Marriage a la mode Part 21

CHAPTER IX

It was a cheerless February day, dark and slaty overhead, dusty below.

In the East End streets paper and straw, children's curls, girls'

pinafores and women's skirts were driven back and forward by a bitter wind; there was an ugly light on ugly houses, with none of that kind trickery of mist or smoke which can lend some grace on normal days even to Commercial Street, or to the network of lanes north of the Bethnal Green Road. The pitiless wind swept the streets--swept the children and the grown-ups out of them into the houses, or any available shelter; and in the dark and chilly emptiness of the side roads one might listen in fancy for the stealthy returning steps of spirits crueller than Cold, more tyrannous than Poverty, coming to seize upon their own.

In one of these side streets stood a house larger than its neighbours, in a bit of front garden, with some decrepit rust-bitten-railings between it and the road. It was an old dwelling overtaken by the flood of tenement houses, which spread north, south, east, and west of it. Its walls were no less grimy than its neighbours'; but its windows were outlined in cheerful white paint, firelight sparkled through its unshuttered panes, and a bright green door with a bra.s.s knocker completed its pleasant air. There were always children outside the Vicarage railings on winter evenings, held there by the spell of the green door and the firelight.

Inside the firelit room to the left of the front pathway, two men were standing--one of whom had just entered the house.

"My dear Penrose!--how very good of you to come. I know how frightfully busy you are."

The man addressed put down his hat and stick, and hastily smoothed back some tumbling black hair which interfered with spectacled eyes already hampered by short sight. He was a tall, lank, powerful fellow; anyone acquainted with the West-country would have known him for one of the swarthy, gray-eyed Cornish stock.

"I am pretty busy--but your tale, Herbert, was a startler. If I can help you--or Barnes--command me. He is coming this afternoon?"

Herbert French pointed his visitor to a chair.

"Of course. And another man--whom I met casually, in Pall Mall this morning--and had half an hour's talk with--an American naval officer--an old acquaintance of Elsie's--Captain Boyson--will join us also. I met him at Harvard before our wedding, and liked him. He has just come over with his sister for a short holiday, and I ran across him."

"Is there any particular point in his joining us?"

Herbert French expounded. Boyson had been an old acquaintance of Mrs.

Roger Barnes before her marriage. He knew a good deal about the Barnes story--"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first into the dining-room."

Penrose nodded. "All right, as long as he doesn't mind his national toes trampled upon. So these are your new quarters, old fellow?"

His eyes travelled round the small book-lined room, with its shelves of poetry, history, and theology; its parish litter; its settle by the fire, on which lay a doll and a child's picture-book; back to the figure of the new vicar, who stood, pipe in hand, before the hearth, clad in a shabby serge suit, his collar alone betraying him. French's white hair showed even whiter than of old above the delicately blanched face; from his natural slenderness and smallness the East End and its life had by now stripped every superfluous ounce; yet, ethereal as his aspect was, not one element of the Meredithian trilogy--"flesh," "blood," or "spirit"--was lacking in it.

"Yes, we've settled in," he said quietly, as Penrose took stock.

"And you like it?"

"We do."

The phrase was brief; nor did it seem to be going to lead to anything more expansive. Penrose smiled.

"Well, now"--he bent forward, with a professional change of tone--"before he arrives, where precisely is this unhappy business? I gather, by the way, that Barnes has got practically all his legal advice from the other side, though the solicitors here have been cooperating?"

French nodded. "I am still rather vague myself. Roger only arrived from New York the day before yesterday. His uncle, General Hobson, died a few weeks ago, and Roger came rus.h.i.+ng home, as I understand, to see if he could make any ready money out of his inheritance. Money, in fact, seems to be his chief thought."

"Money? What for? Mrs. Barnes's suit was surely settled long ago?"

"Oh, yes--months ago. She got her decree and the custody of the child in July."

"Remind me of the details. Barnes refused to plead?"

"Certainly. By the advice of the lawyers on both sides, he refused, as an Englishman, to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Court."

"But he did what he could to stop the thing?"

"Of course. He rushed out after his wife as soon as he could trace where she had gone; and he made the most desperate attempts to alter her purpose. His letters, as far as I could make them out, were heart-rending. I very nearly went over to try and help him, but it was impossible to leave my work. Mrs. Barnes refused to see him. She was already at Sioux Falls, and had begun the residence necessary to bring her within the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Court. Roger, however, forced one or two interviews with her--most painful scenes!--but found her quite immovable. At the same time she was much annoyed and excited by the legal line that he was advised to take; and there was a moment when she tried to bribe him to accept the divorce and submit to the American court."

