long time? What have you brought us?” they cried, leaping and dancing expectantly round him.

Alice glanced up hastily. He was shaking hands with Helen. What was she to do? Would he shake hands with her? Yes; in another second she found her hand in his; and then he turned to the children.

“Give me a cup of tea, Alice,” said Geoffrey, drawing a chair close to the tea-table, and staring at her with a very unpleasant critical scrutiny.

Her hands trembled so violently she could hardly hold the teapot; the colour sank from her cheeks, and her heart beat so fast it seemed as if it would choke her; but she made a brave struggle for self-command, and endeavoured to converse easily and indifferently with Geoffrey whilst her husband was talking to Helen. Presently she stole a look at him; he was standing on his favourite place—the rug—and she met point-blank the steady glance of his keen dark eyes, fixed on herself—a look full of interest, yet grave and stern.

She felt her face becoming crimson, and dived under the table for her handkerchief, glad of an opportunity of composing her countenance. Dare she take another look? No, she dare not.

At this moment visitors were announced, and the bustle consequent on their arrival was the greatest relief.

Enter two fashionable ladies with a cavalier in tow. Reginald evidently found favour in the eyes of one of them; he had the unmistakable air of a man of birth and distinction. She therefore proceeded to make herself most agreeable, and put him through a series of animated questions, giving him a pretty good benefit of her eyes all the time. Alice, looking on, felt indignation burn within her; and yet, why should she mind? he was nothing to her! He had destroyed her life, as far as her happiness went. All she valued was gone. Bravely indeed did she try to sustain a share of conversation, and to keep up appearances to the best of her ability. She knew she was answering the strange young man’s remarks at random, but she could not help it. He was looking intensely puzzled, as well he might, when she told him that “she was staying in India, but had come over to Southsea for two or three days.” Oh, if she could only get out of the room! No sooner thought than done. She was gliding quietly towards the door, when her husband with two steps confronted her.

“Alice,” said he, “I wish to speak to you particularly. Can you come out with me and take a turn on the pier?”

Alice bowed her head in assent, and passed on. When she came down in her walking things—close-fitting velvet paletôt trimmed with superb sable, and cap to match—she found him waiting in the hall. Having ceremoniously opened the door for her, they set out, and walked on rapidly, exchanging the veriest commonplaces. The pier was evidently to be the scene of action, so Alice braced up all her nerve for the encounter, and firmly determined to abide by Miss Fane’s advice, and not yield an inch till the certificate was utterly refuted.

No one meeting them would have guessed at the storm that was raging in their hearts. They did not look like married people, nor lovers certainly. “A young fellow taking his very pretty sister for a walk, most likely,” would have been the verdict of a passer-by.

Arrived at the pier, Alice summoned up all her courage, and taking a good long breath and a firm grasp of her umbrella, said, with apparent composure: “Now what have you to say to me?”

“Several things as your husband, and a few as your guardian,” he replied, leaning against the railing and looking at her intently.

“Say nothing to me as my husband, but whatever you have to say as my guardian I will perhaps attend to.”

“Then you still entertain the monstrous notion—that I am not your husband?”

To this question Alice made no reply, and he proceeded. “Well, I am, all the same. But I see it would be a waste of time and temper to endeavour to persuade you otherwise. I have every reason to believe that within the next two months all will be satisfactorily cleared up. May I ask what you will do in that case?”

“I will return to you as your wife, of course,” she replied calmly.

“And do you suppose that I will receive you then? Return to me now—show, even at the eleventh hour, that you can trust me—I will send in my papers and stay at home. I have interest, and it is not yet too late. I will freely forgive and forget all you thought, all you said. It shall be as though it had never been spoken.” He paused, and looked at her eagerly. “I told you,” he proceeded still more earnestly, “that I had done with you, that I had no desire to see you again, but I found, on cool reflection, that I loved you far too dearly to give you up without an effort at reconciliation. I have made two—once in London and once now—but this, I declare to you solemnly, will be the last. Come back to me, and trust me, my dearest,” he said, laying his hand entreatingly on her arm. “Trust me only for a little time; all will, all must come right. You will never again in all your life have such an opportunity of showing your love, your confidence in me. Do you think I would not stand by you in a similar case? You know I would,” he added emphatically. “Come back to me, Alice,” he urged.

“No, I will not,” she replied doggedly leaning both elbows on the railing of the pier and staring steadily out to sea.

