The Irrational Knot/Chapter XVII

Conolly returned from Glasgow a little before eight on Monday evening. There was no light in the window when he entered the garden. Miss McQuinch opened the door before he reached it.

"What!" he said. "Going the moment I come in!" Then, seeing her face by the hall lamp, he put down his bag quickly, and asked what the matter was.

"I dont know whether anything is the matter. I am very glad you have returned. Come into the drawing-room: I dont want the servants to hear us talking."

"There is no light here," he said, following her in. "Is it possible you have been waiting in the dark?"

He lit a candle, and was about to light a lamp when she exclaimed impatiently, "Oh, I did not notice it: what does it matter? Do let the lamp alone, and listen to me." He obeyed, much amused at her irritation.

"Where has Marian gone to?" she asked.

"Is she out?" he said, suddenly grave. "You forget that I have come straight from Glasgow."

"I have been here since three o'clock. Marian sent me a note not to come on Sunday&mdash;that she should be out and that you were away. But they tell me that she was at home all yesterday, except for two hours when she was out with Sholto. She packed her trunks in the evening, and went away with them. She told the cabman to drive to Euston. I dont know what it all means; and I have been half distracted waiting here for you. I thought you would never come. There is a note for you on your dressing-table."

He pursed his lips a little and looked attentively at her, but said nothing.

"Wont you go and open it?" she said anxiously. "It must contain some explanation."

"I am afraid the explanation is obvious."

"You have no right to say that. How do you know? If you are not going to read her letter, you had better say so at once. I dont want to pry into it: I only want to know what is become of Marian."

"You shall read it by all means. Will you excuse me whilst I fetch it?"

She stamped with impatience. He smiled and went for the letter, which, after a brief absence, he placed unopened on the table before her, saying:

"I suppose this is it. I laid my hand on it in the dark."

"Are you going to open it?" she said, hardly able to contain herself.

"No."

He had not raised his voice; but it struck her that he was in a rage. His friendly look and quiet attitude first reassured, then, on second thoughts, exasperated her.

"Why wont you?"

"I really dont know. Somehow, I am not curious. It interests you. Pray open it."

"I will die first. If it lie there until I open it, it will lie there forever."

He opened the envelope neatly with a paper cutter, and handed her the enclosure. She kept down her hands stubbornly. He smiled a little, still presenting it. At last she snatched it, much as she would have liked to snatch a handful of his hair. Having read it, she turned pale, and looked as she had used to in her childhood, when in disgrace and resolute not to cry. "I had rather have had my two hands cut off," she said passionately, after a pause.

"It is very sad for you," said Conolly, sympathetically. "He is an educated man; but I cannot think that he has much in him."

"He is a selfish, lying, conceited hound. Educated, indeed! And what are you going to do, may I ask?"

"Eat my supper. I am as hungry as a bear."

"Yes, you had better, I think. Good-evening." He seemed to know that she would not leave; for he made no movement to open the door for her. On her way out, she turned, and so came at him with her fists clenched, that for a moment he was doubtful whether she would not bodily assault him.

"Are you a brute, or a fool, or both?" she said, letting her temper loose. "How long do you intend to stand there, doing nothing?"

"What can I do, Miss McQuinch?" he said, gently.

"You can follow her and bring her back before she has made an utter idiot of herself with that miserable blackguard. Are you afraid of him? If you are, I will go with you, and not let him touch you."

"Thank you," he said, good-humoredly. "But you see she does not wish to live with me."

"Good God, man, what woman do you think could wish to live with you! I suppose Marian wanted a human being to live with, and not a calculating machine. You would drive any woman away. If you had feeling enough to have kicked him out of the house, and then beaten her black and blue for encouraging him, you would have been more of a man than you are: she would have loved you more. You are not a man: you are a stone full of brains&mdash;such as they are! Listen to me, Mr. Conolly. There is one chance left&mdash;if you will only make haste. Go after them; overtake them; thrash him within an inch of his life; and bring her back and punish her how you please so long as you shew her that you care. You can do it if you will only make up your mind: he is a coward; and he is afraid of you: I have seen it in his eye. You are worth fifty of him&mdash;if you would only not be so cold blooded&mdash;if you will only go&mdash;dear Mr. Conolly&mdash;youre not really insensible&mdash;you will, wont you?"

