That’s over, at any rate,” said Jack, when he had come to the side of Priscilla in the dining-room. He was smiling, but his face was pale, and his fingers that held his cigar were twitching. “I didn’t say just what I meant to say, but I think I said enough.”
“Every word that you said was the right word,” she cried. “You spoke like a man who knows that a fight has to be faced, and does not fear to face it. Dearest, you were splendid; only—what do you know about him? Who has been telling you anything?—that about the woman—who suggested to you that he had gone to a woman?”
“I have had experience of men of all sorts and conditions. I knew when I saw the fellow that I had to deal with a man on whom such a shot would tell. It was a shot, and I hope that it may turn out to have been a happy one for us. What was the name he mentioned?—someone who he said had been giving him away?”
“Lyman.”
“Lyman. So it was. We must make a note of that. Lyman is the name of the man that is ready to give him away. Now, who is Lyman?”
“Lyman is the name of the captain of the barque that was wrecked on the coast of Nova Scotia. He was among the saved.”
“You knew that? Well, that’s so much. I’m not sure that it’s a great deal, but the smallest contribution will be thankfully received.”
“Another mystery—that postcard. It was from the gunmakers—about the last cartridges. What would you have learned if he had recognized the handwriting of the clerk?”
“That was a little dodge of mine to get from him a piece of undoubted evidence of his identity. You see, I wasn’t quite certain that he was the man. There are so many men ready to carry out some scheme of imposture if they only get the chance. Lord! the cases that I have heard of! Now, what more likely than that someone on the look-out for a job should have read the accounts that appeared in the papers of the heroic death of Marcus Blaydon, and then got hold of the idea that it would pay to come to me with a story of how he had not been drowned, and with a demand for his wife or a pretty fair sum to keep away?”
“There can be no doubt that he is Marcus Blaydon—oh, none whatever. I wish there was even the smallest chance of a chance. But how would the postcard prove anything?”
“Well, an hour ago I found that card on the mantelpiece, and I gave it a light coating of gum. By that means I got an excellent impression of his fingers, and by good luck his thumb also. Now, if I send that card to the governor of the gaol where the man spent a year, he will tell me, in the course of a post or two, if he is Marcus Blaydon or Marcus Aurelius—see?”
She did see. She saw very clearly that the man whose education in a certain direction she had airily undertaken, possessed some elements of knowledge in another direction. He had not mis-spent his years of wandering. He had come to know something of his fellow men and their ways. She was well aware of the fact that, however resolute, however brave she might have been in meeting that man face to face at the critical moment, she would not have succeeded in getting rid of him as easily as Jack had got rid of him; and her admiration for Jack had proportionately increased. Women love a man who is successful with women, but they worship a man who is successful with men.
Priscilla gazed in admiration at the man before her.
“You got the better of him in every way,” she said “He was like a child in your hands—a foolish boy.”
“We’ll get the better of him in the long run, too, you may be sure of that,” he said.
The morning’s work had immeasurably increased his admiration for her. She had only said one word during the whole of that time spent in the library. If a man esteems a low voice as a most excellent thing in a woman, he bows down before the wisdom of a woman who has a great deal to say and yet can keep silent. And surely no woman alive possessed the wisdom of his Priscilla in this respect. She had done neither coaxing nor wheedling of the electors of the Nuttingford division; she had resorted to none of those disgusting flatteries of which the wives or the sisters of other candidates whom he could name had been guilty even in bonnie Scotland, where Conscience is understood to be the only consideration to make her sturdy sons vote this way or that. No; his Priscilla had won him the election by her silence; and in the same way she had allowed him to send Marcus Blaydon out of the house.
“You don’t think I was a little too high-handed with him?” said he, after a thoughtful pause.
She made an expressive motion of negation with both hands.
“The sooner it’s over the sooner to sleep, dear Jack,” she said. “There’s nothing so dreadful as suspense. We shall never know a moment’s ease until the thing is over—or, at any rate, begun. The sooner he begins the better pleased will I be.”
“I don’t think that I gave him any excuse for dallying,” said he, grimly.
“What will his next step be, do you fancy?” she asked. “Tell me what he can do beyond making the newspapers publish the story of his escape. I know how they will do it—with the column headed in big letters, ‘A Modern Enoch Arden.’ They won’t have the sense to see that he has nothing of Enoch Arden about him.”
“We shall have to face some nasty bits of publicity but we’ll face them,” said he, resolutely. “He has plainly been in touch with a man of the law; he had got hold of that legal jargon about conjugal rights. He will have to appeal to a judge to make an order for you to go to him.”
“But no judge will make such an order—surely not, Jack?”
“You may take it from me that he will get his order.”
“Is such a thing possible?”
“Absolutely certain, I should say.”
“And what then?”
“Nothing. The judge who makes the order has no way of enforcing it. Only if the man can carry you off he has the law on his side. You had much better not let him carry you off after he gets his order, Priscilla.”
“Or before it. I suppose that he has the law on his side as matters stand at present.”
“I suppose he has. But when he gets his order and you refuse to obey it, he will have a very good chance of getting a divorce.”
“It would be hoping too much to expect that he will do us such a good turn. So then we shall be the same as before.”
“That’s what I have been thinking; but I’ve also been thinking that if you made an application to have your marriage to him annulled, the chances are greatly in favour of your having that application granted.”
“Jack, you are talking like a lawyer. I did not know that you could give an opinion on these points so definitely.”
“I only speak as a layman, from my recollection of certain cases that have appeared from time to time in the papers. I may be all wrong—remember that. We may have to fall back upon something that Captain Lyman knows, and try for a divorce.”
