A Country Gentleman and his Family Part 35

This would have been simple indeed had it been all. All the Cavendishes, small and great, even the highest divinities of the name, would have stooped from their high estate to express their pleasure that d.i.c.k had found the "nice girl" who was to settle him and make him everything a Cavendish should be. Ah, had that been but all! d.i.c.k was no c.o.xcomb; but he had read so much in Chatty's modest eyes as warranted him in believing that he would not woo in vain. Though he could still laugh, being of that nature of man, his heart, in fact, was overwhelmed with a weight of trouble such as might have made the strongest cry out. But crying out was not in his const.i.tution. He went about his occupations, his work, which, now that Chatty was gone, had few interruptions, chewing the cud of the bitterest fancy and the most painful thought. He walked about the streets, turning it over and over in his mind. He thought of it even when he made the patterns of the holes and laughed at them, tossing them into the fire. Underneath all his lightest as well as his most serious occupations ran this dark and stern current. The arrival of Mrs. Warrender's note made it still darker and more urgent, carrying him away upon its tide. It was not the first letter he had received from her. He had insisted upon hearing whether their journey home had been a pleasant one, how they had liked their new house, and many other trivial things, and he had asked for that invitation from Sat.u.r.day to Monday, which now was reversed and turned into an almost-week, from Monday to Sat.u.r.day. He did not know whether he meant or not to go: but anyhow the invitation, the power of going if he pleased, was sweet to him. He kept it by him as an antic.i.p.ation, a sweetmeat which took the bitter taste of life out of his mouth.

But this letter was more formal, more business-like, than anything that had gone before. To go to see the woman whom you think of most in the world, that is a vague thing which other engagements may push aside; but an invitation to go for the partridges is business and has to be answered. d.i.c.k got it at his club, where he was lingering though it was September, making little runs into the country, but avoiding his home, where he knew many questions would be put to him about what he was going to do. It is a sad thing when there is n.o.body who cares what you are going to do--but this is not the view of the matter most apparent to young men. d.i.c.k very much disliked the question. It was not one to which he could give any reply. He was going to do--nothing, unless life and feeling should be too much for him and he should be driven into doing what would be a villainy--yes a villainy, though probably no harm would ever come of it; most probably, almost certainly, no harm would come of it--and yet it would be a villainy. These were the thoughts that were with him wherever he went or came. And after he got Mrs. Warrender's letter they grew harder and harder, more and more urgent. It was this which took him one day to the rooms of an old gentleman who had not d.i.c.k's reasons for staying in town, but others which were perhaps as weighty, which were that he was fond of his corner in the club, and not of much else. His corner in the club, his walk along the streets, his cosy rooms, and the few old fogies, like himself, sharp as so many needles, giving their old opinions upon the events of the time with a humour sharpened by many an experience of the past: who counted every day only half a day when it was spent out of town. This old gentleman was a lawyer of very high repute, though he had retired from all active practice. He was a man who was supposed to know every case that had ever been on the registers of justice. He had refused the Bench, and he might even have been, if he would, Attorney-General, but to all these responsibilities he preferred freedom and his corner at the club. To him d.i.c.k went with a countenance fresh and fair, which contrasted with the parchment of the old lawyer's face, but a heart like a piece of lead lying in his breast, weighing down every impulse, which also contrasted strongly, though no one could see it, with the tough piece of mechanism screwed up to a very level pitch and now seldom out of order, which fulfilled the same organic functions under the old gentleman's coat.

"What, d.i.c.k! what ill wind--it must be an ill wind--sends you here in September? You ought to be among the partridges, my boy."

"It is an ill wind," said d.i.c.k.

"No need to tell me that: but judging by your complexion nothing of a tremendous character. Money? or love?"

"Well, sir, it is not really my own business at all. As for my complexion, that don't matter. I don't show outside."

"Some men don't," said the old lawyer laconically; "but if the trouble is not your own that is easy to understand."

At this d.i.c.k gave a short laugh. He wanted it to be believed that the trouble was not his own, and yet he did not quite care to be supposed indifferent to it.

"It's an old story," he said. "It is something that happened to--Tom Wyld, an old crony of mine out on the other side."

"I suppose you mean in America. No more slang than you can help, please.

