In the white morning-room which served for her boudoir Mrs. Pendyce sat with an opened letter in her lap. It was her practice to sit there on Sunday mornings for an hour before she went to her room adjoining to put on her hat for church. It was her pleasure during that hour to do nothing but sit at the window, open if the weather permitted, and look over the home paddock and the squat spire of the village church rising among a group of elms. It is not known what she thought about at those times, unless of the countless Sunday mornings she had sat there with her hands in her lap waiting to be roused at 10.45 by the Squire's entrance and his “Now, my dear, you'll be late!” She had sat there till her hair, once dark-brown, was turning grey; she would sit there until it was white. One day she would sit there no longer, and, as likely as not, Mr. Pendyce, still well preserved, would enter and say, “Now, my dear, you'll be late!” having for the moment forgotten.
But this was all to be expected, nothing out of the common; the same thing was happening in hundreds of country houses throughout the “three kingdoms,” and women were sitting waiting for their hair to turn white, who, long before, at the altar of a fashionable church, had parted with their imaginations and all the changes and chances of this mortal life.
Round her chair “the dear dogs” lay—this was their practice too, and now and again the Skye (he was getting very old) would put out a long tongue and lick her little pointed shoe. For Mrs. Pendyce had been a pretty woman, and her feet were as small as ever.
Beside her on a spindley table stood a china bowl filled with dried rose-leaves, whereon had been scattered an essence smelling like sweetbriar, whose secret she had learned from her mother in the old Warwickshire home of the Totteridges, long since sold to Mr. Abraham Brightman. Mrs. Pendyce, born in the year 1840, loved sweet perfumes, and was not ashamed of using them.
The Indian summer sun was soft and bright; and wistful, soft, and bright were Mrs. Pendyce's eyes, fixed on the letter in her lap. She turned it over and began to read again. A wrinkle visited her brow. It was not often that a letter demanding decision or involving responsibility came to her hands past the kind and just censorship of Horace Pendyce. Many matters were under her control, but were not, so to speak, connected with the outer world. Thus ran the letter:
“S.R.W.C., HANOVER SQUARE,
“November 1, 1891.
“DEAR MARGERY,
“I want to see you and talk something over, so I'm running down on Sunday afternoon. There is a train of sorts. Any loft will do for me to sleep in if your house is full, as it may be, I suppose, at this time of year. On second thoughts I will tell you what I want to see you about. You know, of course, that since her father died I am Helen Bellew's only guardian. Her present position is one in which no woman should be placed; I am convinced it ought to be put an end to. That man Bellew deserves no consideration. I cannot write of him coolly, so I won't write at all. It is two years now since they separated, entirely, as I consider, through his fault. The law has placed her in a cruel and helpless position all this time; but now, thank God, I believe we can move for a divorce. You know me well enough to realise what I have gone through before coming to this conclusion. Heaven knows if I could hit on some other way in which her future could be safeguarded, I would take it in preference to this, which is most repugnant; but I cannot. You are the only woman I can rely on to be interested in her, and I must see Bellew. Let not the fat and just Benson and his estimable horses be disturbed on my account; I will walk up and carry my toothbrush.
“Affectionately your cousin,
“GREGORY VIGIL.”
Mrs. Pendyce smiled. She saw no joke, but she knew from the wording of the last sentence that Gregory saw one, and she liked to give it a welcome; so smiling and wrinkling her forehead, she mused over the letter. Her thoughts wandered. The last scandal—Lady Rose Bethany's divorce—had upset the whole county, and even now one had to be careful what one said. Horace would not like the idea of another divorce-suit, and that so close to Worsted Skeynes. When Helen left on Thursday he had said:
“I'm not sorry she's gone. Her position is a queer one. People don't like it. The Maldens were quite——”
And Mrs. Pendyce remembered with a glow at her heart how she had broken in:
“Ellen Malden is too bourgeoise for anything!”
Nor had Mr. Pendyce's look of displeasure effaced the comfort of that word.
