Marriage a la mode
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Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Marriage a la mode
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"No, thank you," said Daphne, firmly. "It's Mr. French I have come to
see, and I am sure that he will wish to see me. Will you kindly give him
my card? I will come in and wait."
And she brushed past the maid, who was intimidated by the visitor's
fashionable dress and by the drooping feathers of her Paris hat, in
which the sharp olive-skinned face with its magnificent eyes was
picturesquely framed. The girl gave way unwillingly, showed Mrs. Floyd
into a small study looking on the front garden, and left her.
* * * * *
"Elsie!" cried Herbert French, springing from the low chair in which he
had been lounging in his shirt-sleeves with a book when the parlour-maid
found him, "Elsie!"
His wife, who was at the other end of the lawn, playing with the
children, the boy on her back and a pair of girl twins clinging to her
skirts, turned in astonishment and hurried back to him.
"Mrs. Floyd?" They both looked at the card in bewilderment. "Who is it?
Mrs. Floyd?"
Then French's face changed.
"What is this lady like?" he asked peremptorily of the parlour-maid.
"Well, sir, she's a dark lady, dressed very smart----"
"Has she very black eyes?"
"Oh yes, sir!"
"Young?"
The girl promptly replied in the negative, qualifying it a moment
afterward by a perplexed "Well, I shouldn't say so, sir."
French thought a moment.
"Thank you. I will come in."
He turned to his wife with a rapid question, under his breath. "Where is
Roger?"
Elsie stared at him, her colour paling.
"Herbert!--it can't--it can't----"
"I suspect it is--Mrs. Barnes," said French slowly. "Help me on with my
coat, darling. Now then, what shall we do?"
"She can't have come to force herself on him!" cried his wife
passionately.
"Probably she knows nothing of his being here. Did he go for a walk?"
"Yes, towards Sandown. But he will be back directly."
A quick shade of expression crossed French's face, which his wife knew
to mean that whenever Roger was out by himself there was cause for
anxiety. But the familiar trouble was immediately swallowed up in the
new and pressing one.
"What can that woman have come to say?" he asked, half of himself, half
of his wife, as he walked slowly back to the house. Elsie had conveyed
the children to their nurse, and was beside him.
"Perhaps she repents!" The tone was dry and short; it flung a challenge
to misdoing.
"I doubt it! But Roger?" French stood still, pondering. "Keep him,
darling--intercept him if you can. If he must see her, I will come out.
But we mustn't risk a shock."
They consulted a little in low voices. Then French went into the house
and Elsie came back to her children. She stood thinking, her fine face,
so open-browed and purely lined, frowning and distressed.
* * * * *
"You wished to see me, Mrs. Barnes?"
French had closed the door of the study behind him and stood without
offering to shake hands with his visitor, coldly regarding her.
Daphne rose from her seat, reddening involuntarily.
"My name is no longer what you once knew it, Mr. French. I sent you my
card."
French made a slight inclination and pointed to the chair from which she
had risen.
"Pray sit down. May I know what has brought you here?"
Daphne resumed her seat, her small hands fidgeting on her parasol.
"I wished to come and consult with you, Mr. French. I had heard a
distressing account of--of Roger, from a friend in America."
"I see," said French, on whom a sudden light dawned. "You met Boyson at
Niagara--that I knew--and you are here because of what he said to you?"
"Yes, partly." The speaker looked round the room, biting her lip, and
French observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity and
dash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened,
pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knew
from the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotisms
and falsehoods, and his heart hardened. Daphne resumed:
"If Captain Boyson has given you an account of our interview, Mr.
French, it was probably a one-sided one. However, that is _not_ the
point. He _did_ distress me very much by his account, which I gather
came from you--of--of Roger, and although, of course, it is a very
awkward matter for me to move in, I still felt impelled for old times'
sake to come over and see whether I could not help you--and his other
friends--and, of course, his mother----"
"His mother is out of the question," interrupted French. "She is, I am
sorry to say, a helpless invalid."