This, the first tender tone he had ever heard in her voice, made him look at her curiously. "What does the letter say?" he asked, still quietly, but inexorably.

She snatched it up again. "Here," she said. "'Our marriage was a mistake. I am going away with Douglas to the other side of the world. It is all I can do to mend matters. Pray forget me.' That is what her letter says, since you condescend to ask."

"It is too late, then. You felt that as you read it, I think?"

"Yes," she cried, sitting down in a paroxysm of grief, but unable to weep. "It is too late; and it is all your fault. What business had you to go away? You knew what was going to happen. You intended it to happen. You wanted it to happen. You are glad it has happened; and it serves you right. 'Pray forget her.' Oh, yes, poor girl! she need not trouble about that. I declare there is nothing viler, meaner, cowardlier, selfisher on earth than a man. Oh, if we had only done what we always said we would do&mdash;kept free from you!"

"It was a good plan," said Conolly, submissively.

"Was it? How were we to know that you were not made of flesh and blood, pray? There, let me go. [The table was between them; but she rose and shook off an imaginary detaining hand.] I dont want to hear anything more about it. I suppose you are right not to care. Very likely she was right to go, too; so we are all right, and everything is for the best, no doubt. Marian is ruined, of course; but what does that matter to you? She was only in your way. You can console yourself with your&mdash;" Here Armande came in; and Elinor turned quickly to the fireplace and stood there, so that the housemaid should not see her face.

"Your dinner, sir," said Armande, with a certain artificiality of manner that was, under the circumstances, significant. "There is a nice fire in the laboratory."

"Thank you," said Conolly. "Presently, Armande."

"The things will spoil if you wait too long, sir. The mistress was very particular with me and cook about it." And Armande, with an air of declining further responsibility, went out.

"What shall I do without Marian?" said Conolly. "Not one woman in a hundred is capable of being a mistress to her servants. She saved me all the friction of housekeeping."

"You are beginning to feel your loss," said Elinor, facing him again. "A pleasant thing for a woman of her talent to be thrown away to save you the friction of housekeeping. If you had paid half the attention to her happiness that she did to your dinners you would not be in your present predicament."

"Have you really calculated that it is twice as easy to make a woman happy as to feed a man?"

"Calc&mdash;! Yes, I have. I tell you that it is three times as easy&mdash;six times as easy: more fool the woman! You can make a woman happy for a week by a word or a kiss. How long do you think it takes to order a week's dinners? I suppose you consider a kiss a weakness?"

"I am afraid&mdash;judging by the result&mdash;that I am not naturally clever at kissing."

"No, I should think not, indeed. Then you had better go and do what you are clever at&mdash;eat your dinner."

"Miss McQuinch: did you ever see an unfortunate little child get a severe fall, and then, instead of a little kindly petting, catch a sound whacking from its nurse for daring to startle her and spoil its clothes?"

"Well, what is the point of that?"

"You remind me a little of the nurse. I have had a sort of fall this evening."

"And now you are going to pretend to be hurt, I suppose; because you dont care to be told that it is your own fault. That is a common experience with children, too. I tell you plainly that I dont believe you are hurt at all; though you may not be exactly pleased&mdash;just for the moment. However, I did not mean to be uncivil. If you are really sorry, I am at least as sorry. I have not said all I think."

"What more?"

"Nothing of any use to say. I see I am wasting my time here&mdash;and no doubt wasting yours too."

"Well, I think you have had your turn. If you are not thoroughly satisfied, pray go on for ten minutes longer: your feelings do you credit, as the phrase goes. Still, do not forget that you thought just the same of me a week ago; and that if you had said as much then you might have prevented what has happened. Giving me a piece of your mind now is of no use except as far as it relieves you. To Marian or me or anyone else it does no good. So when you have said your worst, we cannot do better, I think, than set our wits to work about our next move."

Elinor received this for a moment in dudgeon. Then she laughed sourly, and said, "There is some sense in that. I am as much to blame as anybody: I dont deny it&mdash;if that is any comfort to you. But as to the next move, you say yourself that it is too late to do anything; and I dont see that you can do much."

