A Country Gentleman and his Family Part 41

Chatty put up her hand with a cry. "Don't!" she said. "And do you mean that he is bound to her?--oh, I am sorry for her, I am sorry for her,--to one who has forsaken him and gone so far, so very far astray, to one who has done things that cannot be borne, and not to me--by the same words, the same words--which have no meaning to her, for she has left him, she has never held by him, never; and not to me, who said them with all my heart, and meant them with all my heart, and am bound by them for ever and ever?" She paused a little, and the flush of vehemence on her cheek and of light in her eye calmed down. "It is not just," she said.

"Dear Chatty, it is very hard, harder than can be said."

"It is not just," said Chatty once more, her soft face falling into lines in which Lady Markland saw a reflection of those which made Theo's countenance so severe.

"So far as that goes, the law will release him. It would do so even here.

I do not think there is any doubt of that,--though Theo says,--but I feel sure there is not any doubt."

"And though the law does release him," said Chatty, "and he comes back, you will all say to me it must be dropped, that it is not right, that he is divorced, that I must not marry him, though I have married him.

I know now what will happen. There will be Minnie and Theo,--and even mamma will hesitate, and her voice will tremble. And I don't know if I will have strength to hold out," she cried, with a sudden burst of tears. "I have never struggled or fought for myself. Perhaps I may be a coward. I may not have the strength. If they are all against me, and no one to stand by me, perhaps I may be unjust too, and sacrifice him--and myself."

This burst of almost inaudible pa.s.sion from a creature so tranquil and pa.s.sive took Lady Markland altogether by surprise. Chatty, so soft, so simple, so yielding, driven by cruel fate into a position so terrible, feeling everything at stake, not only her happiness but the life already spoiled and wasted of the man she loved, feeling too that on herself would depend the decision of all that was to follow, and yet seized by a prophetical terror, a fear which was tragic, lest her own habit of submission should still overwhelm all the personal impulse, and sweep away her very life. The girl's face, moved out of all its gentle softness into the gravity almost stern which this consciousness brought, was a strange sight.

"I do not count for much," said Lady Markland. "I cannot expect you to think much of me, if your own sister, and your brother, and even your mother, as you fear, are against you: but I will not be against you, Chatty. So far as I can I will stand by you, if that will do you any good."

"Oh yes, it will do me good," cried Chatty, clasping her hands; "it does me good already to talk to you. You know I am not clever, I don't go deep down into things," she added after a moment. "Minnie always said I was on the surface: but I never thought until to-day, I never thought--I have just been going on, supposing it was all right, that d.i.c.k could set it all right. And now it has burst upon me. Perhaps after all mamma will be on my side, and perhaps you will make Theo----" here she paused instinctively, and looked at her sister-in-law, feeling in the haste and rush of her own awakened spirit a sudden insight of which she had not been capable before.

Lady Markland shook her head. She was a little sad, a little overcast, not so a.s.sured in her gentle dignity, slightly nervous and restless, which was unlike her. "You must not calculate on that," she said.

"Theo--has his own way of looking at things. It is right he should.

We would not wish him to be influenced by--by any one."

"But you are not--any one."

"No, indeed. I am no one, in that point of view. I am his wife, and ought to take my views from him, not he his from me; and besides," she said, with a little laugh, "I am, after all, not like an old acqu--not like one he has known all his life, but comparatively new, and a stranger to his ways of thinking--to any of his ways of thinking--and only learning how he will look at this and that; you don't realise how that operates even when people are married. Theo has very distinct views--which is what he ought to have. The pity is that--I have lived so much alone--I have too. It is a great deal better to be blank," she said, laughing again. Her laugh was slightly nervous too, and it seemed to be intended for Theo, whose conversation with his mother had now paused, and who was occasionally glancing, not without suspicion, at his wife and sister in the corner. Did she laugh to make him think that there was nothing serious in their talk? She called to him to join them, making room upon the sofa. "Chatty is tired," she said, "and out of spirits. I want to try and amuse her a little, Theo, before Mrs. Warrender takes her away."

"Amus.e.m.e.nt is the last thing we were thinking of," he said, coming forward with a sort of surly opposition, as if it came natural to him to go against what she said. "My opinion is that she should go down to the country at once, and not show at all in town this season. I don't think it would be pleasant for any of us. There has been talk enough."

