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Chapter XII.

John found his wife somewhat trying.

A man can have too much wife. It is a dangerous habit for a woman to be constantly sounding her own praises, and pointing out what inferior wives other men's wives are as compared to her, and leading her husband to understand that she is not sufficiently appreciated.

Besides, it happened, unfortunately for Mrs. Anderson, that, during Ruta's lifetime, John could judge for himself, and had no need to do more than compare his own wife and Ruta. He could at least appreciate that contrast. Yet, in his desire to be true to his creed of duty, he intensified his kindness and devotion, even though it was to a woman he had grown to care so little for that he even disliked her. She tried him; and he was patient, for he had sinned against her. She even nagged at him, and that is the climax of a woman's cruelty.

Mrs. Anderson was an admirable mother to her daughters. They, and John, and the world accepted her partiality for her son on the ground of his being her only boy. None the less, she did her duty to her two girls. When Topsy came out, which she did when she was seventeen, Mrs. Anderson attended, in the most self-sacrificing spirit, dances and functions innumerable. Her figure was still admirable, her dancing was still exquisite, and her programme was invariably full. Had Topsy's programme been as page 79usually empty, Mrs. Anderson's self-sacrifice might have experienced the unpleasantness of being put to the test. Possibly, had Topsy been a bad dancer, she would not have come out as early as she did. Daisy, the second girl, did not come out at seventeen. She had to wait for more than a year later. Unkind folks said that she had to wait until Topsy was married. It is immaterial, although the fact, or coincidence undoubtedly, was that Daisy's coming-out ball chanced to be the one immediately prior to Topsy's wedding. The convenience of the coincidence was that Mrs. Anderson never had to chaperone two daughters at one time.

Evelyn, Topsy's husband, was a product of London and modern civilisation. He had a small private income and came to the Colony to take up land. He was young, and he was good looking. He met Topsy, and he fell genuinely in love for the first time in a selfish life.

When he proposed, he, without expressing it in so many words, merely offered the present, himself, his money and—the future. His past, he considered, belonged exclusively to himself! Topsy, being in love, was satisfied with him himself. Mrs. Anderson, being more worldly, satisfied herself as to the money and the future, and gave no heed to the man or thought of the past. The present, the individual and the future proving satisfactory, a fashionable marriage in due course eventuated.

Topsy became Mrs. Arthur Evelyn.

She had made a very good match!

Six months later, she learnt, through a letter, that her husband was already the father of a child, and that the mother was alive in England. He had sufficient honour, and such a lack of appreciation of his vileness, to admit the accusation. He recognised the woman's illiterate scrawl; and he said so.

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Poor Topsy! The shock was intensely bitter. Not unnaturally. Arthur had appeared in her eyes a hero worthy of her love. Therefore, as women will, she had idealised him into a saint and worshipped him as such. After all she was little more than a schoolgirl; and he was very good-looking.

There was a scene. The comedy of their young married life suddenly slipped into tragedy, just as the farces and the comedies of married life so often do. The most wonderful dramas of the world are the unwritten ones. We know that, because of the glimpses we sometimes get from the fragments of a few which are told us in our law courts. Dramas they are, with the low comedy of letters that meant one thing to both the writer and the reader when written and read, but which seem quite another in the horrid glare of public shame and social dishonour. They are dramas comprising the tragedy of passion and deceit and disgrace, and the farce of "damages" and comic evidence.

Educated men make the most vulgar comedians. Sometimes this is illustrated on the stage of the music-hall. It is more frequently observable in our law courts. Letters that might make justice weep for pity are read with legal humour. Laughter greets crosses that were kisses and smudges that were tears. Any one, conscious of common kindness, must realise that the profession of a barrister, veneered with "my learned friend" and stilted ceremonials, is, at its business, the most callous and the most vulgar there is. A refined gentleman is apt to become, in his wig and gown— and there may be scarlet and ermine about the gown— a self-opinionated cad who, without fear of consequences, can and does say what he likes of any one connected with the case he is engaged in. With becoming courage, he avails himself of the opportunity. A judge will talk to a lady in court as he would not talk to a flunkey in his drawing-room.