“You will not?” he repeated, in a tone of bitter disappointment. “You cannot mean it.” After an inward struggle with himself he continued as before: “Think of what you are doing, Alice. You have broken up our home and turned me adrift—taken your freedom and your own way. You are sending me back to India, and God knows if I shall ever return.”

“You need not go,” she replied in a low voice, still looking out to sea, as if addressing the ocean.

“Of course I must go!” he cried emphatically; “unless you wish to have the open mouth of scandal busy with our names. If the world knows that I am engaged in my country’s service it may leave you alone. But I warn you that society looks coldly on a young and pretty woman living apart from her husband, and rightly or wrongly, they almost always throw the blame of the separation on her shoulders. I know you have been influenced by Miss Fane; I know you have. It was not my generous, true-hearted Alice that spoke to me that night at Looton. You don’t know how you pained me, how you nearly maddened me by some of the things she put into your mouth—things my pure-minded girl-wife would never have thought of herself. You could not seriously think that I had another wife living, and that I had dared, nevertheless, to marry you—an orphan, as you justly remarked, committed to my care! Think of the shameful crime it would be! Look me full in the face, and tell me candidly, truthfully, and of your own free will, whether you imagine that I, Reginald Fairfax, could be guilty of such a thing?”

Alice turned round at once and confronted him—his face pale with emotion. His dark, miserable eyes haunted her painfully afterwards for many and many a day.

“Clear yourself first,” she exclaimed, “then I will listen to you. As long as that certificate is unexplained I will never return to you as your wife; I will never, never see you again, as far as I can help it, until the whole affair is refuted. I am amazed that you should expect it.”

Sir Reginald gazed incredulously at his wife for a moment, as if he thought that his ears must have deceived him.

“Is this your last word?” he said in a voice husky with passion.

She nodded emphatically.

Exasperated beyond endurance, he left her side and walked to the other end of the pier alone. Presently he returned with firm rapid strides, and confronted her with a compression of the lips and a flash in his eyes she had never seen before. Coming to a stop, and standing directly before her, he said:

“That was your last word; now hear mine. I most solemnly take God to witness”—raising his hat as he spoke—“that I will never receive you back as my wife until you have made the most humble, abject apology that ever came from woman’s lips. You shall abase yourself to the very dust for the shameful injustice you have done me.”

“Shall I, indeed?” she exclaimed passionately. “You will never see a Saville abased to the dust. I will never apologise and never beg your pardon. Pray do not offer your forgiveness before it is required.”

“Very well,” he replied coldly, “there is no more to be said, as you declare that you will never apologise, and I have sworn to yield to no other terms. We shall live for the future as strangers, excepting that I shall exercise over you—even though at a distance—the authority of your guardian till you are twenty-five.”

“I shall not submit to your authority!” she interrupted hotly.

“Oh yes, you will,” he returned in a cool unmoved tone. “You have as yet to learn that I too have a will—that I am your master—no longer your slave. I am aware I cannot flatter myself that you either love or honour me,” with ironical emphasis, “but you will certainly obey me.”

“I shall not!” she cried indignantly.

“Oh yes, I am quite sure you will,” he replied in the easy authoritative tone with which one talks to a naughty child. “You will live at Monkswood,” he proceeded tranquilly. “It is smaller than Looton, but I hope you will find it as comfortable. Horses, carriages, and servants will precede you there, and I hope all will be ready for your reception in a fortnight’s time. In the meanwhile I must beg you will remain with Helen, as I do not wish you to return to Miss Fane. I forbid you to see her or to correspond with her.” He paused to see the effect of his words, then continued: “Your own aunt, Miss Saville, has been good enough to promise to reside with you permanently, as it would be out of the question for you to live alone.”

During the above long speech Alice had been gazing at her husband with amazed indignant eyes. Drawing herself up as he concluded, she said:

“And supposing I decline to leave Miss Fane and to go to Monkswood, what are to be the dire consequences?”

“You have no other alternative,” he replied with freezing politeness. “Unfortunately for your independent spirit, all your money is in my hands.”

“What a shame!” she cried passionately.

“Yes, is it not?” he answered with a satirical smile. “A young lady with an empty purse, and utterly cut off from her friends, would find herself rather embarrassed, to say the least of it.”

“Miss Fane will allow me to live with her as before,” she returned confidently.

“When she finds that you are absolutely penniless, I think you will discover that her interest in you has ceased,” he replied significantly.

