Holy Wedlock. A story of things as they are

Front matter

A STORY OF THINGS AS THEY ABE. BY CHARLES T. C. JAMES AITHOH OF "THE BLINDNESS OF MEMORY EARLE," "iHE NEW FAI1H "humbling his pride," etc. " Let tliem raTe." Tennyson. LONDON : WARD AND DOWNEY, 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1891. [All rights reserved.] CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CHTSTAL PALACE PRESS. EXORDIUM. " I don't care what you say, mother ! I don't care what Sue says, either. I don't care what any soul on earth says. I'm past caring — long past it ! " The girl, with the defiance of some wild beast driven to bay, stood against the corner of the bare deal table in the North Devon cottage by the sea, and with flashing black eyes, head thrown back, and a glorious animal beauty in every turn of her tall, lithe figure, and the pose of it, confronted the mean, narrow face of her mother, and the coarser, redder one of her elder sister Susan.

"What do you care for, I should like to know ? " the mother asked, with great bitterness. " You, B not eighteen yet, run away to Exeter with a man ! A tourist, too, as you didn't know ! An' me an' Sue 'aving to be dragged there to fetch you back from your wickedness, with the help of the police! To Exeter with a tourist ! Heaven have mercy on you ! " " He was nice — awfully nice ; it's more than can be said of you or Sue, mother ! Yon drive me mad with your teachings and preachings — mad ! Haven't I heard enough of that trip to Exeter by this time ? Haven't I ? It's six months ago, and not once have we had words about anything else since, but you've thrown that in my teeth, and so has Sue. I call it a shame, I do ! " " Where's your religion gone to, Ellen ? Where's all I've tried to teach you gone to?

Answer me that ! " The girl still stood at the corner of the deal table, one shapely brown hand upon it, her sleeves rolled up, and the front of her common stuff gown slightly open, showing the full brown throat pulsating with emotion. She Avas looking out through the open cottage door at the sea conjured to gold where the setting sunbeams smote it. If that dazzling lustre had been re flected in her eyes they couldn't have flashed more brightly and darkly than they did. A queen of gipsy beauty she stood proudly there, and answered back the plain truth as her own heart taught it her : . "You've made my home hell; that's what you've done, with your preachings and strictness ! You have ! Wrong to do this, wrong to do that, wrong to do the other ! What was the harm in going to Exeter, when the man said he'd take me to a theatre ?

Chapter I

High season in London. In the Row — to sum up in one word — everybody. So fully and com pletely was everybody there that, if by any local earthquake or other painful mischance the Row and its contents to-day were swallowed up, the world would have forthwith become a barren waste, distinctly* without " form," and void to a degree. Society — comprising everybody — requiring some excitement through that London season, had found it in Ruby. It lifts up its voice day and night in one all-absorbing question, put to itself wheresoever it assembles itself together. " Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged 1 " "Not yet; but I'm going to, don't you know, when they'll book me." " Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged ? " " Yes ; isn't it marvellous ? " " Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged ? " "Couldn't get seats for six weeks to come, dear boy ; aud haven't sufficient faith in Pro vidence to book so far in advance, don't you know."

And so on, and so on. It was the one question. It seemed to have entered holy wed lock with " How d'you do ? " and the happy couple always went about in society together : " How d'you do ? Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged 1 " Society might have been turned into the parrot house at the Zoo, with every bird gone mad on the one phrase, and repeating it eternally. It was credibly reported that society repeated the ques tion so often by day and night that, when it got to sleep at last, it woke itself up again im mediately by repeating it in dreams. Elegantly dressed youths in their first season, and not par ticularly blessed with powers of conversation, speculated amongst themselves in private places " what on earth fellows talked about, don't you know, before there was a Ruby on the stage?" and, finding the answer not forthcoming, gave it up, and went forth with the parrot cry upon their lips : " Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged ?

" So everybody, walking in the Row that fine early June evening, tossed the conversational ball about freely. Everybody in carriages stopped them and leant towards the occupants of other carriages, the eager question on their lips. Every body on foot sent the query gently toddling down amongst the gleaming silk hats and gay parasols. It sat down with the penny-cramp-producing chair-brigade, and attended to its liver with the equestrians on the tan. If you wanted a good idea of omnipresence, you had it in that question which everybody had mastered at length, and didn't mean to let go on any account. See here, this little group of two good-looking men, fortunately for themselves amply provided from their birth with the money they might have found it difficult to earn. Says the one — it does not matter which is which — they both walk and talk and dress exactly alike : "How d'yer do?