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Topsy had seen the comedies and tragedies of married life on the stage, and laughed sometimes, and yawned sometimes, and never quite understood.

Now she neither laughed nor yawned, but understood. And, in her understanding, she appreciated the fact of how widely a woman differs from a man.

Evelyn appreciated it too.

He tried to argue and reason with his wife—to no purpose.

"It's part of the past, Topsy," he said. "Not highly creditable. I've admitted that. But it was not as fearful as you seem to think. It was an act of folly, and I've been sorry for it. I never made the woman a bad woman. She was that before I met her. I've provided for the—the child. They'll never be in want. What more can I do? I can't undo! Besides, it's not harmed you; and it never will. You're none the worse for it."

The insult of that was its truth.

He added a great deal more, and nearly lost his temper.

She cried, and, as usually happens in real life and in melodrama, asked what she was. Then, without waiting for his reply, she answered her own riddle, and declared that she was merely his mistress. The other woman, she protested, was his wife, his real wife, even though they might never have actually gone through a marriage ceremony. Then she talked of the coming of the letter as the coming of her death, and that her whole nature had changed. Finally, she declared that they must part.

She nearly had hysterics, and, to her credit be it said, no mere thought of appearances or tight lacing prevented her. She buried her head in her arms, and broke into the low bitter sobbing of real grief and agony of heart.

Her husband expostulated, and asked what good could possibly come of her leaving him, and implored page 82her to have some common sense. She wept a reply, and said she had positively decided upon her line of action. He bent over her, and, speaking softly to her, placed his hand upon her shoulder. She refused to listen to him, and threw the hand away. Then she burst into fresh sobs, and, clutching the hateful letter, she left the room and, soon after, the house. He, alone in the room, like a madman cursed the wretched woman who had come between him and his happiness.

The young wife, being a virtuous, helpless girl, sought her parents. Her love for her father urged her to fly to him. Her feelings as a woman prompted her to speak first to her mother.

Mrs. Anderson heard her tale and appeared surprised. She was decently shocked and properly sympathetic.

She told her daughter to do nothing rash, but at the same time to be strong in her self-respect and to pray to God, and added that she looked a perfect guy in the dress she was wearing.

"It wants altering about the sleeves, my dear. You'll have to get some new dresses when you and Arthur are over in Sydney," she said, and merely raised her eyebrows when Topsy declared afresh that she and Arthur would never be together again.

Scarcely an hour later, Mrs. Anderson told Evelyn, who had come round to see how the miserable matter could be quietly settled, that he was a fool to have admitted the scandal

"I should have lied?" he asked.

"And your wife would have been happy," she answered.

"I should have been miserable."

"Exactly. Pure selfishness."

He suggested phantoms and spectres rising for ever between them. He was inclined to be sentimental about it.

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She laughed at him and somewhat surprised him with portions of her advice.

He had had great awe of her sanctity until then. He had grave doubts, when he left, both as to his awe and as to her sanctity.

She divined his thoughts once, towards the end of the interview, and said casually,—

"Common sense, Arthur, common sense; and remember that women are only men in petticoats, with the necessary alterations."

"Which means?"

"That they are no more perfect than men."

"No more!"

"Not really. They're human; and you men seem never to quite realise that. You love to talk of women putting you men on impossible pedestals, whilst you wrong women by doing the same to them to an infinitely greater degree. Women are women and always passionate, and often frail. Likewise men."

"But women——"

"Are petted, and pampered, and caged, and kept for men's special edification. And so long as they flutter and twitter meekly and properly behind their prison bars, well and good. They are noble and ennobling, and the saviours of the world. But the instant they break, or even so much as bend their prison bars, like a slave that has made a dash for liberty, they are punished by being branded as disreputable. And men may act and do just as it pleases them, and the world shrugs its shoulders and smiles. But women—— Great heavens—if a woman strays from the narrow path you men have mapped out for her, even by so little as an indiscreet remark, she is frowned upon, condemned, and lost! A woman must keep good and pure, but——"

"Yet you said I was a fool to have told Topsy."