"There has been no talk that Chatty need care for," said Lady Markland quietly; "don't think so, pray don't think so. Who could say anything of her? People are bad enough in London, but not so bad as that."

"Nevertheless, mother," said Theo, "I think you and I understand each other. Chatty and you have been enjoying yourselves abroad. You never cared for town. It would be much better in every sense that you should go home quietly now."

"We intended nothing else," said Mrs. Warrender, with a slight irritation, "though I confess I see no reason. But we need not discuss that over again. In the end of the week----"

"But this is only Monday. You cannot have anything to keep you here for days. I think you should go to-morrow. A day's rest is surely enough."

"We have some people to see, Theo."

"If I were you I would see n.o.body. You will be sure to meet with something unpleasant. Take Chatty home, that is far the best thing you can do. Frances would say the same if she had not that unfortunate desire to please everybody, to say what is agreeable, which makes women so untrustworthy. But my advice is, take Chatty home. In the circ.u.mstances it is the only thing to do."

Chatty rose from where she had been seated by Lady Markland's side. "Am I to be hidden away?" she said, her pale face flus.h.i.+ng nervously. "Have I done anything wrong?"

"How silly to ask such questions. You know well enough what I mean. You have been talked about. My mother has more experience; she can tell you.

A girl who has been talked about is always at a disadvantage. She had much better keep quite quiet until the story has all died away."

"Mother," cried Chatty, holding out her hands, "take me away then to-night, this moment, from this horrible place, where the people have so little heart and so little sense."

CHAPTER XLVII.

"What was Chatty saying to you? I rely upon your good sense, Frances, not to encourage her in this sentimental folly."

"Is it sentimental folly? I think it is very true feeling, Theo."

"Perhaps these are interchangeable terms," he said, with the angry smile she knew so well; "but without discussing that matter I am determined that this business shall go no farther. A sister of mine waiting for a married man till he shall be divorced! the very thought makes my blood boil."

"Surely that is an unnecessarily strong statement. The circ.u.mstances must be taken into consideration."

"I will take no circ.u.mstances into consideration. It is a thing which must not be. The Cavendishes see it in precisely the same light, and my mother,--even my mother begins to hear reason."

Lady Markland made no reply. They were walking home, as their house was close at hand, a house taken for the season, in which there was not the room and s.p.a.ce of the country, nor its active interests, and which she, having come there with much hope in the change, would already have been glad to exchange for Markland, or the Warren, or almost any other place in the world. He walked more quickly than suited her and she required all her breath to keep up with him; besides that she was silenced by what he said to her, and did not know how to reply.

"You say nothing," he continued after a moment, "from which I conclude that you are antagonistic and mean to throw your influence the other way."

"Not antagonistic: but I cannot help feeling very much for Chatty, whose heart is so much in it, more perhaps than you think."

"Chatty's heart doesn't trouble me much," he said carelessly. "Chatty will always obey whatever impulse is nearest and most continuous, if she is not backed up on the other side."

"I don't believe you realise the strength of her feelings, Theo. That is what she is afraid of, not to be strong enough to hold out."

"Oh! So you have been over that ground with her already!"

"She spoke to me. She was glad of the opportunity to relieve her mind."

"And you promised to stand by her?" he said.

Lady Markland had been a woman full of dignity and composure. She was so still to all outward appearance, and the darkness concealed the flush that rose to her face; But it could not conceal the slight tremor with which she replied after a pause: "I promised not to be against her at least."