It's admirably expressive sometimes, I allow: but not being used to it in my youth I have some difficulty in following. Well, about Tom Wyld--one of the old judge's sons or grandsons, I suppose."

d.i.c.k's complexion heightened a little.

"Oh, not any one you ever heard of--a fellow I picked up--out there."

"Oh, a fellow you picked up out there?"

"It was in one of the new States far West; not the sort of place for nicety of any sort, sir, to tell the truth. Judge Lynch and not much else, in the way of law."

"Works very well I don't doubt--simplifies business immensely," said the old lawyer, nodding his head.

"Makes business, too--lots of it. Well, sir, my friend met with a girl there." d.i.c.k seemed to have great difficulty in getting this out. He stammered and his healthy complexion grew now pale, now red.

"Most likely--they generally do, both in novels and out of them," the old gentleman said. "You had better tell me your story straight off. I shall interrupt you no more."

"Well, sir, the girl was very young, very pretty, I might say beautiful--not like anything he had ever met before. Without training, but he thought at her pliable age it was so easy to remedy that." (The old lawyer shook his head with a groan but said nothing.) "She had never seen anything but the rough people about, and knew only their manners and ways. Everything went on well enough for a little while after they were married."

"Good Lord, they were married!"

"What else?" said d.i.c.k, turning scarlet. "He respected her as every man must respect the woman he--the woman he--thinks he loves."

"I am glad you have the sense to see that he only thought he----Well, and what was the end of it, Mr. d.i.c.k?"

"The end of it was--what you have foreseen, sir," said d.i.c.k, bowing his head. "The fellow is my friend, that's to say Tom did all he could. I don't think he was without patience with her. After, when she left him for good, or rather for bad, bad as could be, he did everything he could to help her. He offered, not to take her back, that was not possible, but to provide for her and--and all that. She had all the savage virtues as well as faults. She was honourable in her way. She would take nothing from him. She even made out what she called a paper, poor thing, to set him free. She would not take her freedom herself and leave him bound, she said. And then she disappeared."

"Leaving him the paper?"

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, with a faint smile, "leaving him the paper. He found it on his table. That is six years ago. He has never seen her since. He came home soon, feeling--I can't tell you how he felt."

"As if life were not much worth living, according to the slang of the day."

"Well, sir," said d.i.c.k, "he's a droll sort of a fellow. He--seemed to get over it somehow. It took a vast deal out of him, but yet he got over it in a kind of a way. He came back among his own people; and what have they been doing since ever he came back but imploring him to marry! It would settle him they all said, if he could get some nice girl: and they have done nothing but throw nice girls in his way--some of the nicest girls in England, I believe,--one----"

"Good Lord!" said the old man, "you don't mean to say this unlucky young fellow has fallen in love again?"

d.i.c.k shook his head with a rueful air, in which it was impossible not to see a touch of the comic, notwithstanding his despair. "This is precisely why he wants your opinion, that is, some one's opinion--for of course he has not the honour of knowing you."

"Hasn't he? Ah! I began to think I remembered something about your Tom--or was it d.i.c.k--Wyld? Tom Wyld--I think I have heard the name."

"If you should meet him in society," cried d.i.c.k, growing very red, "don't for heaven's sake make any allusion to this. I ought not to have mentioned his name."

"Well, get on with the story," said the old man. "He thinks, perhaps, he is free to make love to the other girl and marry--because of that precious paper."

"He is not such a fool as that: I, even," said d.i.c.k, faltering, "know law enough to warn him that would be folly. But you know, sir, in some of the wild States, like the one he lived in, divorce is the easiest thing in the world."

"Well: and he thinks he can get a divorce? He had better do it then without more ado. I suppose the evidence--is sufficient?"

d.i.c.k gave vent to a hoa.r.s.e, nervous laugh. "Sufficient--for twenty divorces," he said, then he added quickly: "But that's not the question."

"Why, what is the question then? He should be very thankful to be able to manage it so easily instead of being dragged through the mud for everybody to gloat over in London. What does the fellow want?" said the old man peevishly. "Many a man would be glad to find so easy a way."

d.i.c.k's embarra.s.sment was great, he changed colour, he could not keep still, his voice grew husky and broken. "I don't say that I agree with him, but this is what he thinks. It's easy enough: but he would have to summon her by the newspapers to answer for herself, which she wouldn't do. And who can tell what hands that newspaper might fall into? He says that n.o.body knows anything about it here; no one has the slightest suspicion that he ever was married or had any entanglement. And she, poor soul, to do her justice, would never put forth a claim. She never would molest him, of that he is sure. He thinks----"

"You take a great deal of interest in your friend's cause, d.i.c.k!" For d.i.c.k had paused with parted lips, unable to say any more.

"I do. It's a case that has been very interesting to me. He asks why he should take any notice of it at all--a thing done when he was scarcely of age, thousands of miles away, a mistake--an utter failure--a--ah!"--d.i.c.k had been speaking very rapidly against time to get out what he had to say before he was interrupted--"you don't see it in that point of view."

"Do you mean to say, sir," said the old gentleman, "that you contemplate betraying a woman by a fict.i.tious marriage, making her children illegitimate and herself a--I can't suppose that you have any real intention of that."

d.i.c.k, who had got up in his excitement, here sat down suddenly as if his strength had failed him, with an exclamation of horror and alarm.

"You don't see that? Why, what else would it be? so long as there is a Mrs.--what do you call her?--living--living and undivorced, the union of that woman's husband with another woman could be nothing but a fict.i.tious marriage. There is a still uglier word by which it could be called."

"You forget," said d.i.c.k, "that Mrs. Wyld--neither bears that name nor lays any claim to it. She put it aside long ago when she went upon her own course. It was nothing to her. She is not of the kind that try to keep up appearances or--anything of that sort. I'll do her that justice, she never meant to give the--the--unfortunate fellow any trouble. She didn't even want to stand in his way. She told him he should neither hear of her nor see her again. She is honest, though she is---- She has been to him as if she did not exist for years."

"Why does that matter," cried the old gentleman, "so long as she does exist? There are women who are mad and never can be otherwise--but that does not give their husbands a right to marry again. Divorce her, since you are sure you can do so, and be thankful you have that remedy. I suppose this woman is--not a lady."

"No." d.i.c.k spoke in a very low voice. He was quite cowed and subdued, looking at his old friend with furtive looks of trouble. Though he spoke carefully as if the case were not his own, yet he did not attempt to correct the elder man who at once a.s.sumed it to be so. He was so blanched and tremulous, nothing but the red of his lips showing out of his colourless face, and all the lines drawn with inward suffering, that he too might have been an old man. He added in the same low tones: "A man who is divorced would be a sort of monster to them. They would never permit--she would never listen."

"You mean--the other? well, that is possible. There is a prejudice, and a just prejudice. So you think on the whole that to do a young lady--for I suppose the second is in your own cla.s.s--a real, an unspeakable injury would be better than to shock her prejudices? If that is how you of the new generation confuse what's right and wrong----"

d.i.c.k made no reply. He was not capable of self-defence, or even of understanding the indignation he had called forth. He continued as if only half conscious. "It need never be known. There is not a creature who knows of it. She sent me her marriage lines. She has nothing to prove that there ever was anything--and she would not want to prove anything. She is as if she were dead."

"Come, sir," said the lawyer, "rouse yourself, d.i.c.k; she is not dead, and for every honourable man that must be enough. Don't bewilder yourself with sophistries. Why should you want to marry--again? You have had enough of it, I should think; or else divorce her, since you can. You may be able to do that secretly as well as the marriage. Why not?"

d.i.c.k said nothing, but shook his head. He was so completely cast down that he had not a word to say for himself. How he could have supposed that a dispa.s.sionate man could have taken his side and seen with his eyes in such a matter, it is hard to say. He had thought of it so much that all the lines had got blurred to him, and right and wrong had come to seem relative terms. "What harm would it do?" he said to himself, scarcely aware he was speaking aloud. "No one would be wronged, and they would never know. How could they know? it would be impossible. Whereas, on the other side, there must be a great scandal and raking up of everything, and betrayal--to every one." He shuddered as he spoke.

"Whereas, on the other side," said the old lawyer, "there would be a betrayal--very much more serious. Suppose you were to die, and that then it were to be found out (in the long run everything is found out) that your wife was not your wife, and her children---- Come, d.i.c.k, you never can have contemplated a blackguard act like that to an unsuspecting girl!"