"So you were. And she'd have been a fool if she page 84had confided every little flirtation she might have had before she married you—or since. There it is, the old, old tale of immaculate virtue on a woman's part, and on the man's part a mere escapade."

It angered Arthur. He had been brought up to believe that a man never sinned. He merely escapaded or sowed wild oats. The only possible wrong of the kind that he could commit was to the husband who had always trusted him and been hospitable and friendly. Even then, it was frequently the husband's fault and the wife's choice. A man's escapade might very possibly be some unfortunate woman's ruin, but that was surely her business. On the other hand, a woman's escapade was a woman's sin; a woman's sin was—her damnation. Clearly.

Evelyn insisted.

So did Mrs. Anderson.

"It's wrong. Of course it is. But why, my dear boy, if men may transgress and be virtuous, may not women?"

"Because they are different. The consequence is greater."

She was silent.

"I'm not going to argue it," he said. "It is so foreign to anything we are concerned in."

"Yes. Of course. Yes." Then she added, with a light laugh, "Well, well, after all, it is exclusively your business—your wife, your past, your misconduct, your folly. I gave you my opinion and shocked you. Oh yes, I did. I saw it. Topsy is my daughter, but what is of far greater importance to her is the fact that she is your wife. Besides, I'm not anxious for a scandal. She'll be a fool if there is one; and so will you be. Now you must be off, Arthur. You must excuse me. I have to order dinner and interview butchers."

"Good-bye, Mrs. Anderson," said Arthur, "and if page 85Topsy comes to you, as I am sure she will, try and——"

"Make her forgive you, eh? Ah well, you must be patient. Good-bye."

She watched him go, and somehow she seemed to forget the dinner and the butcher.

"The consequences are greater," she murmured. "Are they? Not always, not always. The transgression is as bad in a man as in a woman. There is no difference."

In Topsy's mind an unfortunate woman was absolutely impossible as an acquaintance, but none the less deserving of sympathy. She genuinely pitied her husband's victim. Her sentiment carried her almost to the extreme of hating him for his heartlessness. The thought of the helpless, ruined woman and the little child thrown upon the world fatherless and nameless was an unspeakable horror to her. She, who loved so tenderly, who had such faith in her husband, who always attended church, who prayed to God every evening that she might learn to live aright, stood between this poor creature and her salvation!

Not of course of her own free will, but by the law of the land. There was considerable relief in that reflection. She was Evelyn's wife. Do what she might, unless she died, he could never marry the woman. But——

What?

She had an answer to Evelyn; she had an answer to the world. Every woman has an answer to the world. Had she any to herself?

She shuddered. She closed her eyes, and the misery of it, and the horror, appalled her. A wife herself by law, and yet, in truth, no wife.

"Please God help me! Pray God help me! Oh, what can I do? What ought I to do? What must page 86I do? Oh, I am so heart-broken, so miserable, so miserable!

She was in her bedroom. It was the little room she had slept in from childhood to maidenhood, from maidenhood to the spring of womanhood. That spring had brightened into summer at her marriage. It was winter now; the dull, cheerless winter of misery. Six months ago she had been a girl, pure and innocent. Six months ago she loved as in a dream. The glamour of marriage was upon her. Now it was past, it was gone. She was a woman grown. A woman bound for life to a man she loved, and from whom it would well-nigh kill her to part. Was it wrong, knowing what she did, to continue living with her husband as his wife? Was his past sin to the woman in reality so fearful a crime to his wife? Was his chief fault to her his marriage, or his silence, or both?

It was terrible, it was agonising. She was distracted, and burying her face in her hands, the girl sobbed.

Her mother had not helped her, nor even brought a ray of comfort to her. Her father might, the dear, kind, old father whom she had always worshipped. He would know, and could, and would advise her. Whatever he might tell her would be best. He was to her the embodiment of virtue, the soul of honour, and beyond the very thought of evil. He would divine the right; and she brushed back her hair, and dried her eyes, and went down to his study.

She reflected, as she passed downstairs, that break-fest-time, when the letter had arrived, was but a few hours ago. Yet it seemed a lifetime.

In very truth it was—to her.