Marriage a la mode

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

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Boyson made a movement of protest, as though he could not listen any
longer in silence.

"I am ashamed to remind you, Barnes,--again--that your case is no worse
than that of scores of American citizens. We are the first to suffer
from our own enormities."

"Perhaps," said Barnes absently, "perhaps."

His impulse of speech dropped. He sat, drearily staring into the fire,
absorbed in recollection.

* * * * *

Penrose had gone. So had Boyson. Roger was sitting by the fire in the
vicar's study, ministered to by Elsie French and her children. By common
consent the dismal subject of the day had been put aside. There was an
attempt to cheer and distract him. The little boy of four was on his
knee, declaiming the "Owl and the Pussy Cat," while Roger submissively
turned the pages and pointed to the pictures of that immortal history.
The little girl of two, curled up on her mother's lap close by, listened
sleepily, and Elsie, applauding and prompting as a properly regulated
mother should, was all the time, in spirit, hovering pitifully about her
guest and his plight. There was in her, as in Boyson, a touch of
patriotic remorse; and all the pieties of her own being, all the sacred
memories of her own life, combined to rouse in her indignation and
sympathy for Herbert's poor friend. The thought of what Daphne Barnes
had done was to her a monstrosity hardly to be named. She spoke to the
young man kindly and shyly, as though she feared lest any chance word
might wound him; she was the symbol, in her young motherliness, of all
that Daphne had denied and forsaken. "When would America--dear, dear
America!--see to it that such things were made impossible!"

Roger meanwhile was evidently cheered and braced. The thought of the
interview to which Boyson had confidentially bidden him on the morrow
ran warmly in his veins, and the children soothed him. The little boy
especially, who was just Beatty's age, excited in him a number of
practical curiosities. How about the last teeth? He actually inserted a
coaxing and inquiring finger, the babe gravely suffering it. Any trouble
with them? Beatty had once been very ill with hers, at Philadelphia,
mostly caused, however, by some beastly, indigestible food that the
nurse had let her have. And they allowed her to sit up much too late.
Didn't Mrs. French think seven o'clock was late enough for any child not
yet four? One couldn't say that Beatty was a very robust child, but
healthy--oh yes, healthy!--none of your sickly, rickety little things.

The curtains had been closed. The street children, the electric light
outside, were no longer visible. Roger had begun to talk of departure,
the baby had fallen fast asleep in her mother's arms, when there was
another loud ring at the front door.

French, who was expecting the headmaster of his church schools, gathered
up some papers and left the room. His wife, startled by what seemed an
exclamation from him in the hall outside, raised her head a moment to
listen; but the sound of voices--surely a woman's voice?--died abruptly
away, and the door of the dining-room closed. Roger heard nothing; he
was laughing and crooning over the boy.

"The Pobble that lost his toes
Had once as many as we."

The door opened. Herbert stood on the threshold beckoning to her. She
rose in terror, the child in her arms, and went out to him. In a minute
she reappeared in the doorway, her face ashen-white, and called to the
little boy. He ran to her, and Roger rose, looking for the hat he had
put down on entering.

Then French came in, and behind him a lady in black, dishevelled, bathed
in tears. The vicar hung back. Roger turned in astonishment.

"Mother! You here? Mother!"--he hurried to her--"what's the matter?"

She tottered toward him with outstretched hands.

"Oh Roger, Roger!"

His name died away in a wail as she clasped him.

"What is it, mother?"

"It's Beatty--my son!--my darling Roger!" She put up her hands
piteously, bending his head down to her. "It's a cable from Washington,
from that woman, Mrs. Verrier. They did everything, Roger--it was only
three days--and hopeless always. Yesterday convulsion came on--and this
morning----" Her head dropped against her son's breast as her voice
failed her. He put her roughly from him.

"What are you talking of, mother! Do you mean that Beatty has been ill?"

"She died last night. Roger--my darling son--my poor Roger!"

"Died--last night--Beatty?"

French in silence handed him the telegram. Roger disengaged himself and
walked to the fireplace, standing motionless, with his back to them, for
a minute, while they held their breaths. Then he began to grope again
for his hat, without a word.

"Come home with me, Roger!" implored his mother, pursuing him. "We must
bear it--bear it together. You see--she didn't suffer"--she pointed to
the message--"the darling!--the darling!"