Poor Horace! The children took after him, except George, who took after her brother Hubert. The dear boy had gone back to his club on Friday—the day after Helen and the others went. She wished he could have stayed. She wished—— The wrinkle deepened on her brow. Too much London was bad for him! Too much—— Her fancy flew to the London which she saw now only for three weeks in June and July, for the sake of the girls, just when her garden was at its best, and when really things were such a whirl that she never knew whether she was asleep or awake. It was not like London at all—not like that London under spring skies, or in early winter lamplight, where all the passers-by seemed so interesting, living all sorts of strange and eager lives, with strange and eager pleasures, running all sorts of risks, hungry sometimes, homeless even—so fascinating, so unlike—
“Now, my dear, you'll be late!”
Mr. Pendyce, in his Norfolk jacket, which he was on his way to change for a black coat, passed through the room, followed by the spaniel John. He turned at the door, and the spaniel John turned too.
“I hope to goodness Barter'll be short this morning. I want to talk to old Fox about that new chaff-cutter.”
Round their mistress the three terriers raised their heads; the aged Skye gave forth a gentle growl. Mrs. Pendyce leaned over and stroked his nose.
“Roy, Roy, how can you, dear?”
Mr. Pendyce said:
“The old dog's losing all his teeth; he'll have to be put away.”
His wife flushed painfully.
“Oh no, Horace—oh no!”
The Squire coughed.
“We must think of the dog!” he said.
Mrs. Pendyce rose, and crumpling the letter nervously, followed him from the room.
A narrow path led through the home paddock towards the church, and along it the household were making their way. The maids in feathers hurried along guiltily by twos and threes; the butler followed slowly by himself. A footman and a groom came next, leaving trails of pomatum in the air. Presently General Pendyce, in a high square-topped bowler hat, carrying a malacca cane, and Prayer-Book, appeared walking between Bee and Norah, also carrying Prayer-Books, with fox-terriers by their sides. Lastly, the Squire in a high hat, six or seven paces in advance of his wife, in a small velvet toque.
The rooks had ceased their wheeling and their cawing; the five-minutes bell, with its jerky, toneless tolling, alone broke the Sunday hush. An old horse, not yet taken up from grass, stood motionless, resting a hind-leg, with his face turned towards the footpath. Within the churchyard wicket the Rector, firm and square, a low-crowned hat tilted up on his bald forehead, was talking to a deaf old cottager. He raised his hat and nodded to the ladies; then, leaving his remark unfinished, disappeared within the vestry. At the organ Mrs. Barter was drawing out stops in readiness to play her husband into church, and her eyes, half-shining and half-anxious, were fixed intently on the vestry door.
The Squire and Mrs. Pendyce, now almost abreast, came down the aisle and took their seats beside their daughters and the General in the first pew on the left. It was high and cushioned. They knelt down on tall red hassocks. Mrs. Pendyce remained over a minute buried in thought; Mr. Pendyce rose sooner, and looking down, kicked the hassock that had been put too near the seat. Fixing his glasses on his nose, he consulted a worn old Bible, then rising, walked to the lectern and began to find the Lessons. The bell ceased; a wheezing, growling noise was heard. Mrs. Barter had begun to play; the Rector, in a white surplice, was coming in. Mr. Pendyce, with his back turned, continued to find the Lessons. The service began.
Through a plain glass window high up in the right-hand aisle the sun shot a gleam athwart the Pendyces' pew. It found its last resting-place on Mrs. Barter's face, showing her soft crumpled cheeks painfully flushed, the lines on her forehead, and those shining eyes, eager and anxious, travelling ever from her husband to her music and back again. At the least fold or frown on his face the music seemed to quiver, as to some spasm in the player's soul. In the Pendyces' pew the two girls sang loudly and with a certain sweetness. Mr. Pendyce, too, sang, and once or twice he looked in surprise at his brother, as though he were not making a creditable noise.