"That is so. But there are a few things to be faced. First, I have to set Marian and myself free."

"How?"

"Divorce her."

"Divorce!" Elinor looked at him in dismay. He was unmoved. Then her gaze fell slowly, and she said: "Yes: I suppose you have a right to that."

"She also."

"So that she may marry him&mdash;from a sense of duty. That will be so happy for her!"

"She will have time, before she is free to find out whether she likes him or not. There will be a great fuss in the family over the scandal."

"Do you care about that? I dont."

"No. However, thats a detail. Marian will perhaps write to you. If so, just point out to her that her five hundred a year belongs to her still, and makes her quite independent of him and of me. That is all, I think. You need take no pains now to conceal what has happened: the servants below know it as well as we: in a week it will be town talk."

Elinor looked wistfully at him, her impetuosity failing her as she felt how little effect it was producing. Yet her temper rather rose than fell at him. There was a much more serious hostility than before in her tone as she said:

"You seem to have been thoroughly prepared for what has happened. I do not want any instructions from you as to what I shall write to Marian about her money affairs: I want to know, in case she takes it into her head to come back when she has found what a fool she has made of herself, whether I may tell her that you are glad to be rid of her, and that there is no use in her humiliating herself by coming to your door and being turned away."

"Shall I explain the situation to you from my point of view?" said he. At the sound of his voice she looked up in alarm. The indulgent, half-playful manner which she had almost lost the sense of because it was so invariable with him in speaking to ladies was suddenly gone. She felt that the real man was coming out now without ceremony. He was quick to perceive the effect he had produced. To soften it, he placed a comfortable chair on the hearthrug, and said, in his ordinary friendly way: "Sit nearer the fire: we can talk more comfortably. Now," he continued, standing with his back to the mantelpiece, "let me tell you, Miss McQuinch, that when you talk of my turning people away from my door you are not talking fair and square sense to me. I dont turn my acquaintances off in that way, much less my friends; and a woman who has lived with me as my wife for eighteen months must always be a rather particular friend. I liked her before I was her husband, and I shall continue to like her when I am no longer her husband. So you need have no fear on that score. But I wont remain her husband. You said just now that I knew what was going to happen; that I intended it to happen, wanted it to happen, and am glad it happened. There is more truth in that than you thought when you said it. For some time past Marian has been staying with me as a matter of custom and convenience only, using me as a cover for her philandering with Douglas, and paying me by keeping the house very nicely for me. I had asked myself once or twice how long this was to last. I was in no hurry for the answer; for although I was wifeless and had no one to live with who really cared for me, I was quite prepared to wait a couple of years if necessary, on the chance of our making it up somehow. But sooner or later I should have insisted on closing our accounts and parting; and I am not sorry now that the end has come, since it was inevitable; though I am right sorry for the way it has come. Instead of eloping in the conventional way, she should have come to an understanding with me. I could easily have taken her for a trip in the States, where we could have stopped a few months in South Dakota and got divorced without any scandal. I have never made any claims on her since she found out that she didnt care for me; and she might have known from that that I was not the man to keep her against her will and play dog in the manger with a fellow like Douglas. However, thats past praying for now. She has had enough of me; and I have had more than enough of her set and her family, except that I should like to remain good friends with you. You are the only one of the whole lot worth your salt. It is understood, of course, that you take Marian's part against me on all issues; but will you be friends as far as is consistent with that?"

"All right," said Nelly, shortly.

"Shake hands on it; and I'll tell you something else that will help you to understand me better," he said, holding out his hand. She gave hers; and when the bargain was struck, he turned to the fire and seated himself on the edge of the table.

"You know that when I married," he resumed, "I was promoted to mix in fashionable society for the first time. Of course you do: that was the whole excitement of the affair for the family. You know the impression I made on polite society better, probably, than I do. Now tell me: do you know what impression polite society made on me?"

"Dont understand."

"Perhaps it has never occurred even to you, sharp as you are, that I could have taken society otherwise than at its own valuation of itself, as something much higher, more cultivated and refined than anything that I had been accustomed to. Well, I never believed in that much at any time; but it was not until I had made a mésalliance for Marian's sake that I realized how infinitely beneath me and my class was the one I had married into."