"Is it really as bad as that? I hoped for better news. Then I apply to
you--to you chiefly. Is there anything that I could do to assist you, or
others, to----"
"To save him?" French put in the words as she hesitated.
Daphne was silent.
"What is your idea?" asked French, after a moment. "You heard, I
presume, from Captain Boyson that my wife and I were extremely anxious
about Roger's ways and habits; that we cannot induce him, or, at any
rate, we have not yet been able to induce him, to give up drinking; that
his health is extremely bad, and that we are sometimes afraid that there
is now some secret in his life of which he is ashamed?"
"Yes," said Daphne, fidgeting with a book on the table. "Yes, that is
what I heard."
"And you have come to suggest something?"
"Is there no way by which Roger can become as free as I now am!" she
said suddenly, throwing back her head.
"By which Roger can obtain his divorce from you--and marry again? None,
in English law."
"But there is--in Colonial law." She began to speak hurriedly and
urgently. "If Roger were to go to New Zealand, or to Australia, he
could, after a time, get a divorce for desertion. I know he could--I
have inquired. It doesn't seem to be certain what effect my action--the
American decree, I mean--would have in an English colony. My lawyers are
going into it. But at any rate there is the desertion and then"--she
grew more eager--"if he married abroad--in the Colony--the marriage
would be valid. No one could say a word to him when he returned to
England."
French looked at her in silence. She went on--with the unconscious
manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and
guide of subordinates:--
"Could we not induce him to go? Could you not? Very likely he would
refuse to see me; and, of course, he has, most unjustly to me, I think,
refused to take any money from me. But the money might be provided
without his knowing where it came from. A young doctor might be sent
with him--some nice fellow who would keep him amused and look after him.
At Heston he used to take a great interest in farming. He might take up
land. I would pay anything--anything! He might suppose it came from some
friend."
French smiled sadly. His eyes were on the ground. She bent forward.
"I beg of you, Mr. French, not to set yourself against me! Of
course"--she drew herself up proudly--"I know what you must think of my
action. Our views are different, irreconcilably different. You probably
think all divorce wrong. We think, in America, that a marriage which has
become a burden to either party is no marriage, and ought to cease. But
that, of course"--she waved a rhetorical hand--"we cannot discuss. I do
not propose for a moment to discuss it. You must allow me my national
point of view. But surely we can, putting all that aside, combine to
help Roger?"
"To marry again?" said French, slowly. "It can't, I fear, be done--what
you propose--in the time. I doubt whether Roger has two years to live."
Daphne started.
"Roger!--to live?" she repeated, in horror. "What is really the matter?
Surely nothing more than care and a voyage could set right?"
French shook his head.
"We have been anxious about him for some time. That terrible attack of
septic pneumonia in New York, as we now know, left the heart injured and
the lungs weakened. He was badly nursed, and his state of mind at the
time--his misery and loneliness--left him little chance. Then the
drinking habit, which he contracted during those wretched months in the
States, has been of course sorely against him. However, we hoped against
hope--Elsie and I--till a few weeks ago. Then someone, we don't know
who, made him go to a specialist, and the verdict is--phthisis; not very
advanced, but certain and definite. And the general outlook is not
favourable."
Daphne had grown pale.
"We must send him away!" she said imperiously. "We must! A voyage, a
good doctor, a dry climate, would save him, of course they would! Why,
there is nothing necessarily fatal now in phthisis! Nothing! It is
absurd to talk as though there were."
Again French looked at her in silence. But as she had lost colour, he
had gained it. His face, which the East End had already stamped, had
grown rosy, his eyes sparkled.
"Oh, do say something! Tell me what you suggest?" cried Daphne.
"Do you really wish me to tell you what I suggest?"
Daphne waited, her eyes first imploring, then beginning to shrink. He
bent forward and touched her on the arm.
"Go, Mrs. Barnes, and ask your husband's forgiveness! What will come of
it I do not know. But you, at least, will have done something to set
yourself right--with God."
The Christian and the priest had spoken; the low voice in its intensity
had seemed to ring through the quiet sun-flooded room. Daphne rose,
trembling with resentment and antagonism.