“That was why you made that shot which showed your knowledge of men such as he is.”
“I confess that I hoped to get him to commit himself.”
“And he did.”
“Yes; but unfortunately his doing so will not count for anything in a court of law. We shall have to produce evidence as to the woman—perhaps even the woman herself. If we find that, immediately after leaving gaol he went off to her and deserted you—the court would place great stress upon his desertion of you—we might have a very good chance of getting a divorce.”
“Only a good chance?”
“It would be a layman’s folly—even a lawyer’s folly—to talk with any measure of certainty about the result of an action at law. But I am pretty sure that in an application to have the marriage pronounced null and void, as the jargon has it, his desertion of you would play a very important part. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Funny! Funny! Oh, Jack, darling Jack, will not everyone say that it was the unluckiest day of your life when you met me?”
“You may be sure that some fools will say that, Priscilla, my wife; but you may be equally sure that people who knew what I was before I met you and who have continued their acquaintance will say that, whatever may happen, my meeting you and marrying you were the best things that ever happened to me. You may be sure that that’s what I say now and what I’ll ever say. Now, don’t you suggest anything further in that strain. Good Lord! Didn’t you say that the best thing for bringing out what was best in a man was a good fight? Well, I feel that I am now facing a conflict that will develop every ounce of character I possess. That’s all I’ve got to say just now, except that I’ve wired to Reggie Liscomb to meet me at his office in London this afternoon—he belongs to Liscomb and Liscomb, you know, the solicitors—and he will tell us what we should do, and I’ll tell him to do it without a moment’s delay. But you may leave that to Liscomb and Liscomb; their motto has always been ‘Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just, and four times he that gets his fist in fust.’ They’ll get their fist in fust, you bet, if only to take the wind out of the sails of the other side.”
Priscilla had frequently heard of the great firm of Liscomb and Liscomb, but never had she an idea that one day she would be in a position to recognize that celerity of action in the conducting of a case which had frequently resulted in the extrication of a client from a tight place.
“You are going up to London to-day?” she said in surprise. “You don’t take long to make up your mind, Jack. Why, you had only the night to think over this dreadful business, and yet you were able to get that man to commit himself and show his hand, and now you know what is to be done to give us the best chance of getting rid of him for ever. Jack, I ask your forgiveness; but I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Neither did I until lately, Priscilla. It was you who made me think differently. Six months ago if I had been brought face to face with a thing like this I should have run away simply to avoid the bother of it all. But now—well, now I don’t think that you need fear my running away.”
He went up to town by a train that arrived in good time to allow him to have a long afternoon with his friend, the junior partner in the great firm of solicitors who had “handled” some of the most interesting cases that had ever come before a court of law, and some still more interesting that they had succeeded in settling without such an appeal to the judgment of the goddess of Chance. Newspaper readers owed them more grudges than anyone had a notion of, for the persistence with which they accomplished settlements, thereby preventing the publication of columns of piquant details—piquant to a point of unsavouriness. The public, who like their game high and with plenty of seasoning—and the atmosphere of the Divorce Court is very conducive to the former condition—little knew what they lost through the exertions of Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb; but Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb knew, and so did many a superfluous husband and many a duplicated wife.
But here was a case that could by no possibility be regarded as one that might be settled out of court. It was bound to move forward from stage to stage until it came before a judge. Mr. Reginald Liscomb saw that clearly when Jack had given him an outline of the case which had not yet advanced to the position of being a case, but which would do so the very next day, on being “stated” by Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb to the eminent advisory counsel whom they kept constantly employed.
“We have never had anything quite on all fours with this,” said the junior partner. “What we want is a decree of nullity—that’s plain enough. But shall we get it? Well, that’s not quite so plain. As a matter of fact several things may seem plain, but as a matter of law there’s nothing that can be so described. What’s the man going to do? Is he going to do anything? Does he fancy that there’s money in it? Did he suggest that when he came to you to-day? Mind you tell me everything. The man that conceals anything from his lawyer is as great a fool as the man that hides something from his doctor, only the lawyer is the more important. After all, your doctor only deals with your body and its ailments.”
“Whereas you look after—no, not exactly one’s soul—one’s reputation—more important still,” said Jack.
“You put it very well,” assented Mr. Liscomb modestly—as modestly as was consistent with an inherent desire for strict accuracy.
“You compliment me,” said Jack. “You may be sure that I’ll keep nothing back—especially if it tells against the other man.”
“Don’t bother about that so much as about what tells against yourself. At present what might tell against you is the indecent haste in the marriage—within three months of the report of the husband’s death by drowning. A judge may think that was not a sufficient time.”
“But the man would not be more thoroughly dead at the end of a year than he would have been at the end of three months.”
“No; but there was only a report of his death. The question that a judge will ask is this: Did the lady exercise a reasonable amount of precaution in satisfying herself that her husband was dead before entering into a second contract of marriage? That’s a very important question, as you can understand. If the court didn’t consider this point very closely, you can see how easy it would be for a man and his wife to get a decree of nullity by the one publishing a report of his or her death in a newspaper. If the proof of the publication of such a report were to be accepted as justification for a second marriage after a brief interval, the time of the court would be fully occupied in issuing decrees of nullity.”
“I see—yes—there’s something in that. But the circumstances of this case are not quite the same, are they? The first marriage was no marriage, so far as the—the actualities of marriage are concerned: the man was arrested within five minutes of the signing of the register; besides, the fellow had made fraudulent representations.”