Seen the Ruby die in Unavenged ? " Says the other : "Yes; last night. Marvellous! Oh, here comes Miss M'Click ! Wonder whether she has ? Typical old Scotch spinster, eh ? Exalted cheek bones and all that, eh ? " Miss M'Click, coming up at the instant — rather too angular of figure, rather too angular of face, and far, far too frizzy of gray hair that seemed as though it might, in remote ages, have been carroty — lifted her black silk umbrella parasol and recognised her friends, they recog nising her at the same time. Rather a race and jostle between those two friends which should put the great question first. Result — both putting it together and simul taneously : " How d'you do, Miss M'Click ? Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged ? " "Yes, I have seen her. A friend gave me a seat in her box the night before last.

Verra fine and tragic ; yes." Says one of the two men — which, still im material : " Wonderful, you agreeing with the general verdict of humanity ! Why, what does it mean, Miss M'Click ? " "And why wouldn't I agree with it, pray, if it's right ? " " You never have agreed with it, that's all ! Look at the Aubreys' case, and what you say about it." " What I say is the truth. You may call it a happy marriage because eight thousand a year marries five. I don't, that's all. I say he's a man of some feelin', and she's a statue. Time will come when she'll bore him. Good as she is, easy as he is, time will come when they'll bore each other. Yes; I know it. Bother the people all chattering round us like monkeys ! Haven't they any other question to ask themselves but the one about that girl and her actin' ?

" The one man — or the other — makes reply : "It's really the only question worth asking. Happy Ruby, to have your good opinion, Miss M'Click ! " "I know you're laughin' at me now! Every one laughs at me and my ideas. Because I send truth out naked upon the world, people laugh, and say I'm improper, and haven't any delicacy. That's it," Miss M'Click drew her spare figure as upright as a dart, and looked defiantly upon everybody out of her little sharp eyes. The previous speaker stroked a silky moustache, and grinned feebly. "You're too hard, really, don't you know; and you've a terrible habit of being aggravatingly right in what you say, too. That's what annoys people, Miss M'Click." " They must be annoyed, then, for I won't lie for their satisfaction. People are too fond of talking cant; it's a language I hadn't natural cleverness enongh to learn."

" We shall soon be able to test your theories in the matter of the Aubreys ; they come to town to-day or to-morrow," said the man who hadn't spoken lately. " From where do they come ? " " Haven't the vaguest idea. Somewhere abroad — or perhaps it's North Wales. North Wales always seems foreign to me — can't say why." "Late to come to town for the season." "They've usually been earlier, certainly. Had three previous seasons, haven't they ? Yes, of course; been married three years and a half. Fatal period, Miss M'Click. Now or never for your theory with them, eh ? Bless my life, there they are ! " That group of three — the two resplendent male animals and the stiff, upright figure that might claim, perhaps, some slight tinge of " soul " — all faced in one direction — the stream of car riages running on wheels.

In an easily hung victoria, whose pole divided a showy pair of black horses, A*ery silvered and frothy, Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey, just arrived in town, were taking a turn round the park together. They looked as though they were perpetually in heaven — that heaven we have so often shuddered at in the hymn, "Where congregations ne'er break up, and sabbaths never end." Mrs. Aubrey, thirty, dark and pale ; a fashionable Galatea somewhere in the intermediate stage between flesh and stone, but principally the latter — say granite, beautiful and depressing. Mr. Aubrey, thirty-two, flaxen curls all over his head,- but thinner on the top of it than else where ; flaxen moustache, " wavy," with a studied negligence ; bright colour and blue eyes ; general appearance — a man of quality got into the heaven before-mentioned by accident, bored by it, and, with aristocratic courage, entirely prepared to try the antithetical and historic locality by way of change.

" Humph ! " sniffed Miss M'Click. " I wasn't so far wrong. When will people be sharp enough to learn that eight thousand a year marrying five won't bring the millennium, eh? They haven't learnt it yet. Good morning ! " And away marched Scotch wisdom, embodied and upright, leaving the two men to separate and go off in different directions, constantly to be mistaken the one for the other, as they always were. It didn't matter in the least. Meanwhile the Aubreys' victoria, stopped for a moment at the top of the Row, glittered gaily in the sunlight falling on it through the waving trees, and the occupants being instantly recog nised by heaps of friends, were welcomed heartily, and importuned with a fashionable and dogged persistency on the only subject worth mentioning : " Have you seen the Ruby die in Unavenged? " To the melody of which all-absorbing question the summer sun sank down, and the summer wind whispered to the trees, and the old world went round.