"It is you, then, Mr. French, who make it impossible for me to
discuss--to help. I shall have to see if I can find some other means of
carrying out my purpose."
There was a voice outside. Daphne turned.
"Who is that?"
French ran to the glass door that opened on the veranda, and trying for
an ordinary tone, waved somebody back who was approaching from without.
Elsie came quickly round the corner of the house, calling to the
new-comer.
But Daphne saw who it was and took her own course. She, too, went to the
window, and, passing French, she stepped into the veranda.
"Roger!"
A man hurried through the dusk. There was an exclamation, a silence. By
this time French was on the lawn, his wife's quivering hand in his.
Daphne retreated slowly into the study and Roger Barnes followed her.
"Leave them alone," said French, and putting an arm round his wife he
led her resolutely away, out of sound and sight.
* * * * *
Barnes stood silent, breathing heavily and leaning on the back of a
chair. The western light from a side window struck full on him. But
Daphne, the wave of excitement spent, was not looking at him. She had
fallen upon a sofa, her face was in her hands.
"What do you want with me?" said Roger at last. Then, in a sudden heat,
"By God, I never wished to see you again!"
Daphne's muffled voice came through her fingers.
"I know that. You needn't tell me so!"
Roger turned away.
"You'll admit it's an intrusion?" he said fiercely. "I don't see what
you and I have got to do with each other now."
Daphne struggled for self-control. After all, she had always managed him
in the old days. She would manage him now.
"Roger--I--I didn't come to discuss the past. That's done with. But--I
heard things about you--that----"
"You didn't like?" he laughed. "I'm sorry, but I don't see what you have
to do with them."
Daphne's hand fidgeted with her dress, her eyes still cast down.
"Couldn't we talk without bitterness? Just for ten minutes? It was from
Captain Boyson that I heard----"
"Oh, Boyson, was that it? And he got his information from French--poor
old Herbert. Well, it's quite true. I'm no longer fit for your--or
his--or anybody's society."
He threw himself into an arm-chair, calmly took a cigarette out of a box
that lay near, and lit it. Daphne at last ventured to look at him. The
first and dominant impression was of something shrunken and diminished.
His blue flannel suit hung loose on his shoulders and chest, his
athlete's limbs. His features had been thinned and graved and scooped by
fever and broken nights; all the noble line and proportion was still
there, but for one who had known him of old the effect was no longer
beautiful but ghastly. Daphne stared at him in dismay.
He on his side observed his visitor, but with a cooler curiosity. Like
French he noticed the signs of change, the dying down of brilliance and
of bloom. To go your own way, as Daphne had done, did not seem to
conduce to a woman's good looks.
At last he threw in a dry interrogation.
"Well?"
"I came to try and help you," Daphne broke out, turning her head away,
"to ask Mr. French what I could do. It made me unhappy----"
"Did it?" He laughed again. "I don't see why. Oh, you needn't trouble
yourself. Elsie and Herbert are awfully good to me. They're all I want,
or at any rate," he hesitated a moment, "they're all I _shall_
want--from now on. Anyway, you know there'd be something grotesque in
your trying your hand at reforming me."
"I didn't mean anything of the kind!" she protested, stung by his tone.
"I--I wanted to suggest something practical--some way by which you
might--release yourself from me--and also recover your health."
"Release myself from you?" he repeated. "That's easier said than done.
Did you mean to send me to the Colonies--was that your idea?"
His smile was hard to bear. But she went on, choking, yet determined.
"That seems to be the only way--in English law. Why shouldn't you take
it? The voyage, the new climate, would probably set you up again. You
need only be away a short time."
He looked at her in silence a moment, fingering his cigarette.
"Thank you," he said at last, "thank you. And I suppose you offered us
money? You told Herbert you would pay all expenses? Oh, don't be angry!
I didn't mean anything uncivil. But," he raised himself with energy from
his lounging position, "at the same time, perhaps you ought to know that
I would sooner die a thousand times over than take a single silver
sixpence that belonged to you!"