“Fraudulent representations are punishable by imprisonment, but they are not held to invalidate a marriage. But as you say, this particular case is not on all fours with any that has come under my notice. We were talking about the question of money, however. Did the man make any suggestion about your paying him any money?”
Jack made him aware of the points in the interview bearing upon money, and Mr. Liscomb took a note of them. No, the fellow could not be called a blackmailer: the suggestion of the twenty-five thousand pounds had not come from him; but he had clearly shown his hand. On the whole, Mr. Liscomb, speaking for himself, and subject to the correction of Sir Edward, the eminent perpetually-retained counsel learned in the law, and, more important still, in the idiosyncrasies of judges and the idiotcies of juries, was of the belief that, taking the peculiarities of the case into account, a decree of nullity might be obtained; but failing this a divorce might be tried for.
“In the meantime it is advisable that Mrs.—that the lady should go back to her father’s house. You will, of course, see that this is so.”
“I see nothing of the sort,” said Jack. “She holds that she is my wife, and I hold that I am her husband, and so we mean to stand by one another whatever may happen. Besides, the father would hand her over to Blaydon the day she went to him; and I don’t know what you think of it, but it seems to me that just now Blaydon occupies a pretty strong position. If he were to get his hands on her, and hold her as his wife, where should we be then? How could he be hindered from putting her aboard a ship and carrying her off to the South Seas?”
Mr. Liscomb shook his head.
“We should have to serve a writ ofhabeas corpusand——-”
“Don’t trouble yourself further on this score,” said Jack. “We are together now, and we mean to remain together. Take that as final.”
“Very unwise! You’ll have difficulty getting the divorce. But in an exceptional case, possibly—anyhow, we’ll make a move to-morrow, under the advice of Sir Edward, of course. We’ll be first in the field, at any rate. So far as I can see just now, we shall enter our case at once and trust to have it heard early in the Michaelmas sittings.”
“What, not before October?” cried Jack.
“Most likely November, with luck, but probably December,” replied Mr. Liscomb with the complacency of a lawyer for whom time means money. “You may rely on our losing no time. By the way, has the man anything to gain by holding on to the lady—I mean, of course, something in addition to the companionship of the lady?”
“Her father is well off—a wealthy farmer,” said Jack.
“Heavens! this is indeed an exceptional case—a wealthy farmer nowadays! And you have reason to believe that if she went to the custody of her father he would hand her over to the man?”
“He would do his best in that way—he would not succeed, because his daughter is stronger than he is; but he would only force her to run back to me.”
“I should have thought that the old man would kick him out of his house—a blackguard who was fool enough to get caught. But I’ve had experience of fathers—mostly Scotch—who believe so desperately in the sacredness of the marriage bond that they would force a woman to live with the man she has married even though he has just returned from penal servitude for trying to murder her.”
“So far as I can gather from my wife, her father is something like that.”
“My wife!” murmured Mr. Liscomb, smiling very gently, when his client had gone away. “My wife!”
Jack gave what he considered to be an adequate account to Priscilla of his interview with Mr. Liscomb. He did not, however, think it necessary to tell her what that gentleman had said respecting the wisdom of their separating until the case or cases should be heard, nor did he do more than hint at the difficulties, which Mr. Liscomb had rather more than hinted at, in the way of proving the profligacy of Marcus Blaydon. But he thought it well to prepare her for the inevitable law’s delay; and he was gratified at the sensible way she received the information that three months would probably elapse before the case could come on for hearing.
“It seems a long time, Jack,” she said. “But I don’t think that it would be possible for us to have everything ready to go before the judge much sooner. I have been thinking over the whole matter while you have been away, and I see clearly, I think, that we shall have trouble in proving that he went away straight from the gaol to that woman of your surmise. How are we to get hold of Captain Lyman? and when we do get in touch with him, how are we to get him to tell us all that he knows?”
“Yes, all that will take time,” said Jack. “The evidence on this point may help us in the nullity suit, and in the divorce suit it would, of course, be absolutely indispensable.”
There was a pause before she said doubtfully:
“I wonder if Mr. Liscomb suggested that our marrying in such haste—within a few months of the news reaching me—would prejudice a judge.”
“Of course he did; it was stupid of me to forget that,” replied Jack; “very stupid, considering that I was thinking of it in the train on my way home. He made a remark about the haste—indecent haste, he called it.”
“And he gave it its right name,” said she. “That was a mistake on my part, Jack; but don’t think that I’m sorry for it, or that I wouldn’t do it again. Where should I be to-day if I had waited?”
“Would your father have insisted on your going to that man?”
“He would have tried to compel me—I am sure of that. In his eyes a marriage is a marriage—for worse as well as better—it makes no difference.”
“I’m glad that you think so. It lets me know that I did not make a mistake in what I said to Liscomb on that point. But with reference to the indecent haste point, surely any judge that is worth his salt will see that nowadays and in certain circumstances three months are as long as a year was in the old days—the Prayer-book days! It was in the fellow’s power to send you a cablegram letting you know that he was safe long before you had a chance of seeing a newspaper with the account of the wreck and his heroic conduct. ‘Heroic conduct’ was in the heading, I remember.”
“Yes; he’ll have to reply to the judge on that point. By the time Sir Edward has done with him he’ll have to make a good many replies. Well, we shall wait for the next move. But three months—if the people are nasty to us it will seem a long time, Jack; you are right there.”
“You’ll not find that the law errs on the side of indecent haste. We shall soon see how the people behave.”