Mrs. Pendyce did not sing, but her lips moved, and her eyes followed the millions of little dust atoms dancing in the long slanting sunbeam. Its gold path canted slowly from her, then, as by magic, vanished. Mrs. Pendyce let her eyes fall. Something had fled from her soul with the sunbeam; her lips moved no more.
The Squire sang two loud notes, spoke three, sang two again; the Psalms ceased. He left his seat, and placing his hands on the lectern's sides, leaned forward and began to read the Lesson. He read the story of Abraham and Lot, and of their flocks and herds, and how they could not dwell together, and as he read, hypnotised by the sound of his own voice, he was thinking:
'This Lesson is well read by me, Horace Pendyce. I am Horace Pendyce—Horace Pendyce. Amen, Horace Pendyce!'
And in the first pew on the left Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes upon him, for this was her habit, and she thought how, when the spring came again, she would run up to town, alone, and stay at Green's Hotel, where she had always stayed with her father when a girl. George had promised to look after her, and take her round the theatres. And forgetting that she had thought this every autumn for the last ten years, she gently smiled and nodded. Mr. Pendyce said:
“'And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord.' Here endeth the first Lesson.”
The sun, reaching the second window, again shot a gold pathway athwart the church; again the millions of dust atoms danced, and the service went on.
There came a hush. The spaniel John, crouched close to the ground outside, poked his long black nose under the churchyard gate; the fox-terriers, seated patient in the grass, pricked their ears. A voice speaking on one note broke the hush. The spaniel John sighed, the fox-terriers dropped their ears, and lay down heavily against each other. The Rector had begun to preach. He preached on fruitfulness, and in the first right-hand pew six of his children at once began to fidget. Mrs. Barter, sideways and unsupported on her seat, kept her starry eyes fixed on his cheek; a line of perplexity furrowed her brow. Now and again she moved as though her back ached. The Rector quartered his congregation with his gaze, lest any amongst them should incline to sleep. He spoke in a loud-sounding voice.
God-he said-wished men to be fruitful, intended them to be fruitful, commanded them to be fruitful. God—he said—made men, and made the earth; He made man to be fruitful in the earth; He made man neither to question nor answer nor argue; He made him to be fruitful and possess the land. As they had heard in that beautiful Lesson this morning, God had set bounds, the bounds of marriage, within which man should multiply; within those bounds it was his duty to multiply, and that exceedingly—even as Abraham multiplied. In these days dangers, pitfalls, snares, were rife; in these days men went about and openly, unashamedly advocated shameful doctrines. Let them beware. It would be his sacred duty to exclude such men from within the precincts of that parish entrusted to his care by God. In the language of their greatest poet, “Such men were dangerous”—dangerous to Christianity, dangerous to their country, and to national life. They were not brought into this world to follow sinful inclination, to obey their mortal reason. God demanded sacrifices of men. Patriotism demanded sacrifices of men, it demanded that they should curb their inclinations and desires. It demanded of them their first duty as men and Christians, the duty of being fruitful and multiplying, in order that they might till this fruitful earth, not selfishly, not for themselves alone. It demanded of them the duty of multiplying in order that they and their children might be equipped to smite the enemies of their Queen and country, and uphold the name of England in whatever quarrel, against all who rashly sought to drag her flag in the dust.
The Squire opened his eyes and looked at his watch. Folding his arms, he coughed, for he was thinking of the chaff-cutter. Beside him Mrs. Pendyce, with her eyes on the altar, smiled as if in sleep. She was thinking, 'Skyward's in Bond Street used to have lovely lace. Perhaps in the spring I could—— Or there was Goblin's, their Point de Venise——'
Behind them, four rows back, an aged cottage woman, as upright as a girl, sat with a rapt expression on her carved old face. She never moved, her eyes seemed drinking in the movements of the Rector's lips, her whole being seemed hanging on his words. It is true her dim eyes saw nothing but a blur, her poor deaf ears could not hear one word, but she sat at the angle she was used to, and thought of nothing at all. And perhaps it was better so, for she was near her end.