"Mésalliance!&mdash;with Marian! I take back the shake hands."

"Mésalliance with her class, for her sake: I made the distinction purposely. Now what am I, Miss McQuinch? A worker. I belonged and belong to the class that keeps up the world by its millions of serviceable hands and serviceable brains. All the pride of caste in me settles on that point. I admit no loafer as my equal. The man who is working at the bench is my equal, whether he can do my day's work or not, provided he is doing the best he can. But the man who does not work anyhow, and the class that does not work, is a class below mine. When I annoyed Marian by refusing to wear a tall hat and cuffs, I did so because I wanted to have it seen as I walked through Piccadilly and St. James's Street that I did not belong there, just as your people walk through a poor street dressed so as to shew that they dont belong there. To me a man like your uncle, Marian's father, or like Marmaduke or Douglas, loafing idly round spending money that has been made by the sweat of men like myself, are little better than thieves. They get on with the queerest makeshifts for self-respect: old Mr. Lind with family pride. Douglas with personal vanity, and Marmaduke with a sort of interest in his own appetites and his own jollity. Everything is a sham with them: they have drill and etiquet instead of manners, fashions instead of tastes, small talk instead of intercourse. Everything that is special to them as distinguished from workers is a sham: when you get down to the real element in them, good or bad, you find that it is something that is common to them and to all civilized mankind. The reason that this isnt as clear to other workmen who come among them as it is to me is that most workmen share their ignorance of the things they affect superiority in. Poor Jackson, whom you all call the Yankee cad, and who is not a cad at all in his proper place among the engineers at our works, believes in the sham refinements he sees around him at the at-homes he is so fond of. He has no art in him&mdash;no trained ear for music or for fine diction, no trained eye for pictures and colors and buildings, no cultivated sense of dignified movement, gesture, and manner. But he knows what fashionable London listens to and looks at, and how it talks and behaves; and he makes that his standard, and sets down what is different from it as vulgar. Now the difference between me and him is that I got an artistic training by accident when I was young, and had the natural turn to profit by it. Before I ever saw a West End Londoner I knew beautiful from ugly, rare from common, in music, speech, costume, and gesture; for in my father's operatic and theatrical companies there did come now and then, among the crowd of thirdraters, a dancer, an actor, a scenepainter, a singer, or a bandsman or conductor who was a fine artist. Consequently, I was not to be taken in like Jackson by made-up faces, trashy pictures, drawling and lounging and strutting and tailoring, drawing-room singing and drawing-room dancing, any more than by bad ventilation and unwholesome hours and food, not to mention polite dram drinking, and the round of cruelties they call sport. I found that the moment I refused to accept the habits of the rich as standards of refinement and propriety, the whole illusion of their superiority vanished at once. When I married Marian I was false to my class. I had a sort of idea that my early training had accustomed me to a degree of artistic culture that I could not easily find in a working girl, and that would be quite natural to Marian. I soon found that she had the keenest sense of what was ladylike, and no sense of what was beautiful at all. A drawing, a photograph, or an engraving sensibly framed without a white mount round it to spoil it pained her as much as my wrists without cuffs on them. No mill girl could have been less in sympathy with me on the very points for which I had preferred her to the mill girls. The end of it was that I felt that love had made me do a thoroughly vulgar thing&mdash;marry beneath me. These aristocratic idle gentlemen will never be shamed out of their laziness and low-mindedness until the democratic working gentlemen refuse to associate with them instead of running after them and licking their boots. I am heartily glad now to be out of their set and rid of them, instead of having to receive them civilly in my house for Marian's sake. The whole business was strangling me: the strain of keeping my feeling to myself was more than you can imagine. Do you know that there have been times when I have been so carried away with the idea that she must be as tired of the artificiality of our life as I was, that I have begun to speak my mind frankly to her; and when she recoiled, hurt and surprised and frightened that I was going to turn coarse at last, I have shut up and sat there apparently silent, but really saying under my breath: 'Why dont you go? Why dont you leave me, vanish, fly away to your own people? You must be a dream: I never married you. You dont know me: you cant be my wife: your lungs were not made to breathe the air I live in.' I have said a thousand things like that, and then wondered whether there was any truth in telepathy&mdash;whether she could possibly be having my thoughts transferred to her mind and thinking it only her imagination. I would ask myself whether I despised her or not, calling on myself for the truth as if I did not believe the excuses I made for her out of the fondness I could not get over. I am fond of her still, sometimes. I did not really&mdash;practically, I mean&mdash;despise her until I gave up thinking about her at all. There was a certain kind of contempt in that indifference, beyond a doubt: there is no use denying it. Besides, it is proved to me now by the new respect I feel for her because she has had the courage and grit to try going away with Douglas. But my love for her is over: nothing short of her being born over again&mdash;a thing that sometimes happens&mdash;will ever bring her into contact with me after this. To put it philosophically, she made the mistake of avoiding all realities, and yet marrying herself to the hardest of realities, a working man; so it was inevitable that she should go back at last to the region of shadows and mate with that ghostliest of all unrealities, the non-working man. Perhaps, too, the union may be more fruitful than ours: the cross between us was too violent. Now you have the whole story from my point of view. What do you&mdash;"