“Must I go to Monkswood? Must I?” she asked passionately.

A bow was her reply.

“I suppose I am completely in your power?”

“I am afraid so,” he answered composedly.

“Oh, if anyone else were only my guardian! If your father had lived, or if he had chosen Mr. Mayhew.”

“I sincerely echo both your wishes, but I hope you will be able to reconcile yourself to circumstances. You will go to Monkswood, I am sure.”

“I suppose I must—for a time at least,” looking at him defiantly.

“Very well,” he replied, ignoring her look, “we will consider the matter settled. Mark Mayhew and my solicitors will look after your interests. Personally, I will have no communication with you. This is our last interview; from to-day we are strangers.” After a pause he went on: “You will hear from Helen whether I am dead or alive; if the former, you will be freed from every tie—you will be your own mistress, an exceedingly rich widow, with no one to control you in any way. Should you marry again, as no doubt you will, I sincerely hope your second venture in matrimony will be more fortunate than your first.”

“Reginald!” she exclaimed indignantly.

“He will have to be a different sort of fellow to me,” he continued, without noticing the interruption; “to have a pretty thick skin; to give you your own way completely; and to have no self-respect whatever. Of course that will be a sine qua non. He must not mind your changeful moods, nor be offended, if after telling him he is dearer to you than words can express, and making an utter fool of him, you turn on him at the first breath of suspicion and call him a hypocrite, a deceiver, a ruffian of the deepest dye, and altogether a most infernal scoundrel.”

“Reginald, I never used such expressions. How dare you speak to me in such a way! How dare you treat me so!” she exclaimed, raising her voice, much to the amusement of two sailors, the only other people on the pier, who were lolling over the railings close by, and had been watching the scene with unaffected delight.

“She’s giving it to him. By Jove, Bill, that chap has his hands full!” said one of them, turning his quid. “If he is going to venture out on the sea of matrimony with that craft, he’ll happen to have heavy weather frequent and squalls every day.”

“What do you mean by bringing me here to ridicule and insult me?” repeated Alice in a towering rage. “The marriage certificate is still unexplained, and you talk to me as if you were the injured person—you!”

“I am glad to see that you have grasped my meaning,” he replied coolly. “I am the injured person; suspected by you, who should be the last to doubt me—homeless, wifeless, nevertheless innocent. I am leaving my native land, this time a voluntary exile. You have destroyed my faith in womankind: a woman’s word—a woman’s love—a woman’s generosity are to me now merely so many names for delusions believed in by children and fools. I brought you here to tell you of various arrangements I had made. I preferred a personal interview to letter-writing; besides which, I am sure you will be amused to hear that I had a lingering hope you would have believed me and trusted me, even at the eleventh hour—a hope I now see,” looking at her steadily, “that I was mad to entertain.”

“You were indeed insane to think it,” exclaimed Alice very emphatically. “Prove the certificate to be a forgery, and then I will believe you,” she said abruptly, turning to leave the pier, with a scarlet flush on either cheek and a general air of outraged dignity.

They walked homewards, that cold, dusky February evening, in solemn silence. Alice’s conscience was clamouring loudly as she stepped briskly along, endeavouring to keep up with her husband’s rapid strides. He seemed totally unconscious of her presence. Buried deep in his own thoughts, he did not vouchsafe a single remark between the pier and the Mayhews’ house.

“God forgive you if you have wronged him,” said Alice’s inward monitor. “He is going away to the other end of the world, and you may never see him again.”

“But the certificate—the clergyman’s signature so far undenied and unrefuted,” argued Pride and Propriety.

Helen, who had been expecting great things from this interview, met her cousins in the hall on their return. One glance at Alice was sufficient to dash her hopes to the ground—she looked the very picture of frigid resolution as she placed her umbrella in the stand, and with some trivial remark about the lateness of the hour walked straight upstairs to her own room, where she remained all the evening, pleading a bad headache as an excuse from dinner. Nor was her husband a more hopeful subject; declining all his cousin’s entreaties and persuasions to remain, at any rate, till the last train, he took his departure forthwith, Helen promising him, as she followed him to the door, that they would all come and see him off the following Thursday. Her inquiries and hints were in vain; no particulars of the walk to the pier were vouchsafed to satisfy the cravings of her curiosity. “We are just where we were before we ever met—we are strangers,” was the only intelligence gleaned from her cousin as he selected a cigar, buttoned up his top-coat, and bade her good-night.