Chapter II

Satisfied with only a couple of circles round the park, Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey drove home. It was no great distance, being only so far away as Con naught Square. So they drove home. "Home!" That was the direction they gave the coachman when they had made those two circles of the park. In a sense it was home, for any place one owns and occasionally resides in bears that ap pellation. It was full of the most charming things. When eight thousand a year marries five, homes usually are. The front door was a delicate shade of blue, and the hall was decorated in different shades of blue, and the flower-boxes in the dininoroom windows were a deep blue, while the iron work of the drawing-room balcony upstairs showed the same heavenly tint. There wasn't a room or a passage in all the house (not too large a one) where you could make your footstep audible by any endeavour.

It was all charming, from cellar to chimney-pot. People dining there always said so. Servants, once coming into the Aubreys' service, felt settled for life. If by any chance one of those servants left to marry a retired butler setting up a cosy lodging-house in the West End, or other advantageous fortune-making enterprise, there was invariably a rush to get the vacant place. Mr. Aubrey was such an excellent master; Mrs. Aubrey was such an excellent mistress ! As with the servants, so with the world as comprised in the inclusive term everybody. The world, with the single exception of poor, eccentric Miss M'Click, envied them. Wives wishing to reprove their husbands in that most charming and effective of all ways — by comparison with other human per fection — always found that perfection in Mr. Aubrey.

Husbands, with wives not exactly to their tastes, invariably exalted Mrs. Aubrey as the highest womanly perfection possible of conception. Ob, happy, happy Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey ! Yet as they drove rapidly home behind the showy pair of black horses, glittering in silver and flecked with foam, Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey were very silent, They had gradually been growing silent, when alone together, for the last year or two. It was as though some invisible gulf were widening between them day by day. Why was it that the stately beauty who had played for him and won him could not retain the heart which she had captured ? Why was it that, scornfully careless on the point as she seemed to be now victory was hers, there was yet a bitterness in her soul because of it : Why was it that in Mr. Aubrey's heart there should be a void which he found a life of growing dissipation could not fill ?

He was pondering the question as he drove home that day beside his wife. " Gay dog that I used to be, where is my gayness gone to ? Why can't the old life to which I have returned bring back the old pleasures ? Not bringing them back, why can't I abandon it?" He turned slightly, and glanced at his wife, for the moment, almost sadly, almost pitying her because she couldn't keep his wayward heart captive. She caught his glance. "A lovely evening ! " said happy Mrs. Aubrey. " Couldn't be better," assented her happy husband. They were silent from that moment till they faced each other from opposite ends of the pretty dining-table half an hour later. Such a cosy, charmiDg dining-room, table, and dinner it was, with gliding servants so perfect they might have been the ghosts of deceased royal footmen, risen by some golden miracle to make the happy Aubreys still more happy !

Said Mrs. Aubrey then "Are you at home to-night?" Answered Mr. Aubrey : " I was thinking of the club, later." Tben another prolonged silence fell upon the cosy room, and the gliding servants glided, and everything else was immovable and silent as the grave. c A note was brought in on a salver of silver tracery, and handed to Mrs. Aubrey. It was the dessert stage of the meal. Mrs. Aubrey indolently took the note, opened and read it. Mr. Aubrey chose a blushing peach, peeled it, looked with some concern to see whether the spurting juice of it had sullied his shirt-front ; found it had not, and then consumed the peach in silence. By which time Mrs. Aubrey had finished reading her note. "From the Furnivals. They have a box for Un avenged to-night, but can't use it. Guessing we might be free on our first night in town, they have kindly sent the ticket on to me.

Do we go?" Mr. Aubrey, peeling a second peach with especial regard to the spurting juice, did not speak for a moment. " It won't interfere with your club arrangement," his wife added. "Then you wish to go?" he asked. "I should like to go. I am not absolutely bent upon going." " I will go with pleasure," Mr. Aubrey said, politely, rising to ring the bell and order ac cordingly. Mrs. Aubrey rose at the same instant. " I will get a wrap," she said. " We ought to start at once." "Yes. I am going to order a cab; there is no time for anything else. It is past eight now." The door was near the electric bell, and, passing from the pressing of it, Mr. Aubrey held the former open for his wife with great politeness. As she passed through on her way upstairs she bowed slightly to him iu recognition of the attention.