Outside the churchyard, in the sun-warmed grass, the fox-terriers lay one against the other, pretending to shiver, with their small bright eyes fixed on the church door, and the rubbery nostrils of the spaniel John worked ever busily beneath the wicket gate.
About three o'clock that afternoon a tall man walked up the avenue at Worsted Skeynes, in one hand carrying his hat, in the other a small brown bag. He stopped now and then, and took deep breaths, expanding the nostrils of his straight nose. He had a fine head, with wings of grizzled hair. His clothes were loose, his stride was springy. Standing in the middle of the drive, taking those long breaths, with his moist blue eyes upon the sky, he excited the attention of a robin, who ran out of a rhododendron to see, and when he had passed began to whistle. Gregory Vigil turned, and screwed up his humorous lips, and, except that he was completely lacking in embonpoint, he had a certain resemblance to this bird, which is supposed to be peculiarly British.
He asked for Mrs. Pendyce in a high, light voice, very pleasant to the ear, and was at once shown to the white morning-room.
She greeted him affectionately, like many women who have grown used to hearing from their husbands the formula “Oh! your people!”—she had a strong feeling for her kith and kin.
“You know, Grig,” she said, when her cousin was seated, “your letter was rather disturbing. Her separation from Captain Bellew has caused such a lot of talk about here. Yes; it's very common, I know, that sort of thing, but Horace is so——! All the squires and parsons and county people we get about here are just the same. Of course, I'm very fond of her, she's so charming to look at; but, Gregory, I really don't dislike her husband. He's a desperate sort of person— I think that's rather, refreshing; and you know I do think she's a little like him in that!”
The blood rushed up into Gregory Vigil's forehead; he put his hand to his head, and said:
“Like him? Like that man? Is a rose like an artichoke?”
Mrs. Pendyce went on:
“I enjoyed having her here immensely. It's the first time she's been here since she left the Firs. How long is that? Two years? But you know, Grig, the Maldens were quite upset about her. Do you think a divorce is really necessary?”
Gregory Vigil answered: “I'm afraid it is.”
Mrs. Pendyce met her cousin's gaze serenely; if anything, her brows were uplifted more than usual; but, as at the stirring of secret trouble, her fingers began to twine and twist. Before her rose a vision of George and Mrs. Bellew side by side. It was a vague maternal feeling, an instinctive fear. She stilled her fingers, let her eyelids droop, and said:
“Of course, dear Grig, if I can help you in any way— Horace does so dislike anything to do with the papers.”
Gregory Vigil drew in his breath.
“The papers!” he said. “How hateful it is! To think that our civilisation should allow women to be cast to the dogs! Understand, Margery, I'm thinking of her. In this matter I'm not capable of considering anything else.”
Mrs. Pendyce murmured: “Of course, dear Grig, I quite understand.”
“Her position is odious; a woman should not have to live like that, exposed to everyone's foul gossip.”
“But, dear Grig, I don't think she minds; she seemed to me in such excellent spirits.”
Gregory ran his fingers through his hair.
“Nobody understands her,” he said; “she's so plucky!”
Mrs. Pendyce stole a glance at him, and a little ironical smile flickered over her face.
“No one can look at her without seeing her spirit. But, Grig, perhaps you don't quite understand her either!”
Gregory Vigil put his hand to his head.
“I must open the window a moment,” he said.
Again Mrs. Pendyce's fingers began twisting, again she stilled them.
“We were quite a large party last week, and now there's only Charles. Even George has gone back; he'll be so sorry to have missed you!”
Gregory neither turned nor answered, and a wistful look came into Mrs. Pendyce's face.
“It was so nice for the dear boy to win that race! I'm afraid he bets rather! It's such a comfort Horace doesn't know.”
Still Gregory did not speak.
Mrs. Pendyce's face lost its anxious look, and gained a sort of gentle admiration.