Her voice lost itself in tears. But Roger brushed her away, as though
resenting her emotion, and made for the door.

French also put out a hand.

"Roger, dear, dear old fellow! Stay here with us--with your mother.
Where are you going?"

Roger looked at his watch unsteadily.

"The office will be closed," he said to himself; "but I can put some
things together."

"Where are you going, Roger?" cried Lady Barnes, pursuing him. Roger
faced her.

"It's Tuesday. There'll be a White Star boat to-morrow."

"But, Roger, what can you do? She's gone, dear--she's gone. And before
you can get there--long before--she will be in her grave."

A spasm passed over his face, into which the colour rushed. Without
another word he wrenched himself from her, opened the front door, and
ran out into the night.

CHAPTER X

"Was there ever anything so poetic, so suggestive?" said a charming
voice. "One might make a new Turner out of it--if one just happened to
be Turner!--to match 'Rain: Steam, and Speed.'"

"What would you call it--'Mist, Light, and Spring'?"

Captain Boyson leant forward, partly to watch the wonderful landscape
effect through which the train was passing, partly because his young
wife's profile, her pure cheek and soft hair, were so agreeably seen
under the mingled light from outside.

They were returning from their wedding journey. Some six weeks before
this date Boyson had married in Philadelphia a girl coming from one of
the old Quaker stocks of that town, in whose tender steadfastness of
character a man inclined both by nature and experience to expect little
from life had found a happiness that amazed him.

The bridegroom, also, had just been appointed to the Military
Attacheship at the Berlin Embassy, and the couple were, in fact, on
their way south to New York and embarkation. But there were still a few
days left of the honeymoon, of which they had spent the last half in
Canada, and on this May night they were journeying from Toronto along
the southern shore of Lake Ontario to the pleasant Canadian hotel which
overlooks the pageant of Niagara. They had left Toronto in bright
sunshine, but as they turned the corner of the lake westward, a white
fog had come creeping over the land as the sunset fell.

But the daylight was still strong, the fog thin; so that it appeared
rather as a veil of gold, amethyst, and opal, floating over the country,
now parting altogether, now blotting out the orchards and the fields.
And into the colour above melted the colour below. For the orchards that
cover the Hamilton district of Ontario were in bloom, and the snow of
the pear-trees, the flush of the peach-blossom broke everywhere through
the warm cloud of pearly mist; while, just as Mrs. Boyson spoke, the
train had come in sight of the long flashing line of the Welland Canal,
which wound its way, outlined by huge electric lamps, through the sunset
and the fog, till the lights died in that northern distance where
stretched the invisible shore of the great lake. The glittering
waterway, speaking of the labour and commerce of men, the blossom-laden
earth, the white approaching mist, the softly falling night:--the
girl-bride could not tear herself from the spectacle. She sat beside the
window entranced. But her husband had captured her hand, and into the
overflowing beauty of nature there stole the thrill of their love.

"All very well!" said Boyson presently. "But a fog at Niagara is no
joke!"

The night stole on, and the cloud through which they journeyed grew
denser. Up crept the fog, on stole the night. The lights of the canal
faded, the orchards sank into darkness, and when the bride and
bridegroom reached the station on the Canadian side the bride's pleasure
had become dismay.

"Oh, Alfred, we shan't see anything!"

And, indeed, as their carriage made its slow progress along the road
that skirts the gorge, they seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the
fog. A white darkness, as though of impenetrable yet glimmering cloud,
above and around them; a white abyss beneath them; and issuing from it
the thunderous voice of wild waters, dim first and distant, but growing
steadily in volume and terror.

"There are the lights of the bridge!" cried Boyson, "and the towers of
the aluminum works. But not a vestige of the Falls! Gone! Wiped out! I
say, darling, this is going to be a disappointment."

Mrs. Boyson, however, was not so sure. The lovely "nocturne" of the
evening plain had passed into a Vision or Masque of Force that captured
the mind. High above the gulf rose the towers of the great works,
transformed by the surging fog and darkness into some piled and castled
fortress; a fortress of Science held by Intelligence. Lights were in the
towers, as of genii at their work; lights glimmered here and there on
the face of the farther cliff, as though to measure the vastness of the
gorge and of that resounding vacancy towards which they moved. In front,
the arch of the vast suspension bridge, pricked in light, crossed the
gulf, from nothingness to nothingness, like that sky bridge on which the
gods marched to Walhalla. Otherwise, no shape, no landmark; earth and
heaven had disappeared.

"Here we are at the hotel," said Boyson. "There, my dear,"--he pointed
ironically--"is the American Fall, and there--is the Canadian! Let me
introduce you to Niagara!"

They jumped out of the carriage, and while their bags were being carried
in they ran to the parapeted edge of the cliff in front of the hotel.
Niagara thundered in their ears; the spray of it beat upon their faces;
but of the two great Falls immediately in front of them they saw nothing
whatever. The fog, now cold and clammy, enwrapped them; even the bright
lights of the hotel, but a stone's throw distant, were barely visible;
and the carriage still standing at the steps had vanished.

Suddenly, some common impulse born of the moment and the scene--of its
inhuman ghostliness and grandeur--drew them to each other. Boyson threw
his arm round his young wife and pressed her to him, kissing her face
and hair, bedewed by the spray. She clung to him passionately, trembling
a little, as the roar deafened them and the fog swept round them.

* * * * *

As the Boysons lingered in the central hall of the hotel, reading some
letters which had been handed to them, a lady in black passed along the
gallery overhead and paused a moment to look at the new arrivals brought
by the evening train.

As she perceived Captain Boyson there was a quick, startled movement;
she bent a moment over the staircase, as though to make sure of his
identity, and then ran along the gallery to a room at the farther end.
As she opened the door a damp cold air streamed upon her, and the
thunder of the Falls, with which the hotel is perpetually filled, seemed
to redouble.

Three large windows opposite to her were, in fact, wide open; the room,
with its lights dimmed by fog, seemed hung above the abyss.

An invalid couch stood in front of the window, and upon it lay a pale,
emaciated woman, breathing quickly and feebly. At the sound of the
closing door, Madeleine Verrier turned.

"Oh, Daphne, I was afraid you had gone out! You do such wild things!"

Daphne Barnes came to the side of the couch.

"Darling, I only went to speak to your maid for a moment. Are you sure
you can stand all this damp fog?"

As she spoke Daphne took up a fur cloak lying on a chair near, and
wrapped herself warmly in it.

"I can't breathe when they shut the windows. But it is too cold for
you."

"Oh, I'm all right in this." Daphne drew the cloak round her.

Inwardly she said to herself, "Shall I tell her the Boysons are here?
Yes, I must. She is sure to hear it in some way."

So, stooping over the couch, she said:

"Do you know who arrived this evening? The Alfred Boysons. I saw them in
the hall just now."

"They're on their honeymoon?" asked the faint voice, after a just
perceptible pause.

Daphne assented. "She seems a pretty little thing."

Madeleine Verrier opened her tired eyes to look at Daphne. Mrs.
Floyd--as Daphne now called herself--was dressed in deep black. The
costly gown revealed a figure which had recently become substantial, and
the face on which the electric light shone had nothing left in it of the
girl, though Daphne Floyd was not yet thirty. The initial beauty of
complexion was gone; so was the fleeting prettiness of youth. The eyes
were as splendid as ever, but combined with the increased paleness of
the cheeks, the greater prominence and determination of the mouth, and a
certain austerity in the dressing of the hair, which was now firmly
drawn back from the temples round which it used to curl, and worn high,
_a la Marquise_, they expressed a personality--a formidable
personality--in which self-will was no longer graceful, and power no
longer magnetic. Madeleine Verrier gazed at her friend in silence. She
was very grateful to Daphne, often very dependent on her. But there were
moments when she shrank from her, when she would gladly never have seen
her again. Daphne was still erect, self-confident, militant; whereas
Madeleine knew herself vanquished--vanquished both in body and soul.

Certain inner miseries and discomforts had been set vibrating by the
name of Captain Boyson.

"You won't want to see him or come across him?" she said abruptly.

"Who? Alfred Boyson? I am not afraid of him in the least. He may say
what he pleases--or think what he pleases. It doesn't matter to me."

"When did you see him last?"

Daphne hesitated a moment. "When he came to ask me for certain things
which had belonged to Beatty."

"For Roger? I remember. It must have been painful."

"Yes," said Daphne unwillingly, "it was. He was very unfriendly. He
always has been--since it happened. But I bore him no malice"--the tone
was firm--"and the interview was short."

"----" The half inaudible word fell like a sigh from Madeleine's lips as
she closed her eyes again to shut out the light which teased them. And
presently she added, "Do you ever hear anything now--from England?"

"Just what I might expect to hear--what more than justifies all that I
did."

Daphne sat rigid on her chair, her hands crossed on her lap. Mrs.
Verrier did not pursue the conversation.

Outside the fog grew thicker and darker. Even the lights on the bridge
were now engulfed. Daphne began to shiver in her fur cloak. She put out
a cold hand and took one of Mrs. Verrier's.

"Dear Madeleine! Indeed, indeed, you ought to let me move you from this
place. Do let me! There's the house at Stockbridge all ready. And in
July I could take you to Newport. I must be off next week, for I've
promised to take the chair at a big meeting at Buffalo on the 29th. But
I can't bear to leave you behind. We could make the journey quite easy
for you. That new car of mine is very comfortable."

"I know it is. But, thank you, dear, I like this hotel; and it will be
summer directly."

Daphne hesitated. A strong protest against "morbidness" was on her lips,
but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire,
the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was
real--terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce
as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the eternal flow and
conflict at the heart of things. Daphne knew well that, mingled with
this primitive, cosmic voice, there was--for Madeleine Verrier--another;
a plaintive, human cry, that was drawing the life out of her breast, the
blood from her veins, like some baneful witchcraft of old. But she dared
not speak of it; she and the doctor who attended Mrs. Verrier dared no
longer name the patient's "obsession" even to each other. They had tried
to combat it, to tear her from this place; with no other result, as it
seemed, than to hasten the death-process which was upon her. Gently, but
firmly, she had defied them, and they knew now that she would always
defy them. For a year past, summer and winter, she had lived in this
apartment facing the Falls; her nurses found her very patient under the
incurable disease which had declared itself; Daphne came to stay with
her when arduous engagements allowed, and Madeleine was always grateful
and affectionate. But certain topics, and certain advocacies, had
dropped out of their conversation--not by Daphne's will. There had been
no spoken recantation; only the prophetess prophesied no more; and of
late, especially when Daphne was not there--so Mrs. Floyd had
discovered--a Roman Catholic priest had begun to visit Mrs. Verrier.
Daphne, moreover, had recently noticed a small crucifix, hidden among
the folds of the loose black dress which Madeleine commonly wore.

* * * * *

Daphne had changed her dress and dismissed her maid. Although it was
May, a wood-fire had been lighted in her room to counteract the chilly
damp of the evening. She hung over it, loth to go back to the
sitting-room, and plagued by a depression that not even her strong will
could immediately shake off. She wished the Boysons had not come. She
supposed that Alfred Boyson would hardly cut her; but she was tolerably
certain that he would not wish his young wife to become acquainted with
her. She scorned his disapproval of her; but she smarted under it. It
combined with Madeleine's strange delusions to put her on the defensive;
to call out all the fierceness of her pride; to make her feel herself
the champion of a sound and reasonable view of life as against weakness
and reaction.

Madeleine's dumb remorse was, indeed, the most paralyzing and baffling
thing; nothing seemed to be of any avail against it, now that it had
finally gained the upper hand. There had been dark times, no doubt, in
the old days in Washington; times when the tragedy of her husband's
death had overshadowed her. But in the intervals, what courage and
boldness, what ardour in the declaration of that new Feminist gospel to
which Daphne had in her own case borne witness! Daphne remembered well
with what feverish readiness Madeleine had accepted her own pleas after
her flight from England; how she had defended her against hostile
criticism, had supported her during the divorce court proceedings, and
triumphed in their result. "You are unhappy? And he deceived you? Well,
then, what more do you want? Free yourself, my dear, free yourself! What
right have you to bear more children to a man who is a liar and a
shuffler? It is our generation that must suffer, for the liberty of
those that come after!"

What had changed her? Was it simply the approach of mortal illness, the
old questioning of "what dreams may come"? Superstition, in fact? As a
girl she had been mystical and devout; so Daphne had heard.

