Marriage a la mode

M >> Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Marriage a la mode

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She was triumphant; but from sheer excitement she wept and sobbed
through the greater part of the night.

PART III

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 brass 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 cooeperating?"

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 rushing 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 partnership
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 shilly-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 assented.

"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 passionately 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----"

French paused a moment.

"Ah!" said Penrose, "I have heard rumours."

French rose and began to pace the room.

"It is a matter I can hardly speak of calmly," he said at last. "The
night after that first scene between them, the night of her fall--her
pretended fall, so Roger told me--he went downstairs in his excitement
and misery, and drank, one way and another, nearly a bottle of brandy, a
thing he had never done in his life before. But----"

"He has often done it since?"

French raised his shoulders sadly, then added, with some emphasis.
"Don't, however, suppose the thing worse than it is. Give him a gleam of
hope and happiness, and he would soon shake it off."

"Well, what came of his action?"

"Nothing--so far. I believe he has ceased to take any interest in it.
Another line of action altogether was suggested to him. About three
months ago he made an attempt to kidnap the child, and was foiled. He
got word that she had been taken to Charlestown, and he went there with
a couple of private detectives. But Mrs. Barnes was on the alert, and
when he discovered the villa in which the child had been living, she had
been removed. It was a bitter shock and disappointment, and when he got
back to New York in November, in the middle of an epidemic, he was
struck down by influenza and pneumonia. It went pretty hard with him.
You will be shocked by his appearance. Ecco! was there ever such a
story! Do you remember, Penrose, what a magnificent creature he was that
year he played for Oxford, and you and I watched his innings from the
pavilion?"

There was a note of emotion in the tone which implied much. Penrose
assented heartily, remarking, however, that it was a magnificence which
seemed to have cost him dear, if, as no doubt was the case, it had won
him his wife.

"But now, with regard to money; you say he wants money. But surely, at
the time of the marriage, something was settled on him?"

"Certainly, a good deal. But from the moment she left him, and the
Heston bills were paid, he has never touched a farthing of it, and never
will."

"So that the General's death was opportune? Well, it's a deplorable
affair! And I wish I saw any chance of being of use."

French looked up anxiously.

"Because you know," the speaker reluctantly continued, "there's nothing
to be done. The thing's finished."

"Finished?" French's manner took fire. "And the law can do _nothing_!
Society can do _nothing_, to help that man either to right himself, or
to recover his child? Ah!"--he paused to listen--"here he is!"

A cab had drawn up outside. Through the lightly curtained windows the
two within saw a man descend from it, pay the driver, and walk up the
flagged passage leading to the front door.

French hurried to greet the new-comer.

"Come in, Roger! Here's George Penrose--as I promised you. Sit down, old
man. They'll bring us some tea presently."

Roger Barnes looked round him for a moment without replying; then
murmured something unintelligible, as he shook hands with Penrose, and
took the chair which French pushed forward. French stood beside him with
a furrowed brow.

"Well, here we are, Roger!--and if there's anything whatever in this
horrible affair where an English lawyer can help you, Penrose is your
man. You know, I expect, what a swell he is? A K. C. after seven
years--lucky dog!--and last year he was engaged in an Anglo-American
case not wholly unlike yours--Brown _v._ Brown. So I thought of him as
the best person among your old friends and mine to come and give us some
private informal help to-day, before you take any fresh steps--if you do
take any."

"Awfully good of you both." The speaker, still wrapped in his fur coat,
sat staring at the carpet, a hand on each of his knees. "Awfully good of
you," he repeated vaguely.

Penrose observed the new-comer. In some ways Roger Barnes was handsomer
than ever. His colour, the pink and white of his astonishing complexion,
was miraculously vivid; his blue eyes were infinitely more arresting
than of old; and the touch of physical weakness in his aspect, left
evidently by severe illness, was not only not disfiguring, but a
positive embellishment. He had been too ruddy in the old days, too
hearty and splendid--a too obvious and supreme king of men--for our
fastidious modern eyes. The grief and misfortune which had shorn some of
his radiance had given a more human spell to what remained. At the same
time the signs of change were by no means, all of them, easy to read, or
reassuring to a friend's eye. Were they no more than physical and
transient?

Penrose was just beginning on the questions which seemed to him
important, when there was another ring at the front door. French got up
nervously, with an anxious look at Barnes.

"Roger! I don't know whether you will allow it, but I met an American
acquaintance of yours to-day, and, subject to your permission, I asked
him to join our conference."

Roger raised his head--it might have been thought, angrily.

"Who on earth----?"

"Captain Boyson?"

The young man's face changed.

"I don't mind him," he said sombrely. "He's an awfully good sort. He was
in Philadelphia a few months ago, when I was. He knows all about me. It
was he and his sister who introduced me to--my wife."

French left the room for a moment, and returned accompanied by a
fair-haired, straight-shouldered man, whom he introduced to Penrose as
Captain Boyson.

Roger rose from his chair to shake hands.

"How do you do, Boyson? I've told them you know all about it." He
dropped back heavily into his seat.

"I thought I might possibly put in a word," said the new-comer, glancing
from Roger to his friends. "I trust I was not impertinent? But don't let
me interrupt anything that was going on."

On a plea of chill, Boyson remained standing by the fire, warming his
hands, looking down upon the other three. Penrose, who belonged to a
military family, reminded himself, as he glanced at the American, of a
recent distinguished book on Military Geography by a Captain Alfred
Boyson. No doubt the same man. A capable face,--the face of the modern
scientific soldier. It breathed alertness; but also some quality warmer
and softer. If the general aspect had been shaped and moulded by an
incessant travail of brain, the humanity of eye and mouth spoke dumbly
to the humanity of others. The council gathered in the vicarage room
felt itself strengthened.