"Hush!" said Elinor, interrupting him. "What is that noise outside?"

The house bell began to ring violently; and they could hear a confused noise of voices and footsteps without.

"Can she have come back?" said Elinor, starting up.

"Impossible!" said Conolly, looking disturbed for the first time. They stood a moment listening, with averted eyes. A second peal from the bell was followed by roars of laughter, amid which a remonstrant voice was audible. Then the house door was hammered with a stick. Conolly ran downstairs at once and opened it. On the step he found Marmaduke reeling in the arms of the Rev. George.

"How are you, ol' fler?" said Marmaduke, plunging into the hall. "The parson is tight. I found him tumbling about High Street, and brought him along."

"Pray excuse this intrusion," whispered the Rev. George. "You see the state he is in. He accosted me near Campden Hill; and I really could not be seen walking with him into town. I wonder he was not arrested."

"He is the worse for drink; but he is sober enough to know how to amuse himself at your expense," said Conolly, aloud. "Come up to the laboratory. Miss McQuinch is there."

"But he is not fit," urged the clergyman. "Look at him trying to hang up his hat. How absurd&mdash;I should rather say how deplorable! I assure you he is perfectly tipsy. He has been ringing the bells of the houses, and requesting females to accompany us. Better warn Elinor."

"Nonsense!" said Conolly. "I have some news that will sober him. Here is Miss McQuinch. Are you going?"

"Yes," said Elinor. "I should lose my patience if I had to listen to George's comments; and I am tired. I would rather go."

"Not yet, Nelly. Wont um stay and talk to um's Marmadukes?"

"Let me go," said Elinor, snatching away her hand, which he had seized. "You ought to be at home in bed. You are a sot." At this Marmaduke laughed boisterously. She passed him contemptuously, and left. The three men then went upstairs, Marmaduke dropping his pretence of drunkenness under the influence of Conolly's presence.

"Marian is not in, I presume," said the clergyman, when they were seated.

"No." said Conolly. "She has eloped with Douglas."

They stared at him. Then Marmaduke gave a long whistle; and the clergyman rose, pale. "What do you mean, sir?" he said.

Conolly did not answer; and the Rev. George slowly sat down again.

"Well, I'm damned sorry for it," said Marmaduke, emphatically. "It was a mean thing for Douglas to do, with all his brag about his honor."

The Rev. George covered his face with his handkerchief and sobbed.

"Come, shut up, old fellow; and dont make an ass of yourself," said Marmaduke. "What are you going to do, Conolly?"

"I must simply divorce her."

"Go for heavy damages, Conolly. Knock a few thousand out of him, just to punish him."

"He could easily afford it. Besides, why should I punish him?"

"My dear friend," cried the clergyman, "you must not dream of a divorce. I implore you to abandon such an idea. Consider the disgrace, the impiety! The publicity would kill my father."

Conolly shook his head.

"There is no such thing as divorce known to the Church. 'What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.'"

"She had no right to bolt," said Marmaduke. "Thats certain."