Their eyes met, his quite calm, hers sparkling with resentment and pain.
"Of course I can't argue with you if you meet me in that tone," she said
passionately. "But I should have thought----"
"Besides," he interrupted her, "you say it is the only way. You are
quite mistaken. It is not the only way. As far as freeing me goes, you
could divorce me to-morrow--here--if you liked. I have been unfaithful
to you. A strange way of putting it--at the present moment--between you
and me! But that's how it would appear in the English courts. And as to
the 'cruelty'--that wouldn't give _you_ any trouble!"
Daphne had flushed deeply. It was only by a great effort that she
maintained her composure. Her eyes avoided him.
"Mrs. Fairmile?" she said in a low voice.
He threw back his head with a sound of scorn.
"Mrs. Fairmile! You don't mean to tell me, Daphne, to my face, that you
ever believed any of the lies--forgive the expression--that you, and
your witnesses, and your lawyers told in the States--that you bribed
those precious newspapers to tell?"
"Of course I believed it!" she said fiercely. "And as for lies, it was
you who began them."
"You _believed_ that I had betrayed you with Chloe Fairmile?" He raised
himself again, fixing his strange deep-set gaze upon her.
"I never said----"
"No! To that length you didn't quite go. I admit it. You were able to
get your way without it." He sank back in his chair again. "No, my
remark had nothing to do with Chloe. I have never set eyes on her since
I left you at Heston. But--there was a girl, a shop-girl, a poor little
thing, rather pretty. I came across her about six months ago--it doesn't
matter how. She loves me, she was awfully good to me, a regular little
brick. Some day I shall tell Herbert all about her--not yet--though, of
course, he suspects. She'd serve your purpose, if you thought it worth
while. But you won't----"
"You're--living with her--now?"
"No. I broke with her a fortnight ago, after I'd seen those doctors. She
made me see them, poor little soul. Then I went to say good-bye to her,
and she," his voice shook a little, "she took it hard. But it's all
right. I'm not going to risk her life, or saddle her with a dying man.
She's with her sister. She'll get over it."
He turned his head towards the window, his eyes pursued the white sails
on the darkening blue outside.
"It's been a bad business, but it wasn't altogether my fault. I saved
her from someone else, and she saved me, once or twice, from blowing my
brains out."
"What did the doctors say to you?" asked Daphne, brusquely, after a
pause.
"They gave me about two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock
off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes
caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair
nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't
let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are a
number of things I want to know. Tell me everything you can remember
about Beatty that last six months--and about her illness, you
understand--never mind repeating what you told Boyson, and he told me.
But there's lots more, there must be. Did she ever ask for me? Boyson
said you couldn't remember. But you must remember!"
He came closer still, his threatening eyes upon her. And as he did so,
the dark presence of ruin and death, of things damning and irrevocable,
which had been hovering over their conversation, approached with
him--flapped their sombre wings in Daphne's face. She trembled all over.
"Yes," she said, faintly, "she did ask for you."
"Ah!" He gave a cry of delight. "Tell me--tell me at
once--everything--from the beginning!"
And held by his will, she told him everything--all the piteous story of
the child's last days--sobbing herself; and for the first time making
much of the little one's signs of remembering her father, instead of
minimizing and ignoring them, as she had done in the talk with Boyson.
It was as though for the first time she were trying to stanch a wound
instead of widening it.
He listened eagerly. The two heads--the father and mother--drew closer;
one might have thought them lovers still, united by tender and sacred
memories.
But at last Roger drew himself away. He rose to his feet.
"I'll forgive you much for that!" he said with a long breath. "Will you
write it for me some day--all you've told me?"
She made a sign of assent.
"Well, now, you mustn't stay here any longer. I suppose you've got a
carriage? And we mustn't meet again. There's no object in it. But I'll
remember that you came."
She looked at him. In her nature the great deeps were breaking up. She
saw him as she had seen him in her first youth. And, at last, what she
had done was plain to her.
With a cry she threw herself on the floor beside him. She pressed his
hand in hers.