He was quite right. The next day he glanced at the local paper, thinking that it was quite possible the man might have gone without the delay of an hour to make his statement public; but the paper contained no such interesting item of news. The man was plainly still in consultation with his solicitor.
In the course of the afternoon the road to the Manor was crowded with vehicles bearing card-leavers for Mrs. Jack Wingfield. The two livery stables at Framsby found the strain on their resources so severe as to necessitate their collecting the fragments of their most ancient vehicles and glueing them together in haste to respond to the demand for carriages from people who had never been otherwise than impolite, if not actually insolent, to Miss Wadhurst, but who now had a feeling that Mrs. Jack Wingfield would make her husband’s money fly infêtes. It would never do for them to miss invitations to whatever festivities were in the air through neglect on their part to take every reasonable precaution to secure their being invited.
But when the footman had the same answer for all—namely, that Mrs. Jack Wingfield was “not at home,” the feeling was very general that it was rather too soon for Mrs. Jack Wingfield to give herself airs, though it seemed that airs were to be looked for from her as inevitably as in an opera by Balfe.
Another day brought the newspapers, but there was still no news, in even the most enterprising of them all, bearing upon the incident which had caused Mrs. Jack Wingfield to think that for some time at least she would do well to be “not at home” to any visitors.
But on the afternoon of the third day a visitor called to whom she did not deny herself. Her father was admitted and found himself awaiting her coming in the library. She did not keep him waiting for long.
“Well, father, is not this a shocking business?” she said, before he had even greeted her.
“A shocking business! A shocking business to find you still here, Priscilla,” he said.
“Where should I be if not with my husband?” she said.
“Your husband! Your husband isn’t here; you know that well, my girl.”
“The only husband I have ever known is here. Please do not fancy that I recognize as my husband that contemptible fraud to whom you gave me.”
“However badly he treated you, however grossly I was taken in by him, he is still your lawful husband. Marriage according to the rites of the Church is a sacred bond. It is not in the power of man to sever it. You swore ‘for better for worse.’”
“I did not swear at all. That is one of the fictions of the Church like the ‘Love, honour, and obey’ paragraph. Do you tell me that I must honour a felon, love a trickster, and obey a blackguard?”
“It is God’s holy ordinance; you cannot deny that, however blasphemous you may become in your words.”
“Do you tell me that it is God’s holy ordinance that I should worship with my body a swindler—a man who only wanted to get me into his power to prevent his swindling from sending him to the gaol that he deserved? Do you think that it would be in keeping with the holy ordinance of God for me to live with a wretch who made his scurrilous joke about the ring he had just put on my finger a few minutes before the handcuffs were put on his wrists?—a blackguard who went straight from the gaol to a woman in America—who allowed the report of his heroic death—oh, how you laid stress upon that heroic death of his, and called me indecent because I was sincere enough to thank God for having delivered me from him!—he allowed the report of his death to be published in order that he might have a chance of blackmailing my husband.”
“Your husband! Your—I tell you, girl, that Marcus Blaydon is your husband, and that so long as you remain under this roof John Wingfield is your paramour. I warned you of him long ago. I did my duty as a father by you in warning you that he did not mean to wed you; and didn’t my words come true?”
Her face was scarlet and her eyes were blazing. She took a couple of rapid steps toward the door; but when about to fling it open, she managed to restrain herself. She stood there, breathing in short gasps, looking at him but unable to speak for indignation.
“You are my father,” she managed to say at last; “I do not wish to turn you out of this house; but if you utter such an accusation again in my hearing, out of this house you will go—straight—straight! You have made some horrible—some vile accusations against me—me, your daughter, whom you placed in the power of that wretch, though I told you that I never could love him—that I almost loathed him; but instead of showing my poor mother the cruelty of which she was guilty, you backed her up and compelled me to utter lies—-lies that you knew were lies—in the church. He uttered lies too; and yet, knowing all that you know, you are still not afraid to call this duet of Ananias and Sapphira God’s holy ordinance! I don’t know what your ideas of blasphemy are, but I know that you have provided me with a very good example of what I should call blasphemy.”
He gazed at her as he had never before gazed even when she had also amazed him by the ease with which she got the better of him. He gazed at her for some minutes, and then his head fell till his chin was on his breast.
“Oh, God, my God! how have I sinned that my girl should turn out like this?” he said in a firm voice, as if uttering a challenge to his God to lay a finger upon a single weakness in his life that demanded so drastic a punishment.
She watched him, and she had a great pity for him, knowing him to be sincere in his belief in his own integrity and in the infallibility of the ordinances of the Church.
“Father,” she said, “have you not read in the Bible that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind? I do not profess to know much about the ways of God toward men—there are people who, while they tell me one minute that His ways are past finding out, will, the next, interpret with absolute confidence the most incomprehensible of His acts. But I have taken note of some things that I have seen, and that is one of them—the whirlwind harvest. Here we are to-day in this horrible position—why? Because you compelled me to go to the church and make promises, and utter falsehoods by the side of that man for whom I had no feeling of love. If I had ever loved him, would the fact of his going to gaol have made any difference to me? Not the least. It would only have made me love him more dearly, knowing that my love would mitigate his suffering. If I had loved him, would I not have been by his side the moment he got his freedom? If I had loved him, would I have been capable of loving someone else and of marrying that one within three months of his death? The seed was sown, and this is the harvest. I feel for you with all my heart; but I see the justice of it all—I even see that, like every other woman, I have to pay dearly for my one hour of weakness—for my one hour of falsehood to myself.”