"I was married by a registrar," said Conolly; "and as there is no such thing as civil marriage known to the Church, our union, from the ecclesiastical point of view, has no existence. We were not joined by God, in fact, in your sense. To deny her the opportunity of remarrying would be to compel her to live as an adulteress in the eye of the law, which, by the bye, would make me the father of Douglas's children. I cannot, merely because your people are afraid of scandal, take such a revenge on Marian as to refuse her the freedom she has sacrificed so much for. After all, since our marriage has proved a childless one, the only reason for our submitting to be handcuffed to one another, now that our hearts are no longer in the arrangement, is gone."

"The game began at Sark," said Marmaduke. "Douglas stuck to her there like a leech. He's been about the house here a good deal since she came back. I often wondered you didnt kick him out. But, of course, it was not my business to say anything. Was she huffed into going? You hadnt any row with her just before, had you?

"We never had rows."

"That was your mistake, Conolly. You should have heard poor Susanna and me fighting. We always ended by swearing we would never speak to one another again. Nothing duller than a smooth life. If you had given Marian something to complain of, she would have been too much taken up with it to bother about Douglas."

"But have you ascertained whither they have gone?" said the clergyman, distractedly. "Will you not follow them?"

"I know nothing of their movements. Probably they are crossing to New York."

"But surely you ought to follow her," said the Rev. George. "You may yet be in time to save her from worse than death."

"Yah!" said Marmaduke. "Drop all that rot, George. Worse than death be hanged! Serves the family right! They are a jolly sight too virtuous: it will do them good to get shewn up a bit."

"If you have no respect for the convictions of a priest," exclaimed the Rev. George, shedding tears, "you might at least be silent in the presence of a heartbroken brother and husband."

"Oh, I dont want to shew any want of consideration for you or Conolly," said Marmaduke, sulkily. "No doubt it's rough on you. But as to the feelings of the family, I tell you flatly that I dont care if the whole crew were brought to the Old Bailey to-morrow and convicted of bigamy. It would take the conceit out of them."

"I know not how to break this wretched news to my father," said the Rev. George, turning disconsolately from his sottish cousin to Conolly.

"It is no such uncommon occurrence. The less fuss made about it the better. She is not to blame, and I shall not be heard crying out misery and disgrace. Your family can very well follow my example. I have nothing to say against her, and I believe she has nothing to say against me. Nothing can prevent such publicity as a petition for divorce must entail. Your father will survive it, never fear."

The clergyman, remembering how vainly he had tried to change Conolly's intention when Marian was to be married, felt that he should succeed no better now that she was to be divorced. Silent and cast down, he sat dangling his handkerchief between his knees and leaning forward on his elbows toward the fire.

"You must excuse me if I see my way straight through to the end. I daresay you would rather realize it gradually, inevitable as it is," added Conolly, looking down with some pity at his drooping figure. "I cannot help my habit of mind. When are you going to be married?" he continued, to Marmaduke.

"I dont know. The Countess is in a hurry. I'm not. But I suppose it will be some time in spring."

"You have made up your mind to it at last?"

"Oh, I never had any particular objection to it, only I dont like to be hunted into a corner. Conny is a good little girl, and will make a steady wife. I dont like her mother; but as for herself, she is fond of me; and after all, I did lead her a dance long ago. Besides, old boy, the Earl is forking out handsomely; and as I have some notion of settling down to farm, his dust will come in conveniently as capital."

The clergyman rose, and slowly pulled on his woolen gloves.

"If youre going, I will see you part of the way," said Marmaduke. "I'll cheer you up. You know you neednt tell the governor until to-morrow."

"I had rather go alone, if you intend to behave as you did before."

"Never fear. I'm as sober as a judge now. Come along. Away with melancholy! Youll have Douglas for a brother-in-law before this time next year."

This seemed to have been in the clergyman's mind; for he shook hands with his host more distantly than usual. When they were gone, Conolly went to the laboratory, and rang for his neglected dinner, which he ate with all a traveller's appetite. From the dinner table he went straight to the organ, and played until a little before midnight, when, after a brief turn in the open air, he retired to bed, and was soon quietly asleep.