“Dear Grig,” she said, “where do you go about your hair? It is so nice and long and wavy!”
Gregory turned with a blush.
“I've been wanting to get it cut for ages. Do you really mean, Margery, that your husband can't realise the position she's placed in?”
Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes on her lap.
“You see, Grig,” she began, “she was here a good deal before she left the Firs, and, of course, she's related to me—though it's very distant. With those horrid cases, you never know what will happen. Horace is certain to say that she ought to go back to her husband; or, if that's impossible, he'll say she ought to think of Society. Lady Rose Bethany's case has shaken everybody, and Horace is nervous. I don't know how it is, there's a great feeling amongst people about here against women asserting themselves. You should hear Mr. Barter and Sir James Malden, and dozens of others; the funny thing is that the women take their side. Of course, it seems odd to me, because so many of the Totteridges ran away, or did something funny. I can't help sympathising with her, but I have to think of—of—— In the country, you don't know how things that people do get about before they've done them! There's only that and hunting to talk of.”
Gregory Vigil clutched at his head.
“Well, if this is what chivalry has come to, thank God I'm not a squire!”
Mrs. Pendyce's eyes flickered.
“Ah!” she said, “I've thought like that so often.”
Gregory broke the silence.
“I can't help the customs of the country. My duty's plain. There's nobody else to look after her.”
Mrs. Pendyce sighed, and, rising from her chair, said: “Very well, dear Grig; do let us go and have some tea.”
Tea at Worsted Skeynes was served in the hall on Sundays, and was usually attended by the Rector and his wife. Young Cecil Tharp had walked over with his dog, which could be heard whimpering faintly outside the front-door.
General Pendyce, with his knees crossed and the tips of his fingers pressed together, was leaning back in his chair and staring at the wall. The Squire, who held his latest bird's-egg in his hand, was showing its spots to the Rector.
In a corner by a harmonium, on which no one ever played, Norah talked of the village hockey club to Mrs. Barter, who sat with her eyes fixed on her husband. On the other side of the fire Bee and young Tharp, whose chairs seemed very close together, spoke of their horses in low tones, stealing shy glances at each other. The light was failing, the wood logs crackled, and now and then over the cosy hum of talk there fell short, drowsy silences—silences of sheer warmth and comfort, like the silence of the spaniel John asleep against his master's boot.
“Well,” said Gregory softly, “I must go and see this man.”
“Is it really necessary, Grig, to see him at all? I mean—if you've made up your mind——”
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
“It's only fair, I think!” And crossing the hall, he let himself out so quietly that no one but Mrs. Pendyce noticed he had gone.
An hour and a half later, near the railway-station, on the road from the village back to Worsted Skeynes, Mr. Pendyce and his daughter Bee were returning from their Sunday visit to their old butler, Bigson. The Squire was talking.
“He's failing, Bee-dear old Bigson's failing. I can't hear what he says, he mumbles so; and he forgets. Fancy his forgetting that I was at Oxford. But we don't get servants like him nowadays. That chap we've got now is a sleepy fellow. Sleepy! he's—— What's that in the road? They've no business to be coming at that pace. Who is it? I can't see.”
Down the middle of the dark road a dog cart was approaching at top speed. Bee seized her father's arm and pulled it vigorously, for Mr. Pendyce was standing stock-still in disapproval. The dog cart passed within a foot of him and vanished, swinging round into the station. Mr. Pendyce turned in his tracks.
“Who was that? Disgraceful! On Sunday, too! The fellow must be drunk; he nearly ran over my legs. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over——”
Bee answered:
“It was Captain Bellew, Father; I saw his face.” “Bellew? That drunken fellow? I shall summons him. Did you see, Bee, he nearly ran over my——”
“Perhaps he's had bad news,” said Bee. “There's the train going out now; I do hope he caught it!”
“Bad news! Is that an excuse for driving over me? You hope he caught it? I hope he's thrown himself out. The ruffian! I hope he's killed himself.”