With a sigh, Mr. Aubrey returned to the table, and, standing by it, poured out a glass of wine and drank it. " I wish," he thought, for the moment quite sadly, " I wish she had the power to make me and keep me a better man ! I wish she had a little more passion in her nature ! I wish she could kill that eternal sense of search which is in me; search for some one companion I have never found; some one happiness I have never known ! " c Then, with a sudden change of mood as he swung round to the mantelpiece and lighted a cigarette : " Bah ! what's the use of wishing ? The fault may be as much in me as her ; most likely more so." For there was good metal in him ; but it had not yet been magnetised, that was all. The butler came in with coffee, and said the cab was at the door; and Mrs. Aubrey came down, with her wrap about her, beautifully granite as usual.

The theatre was crowded with everybody, come for the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth time to see the Ruby die in Unavenged. Few plays had ever earned such a run before. It was told as a solemn fact, devoid of all exaggerative filigree, that one or two men had arranged with the management for season tickets, and spent the first half of every night there as regularly as they spent the other half of it in bed. The great charm of the piece lay in the death of Ruby, with which it closed. The play itself was slight in the extreme, on old, irritatingly lifelike lines. Merely the story of a rustic beauty ruined by a man of good standiug, the pet of society. The poor girl, in a last desperation of despair, makes final appeal to him in his London rooms. He puts her off with the promise that he will consider the matter and call upon her next evening.

He promises the more readily because he is expecting a visitor to dine in his cosy rooms — a visitor who ought to be dining with her lawful husband. After a passionate scene of entreaty, the girl is compelled to be content with the promise of consideration, and retires to her own abode. In the final scene she is despairingly preparing supper for the expected visitor in her rooms. She does it very delicately, with her own hands, remembering all his favourite dishes with affectionate solicitude ; for she is fond of him in spite of what has happened ; fond of him with a girl's first and purest lo\~e. All is ready, and in breathless impatience and excitement she waits for his coming. At last, a knock at the door — the postman's knock. She flies to take the letter out of the box. From him ! Staggering back against the table she has laid with all his favourite deli cacies, she reads his letter — his cruel letter.

He is a skilful diplomatist, and knows how to touch the passionate but generous heart of the girl he has ruined. He writes to her tenderly — with a tenderness that brings tears to her eyes as she reads. He Avould marry her gladly ; but he is poor — in great pecuniary difficulties. His only chance of escaping them lies in a wealthy marriage. That opportunity is now his. Out of regard for her feelings he could not tell her before; but he can keep it secret no longer. He is already engaged to an American heiress. A happy future lies in front of him if he can only rely upon the village girl's silence as to the past. Can he ? To the best of his ability he will provide for her comfort. Can he rely upon her silence as to the past ? He prefers his appeal by every tender memory he can recall. Can he ?

If he can, his future happiness is assured. Can he ? She reads, leaning against the side of the supper - table, and facing the audience. She repeats his question again and again — " Can he ? " The struggle with herself is but brief, for he has touched her heart. Yes, he can rely upon her silence for ever, and in the surest way. As the full meaning of the vow she utters forces itself upon her a faintness crosses her ; she puts her hand upon the table, and accidentally touching the long, sharp blade of a knife, shudders at its contact, grows suddenly thoughtful with her hand still upon the steel ; takes it up at last and examines it critically ; the audience holding their breath as the dawn and growth of her idea communicates itself to them. At last her mind is made up. Her love for him gives her strength to set him free from that moment.

" He can rely upon my silence — for ever and ever ! My dearest, go to the happy future that lies before you. Go to it, but don't think it wholly and solely of her giving ; hold me fondly in your recollection through those happy coming years as the one who gave all she could, and the most she could, to ensure them to you." With the last word the glittering steel is in her heart, and the curtain falls upon her lying dead with her lover's letter clasped to her stained with her blood. This was the scene about which London had gone mad. There was a grandeur in the simple pathos of it — the girl making one sacrifice more for the man for whom she had already made .so great a one — but especially in the manner in which the Ruby did it ; the amazing fidelity to life of every glance and gesture of the tall, lithe figure ; the marvellous conception of a nature wrought above what it could endure.

All this combined had succeeded in turning London's head, and even faintly stirring the adamantine heart of society. Upon the two acts leading up to the touching last scene, happy Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey gazed in almost unbroken silence. Mrs. Aubrey, coldly beautiful and languid; George Aubrey, looking out over the crowded house with the weary ex pression with which he looked out upon the world ; the glance of a man Avhose fate was sealed; who neither hoped nor feared; whose destiny had cast him upon one of the desert islands of life — an island glittering with jewels, but barren despite them all. When the curtain went down before the final act, Mrs. Aubrey spoke : " A pretty play," she said. " I wish Maud had been able to come to us to-day instead of to-morrow; she would have enjoyed this, and we shan't be able to get seats for six weeks to come."