"To bribe him! With money?"

"No; with the child. Beatty at first was hidden away, and Roger could find no traces of her. But for a few weeks she was sent to stay with a Mrs. Verrier at Philadelphia, and Roger was allowed to see her, while Mrs. Barnes negotiated. It was a frightful dilemma! If he submitted, Mrs. Barnes promised that Beatty should go to him for two months every year; if not, and she obtained her decree, and the custody of the child, as she was quite confident of doing, he should never--as far as she could secure it--see Beatty again. He too, foresaw that she would win her suit. He was sorely tempted; but he stood firm. Then before he could make up his mind what to do as to the child, the suit came on, Mrs.

Barnes got her decree, and the custody of the little girl."

"On the ground of 'cruelty,' I understand, and 'indignities'?"

French nodded. His thin cheek flushed.

"And by the help of evidence that any liar could supply!"

"Who were her witnesses?"

"Beatty's nurse--one Agnes Farmer--and a young fellow who had been employed on the decorative work at Heston. There were relations between these two, and Roger tells me they have married lately, on a partners.h.i.+p bought by Mrs. Barnes. While the work was going on at Heston the young man used to put up at an inn in the country town, and talk scandal at the bar."

"Then there was some local scandal--on the subject of Barnes and Mrs.

Fairmile?"

"Possibly. Scandal _pour rire_! Not a soul believed that there was anything more in it than mischief on the woman's side, and a kind of incapacity for dealing with a woman as she deserved, on the man's. Mrs.

Fairmile has been an _intrigante_ from her cradle. Barnes was at one time deeply in love with her. His wife became jealous of her after the marriage, and threw them together, by way of getting at the truth, and he s.h.i.+lly-shallied with the situation, instead of putting a prompt end to it, as of course he ought to have done. He was honestly fond of his wife the whole time, and devoted to his home and his child."

"Well, she didn't plead, you say, anything more than 'cruelty' and 'indignities'. The scandal, such as it was, was no doubt part of the 'cruelty'?"

French a.s.sented.

"And you suspect that money played a great part in the whole transaction?"

"I don't _suspect_--the evidence goes a long way beyond that. Mrs.

Barnes bought the show! I am told there are a thousand ways of doing it."

Penrose smoked and pondered.

"Well, then--what happened? I imagine that by this time Barnes had not much affection left for his wife?"

"I don't know," said French, hesitating. "I believe the whole thing was a great blow to him. He was never pa.s.sionately in love with her, but he was very fond of her in his own way--increasingly fond of her--up to that miserable autumn at Heston. However, after the decree, his one thought was for Beatty. His whole soul has been wrapped up in that child from the first moment she was put into his arms. When he first realized that his wife meant to take her from him, Boyson tells me that he seemed to lose his head. He was like a person unnerved and bewildered, not knowing how to act or where to turn. First of all, he brought an action--a writ of _habeas corpus_, I think--to recover his daughter, as an English subject. But the fact was he had put it off too long----"

"Naturally," said Penrose, with a shrug. "Not much hope for him--after the decree."

"So he discovered, poor old fellow! The action was, of course, obstructed and delayed in every way, by the power of Mrs. Barnes's millions behind the scenes. His lawyers told him plainly from the beginning that he had precious little chance. And presently he found himself the object of a press campaign in some of the yellow papers--all of it paid for and engineered by his wife. He was held up as the brutal fortune-hunting Englishman, who had beguiled an American heiress to marry him, had carried her off to England to live upon her money, had then insulted her by scandalous flirtations with a lady to whom he had formerly been engaged, had shown her constant rudeness and unkindness, and had finally, in the course of a quarrel, knocked her down, inflicting shock and injury from which she had suffered ever since. Mrs.

Barnes had happily freed herself from him, but he was now trying to bully her through the child--had, it was said, threatened to carry off the little girl by violence. Mrs. Barnes went in terror of him. America, however, would know how to protect both the mother and the child! You can imagine the kind of thing. Well, very soon Roger began to find himself a marked man in hotels, followed in the streets, persecuted by interviewers; and the stream of lies that found its way even into the respectable newspapers about him, his former life, his habits, etc., is simply incredible! Unfortunately, he gave some handle----"