"Roger, let me stay! Let me nurse you!" she panted. "I didn't
understand. Let me be your friend! Let me help! I implore--I implore
you!"
He hesitated a moment, then he lifted her to her feet decidedly, but not
unkindly.
"What do you mean?" he said, slowly. "Do you mean that you wish us to be
husband and wife again? You are, of course, my wife, in the eye of
English law, at this moment."
"Let me try and help you!" she pleaded again, breaking into bitter
tears. "I didn't--I didn't understand!"
He shook his head.
"You can't help me. I--I'm afraid I couldn't bear it. We mustn't meet.
It--it's gone too deep."
He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away to the window. She
stood helplessly weeping.
When he returned he was quite composed again.
"Don't cry so," he said, calmly. "It's done. We can't help it. And don't
make yourself too unhappy about me. I've had awful times. When I was ill
in New York--it was like hell. The pain was devilish, and I wasn't used
to being alone, and nobody caring a damn, and everybody believing me a
cad and a bully. But I got over that. It was Beatty's death that hit me
so hard, and that I wasn't there. It's that, somehow, I can't get
over--that you did it--that you could have had the heart. It would
always come between us. No, we're better apart. But I'll tell you
something to comfort you. I've given up that girl, as I've told you, and
I've given up drink. Herbert won't believe it, but he'll find it is so.
And I don't mean to die before my time. I'm going out to Switzerland
directly. I'll do all the correct things. You see, when a man _knows_
he's going to die, well," he turned away, "he gets uncommonly curious as
to what's going to come next."
He walked up and down a few turns. Daphne watched him.
"I'm not pious--I never was. But after all, the religious people profess
to know something about it, and nobody else does. Just supposing it were
true?"
He stopped short, looking at her. She understood perfectly that he had
Beatty in his mind.
"Well, anyhow, I'm going to live decently for the rest of my time--and
die decently. I'm not going to throw away chances. And don't trouble
yourself about money. There's enough left to carry me through. Good-bye,
Daphne!" He held out his hand to her.
She took it, still dumbly weeping. He looked at her with pity.
"Yes, I know, you didn't understand what you were doing. But you see,
Daphne, marriage is----" he sought rather painfully for his words, "it's
a big thing. If it doesn't make us, it ruins us; I didn't marry you for
the best of reasons, but I was very fond of you--honour bright! I loved
you in my way, I should have loved you more and more. I should have been
a decent fellow if you'd stuck to me. I had all sorts of plans; you
might have taught me anything. I was a fool about Chloe Fairmile, but
there was nothing in it, you know there wasn't. And now it's all rooted
up and done with. Women like to think such things can be mended, but
they can't--they can't, indeed. It would be foolish to try."
Daphne sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. He drew a
long and painful breath. "I'm afraid I must go," he said waveringly.
"I--I can't stand this any longer. Good-bye, Daphne, good-bye."
She only sobbed, as though her life dissolved in grief. He drew near to
her, and as she wept, hidden from him, he laid his hand a moment on her
shoulder. Then he took up his hat.
"I'm going now," he said in a low voice. "I shan't come back till you
have gone."
She heard him cross the room, his steps in the veranda. Outside, in the
summer dark, a figure came to meet him. French drew Roger's arm into
his, and the two walked away. The shadows of the wooded lane received
them.
A woman came quickly into the room.
Elsie French looked down upon the sobbing Daphne, her own eyes full of
tears, her hands clasped.
"Oh, you poor thing!" she said, under her breath. "You poor thing!" And
she knelt down beside her and folded her arms round her.
So from the same heart that had felt a passionate pity for the victim,
compassion flowed out on the transgressor. For where others feel the
tragedy of suffering, the pure in heart realize with an infinitely
sharper pain the tragedy of guilt.
THE END
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Amiel's Journal (translated)
Miss Bretherton
Robert Elsmere
The History of David Grieve
Marcella
Sir George Tressady
Helbeck of Bannisdale
Eleanor
Lady Rose's Daughter
The Marriage of William Ashe
Agatha
Fenwick's Career
Milly and Olly
The Testing of Diana Mallory
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