He had not raised his head all the time that she was speaking, nor did he do so until several moments had passed. He seemed to be considering her words and to be finding that there was something in them, after all. But when he looked up there was not much sign of contrition in his face.
“Whatever you may say, there’s no blinking facts, and you know as well as I do what are the facts that face you to-day,” he said, shaking a vehement fist, not as if threatening her, but only to give emphasis to his words. “The facts are, first, that you are the lawful wife of Marcus Blaydon, and secondly, that you are not the lawful wife of John Wingfield, and that if you persist in living with him you are his mistress.”
She opened the door this time, but not vehemently.
“Go away,” she said, “go away. I might as well have kept silent. I shall work out my own salvation in the face of your opposition and the opposition of the world.”
“Your salvation? Woman, it is your own damnation that you are working out in this house—this house of sin!”
He took a few steps toward the door and then wheeled round.
“One more chance I give you,” he said. “Come with me now, and you will only be asked to resume your former life. I will not insist on your joining your husband—only come away from this house.”
“Go away, go away,” she said, without so much as glancing at him.
Only one moment longer did he stay—just long enough to say:
“May God forgive you, Priscilla.”
He contrived, as so many pious people can in saying those words, to utter them as if they were a curse. They sounded in her ears exactly as a curse would have sounded.
And then he tramped away.
Jack came to her shortly afterwards.
“You have no news for me, I suppose?” he said.
“No news, indeed. The old story.”
“You knew what to expect. I think that the best thing we can do is to clear off from this neighbourhood as soon as we can. Until the matter is settled one way or another we should feel more comfortable among strangers.”
“I am perfectly happy here, my dear Jack,” she said. “I am so confident that we are doing what is right, I do not mind what people may say. Perhaps we should do well to go when your mother is strong enough to learn what has happened. That is the only thing that I dread—telling her the story.”
He shook his head sadly.
“That will be the worst moment of all,” he said slowly. “Thank heaven there is no possibility of our having to tell her anything for some time. She is far from well to-day.”
That same evening Jack received from Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb a copy of the opinion of the astute Sir Edward on their case. It was not voluminous, but it was very much to the point. It was in favour of an application for a decree of nullity in respect of the marriage with Blaydon, on the grounds, first, that the man had made false representations (ante-nuptial); secondly, that he had deserted his wife, making no attempt to see her after his release from gaol; and, thirdly, that he had taken no step to contradict the report, so widely circulated, of his death, thereby making her believe that she was at liberty to enter into a second contract of marriage. Failing success to have the marriage nullified, there were some grounds for trying for a divorce. In this case it would of course be necessary to prove misconduct.
On the whole, Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb were inclined to think that the court would consider favourably the application for a nullity decree on the ground that the man and the woman had never lived together—the lawyers made use of a legal phrase—and that the latter had good reason to believe, owing to the default of the former, that she was a widow when she contracted her second marriage. Of course the misrepresentations (ante-nuptial) of the man, though of no weight in an ordinary case of divorce or separation, might in a petition for a nullity decree be worth bringing forward. They also thought that the fact of the man’s being convicted of a crime against property (always looked on seriously by a judge and jury), and of his being arrested practically in the church porch after the marriage ceremony, would influence a court favourably in respect of the petitioner.
“They have never misled a client by an over-sanguine opinion, I should say,” remarked Jack when he had read to her the letter of Messrs. Liscomb and Liscomb.
“And I am sure that they have found that plan to be the wisest,” said she. “But I think that they rather incline to the belief that we shall succeed.”
“From all that I have heard respecting them I feel that they have in this case expressed what they would consider to be an extraordinarily roseate opinion of our prospects,” said he. “I wonder what move the other side will make next, and I wonder also if his advisers will take a sanguine view of his prospects. Did you gather from anything your father said that the fellow had been with him?”
“He said nothing definite on that point; but how should my father know anything of what has happened unless he had seen Marcus Blaydon?” said Priscilla. “He is, as we knew he would be, on the side of Blaydon. Just think of it! He is on the side of the wretch who did his best to wreck my life—who shortened my mother’s life and made its last months to be months of misery instead of happiness—who allowed that false report of his death to go about uncontradicted so that I should run the chance of finding myself in the midst of the trouble that has come to me now—my father takes the side of that man against us, simply because of his superstition as to the sanctity of the marriage service according to the Church of England! He does not consider for a moment that the sacredness of marriage is to be found only in the spirit in which the marriage is entered into. He does not ask himself how there can be any element of a holy ordinance in a fraud.”
Jack Wingfield was a man. He had been wise enough to refrain from considering the question of marriage either from the standpoint of a sacrament—the standpoint assumed by the Church of Rome—or from the standpoint of a symbol of the mystical union of Christ and the Church—the standpoint assumed by the Church of England. He had, as a matter of fact, never thought about marriage as a mystery, or the symbol of a mystery. It had only occurred to him that these assumptions, though professed by the Church within the Church, were ignored by the Church outside the Church. The Church of Rome refused to recognize divorce; but had frequently permitted it. It called marriage between an uncle and a niece incest, but sanctified it in the case of a royal personage. The Church of England, with its reiteration about every marriage being indissoluble by man, having been made by God, smiled amiably at the Divorce Court and petteddivorces. The Church did not attempt to assign a mystic symbolism to divorce; and though it had for years affirmed that the marriage of a man with the sister of his deceased wife was incest, yet Parliament and every sensible person had assured the Church that this view was wrong, and the Church, after a little mumbling, like giants Pope and Pagan at the mouth of their cave, had submitted to be put in the wrong.