Penrose resumed his questioning of Barnes, and the other two listened
while the whole miserable story of the divorce, in its American aspects,
unrolled. At first Roger showed a certain apathy and brevity; he might
have been fulfilling a task in which he took but small interest; even
the details of chicanery and corruption connected with the trial were
told without heat; he said nothing bitter of his wife--avoided naming
her, indeed, as much as possible.

But when the tale was done he threw back his head with sudden animation
and looked at Boyson.

"Is that about the truth, Boyson? You know."

"Yes, I endorse it," said the American gravely. His face, thin and
tanned, had flushed while Barnes was speaking.

"And you know what all their papers said of me--what _they_ wished
people to believe--that I wasn't fit to have charge of Beatty--that I
should have done her harm?"

His eyes sparkled. He looked almost threateningly at the man whom he
addressed. Boyson met his gaze quietly.

"I didn't believe it."

There was a pause. Then Roger sprang suddenly to his feet, confronting
the men round him.

"Look here!" he said impatiently. "I want some money at once--and a good
lot of it." He brought his fist down heavily on the mantelpiece.
"There's this place of my uncle's, and I'm dashed if I can get a penny
out of it! I went to his solicitors this morning. They drove me mad with
their red-tape nonsense. It will take some time, they say, to get a
mortgage on it, and meanwhile they don't seem inclined to advance me
anything, or a hundred or two, perhaps. What's that? I lost my temper,
and next time I go they'll turn me out, I dare say. But there's the
truth. It's _money_ I want, and if you can't help me to money it's no
use talking."

"And when you get the money what'll you do with it?" asked Penrose.

"Pay half a dozen people who can be trusted to help me kidnap Beatty and
smuggle her over the Canadian frontier. I bungled the thing once. I
don't mean to bungle it again."

The answer was given slowly, without any bravado, but whatever energy of
life there was in the speaker had gone into it.

"And there is no other way?" French's voice from the back was troubled.

"Ask him?" Roger pointed to Boyson.

"Is there any legal way, Boyson, in which I can recover the custody and
companionship of my child?"

Boyson turned away.

"None that I know of--and I have made every possible inquiry."

"And yet," said Barnes, with emphasis, addressing the English barrister,
"by the law of England I am still Daphne's husband and that child's
legal guardian?"

"Certainly."

"And if I could once get her upon ground under the English flag, she
would be mine again, and no power could take her from me?"

"Except the same private violence that you yourself propose to
exercise."

"I'd take care of that!" said Roger briefly.

"How do you mean to do it?" asked French, with knit brows. To be sitting
there in an English vicarage plotting violence against a woman disturbed
him.

"He and I'll manage it," said the quiet voice of the American officer.

The others stared.

"_You?_" said French. "An officer in active service? It might injure
your career!"

"I shall risk it."

A charming smile broke on Penrose's meditative face.

"My dear French, this is much more amusing than the law. But I don't
quite see where _I_ come in." He rose tentatively from his seat.

Boyson, however, did not smile. He looked from one to the other.

"My sister and I introduced Daphne Floyd to Barnes," he said steadily,
"and it is my country, as I hold,--or a portion of it--that allows these
villainies. Some day we shall get a great reaction in the States, and
then the reforms that plenty of us are clamouring for will come about.
Meanwhile, as of course you know"--he addressed French--"New Yorkers and
Bostonians suffer almost as much from the abomination that Nevada and
South Dakota call laws, as Barnes has suffered. Marriage in the Eastern
States is as sacred as with you--South Carolina allows no divorce at
all--but with this licence at our gates, no one is safe, and thousands
of our women, in particular--for the women bring two-thirds of the
actions--are going to the deuce, simply because they have the
opportunity of going. And the children--it doesn't bear thinking of!
Well--no good haranguing! I'm ashamed of my country in this matter--I
have been for a long time--and I mean to help Barnes out, _coute que
coute_! And as to the money, Barnes, you and I'll discuss that."

Barnes lifted a face that quivered, and he and Boyson exchanged looks.

Penrose glanced at the pair. That imaginative power, combined with the
power of drudgery, which was in process of making a great lawyer out of
a Balliol scholar, showed him something typical and dramatic in the two
figures:--in Boyson, on the one hand, so lithe, serviceable, and
resolved, a helpful, mercurial man, ashamed of his country in this one
respect, because he adored her in so many others, penitent and patriot
in one:--in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, a
ship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that very
America which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him.

It was Penrose who broke the silence.

"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked.

Barnes turned to him.

"Not that I know of."

"There's no one else in the case?"

"I never heard of anyone." Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "What
she's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she was
in love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorce
case--that there was nobody."

Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French the
beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of
Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these
three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been
done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through
their reticent speech.

His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break down
his own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimately
ruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke out
into sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthily
delicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spoke
he looked mainly at French.

"There's lots of things you don't know," he said in a hesitating voice,
as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story of
Daphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home many
details that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the three
listeners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, and
stung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him during
his first week's absence from home, after the quarrel--letters from
Daphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston by
their accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them were
hurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs.
Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a day
or two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters--lots of them--to
my wife. I thought I had made everything right--not that there ever had
been anything wrong, you understand,--seriously. But in some ways I had
behaved like a fool."

He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands on his eyes. The
listeners sat or stood motionless.

"Well, I might have spared my pains. The letters were returned to me
from the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was some
time in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she was
through a month of her necessary residence. My God!"--his voice dropped,
became almost inaudible--"if I'd only carried Beatty off _then_!--then
and there--the frontier wasn't far off--without waiting for anything
more. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such a
monstrous thing, and, if she did, that any decent country would aid and
abet her."

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