Or was it the death of little Beatty, to whom she was much attached? She
had seen something of Roger during that intermediate Philadelphia stage,
when he and Beatty were allowed to meet at her house; and she had once
or twice astonished and wounded Daphne at that time by sudden
expressions of pity for him. It was she who had sent the cable message
announcing the child's death, wording it as gently as possible, and had
wept in sending it.

"As if I hadn't suffered too!" cried Daphne's angry thought. And she
turned to look at the beautiful miniature of Beatty set in pearls that
stood upon her dressing-table. There was something in the recollection
of Madeleine's sensibility with regard to the child--as in that of her
compassion for the father's suffering--that offended Daphne. It seemed a
reflection upon herself, Beatty's mother, as lacking in softness and
natural feeling.

On the contrary! She had suffered terribly; but she had thought it her
duty to bear it with courage, not to let it interfere with the
development of her life. And as for Roger, was it her fault that he had
made it impossible for her to keep her promise? That she had been forced
to separate Beatty from him? And if, as she understood now from various
English correspondents, it was true that Roger had dropped out of decent
society, did it not simply prove that she had guessed his character
aright, and had only saved herself just in time?

It was as though the sudden presence of Captain Boyson under the same
roof had raised up a shadowy adversary and accuser, with whom she must
go on thus arguing, and hotly defending herself, in a growing
excitement. Not that she would ever stoop to argue with Alfred Boyson
face to face. How could he ever understand the ideals to which she had
devoted her powers and her money since the break-up of her married life?
He could merely estimate what she had done in the commonest, vulgarest
way. Yet who could truthfully charge her with having obtained her
divorce in order thereby to claim any fresh licence for herself? She
looked back now with a cool amazement on that sudden rush of passion
which had swept her into marriage, no less than the jealousy which had
led her to break with Roger. She was still capable of many kinds of
violence; but not, probably, of the violence of love. The influence of
sex and sense upon her had weakened; the influence of ambition had
increased. As in many women of Southern race, the period of hot blood
had passed into a period of intrigue and domination. Her wealth gave her
power, and for that power she lived.

Yes, she was personally desolate, but she had stood firm, and her reward
lay in the fact that she had gathered round her an army of dependents
and followers--women especially--to whom her money and her brains were
indispensable. There on the table lay the plans for a new Women's
College, on the broadest and most modern lines, to which she was soon to
devote a large sum of money. The walls should have been up by now but
for a quarrel with her secretary, who had become much too independent,
and had had to be peremptorily dismissed at a moment's notice. But the
plan was a noble one, approved by the highest authorities; and Daphne,
looking to posterity, anticipated the recognition that she herself might
never live to see. For the rest she had given herself--with
reservations--to the Feminist movement. It was not in her nature to give
herself wholly to anything; and she was instinctively critical of people
who professed to be her leaders, and programmes to which she was
expected to subscribe. Wholehearted devotion, which, as she rightly
said, meant blind devotion, had never been her line; and she had been on
one or two occasions offensively outspoken on the subject of certain
leading persons in the movement. She was not, therefore, popular with
her party, and did not care to be; her pride of money held her apart
from the rank and file, the college girls, and typists, and journalists
who filled the Feminist meetings, and often made themselves, in her
eyes, supremely ridiculous, because of what she considered their silly
provinciality and lack of knowledge of the world.

Yet, of course, she was a "Feminist"--and particularly associated with
those persons in the suffrage camp who stood for broad views on marriage
and divorce. She knew very well that many other persons in the same camp
held different opinions; and in public or official gatherings was always
nervously--most people thought arrogantly--on the look-out for affronts.
Meanwhile, everywhere, or almost everywhere, her money gave her power,
and her knowledge of it was always sweet to her. There was nothing in
the world--no cause, no faith--that she could have accepted "as a little
child." But everywhere, in her own opinion, she stood for Justice;
justice for women as against the old primaeval tyranny of men; justice,
of course, to the workman, and justice to the rich. No foolish
Socialism, and no encroaching Trusts! A lucid common sense, so it seemed
to her, had been her cradle-gift.

And with regard to Art, how much she had been able to do! She had
generously helped the public collections, and her own small gallery, at
the house in Newport, was famous throughout England and America. That in
the course of the preceding year she had found among the signatures,
extracted from visitors by the custodian in charge, the name of Chloe
Fairmile, had given her a peculiar satisfaction.

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