Jack Wingfield being a student—a newspaper student—of contemporary history, was aware of the numerous standpoints from which marriage is discussed, with well-assumed seriousness, by people whom he suspected of having their tongues in their cheeks all the time; but, as has just been stated, he had never himself given a thought to the mysticism of marriage or the symbolism of a wedding. He felt that it was enough for him to know that when his time came to fall in love with a girl and to desire to make her his wife, if the girl consented, he would marry her according to the law of the land, and she would be his wife.
Well, this had all come about; he had fallen in love and he had married the girl according to the law of the land; and was there anyone to say that she was not his wife or that he was not her husband? Of course he knew that there were quite a number of people who would say so; but what was their opinion worth? If she was the wife of someone else, she should, in the opinion of these people, leave him and go to someone else—yes, go to live with that swindling scoundrel—go to be the perpetual companion of a felon and a trickster who had shown his indifference to her and to all that she had suffered as his victim. What was the value of the opinion of people who should, with eyes turned up, assert the doctrine of the sacredness of marriage, and the necessity of acting in the case of himself and Priscilla in sympathy with their doctrines? These were the people who regard the conduct of Enoch Arden with abhorrence. Was he not actually allowing his wife to “live in sin” with the man who had supplanted him?
No; Priscilla and he had married in good faith, and they should be regarded by all sensible and unprejudiced people as man and wife. There was no man living, worthy of the name of a man, who would not call him a cur if he took any other view of the matter than this.
The idea of his handing over that girl to be dealt with by a felon according to his will, simply because the rascal had succeeded in getting the better of her father and mother...
Jack Wingfield laughed.
“Let him come and take her,” he said to himself.
That was what he was longing for—for the claimant to come in person and lay a hand upon her. He felt that he would have given half his estate for the chance of answering the fellow as he should be answered—not by any reference to the opinions of those half-pagan patriarchs known as The Fathers; not by any reference to the views promulgated in the Middle Ages by that succession of thieving voluptuaries, murderers and excommunicators, the heads of the Church of Rome; or by modern sentimentalists struggling to reach the focus of the public eye—no, but by the aid of a dog-whip.
That was what he was longing for in these days—the chance to use his dog-whip upon the body of Marcus Blaydon. But Marcus Blaydon did not seem particularly anxious to give him the chance, and this fact caused his indignation against the man to increase. He felt as indignant as the henwife when her favourite chicken had shown some reluctance to come out of its coop to be killed.
It was the Reverend Osney Possnett, the vicar of Athalsdean, who paid a visit to the Manor House. Mr. Possnett had not been able to officiate at the marriage ceremony between Priscilla and Marcus Blaydon; he had been in Italy at the time; it was his curate for the time being, the Reverend Sylvanus Purview, who had married them. Doubtless if Mr. Purview had remained in the parish he would have paid Priscilla a visit when still under her father’s roof, to offer her official consolation upon the untoward incident which, happening at the church porch immediately after the ceremony, had deprived her (as it turned out) of the society of her husband; but the Reverend Sylvanus Purview had found that the air of the Downs was too bracing for him, and he had quitted the parish a few days after the vicar’s return, leaving the vicar to pay for his month’s board and lodging, which he himself had, by some inadvertence that was never fully explained, omitted doing, although it was afterwards discovered that he had borrowed from Churchwarden Wadhurst the money necessary for this purpose.
Mr. Possnett had, however, made up for his curate’s official deficiencies, as well as his monetary, and had spoken very seriously to Priscilla, on his return from Siena, on the subject of what he termed her trial—though it was really to Marcus Blaydon’s trial he was alluding.
Priscilla had listened.
And now the Reverend Osney Possnett would not accept the formal statement of the footman, that Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield were not at home, but had written a few lines on the back of his card, begging Priscilla to allow him to speak a few words to her.
“I wouldn’t bother with him, if I were you,” said Jack when she showed him the card. “We have no use for your Reverend Osney Possnett. But please yourself.”
“I don’t want to be rude,” said Priscilla.
“No, but he does,” said Jack.
“I don’t mind his rudeness,” she cried. “Perhaps—who can tell?—he may have something important to communicate to me—something material——”
“They scorn anything bordering on the material,” remarked Jack, “except when they get hold of a fraudulent prospectus with a promise of eighty per cent, dividends. But see him if you have any feeling in the matter.”
“I think I should see him, Jack.”
“Then see him. I’m sure he won’t mind if I clear off.”
So Jack went out of the room by the one door and the Reverend Osney Possnett was admitted by the other. The room was the large drawing-room with the cabinets of Wedgwood; and the sofa on which Priscilla sat was of the design of that in which Madame de Pompadour was painted by Boucher. It is, however, scarcely conceivable that the Reverend Osney Possnett became aware of any sinister suggestiveness in this coincidence.
He shook hands with her, not warmly, not even socially, but strictly officially.
“Priscilla,” he said—he had known her from her childhood—“Priscilla, I have seen your father. He has told me all. I felt it to be my duty to come to you—to take you away from here.”
She looked up and laughed—just in the way that Mrs. Patrick Campbell laughs in “Magda” when the man makes the suggestion about the child. Priscilla’s rendering of that laugh made her visitor feel angry. He was not accustomed to be laughed at—certainly not to his face. He took a step toward her in a way that suggested scarcely curbed indignation.
“Priscilla,” he cried, “have you realized what you are doing? Have you realized what you are—what you must be called so long as you remain in this house?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I am Mr. Wingfield’s wife, and I am called Mrs. Wingfield by all in this house, and I must be called so by everyone who visits at this house!”
“You are not his wife—you know that you are not his wife,” said Mr. Possnett, vehemently.
“I know that I am his wife, Mr. Possnett,” she replied with irritating gentleness. “I married him in accordance with the law of the land.”
“But you were already married—that you have found out; so your marriage was no marriage.”
“I agree with you—my marriage with Marcus Blaydon was no marriage.”
“It was a marriage, celebrated in the house of God, by a priest of God, that made it a marriage—sacred; and yet you——”
“Sacred? Sacred? Mr. Possnett, do not be so foolish, I beg of you. Don’t be so—so profane. Surely the sacredness of marriage does not begin and end with the form of words spoken in the church. Surely it is on account of its spiritual impulses that a marriage, the foundation of which is love, is sacred. A marriage is made sacred by the existence of a mutual love, and by that only. Is not that the truth?”
“I have not come here to-day to discuss with you any quibble, Priscilla. You know that you can legally have but one husband and——”
“Ah! I had no idea that you would make such a sudden drop from the question of the sacredness of marriage to the question of mere legality. I understood that the Church’s first and only line of defence was the spirituality of marriage—the sacred symbolism—the mystery. Now you drop at once to the mundane level of the law—you talk of the legal marriage. I thank God, Mr. Possnett, that I adopt a higher tone. I elect to stand on a loftier level than yours. I do not talk of legality, but of spirituality.”
“You cannot evade your responsibility by harping on words or phrases, Priscilla. In any question of marriage one cannot express too rigid an adherence to what is legal and what is illegal.”
“In that case, then, surely we shall be able to obtain a divorce in a court of law——”
“There is no such thing as divorce.”
Mr. Possnett had unwittingly walked into the trap laid for his feet by a young woman who had for years been acquainted with his individual views respecting the dissolution by a court of law of a marriage celebrated in a church of God.
“There is no such thing as divorce,” he said. “I refuse to recognize the validity of a so-called decree of divorce. I would think it my duty to refuse to perform the service of marriage between two persons either of whom had been divorced. Having once said the words, ‘Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!’”
“But surely divorce is perfectly legal, Mr. Possnett?” said Priscilla.
“I care nothing for that.”
“But you said just now that in all questions of marriage one must be bound down by what is legal and what is illegal; and now you tell me that you refuse to be bound down to a legal decree of divorce. Oh, Mr. Possnett, you cannot blow both hot and cold in the same breath.”
“In all matters but this—but our Church permits a priest to hold his own opinion, if it be formed on conscientious grounds. It is not like the Church of Rome; it recognizes the imperative nature of the call of religious scruples on the part of an individual priest.”
“And the Church does well. Let the priest follow the example of his Church, and recognize the spiritual exigencies of a poor woman who loved a man and married him in all honesty of purpose and in all good faith.”
“Talk not to me of such things; the fact remains—the terrible truth—that man is not your husband. Priscilla, this is, I know, a great trial; but you know whence it comes. I have taught you ill all these years if you fail to acknowledge the Hand—the Hand—you know that it comes from God.”
“That is the reflection which prevents me from being overwhelmed, Mr. Possnett. I try to feel that it all comes from God—that it is meant to try our faith, and I cannot doubt that its effect will be to draw us closer together, my dear husband and myself—nay, I have felt that it has done so already. Our faith in each other has been strengthened—it has indeed.”
“That is not the object of the trial. Trial is sent to purify the soul, as gold is tried by fire; the furnace of affliction is meant to cleanse, not to strengthen one’s persistence in a course of sin.”
“I have never doubted it, Mr. Possnett, nor can I doubt that this burden, though it is hard to bear, will but strengthen our characters—strengthen all those qualities which go to build up into one life the life of a man and a woman who love each other, and whose faith in each other has been proved under the stress of adversity.”
The Reverend Osney Possnett felt that he was now being subjected to a greater trial of patience than he could bear. Here was this young woman, the daughter of his own churchwarden, facing him and turning and twisting his words to suit her own pernicious views! He could almost fancy that she was mocking him. He could scarcely believe that such a trial should be included among those of celestial origin.
“Priscilla, I, your priest, tell you that you are living in sin with this man who is not your husband, and I command you to forsake this life and to forsake that man who, I doubt not, has tempted you by the allurements of a higher position in life than that for which you were intended by God, to be false to your Church, false to the teaching of its priest, false to your own better nature. Leave him, Priscilla; leave him before it is too late!”
Again she laughed; but this time it was with a different expression.
“I cannot say ‘Retro me?because I am not resisting any temptation,” she said. “You have shown that you do not understand in the least how I feel in regard to my position—you could not possibly understand me if I were to refer to the church in which you preach as a house of sin.”
“Priscilla, for God’s sake, pause—pause——”
“I have not called it a house of sin; God forbid that I should be so foolish! but it was made the means of my committing the greatest sin of my life—the abandonment of myself—myself—at the bidding of my parents. All that has happened since, you have assured me as a delegate, is to be part of a great trial sent for the purification of my heart, my soul, whatever you please. Well, I told you that I accepted that view and that I hoped I should come away from it purified and strengthened. But I cannot get away altogether from the thought that perhaps it may be a judgment on myself for being untrue to myself when I entered your church at the bidding of my father and my mother to say words that I knew to be false—that they knew to be false—to make promises that I knew it would be a crime to keep.”
“I care nothing about that, Priscilla. All that concerns me is that you were joined to a man according to the rites of the Holy Church, and that, he being still alive you are now wife to him and to no other.”
“And you would have me now go to him and live with him as his wife according to God’s holy ordinance, and to keep those promises which I made in your church?”
“I solemnly affirm that such is your duty.”
“You say that, knowing the man, and knowing that he is a criminal—that he married me to save himself from the consequences of his crime—you can tell me that I should worship him with my body, that I should love, honour, and obey him till death us do part? Knowing that I have never had any love for him, you tell me that my place is by his side?”
“Your place is by his side. The words of the Prayer-book are there; no Christian priest has any option in the matter. The mystic words have been said. ‘The twain shall be one flesh.’”
“Ah, there is the difference between us—the flesh. You will insist on looking at the fleshly side of marriage, whereas I look on the spiritual. Don’t you think that there may be something to be said in favour of the spiritual aspect of marriage—the marriage voice which says, not, ‘The twain shall be one flesh,’ but ‘The twain shall be one spirit’? What, Mr. Possnett, will you say that marriage is solely a condition of the flesh?”
“I refuse to answer any question put to me in this spirit by a woman who is living in sin with a man who is not her husband.”
“You will admit that the trial to which I have been subjected has influenced me for good—making me patient and forbearing in the face of a repeated insult such as I would not have tolerated from any human being a week ago. I have listened to you, and I have even brought myself to pay you the compliment of discussing with you a matter which concerns only my husband and myself, but you have not even thought it worth your while to be polite to me—to treat me as an erring sister. You come with open insults—with an assumption of authority—to pronounce one thing sin and another thing duty. But your authority is a mockery—as great a mockery as the enquiry in the marriage service, ‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ when you know that the pew-cleaner will be accepted by the priest as the one who possesses that authority. Your authority is a mockery, and your counsel is worth no more than that of any other man of some education, of abilities which have the lowest market value of those required for any profession, and experiences of the most limited character.”
“Woman—Priscilla, you forget yourself!”
The Reverend Osney Possnett, who had never had a chance in his life of reaching a point of declamation beyond what was necessary for the adequate reproof of a ploughman for neglecting to attend Divine service, and who had never been addressed except with respect bordering upon awe since the days of his curacy, found himself in a mental condition for which the word flabbergasted was invented by a philologist in the lumber trade. When he had told Priscilla that she was forgetting herself he forgot himself. He forgot his part. He had come to the Manor House, on the invitation of his churchwarden, Farmer Wadhurst, to administer a severe rebuke to Farmer Wadhurst’s self-willed daughter, whose early religious instruction he had superintended, and who, he saw no reason to doubt, would be at once amenable to his ministration; but he found himself forced not only to enter into something of an argument with her—a course of action which was very distasteful to him—but also to be reproved by her for a sensualist, looking at the fleshly side of marriage instead of the spiritual—to be told by her that his opinion was of no greater value than that of an ordinary man who had never been granted the distinction of holy orders, which the whole world recognizes as a proof of the possession of the highest culture, pagan as well as Christian, the most virile human intellect, and an intuitive knowledge of mankind, such as ordinary people can only gain by experience!
He had come to be letter-perfect in the part which he had meant to play in her presence, and with a good working knowledge of the “business” of the part; but she had failed to act up to him. She had disregarded the cues which he waited for from her, and the result was naturally the confusion that now confronted him—that now overwhelmed him. He had in his mind actually, if unconsciously, the feeling that it was her failure in regard to her cues which had put him out, when he cried:
“Priscilla, you forget yourself.”
“No, you do not quite mean that,” she said, with a disconcerting readiness; “you do not quite mean that; you mean that I forget that for years I sat Sunday after Sunday under your pulpit listening to your preaching—that for years and years you gave your opinion, which was followed without question, to my father and mother on the subject of my bringing up; that until now I was submissive to you, with all the members of the household. That is what you had on your mind just now, and I do not wonder at it. I have amazed you. I don’t doubt it; I have amazed myself. The troubles which I have had during the past eighteen months—you call them trials, and that is the right word—have been the means of showing me myself—showing me what I am as an individual: that I am not merely as a single grain of sand running down with a million other grains in the hour-glass only to mark time till the whole are swallowed up. I thank God for those trials which have made me what I am to-day. I can even thank God for the present trial, terrible though it seems, because I have faith in God’s way of working to bring out all that is best in man and woman; and I know that we shall come out of it with our love for each other strengthened and our belief in God strengthened. That is what you forgot when you came here to-day, Mr. Possnett; you forgot the power that there is in suffering to develop the character, the nature, the individuality, the human feeling and the Divine love of every one who experiences it. That was your mistake: you did not make allowance for God’s purpose in suffering. You thought that I should be the same to-day that I was eighteen months ago. You have much to learn, both of God and man, Mr. Possnett. So have I. I am learning daily.”
The Reverend Osney Possnett lifted up his hands—the attitude was that of Moses blessing the congregation; but by a sudden increase of emphasis and a tightening of the hands into fists it became the attitude of Balak the son of Zippor reproving Balaam the Prophet for having betrayed the confidence reposed in him as an agent of commination. He was not a man of any intelligence worth speaking of, and with so limited an experience of the world that the least departure from the usual found him without resources for meeting it. Such men are unwise if they make the attempt to play the usual against the unusual. They are wisest in avoiding it.
The Reverend Osney Possnett showed that he was not without wisdom by his retreat. Sorrow and not indignation was the lubricant of his farewell. His prayer was that she might be brought to see in what direction the truth lay before it should be too late.
And that was just the prayer to which Priscilla could say “Amen!” with all her heart.