Marriage a la mode
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Mrs. Humphry Ward >> Marriage a la mode
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Roger reached Heston that night only just in time to dress for dinner.
By this time he was in a wholly different mood; angry with himself, and
full of rueful thought about his wife. Daphne and he had been getting on
anything but well for some time past. He knew that he had several times
behaved badly; why, indeed, that very afternoon, had he held Chloe
Fairmile's hand in the public road, like an idiot? Suppose anyone had
passed? It was only Daphne's tempers and the discomfort at home that
made an hour with Chloe so pleasant--and brought the old recollections
back. He vowed he never thought of her, except when she was there to
make a fool of him--or plague him about those beastly letters. Whereas
Daphne--Daphne was always in his mind, and this eclipse into which their
daily life had passed. He seemed to be always tripping and stumbling,
like a lame man among loose stones; doing or saying what he did not mean
to do or say, and tongue-tied when he should have spoken. Daphne's
jealousy made him ridiculous; he resented it hotly; yet he knew he was
not altogether blameless.
If only something could be done to make Daphne like Heston and the
neighbours! But he saw plainly enough that in spite of all the effort
and money she was pouring out upon the house, it gave her very little
pleasure in return. Her heart was not in it. And as for the neighbours,
she had scarcely a good word now for any of them. Jolly!--just as he was
going to stand for the County Council, with an idea of Parliament later
on! And as for what _he_ wished--what would be good for _him_--that she
never seemed to think of. And, really, some of the things she said now
and then about money--nobody with the spirit of a mouse could stand
them.
To comfort his worries he went first of all to the nursery, where he
found the nursery-maid in charge, and the child already asleep. Miss
Farmer, it appeared, had been enjoying a "day off," and was not expected
back till late. He knelt down beside the little girl, feeding his eyes
upon her. She lay with her delicate face pressed into the pillow, the
small neck visible under the cloud of hair, one hand, the soft palm
uppermost, on the sheet. He bent down and kissed the hand, glad that the
sharp-faced nurse was not there to see. The touch of the fragrant skin
thrilled him with pride and joy; so did the lovely defencelessness of
the child's sleep. That such a possession should have been given to him,
to guard and cherish! There was in his mind a passionate vow to guard
the little thing--aye, with his life-blood; and then a movement of
laughter at his own heroics. Well!--Daphne might give him sons--but he
did not suppose any other child could ever be quite the same to him as
Beatty. He sat in a contented silence, feeding his eyes upon her, as the
soft breath rose and fell. And as he did so, his temper softened and
warmed toward Beatty's mother.
A little later he found Daphne in her room, already dressed for dinner.
He approached her uneasily.
"How tired you look, Daphne! What have you been doing to yourself?"
Daphne stiffly pointed out that she had been standing over the workmen
all day, there being no one else to stand over them, and of course she
was tired. Her manner would have provoked him but for the visiting of an
inward compunction. Instead of showing annoyance he bent down and kissed
her.
"I'll stay and help to-morrow, if you want me, though you know I'm no
good. I say, how much more are you going to do to the house?"
Daphne looked at him coldly. She had not returned the kiss. "Of course,
I know that you don't appreciate in the least what I am doing!"
Roger thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down
uncomfortably. He thought, in fact, that Daphne was spoiling the dear
nondescript old place, and he knew that the neighbourhood thought so
too. Also he particularly disliked the young architect who was
superintending the works ("a priggish ass," who gave himself abominable
airs--except to Daphne, whom he slavishly obeyed, and to Miss Farmer,
with whom Roger had twice caught him gossipping). But he was determined
not to anger his wife, and he held his tongue.
"I wish, anyway, you wouldn't stick at it so closely," he said
discontentedly. "Let's go abroad somewhere for Christmas--Nice, or Monte
Carlo. I am sure you want a change."
"Well, it isn't exactly an enchanting neighbourhood," said Daphne, with
pinched lips.
"I'm awfully sorry you don't like the people here," said Roger,
perplexed. "I dare say they're all stupids."
"That wouldn't matter--if they behaved decently," said Daphne, flushing.
"I suppose that means--if I behaved decently!" cried Roger, turning upon
her.
Daphne faced him, her head in air, her small foot beating the ground, in
a trick it had.
"Well, I'm not likely to forget the Brendon ball, am I?"
Roger's look changed.
"I meant no harm, and you know I didn't," he said sulkily.
"Oh, no, you only made a laughing-stock of _me_!" Daphne turned on her
heel. Suddenly she felt herself roughly caught in Roger's arms.
"Daphne, what _is_ the matter? Why can't we be happy together?"
"Ask yourself," she said, trying to extricate herself, and not
succeeding. "I don't like the people here, and they don't like me. But
as you seem to enjoy flirting with Mrs. Fairmile, there's one person
satisfied."
Roger laughed--not agreeably. "I shall soon think, Daphne, that
somebody's 'put a spell on you,' as my old nurse used to say. I wish I
knew what I could do to break it."
She lay passive in his arms a moment, and then he felt a shiver run
through her, and saw that she was crying. He held her close to him,
kissing and comforting her, while his own eyes were wet. What her
emotion meant, or his own, he could not have told clearly; but it was a
moment for both of healing, of impulsive return, the one to the other,
unspoken penitence on her side, a hidden self-blame on his. She clung to
him fiercely, courting the pressure of his arms, the warm contact of his
youth; while, in his inner mind, he renounced with energy the temptress
Chloe and all her works, vowing to himself that he would give Daphne no
cause, no pretext even, for jealousy, and would bear it patiently if she
were still unjust and tormenting.
"Where have you been all day?" said Daphne at last, disengaging herself,
and brushing the tears away from her eyes--a little angrily, as though
she were ashamed of them.
"I told you this morning. I had a run with the Stoneshire hounds."
"Whom did you meet there?"
"Oh, various old acquaintances. Nobody amusing." He gave two or three
names, his conscience pricking him. Somehow, at that moment, it seemed
impossible to mention Chloe Fairmile.
* * * * *
About eleven o'clock that night, Daphne and Lady Barnes having just gone
upstairs, Roger and a local Colonel of Volunteers who was dining and
spending the night at Heston, were in the smoking-room. Colonel Williams
had come over to discuss Volunteer prospects in the neighbourhood, and
had been delighted to find in the grandson of his old friend, Oliver
Trescoe,--a young fellow whom he and others had too readily regarded as
given over to luxury and soft living--signs of the old public spirit,
the traditional manliness of the family. The two men were talking with
great cordiality, when the sound of a dogcart driving up to the front
door disturbed them.
"Who on earth?--at this time of night?" said Roger.
The butler, entering with fresh cigarettes, explained that Miss Farmer
had only just returned, having missed an earlier train.
"Well, I hope to goodness she won't go and disturb Miss Beatty,"
grumbled Roger; and and then, half to himself, half to his companion, as
the butler departed--"I don't believe she missed her train; she's one of
the cool sort--does jolly well what she likes! I say, Colonel, do you
like 'lady helps'? I don't!"
Half an hour later, Roger, having said good-night to his guest ten
minutes before, was mounting the stairs on his own way to bed, when he
heard in the distance the sound of a closing door and the rustle of a
woman's dress.
Nurse Farmer, he supposed, who had been gossiping with Daphne. His face,
as the candle shone upon it, expressed annoyance. Vaguely, he resented
the kind of intimacy which had grown up lately between Daphne and her
child's nurse. She was not the kind of person to make a friend of; she
bullied Beatty; and she must be got rid of.
Yet when he entered his wife's room, everything was dark, and Daphne was
apparently sound asleep. Her face was hidden from him; and he moved on
tiptoe so as not to disturb her. Evidently it was not she who had been
gossiping late. His mother, perhaps, with her maid.
CHAPTER VIII
In the course of that night Roger Barnes's fate was decided, while he
lay, happily sleeping, beside his wife. Daphne, as soon as she heard his
regular breathing, opened the eyes she had only pretended to close, and
lay staring into the shadows of the room, in which a nightlight was
burning. Presently she got up softly, put on a dressing-gown, and went
to the fire, which she noiselessly replenished; drawing up a chair, she
sank back into it, her arms folded. The strengthening firelight showed
her small white face, amid the masses of her dark hair.
Her whole being was seething with passionate and revengeful thought. It
was as though with violent straining and wrenching the familiar links
and bulwarks of life were breaking down, and as if amid the wreck of
them she found herself looking at goblin faces beyond, growing gradually
used to them, ceasing to be startled by them, finding in them even a
wild attraction and invitation.
[Illustration: "Her whole being was seething with passionate and
revengeful thought."]
So Roger had lied to her. Instead of a casual ride, involving a meeting
with a few old acquaintances, as he had represented to her, he had been
engaged that day in an assignation with Mrs. Fairmile, arranged
beforehand, and carefully concealed from his wife. Miss Farmer had seen
them coming out of a wood together hand in hand! In the public road,
this!--not even so much respect for appearances as might have dictated
the most elementary reticence and decency. The case was so clear that it
sickened her; she shivered with cold and nausea as she lay there by the
now glowing fire which yet gave her no physical comfort. Probably in the
past their relation had gone much farther than Roger had ever confessed
to his wife. Mrs. Fairmile was a woman who would stick at nothing. And
if Daphne were not already betrayed, she could no longer protect
herself. The issue was certain. Such women as Chloe Fairmile are not to
be baulked of what they desire. Good women cannot fight them on equal
terms. And as to any attempt to keep the affections of a husband who
could behave in such a way to the wife who had given him her youth,
herself, and all the resources and facilities of life, Daphne's whole
being stiffened into mingled anguish and scorn as she renounced the
contest. Knowing himself the traitor that he was, he could yet hold her,
kiss her, murmur tender things to her, allow her to cry upon his breast,
to stammer repentance and humbleness. Cowardly! False! Treacherous! She
flung out her hands, rigid, before her in the darkness, as though for
ever putting him away.
Anguish? Yes!--but not of such torturing quality as she could have felt
a year, six months even, before this date. She was astonished that she
could bear her life, that he could sit there in the night stillness,
motionless, holding her breath even, while Roger slept there in the
shadowed bed. Had this thing happened to her before their arrival at
Heston, she must have fallen upon Roger in mad grief and passion, ready
to kill him or herself; must at least have poured out torrents of
useless words and tears. She could not have sat dumb like this; in
misery, but quite able to think things out, to envisage all the dark
possibilities of the future. And not only the future. By a perfectly
logical diversion her thoughts presently went racing to the past. There
was, so to speak, a suspension of the immediate crisis, while she
listened to her own mind--while she watched her own years go by.
It was but rarely that Daphne let her mind run on her own origins. But
on this winter night, as she sat motionless by the fire, she became
conscious of a sudden detachment from her most recent self and life--a
sudden violent turning against both--which naturally threw her back on
the past, on some reflection upon what she had made of herself, by way
of guide to what she might still make of herself, if she struck boldly,
now, while there was yet time, for her own freedom and development.
As to her parents, she never confessed, even to herself, that she owed
them anything, except, of course, the mere crude wealth that her father
had left her. Otherwise she was vaguely ashamed of them both. And
yet!--in her most vital qualities, her love of sensational effect, her
scorn of half-measures, her quick, relentless imagination, her
increasing ostentation and extravagance, she was the true child of the
boastful mercurial Irishman who had married her Spanish mother as part
of a trade bargain, on a chance visit to Buenos Ayres. For twenty years
Daniel Floyd had leased and exploited, had ravaged and destroyed, great
tracts of primaeval forest in the northern regions of his adopted state,
leaving behind him a ruined earth and an impoverished community, but
building up the while a colossal fortune. He had learnt the arts of
municipal "bossing" in one of the minor towns of Illinois, and had then
migrated to Chicago, where for years he was the life and soul of all the
bolder and more adventurous corruption of the city. A jovial, handsome
fellow!--with an actor's face, a bright eye, and a slippery hand. Daphne
had a vivid, and, on the whole, affectionate, remembrance of her father,
of whom, however, she seldom spoke. The thought of her mother, on the
other hand, was always unwelcome. It brought back recollections of storm
and tempest; of wild laughter, and still wilder tears; of gorgeous
dresses, small feet, and jewelled fingers.
No; her parents had but small place in that dramatic autobiography that
Daphne was now constructing for herself. She was not their daughter in
any but the physical sense; she was the daughter of her own works and
efforts.
She leant forward to the fire, her face propped in her hands, going back
in thought to her father's death, when she was fifteen; to her three
years of cloying convent life, and her escape from it, as well as from
the intriguing relations who would have kept her there; to the clever
lawyer who had helped to put her in possession of her fortune, and the
huge sums she had paid him for his services; to her search for
education, her hungry determination to rise in the world, the friends
she had made at college, in New York, Philadelphia, Washington. She had
been influenced by one _milieu_ after another; she had worked hard, now
at music, now at philosophy; had dabbled in girls' clubs, and gone to
Socialist meetings, and had been all through driven on by the gadfly of
an ever-increasing ambition.
Ambition for what! She looked back on this early life with a bitter
contempt. What had it all come to? Marriage with Roger Barnes!--a hasty
passion of which she was already ashamed, for a man who was already
false to her.
What had made her marry him? She did not mince matters with herself in
her reply. She had married him, influenced by a sudden, gust of physical
inclination--by that glamour, too, under which she had seen him in
Washington, a glamour of youth and novelty. If she had seen him first in
his natural environment she would have been on her guard; she would have
realized what it meant to marry a man who could help her own ideals and
ambitions so little. And what, really, had their married life brought
her? Had she ever been _sure_ of Roger?--had she ever been able to feel
proud of him, in the company of really distinguished men?--had she not
been conscious, again and again, when in London, or Paris, or Berlin,
that he was her inferior, that he spoiled her social and intellectual
chances? And his tone toward women had always been a low one; no great
harm in it, perhaps; but it had often wounded and disgusted her.
And then--for climax!--his concealment of the early love affair with
Chloe Fairmile; his weakness and folly in letting her regain her hold
upon him; his behaviour at the Brendon ball, the gossip which, as Agnes
Farmer declared, was all over the neighbourhood, ending in the last
baseness--the assignation, the lies, the hypocrisy of the afternoon!
Enough!--more than enough! What did she care what the English world
thought of her? She would free and right herself in her own way, and
they might hold up what hands they pleased. A passion of wounded vanity,
of disappointed self-love swept through her. She had looked forward to
the English country life; she had meant to play a great part in it. But
three months had been enough to show her the kind of thing--the hopeless
narrowness and Philistinism of these English back-waters. What did these
small squires and country clergy know of the real world, the world that
mattered to _her_, where people had free minds and progressive ideas?
Her resentment of the _milieu_ in which Roger expected her to live
subtly swelled and strengthened her wrath against himself; it made the
soil from which sprang a sudden growth of angry will--violent and
destructive. There was in her little or none of that affinity with a
traditional, a parent England, which is present in so many Americans,
which emerges in them like buried land from the waters. On the contrary,
the pressure of race and blood in her was not towards, but against; not
friendly, but hostile. The nearer she came to the English life, the more
certain forces in her, deeply infused, rose up and made their protest.
The Celtic and Latin strains that were mingled in her, their natural
sympathies and repulsions, which had been indistinct in the girl,
overlaid by the deposits of the current American world, were becoming
dominant in the woman.
* * * * *
Well, thank goodness, modern life is not as the old! There are ways out.
Midnight had just struck. The night was gusty, the north-west wind made
fierce attacks on the square, comfortable house. Daphne rose slowly; she
moved noiselessly across the floor; she stood with her arms behind her
looking down at the sleeping Roger. Then a thought struck her; she
reached out a hand to the new number of an American Quarterly which lay,
with the paper knife in it, on a table beside the bed. She had ordered
it in a mood of jealous annoyance because of a few pages of art
criticism in it by Mrs. Fairmile, which impertinently professed to know
more about the Vitali Signorelli than its present owner did; but she
remembered also an article on "The Future for Women," which had seemed
to her a fine, progressive thing. She turned the pages noiselessly--her
eyes now on the unconscious Roger--now on the book.
"All forms of contract--in business, education, religion, or
law--suffer from the weakness and blindness of the persons making
them--the marriage contract as much as any other. The dictates of
humanity and common-sense alike show that the latter and most
important contract should no more be perpetual than any of the
others."
Again:--
"Any covenant between human beings that fails to produce or promote
human happiness, cannot in the nature of things be of any force or
authority; it is not only a right but a duty to abolish it."
And a little further:--
"Womanhood is the great fact of woman's life. Wifehood and
motherhood are but incidental relations."