In this strain Mr. Pendyce continued until they reached the church. On their way up the aisle they passed Gregory Vigil leaning forward with his elbows on the desk and his hand covering his eyes....
At eleven o'clock that night a man stood outside the door of Mrs. Bellew's flat in Chelsea violently ringing the bell. His face was deathly white, but his little dark eyes sparkled. The door was opened, and Helen Bellew in evening dress stood there holding a candle in her hand.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
The man moved into the light.
“Jaspar! You? What on earth——”
“I want to talk.”
“Talk? Do you know what time it is?”
“Time—there's no such thing. You might give me a kiss after two years. I've been drinking, but I'm not drunk.”
Mrs. Bellew did not kiss him, neither did she draw back her face. No trace of alarm showed in her ice-grey eyes. She said: “If I let you in, will you promise to say what you want to say quickly, and go away?”
The little brown devils danced in Bellew's face. He nodded. They stood by the hearth in the sitting-room, and on the lips of both came and went a peculiar smile.
It was difficult to contemplate too seriously a person with whom one had lived for years, with whom one had experienced in common the range of human passion, intimacy, and estrangement, who knew all those little daily things that men and women living together know of each other, and with whom in the end, without hatred, but because of one's nature, one had ceased to live. There was nothing for either of them to find out, and with a little smile, like the smile of knowledge itself, Jaspar Bellew and Helen his wife looked at each other.
“Well,” she said again; “what have you come for?”
Bellew's face had changed. Its expression was furtive; his mouth twitched; a furrow had come between his eyes.
“How—are—you?” he said in a thick, muttering voice.
Mrs. Bellew's clear voice answered:
“Now, Jaspar, what is it that you want?”
The little brown devils leaped up again in Jaspar's face.
“You look very pretty to-night!”
His wife's lips curled.
“I'm much the same as I always was,” she said.
A violent shudder shook Bellew. He fixed his eyes on the floor a little beyond her to the left; suddenly he raised them. They were quite lifeless.
“I'm perfectly sober,” he murmured thickly; then with startling quickness his eyes began to sparkle again. He came a step nearer.
“You're my wife!” he said.
Mrs. Bellew smiled.
“Come,” she answered, “you must go!” and she put out her bare arm to push him back. But Bellew recoiled of his own accord; his eyes were fixed again on the floor a little beyond her to the left.
“What's that?” he stammered. “What's that—that black——?”
The devilry, mockery, admiration, bemusement, had gone out of his face; it was white and calm, and horribly pathetic.
“Don't turn me out,” he stammered; “don't turn me out!”
Mrs. Bellew looked at him hard; the defiance in her eyes changed to a sort of pity. She took a quick step and put her hand on his shoulder.
“It's all right, old boy—all right!” she said. “There's nothing there!”
Mrs. Pendyce, who, in accordance with her husband's wish, still occupied the same room as Mr. Pendyce, chose the ten minutes before he got up to break to him Gregory's decision. The moment was auspicious, for he was only half awake.
“Horace,” she said, and her face looked young and anxious, “Grig says that Helen Bellew ought not to go on in her present position. Of course, I told him that you'd be annoyed, but Grig says that she can't go on like this, that she simply must divorce Captain Bellew.”
Mr. Pendyce was lying on his back.
“What's that?” he said.
Mrs. Pendyce went on
“I knew it would worry you; but really”—she fixed her eyes on the ceiling—“I suppose we ought only to think of her.”
The Squire sat up.
“What was that,” he said, “about Bellew?”
Mrs. Pendyce went on in a languid voice and without moving her eyes:
“Don't be angrier than you can help, dear; it is so wearing. If Grig says she ought to divorce Captain Bellew, then I'm sure she ought.”
Horace Pendyce subsided on his pillow with a bounce, and he too lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“Divorce him!” he said—“I should think so! He ought to be hanged, a fellow like that. I told you last night he nearly drove over me. Living just as he likes, setting an example of devilry to the whole neighbourhood! If I hadn't kept my head he'd have bowled me over like a ninepin, and Bee into the bargain.”