A flood of angry words rose to Theo's lips, the blood mounted to his head. He had taken the bias so fatal between married people of supposing when his wife disagreed with him that she did it on purpose, not because she herself thought so, but because it was opposition. Perhaps this was because of that inherent contempt for women which is a settled principle in the minds of so many men, perhaps because he had been used to a narrow mind and opinions cut and dry in the case of his sister, perhaps even because of his hot adoration and faith in Lady Markland as perfect. To continue perfect in his eyes, after their marriage, she would have needed to agree always with him, to think his thoughts. He exacted this accord with all the susceptibility of a fastidious nature, which would be content with no forced agreement, and divined in a moment when an effort was required to conform her opinions to his. He would not tolerate such an effort. He would have had her agree with him by instinct, by nature, not even by desire to please him, much less by policy. He could not endure to think of either of these means of procuring what he wanted. What he wanted was the perfect agreement of a nature which arrived at the same conclusions as his by the same means, which responded before he spoke, which was always ready to antic.i.p.ate, to give him the exquisite satisfaction of feeling he was right by a perpetual seconding of all his decisions and antic.i.p.ation of his thoughts. Had he married a young creature like Chatty, ready to take the impress of his more active mind, he might have found other drawbacks in her to irritate his _amour propre_, and probably would have despised her judgment in consequence of her perpetual agreement with him. But the fact was that he was jealous of his wife, not in the ordinary vulgar way, for which there was no possibility, but for every year of additional age, and every experience, and all the life she had led apart from him. He could not endure to think that she had formed the most of her ideas before she knew him: the thought of her past was horrible to him. A suspicion that she was thinking of that, that her mind was going back to something which he did not know, awoke a sort of madness in his brain. All this she knew by painful intuition now, as at first by discoveries which startled her very soul, and seemed to disturb the pillars of the world. She was aware of the forced control he kept over himself, not to burst forth upon her, and she would have fled morally, and brought herself round to his ideas and sworn eternal faith to him, if it would have done any good. But she knew very well that his uneasy nature would not be satisfied with that.

"I might have divined," he said, after a long pause, during which they went quickly along, he increasing his pace unawares, she losing her breath in keeping up with him, "that you would see this matter differently. But I must ask, at least, that you won't circ.u.mvent us, and neutralise all our plans. The only thing for Chatty to do is to drop it altogether, to receive no more letters, to cut the whole concern. It is a disreputable business altogether. It is better she should never marry at all than marry in that way."

"I feel sure, Theo, that except in this way she will never marry at all--if you think that matters."

"If I think that matters! It is not very flattering to me that you should think it doesn't matter," he said.

And then they reached their house, and he followed her into the drawing-room, where one dim lamp was burning, and the room had a deserted look. Perhaps that last speech had been a little unkind.

Compunction visited him not unfrequently. He seated himself at the little table on which the lamp was standing, as she took off her hat and recovered her breath. "Since we are at home, and alone for once in a way," he said, more graciously, "which happens seldom enough, I'll read to you for an hour, if you like, Frances; that is, if you have no letters to write."

There was a little irony in the last words, for Lady Markland had, if the truth must be told, a foible that way, and liked, as so many women do, the idea of having a large correspondence, and took pleasure in keeping it up. She answered eagerly that she had no letters to write (though not without a glance at her table where one lay unfinished) and would like his reading above everything: which was so far true that it was a sign of peace, and an occupation which he enjoyed. She got her work while he got the book, not without a horrible sense that Geoff, always wakeful, would have heard her come in, and would call for her, nor without a longing desire to go to him, if only for a moment, which was what she had intended to do. Perhaps it was to prevent this that Theo had been so ready with his offer, and so sensitive was he to every impression that the poor lady felt a thrill of terror lest her half-formed intention, or Geoff's waking, might thrill through the atmosphere to her husband's mind, and make him fling down the book with impatience. She got her work with a nervous haste, which it seemed he must divine, and seated herself opposite to him. "Now, I am ready," she said.

Poor Lady Markland! He had not read a page--a page to which she gave the most painful attention, trying not to think that the door might open any moment, and the nurse appear begging her to speak a word to Lord Markland--when a faint cry reached her ears. It was faint and far away, but she knew what it was. It was the cry of "Mamma," from Geoff's bed, only given forth, she knew, after much tossing and turning, and which a year ago she would have heard from any corner of the house and flown to answer. She started when she heard it, but she had been so much on the alert, and prepared for some interruption of the kind, that she hoped Theo did not see the little instinctive movement "Mamma!" She sat with a nervous thrill upon her, taking no notice, trying to listen, seeing in the dark the little sleepless boy tossing upon his uneasy pillow, and calling in vain for his mother, but resisting all the impulses both of heart and habit. If only Theo might not hear! After a while, however, Theo's ear caught the sound. "What's that?" he said sharply, stopping and looking at her across the table. Alas! the repressed agitation in her smile told its own story to Theo. He knew that she pretended to listen, that she knew very well what it was. "_That_" she said, faltering.

"What? Oh! it sounds like Geoff calling--some one."

"He is calling _you_; and you are dying to be with him, to rush upstairs and coax and kiss him to sleep. You are ruining the boy."

"No, Theo. It is probably nurse he is calling. He sleeps so badly," she said, with a broken voice, for the appeals to mamma came quicker, and she felt as if the child was dragging at her very heart-strings.