"Isn't there another reason for wishing her here to-night ? " George Aubrey asked, with a smile upon hi3 face, and looking down into the stalls. Mrs. Aubrey followed the direction of her husband's glance with her own, and saw a per fectly dressed old man, with a handsome, satur nine face, sitting in as graceful an attitude as circumstances permitted, endeavouring to stifle a yawn with a jewelled hand. There was so much art and so little nature about the Marquess of Twilight that he might have been fairly de scribed as a " Mechanical Nobleman — Debrett's Patent" in any catalogue of the social Chamber of Horrors. " There is another reason for regretting Maud's absence, now that I see Lord Twilight," Mrs. Aubrey said, coldly. "In spite of your theories, I think when one has an orphan niece in one's house, it's a good plan to get her married to a title and thirty thousand a year."

"I know you do, Alice; and I know that I've no faith in the May and December arrangement. I can't help it. I merely hold that opinion, and I express it now and then inadvertently. It's wrong of me, and I apologise." At that instant the mechanical nobleman tottered into the box. His boots, his teeth, his rings, and his hair (what there was of it) glittered brightly ; and he brought a delicate perfume with him as he came in. " So pleased to see you in Town at last," he said, shaking hands with husband and wife. " I had begun to think you'd forgotten London altogether ; I had, indeed. But where is Miss Elsey ? " "Maud is away visiting — or has been. She returns to us to-morrow," Mrs. Aubrey said, fanning herself and smiling pleasantly at her niece's admirer — making room for him, indeed, in the box beside her.

It was the paramount desire of Mrs. Aubrey's life to sell Maud Elsey to the mechanical one. She felt it her duty to matrimonially provide for Maud Elsey. What better provision could she make than the Marquess of Twilight ? Answer, Brahmin Priestess mothers of Society ! The curtain rose upon the final act of Un avenged, and the act went through to its tragic end. " There ! " whispered Lord Twilight, as the curtain fell before a house disfigured by tears. " There's never been such talent as that ! Did you see her die ? A medical friend tells me it's as near the perfection of realism as it's possible to get ! Why, it's even brought the tears into Aubrey's eyes ! " It had. There was a warm heart beneath that assumption of cool mannerism, and the pathos of that beautiful girl's self - inflicted death had touched it.

Mrs. Aubrey, with a controlled face, looked at her husband scornfully. " Who is that girl ? " George Aubrey asked Lord Twilight, heedless of the scornful glance. "Native talent come from the remote wilds of Devon — quite young." Then sinking his voice to a whisper as Mrs. Aubrey passed out of the box, he added in Aubrey's ear : " Aaron the money lender's paying her bills at the moment, or they say he is. I believe it's a partnership, or limited liability company, in reality. I can introduce you to her if you like ; she's no end of a lark ! " And the Marquess of Twilight leered knowingly. Declining his lordship's good offices, George Aubrey took his wife home, after waiting while she arranged a date on which the Marquess was able to dine with them to meet Maud. " I hope you won't coerce Maud into this marriage," George said, as they drove along.

" One would almost think Maud was your niece instead of mine, or that you didn't want her married at all," Mrs. Aubrey replied, with a dash of bitterness in her tone. Beneath her cold manner she was — strange fact ! — jealous of this husband of hers. But it was only with a dog-in the-manger kind of jealousy. She did not hold his heart — she knew that — and she was angry at the thought of any other woman holding it. George Aubrey took no notice of the sneer her words contained ; no notice of a reiteration of it in her words to him when they reached home. "I am tired, and going to bed. You, I suppose, go to the club ? " " Yes," he said ; " but I shall not be very late — or early. Good night." Then he lighted a cigar, felt that his latch-key was safely in his waistcoat pocket, and walked out into the cool, gas-lit streets, bent on walking to that cosiest of select clubs, the "Easy Chair."

"If one could meet with a devotion of the stage anything like that I saw to-night upon it — if one could chance across such a girl in every-day life as the one who presented that devotion to-night — I don't believe we should hear of men being unfaithful," he thought, with a tinge of sadness. "I don't believe, in face of such devotion, unfaithfulness could exist; but I'm not sure. I wish all women were of that devoted sort, so that we might test the question ! " And deaf to the frequent cry of " Keb, sir, keb ? " George Aubrey strolled through the cool summer night to the " Easy Chair " in Pall Mall.