Daphne put down the book. In the dim light, the tension of her slender
figure, her frowning brow, her locked arms and hands, made of her a
threatening Fate hovering darkly above the man in his deep, defenceless
sleep.
She was miserable, consumed with jealous anger. But the temptation of a
new licence--a lawless law--was in her veins. Have women been trampled
on, insulted, enslaved?--in America, at least, they may now stand on
their feet. No need to cringe any more to the insolence and cruelty of
men. A woman's life may be soiled and broken; but in the great human
workshop of America it can be repaired. She remembered that in the
majority of American divorces it is the woman who applies for relief.
And why not? The average woman, when she marries, knows much less of
life and the world than the average man. She is more likely--poor
soul!--to make mistakes.
She drew closer to the bed. All round her glimmered the furniture and
appointments of a costly room--the silver and tortoise-shell on the
dressing-table, the long mirrors lining the farther wall, the silk
hangings of the bed. Luxury, as light and soft as skill and money could
make it--the room breathed it; and in the midst stood the young creature
who had designed it, the will within her hardening rapidly to an
irrevocable purpose.
Yes, she had made a mistake! But she would retrieve it. She would free
herself. She would no longer put up with Roger, with his neglect and
deceit--his disagreeable and ungrateful mother--his immoral friends--and
this dull, soul-deadening English life.
Roger moved and murmured. She retreated a little, still looking at him
fixedly. Was it the child's name? Perhaps. He dreamed interminably, and
very often of Beatty. But it did not move her. Beatty, of course, was
_her_ child. Every child belongs to the mother in a far profounder sense
than to the father. And he, too, would be free; he would naturally marry
again.
Case after case of divorce ran through her mind as she stood there; the
persons and circumstances all well known to her. Other stories also, not
personally within her ken; the famous scandals of the time, much
discussed throughout American society. Her wits cleared and steeled. She
began to see the course that she must follow.
It would all depend upon the lawyers; and a good deal--she faced
it--upon money. All sorts of technical phrases, vaguely remembered, ran
through her mind. She would have to recover her American
citizenship--she and the child. A domicile of six months in South
Dakota, or in Wyoming--a year in Philadelphia--she began to recall
information derived of old from Madeleine Verrier, who had, of course,
been forced to consider all these things, and to weigh alternatives.
Advice, of course, must be asked of her at once--and sympathy.
Suddenly, on her brooding, there broke a wave of excitement. Life,
instead of being closed, as in a sense it is, for every married woman,
was in a moment open and vague again; the doors flung wide to flaming
heavens. An intoxication of recovered youth and freedom possessed her.
The sleeping Roger represented things intolerable and outworn. Why
should a woman of her gifts, of her opportunities, be chained for life
to this commonplace man, now that her passion was over?--now that she
knew him for what he was, weak, feather-brained, and vicious? She looked
at him with a kind of exaltation, spurning him from her path.
But the immediate future!--the practical steps! What kind of evidence
would she want?--what kind of witnesses? Something more, no doubt, of
both than she had already. She must wait--temporize--do nothing rashly.
If it was for Roger's good as well as her own that they should be free
of each other--and she was fast persuading herself of this--she must,
for both their sakes, manage the hateful operation without bungling.
What was the alternative? She seemed to ask it of Roger, as she stood
looking down upon him. Patience?--with a man who could never sympathize
with her intellectually or artistically?--the relations of married life
with a husband who made assignations with an old love, under the eyes of
the whole neighbourhood?--the narrowing, cramping influences of English
provincial society? No! she was born for other and greater things, and
she would grasp them. "My first duty is to myself--to my own
development. We have absolutely no _right_ to sacrifice ourselves--as
women have been taught to do for thousands of years."
Bewildered by the rhetoric of her own thoughts, Daphne returned to her
seat by the fire, and sat there wildly dreaming, till once more recalled
to practical possibilities by the passage of the hours on the clock
above her.
Miss Farmer? Everything, it seemed, depended on her. But Daphne had no
doubts of her. Poor girl!--with her poverty-stricken home, her drunken
father lately dismissed from his post, and her evident inclination
towards this clever young fellow now employed in the house--Daphne
rejoiced to think of what money could do, in this case at least; of the
reward that should be waiting for the girl's devotion when the moment
came; of the gifts already made, and the gratitude already evoked. No;
she could be trusted; she had every reason to be true.
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