Mrs. Pendyce sighed.
“It was a narrow escape,” she said.
“Divorce him!” resumed Mr. Pendyce—“I should think so! She ought to have divorced him long ago. It was the nearest thing in the world; another foot and I should have been knocked off my feet!”
Mrs. Pendyce withdrew her glance from the ceiling.
“At first,” she said, “I wondered whether it was quite—but I'm very glad you've taken it like this.”
“Taken it! I can tell you, Margery, that sort of thing makes one think. All the time Barter was preaching last night I was wondering what on earth would have happened to this estate if—if——” And he looked round with a frown. “Even as it is, I barely make the two ends of it meet. As to George, he's no more fit at present to manage it than you are; he'd make a loss of thousands.”
“I'm afraid George is too much in London. That's the reason I wondered whether— I'm afraid he sees too much of——”
Mrs. Pendyce stopped; a flush suffused her cheeks; she had pinched herself violently beneath the bedclothes.
“George,” said Mr. Pendyce, pursuing his own thoughts, “has no gumption. He'd never manage a man like Peacock—and you encourage him! He ought to marry and settle down.”
Mrs. Pendyce, the flush dying in her cheeks, said:
“George is very like poor Hubert.”
Horace Pendyce drew his watch from beneath his pillow.
“Ah!” But he refrained from adding, “Your people!” for Hubert Totteridge had not been dead a year. “Ten minutes to eight! You keep me talking here; it's time I was in my bath.”
Clad in pyjamas with a very wide blue stripe, grey-eyed, grey-moustached, slim and erect, he paused at the door.
“The girls haven't a scrap of imagination. What do you think Bee said? 'I hope he hasn't lost his train.' Lost his train! Good God! and I might have— I might have——” The Squire did not finish his sentence; no words but what seemed to him violent and extreme would have fulfilled his conception of the danger he had escaped, and it was against his nature and his training to exaggerate a physical risk.
At breakfast he was more cordial than usual to Gregory, who was going up by the first train, for as a rule Mr. Pendyce rather distrusted him, as one would a wife's cousin, especially if he had a sense of humour.
“A very good fellow,” he was wont to say of him, “but an out-and-out Radical.” It was the only label he could find for Gregory's peculiarities.
Gregory departed without further allusion to the object of his visit. He was driven to the station in a brougham by the first groom, and sat with his hat off and his head at the open window, as if trying to get something blown out of his brain. Indeed, throughout the whole of his journey up to town he looked out of the window, and expressions half humorous and half puzzled played on his face. Like a panorama slowly unrolled, country house after country house, church after church, appeared before his eyes in the autumn sunlight, among the hedgerows and the coverts that were all brown and gold; and far away on the rising uplands the slow ploughman drove, outlined against the sky:
He took a cab from the station to his solicitors' in Lincoln's Inn Fields. He was shown into a room bare of all legal accessories, except a series of Law Reports and a bunch of violets in a glass of fresh water. Edmund Paramor, the senior partner of Paramor and Herring, a clean-shaven man of sixty, with iron-grey hair brushed in a cockscomb off his forehead, greeted him with a smile.
“Ah, Vigil, how are you? Up from the country?”
“From Worsted Skeynes.”
“Horace Pendyce is a client of mine. Well, what can we do for you? Your Society up a tree?”
Gregory Vigil, in the padded leather chair that had held so many aspirants for comfort, sat a full minute without speaking; and Mr. Paramor, too, after one keen glance at his client that seemed to come from very far down in his soul, sat motionless and grave. There was at that moment something a little similar in the eyes of these two very different men, a look of kindred honesty and aspiration. Gregory spoke at last.
“It's a painful subject to me.”
Mr. Paramor drew a face on his blotting-paper.
“I have come,” went on Gregory, “about a divorce for my ward.”
“Mrs. Jaspar Bellew?”
“Yes; her position is intolerable.”
Mr. Paramor gave him a searching look.
“Let me see: I think she and her husband have been separated for some time.”
“Yes, for two years.”
“You're acting with her consent, of course?”
“I have spoken to her.”
“You know the law of divorce, I suppose?”
Gregory answered with a painful smile:
“I'm not very clear about it; I hardly ever look at those cases in the paper. I hate the whole idea.”
Mr. Paramor smiled again, became instantly grave, and said:
“We shall want evidence of certain things. Have you got any evidence?”
Gregory ran his hand through his hair.
“I don't think there'll be any difficulty,” he said. “Bellew agrees—they both agree!”
Mr. Paramor stared.
“What's that to do with it?”
Gregory caught him up.
“Surely, where both parties are anxious, and there's no opposition, it can't be difficult.”
“Good Lord!” said Mr. Paramor.
“But I've seen Bellew; I saw him yesterday. I'm sure I can get him to admit anything you want!”
Mr. Paramor drew his breath between his teeth.
“Did you ever,” he said drily, “hear of what's called collusion?”
Gregory got up and paced the room.
“I don't know that I've ever heard anything very exact about the thing at all,” he said. “The whole subject is hateful to me. I regard marriage as sacred, and when, which God forbid, it proves unsacred, it is horrible to think of these formalities. This is a Christian country; we are all flesh and blood. What is this slime, Paramor?”
With this outburst he sank again into the chair, and leaned his head on his hand. And oddly, instead of smiling, Mr. Paramor looked at him with haunting eyes.
“Two unhappy persons must not seem to agree to be parted,” he said. “One must be believed to desire to keep hold of the other, and must pose as an injured person. There must be evidence of misconduct, and in this case of cruelty or of desertion. The evidence must be impartial. This is the law.”
Gregory said without looking up:
“But why?”
Mr. Paramor took his violets out of the water, and put them to his nose.
“How do you mean—why?”
“I mean, why this underhand, roundabout way?”
Mr. Paramor's face changed with startling speed from its haunting look back to his smile.
“Well,” he said, “for the preservation of morality. What do you suppose?”
“Do you call it moral so to imprison people that you drive them to sin in order to free themselves?”
Mr. Paramor obliterated the face on his blotting-pad.
“Where's your sense of humour?” he said.
“I see no joke, Paramor.”
Mr. Paramor leaned forward.
“My dear friend,” he said earnestly, “I don't say for a minute that our system doesn't cause a great deal of quite unnecessary suffering; I don't say that it doesn't need reform. Most lawyers and almost any thinking man will tell you that it does. But that's a wide question which doesn't help us here. We'll manage your business for you, if it can be done. You've made a bad start, that's all. The first thing is for us to write to Mrs. Bellew, and ask her to come and see us. We shall have to get Bellew watched.”
Gregory said:
“That's detestable. Can't it be done without that?”
Mr. Paramor bit his forefinger.
“Not safe,” he said. “But don't bother; we'll see to all that.”
Gregory rose and went to the window. He said suddenly:
“I can't bear this underhand work.”
Mr. Paramor smiled.
“Every honest man,” he said, “feels as you do. But, you see, we must think of the law.”
Gregory burst out again:
“Can no one get a divorce, then, without making beasts or spies of themselves?”
Mr. Paramor said gravely
“It is difficult, perhaps impossible. You see, the law is based on certain principles.”
“Principles?”
A smile wreathed Mr. Paramor's mouth, but died instantly.
“Ecclesiastical principles, and according to these a person desiring a divorce 'ipso facto' loses caste. That they should have to make spies or beasts of themselves is not of grave importance.”
Gregory came back to the table, and again buried his head in his hands.
“Don't joke, please, Paramor,” he said; “it's all so painful to me.”
Mr. Paramor's eyes haunted his client's bowed head.
“I'm not joking,” he said. “God forbid! Do you read poetry?” And opening a drawer, he took out a book bound in red leather. “This is a man I'm fond of: