The obstinate lady

Chapter I

** It has come to be intolerable,” said Mrs. Maddison in her low, composed voice ; I think he means it to be intolerable. You know something of what I have had to bear, you agree that it has been worse than anything that I could have been asked or expected to bear ; yet you suggest no remedy, except the one which, as I have told you again and again, is out of the question for me.”

'' It is the only remedy,” answered her companion.

“ But if I refuse it ? ”

Tristram Rolfe, stroking his closely trimmed beard and gazing pensively at the lady who sat facing him with her back to the light, had no immediate rejoinder for her. On that warm summer afternoon the windows were wide open and the outside blinds had been lowered, shutting out the prospect of Eaton Square ; but every now and then, as a puff of breeze lifted them, rays from the westering sun caught Mrs. Maddison 's abundant fair hair and converted it into a shimmering gold frame for her pale face. Any stranger, on a first I survey of her, must have pronounced her charming, would probably have conjectured that she was as good as she was pretty and would with equal probability have gathered from the droop of her lips that, despite the evidences of wealth which surrounded her — ^the spacious drawing-room, so tastefully adorned, and the banks of cut flowers which filled the air with their fragrance — she was not a happy woman. Had he chanced to be, as Tristram Rolfe was, a practised physiognomist, he might further have divined that she was a gently obstinate one. Obstinate in truth she was, and nobody was better aware of that than her faithful friend and counsellor ; although acquaintance with her defects had never lessened in the smallest degree his inveterate (and altogether hopeless) adoration of her.

“ I think I can understand your feeling,” he said at length. ” You shrink from the odious publicity of the Divorce Court ; you would hate to stand up and be cross-examined by some brute of a barrister who would do his utmost to confuse and confute you. I daresay there are many wives who for some such reasons go on enduring the intolerable. But isn’t it, after all, worth while ”...

” You don’t understand in the least,” interrupted Mrs. Maddison, ” I should have thought that you would — ^you, who are a novelist and a playwright and who have explored and exploited human nature to such purpose in the pursuit of your art. To my father and mother and the rest of them the affair is quite simple. ' You are afflicted with a perfectly impossible husband,’ they say ; ‘ he has given you every conceivable right to rid yourself of him. Divorce him and be free.’ Yes, if liberty were what I wanted ; but I am not asking for that. In a certain sense I have liberty already. Jack, as he is fond of reminding me, allows me to go my own way and makes the way as smooth for me as money and indifference can make it. In return, he claims the disgusting life which he leads and which doesn’t disgust him. I might consent to that, but it seems as if nothing short of insulting me in the presence of witnesses would satisfy him. He uses language to me before the servants which a costermonger would be ashamed to address to his wife ; I dread showing myself in the Park or at the theatre or in any public place lest I should meet him in company which obliges me to look the other way. And though I turn my back, I know he is leering at me behind it and chuckling. It is a perpetual and deliberate persecution ! ”

Rolfe frowned distressfully. “It is,” he assented. “ That is why I can only entreat you to put an end to it.”

“ I will never accept the position of a divorced woman,” said Mrs. Maddison decisively.

It would have been vain to represent to her that an outraged wife who has been driven to seek the release to which the law entitles her is not a divorced woman in any dishonouring acceptation of the term. Rolfe, who had told her this times and again, forbore to vex her by reiteration. He was there to give her the best advice that he could ; but what advice was there to offer her, save that she should break off all relations with an incorrigible sot and libertine who combined in the strangest manner the qualities of good nature and malignity ?

“lam helpless ! “ he sighed. “ What is it that you wish me to do ? To speak to Jack ? “

She made a sign of assent. “ Yes, that is what I wish. If he will listen to anybody, he will listen to you. All I require is that he shall control himself and behave with some outward show of decency. Surely that isn’t a great deal to ask ! “

“ Only it is more than he will concede.”

“ How can you tell if you won’t even try to find out ? Oh, I know you are most unwilling to make the attempt, and I can’t think why. It is impossible to suppose that you are afraid of Jack ; you have proved that you are brave by fighting for your country and being wounded. Nobody could doubt your courage, and Jack is — ^what he is. Yet you seem to be somehow in awe of him.”

“ I believe I have the average share of physical courage,” answered Rolfe ; “ as to the moral variety I am not so sure. I am not afraid of Jack's knocking me down ; but there are other possibilities. . . , Your bidding shall be done, though, if you make a point of it.”

“ I can’t press you to do a thing that you dislike so much,” returned Mrs. Maddison rather resentfully. “ Let us say no more about it, then.”

She was sometimes upon the verge of quarrelling with this trusty friend of hers, whose patience was inexhaustible and who was certain to yield to pressure from her, whether she professed to renounce it or not. He was a man of something over thirty, but looked more than his age, his curly brown hair being already streaked here and there with grey threads. He showed a rather sad and tired face to a world which had done much to sadden and weary him during his comparatively brief progress through it. However, his features were illumined by a bright smile as he declared :

Of course you shall be obeyed ; I can but fail.’'

“ Thank you,” she answered in a changed and grateful voice ; it is good of you.” And then —

Are you going down to Marling for the week-end ? ” Yes ; aren’t you ? ”

She shook her head. “ I have cried off this time. I am so tired of being told in endearing terms that I am an unreasonable idiot ! Besides, Jack is out of sorts again.”

It was one of Mrs. Maddison’s somewhat numerous incongruities that whenever her detestable husband was unwell — as his intemperate habits often made him — she considered it necessary to remain at hand, in case he should require nursing. He never did require anything of the sort, nor, if he had, would he have been likely to apply to her ; still duty is duty. Her friend’s duty, or something which had an equivalent force for him, was not going to be pleasant and was assured in advance of futility. The sooner it was discharged the better, he thought. He rose presently, saying :

I suppose I shall find Jack downstairs ? ”

She nodded, “ He hasn’t left the house all day. Be firm with him,” she added, as a final injunction ; “ don’t let him laugh it off. He must be made to see that things can’t go on as they are.’'

To make Jack Maddison see that there was any need for a change in his general conduct would be about as easy as prevailing upon a burglar to abandon burglary on high moral grounds. Tristram Rolfe, committed to this inept undertaking, descended the broad staircase, wincing slightly, (for he had brought back rheumatism as well as a troublesome wound from the trenches) and had reached the first landing when Anne Pritchard stepped forth through a door leading to the servants’ part of the house to intercept him. Anne Pritchard, who had been Blanche Maddison's nurse and was now her maid, was a grey-headed woman with a determined mouth. Respectable and respected rather than respectful, she was a privileged member of the establishment and did not scruple to waylay a visitor whom she had known from his youth up.

Oh, Mr. Rolfe,” said she, “ could I have one word * with you, pleasfe ? ”

It was not in one but in a hurried volume of words that Anne proclaimed very much what her patient hearer had just been told. It had come to this, she declared, that there was no putting up with it any longer. No, not if you was a saint and an angel — and the Lord he knew that her dear mistress was both ! — ^you couldn’t stand it. Nor yet she didn’t ought to stand it. “ If you was to hear the way he speaks to her, sir, ’twould make your blood boil — for as cold as you be ! No, if you’ll excuse me interrupting you, sir, ’tain’t no manner of good to talk to her about divorce, for divorce him she won’t. But it’s a sin and a shame that he should be let to treat her the way he does.”

I think it is, Anne,” Rolfe assented ; “ but will you tell me what I can do ? ”

” If I was a gentleman,” old Anne replied, ” I shouldn’t want nobody to tell me what to do. My stick ’d have been laid acrost his back long before now, that it would ! ”

” There are several objections to such a remedy, if it can be called a remedy,” said Rolfe, smiling. ” I shall have to depend upon my tongue for a weapon.”

He did not anticipate that he would be able to effect much by means of verbal castigation ; nor did Anne, who observed — ^perhaps as an incentive to more virile measures —

” He’s a dirty coward, you know, sir.”

Yes, Rolfe knew that, amongst other things. He knew that Jack Maddison, despite blustering assertions of eagerness to proceed to the front and slay Germans, had taken care to obtain a prohibitory medical certificate ; he likewise knew that Jack, with whom, for more reasons than one, he did not wish to fall out, was unacquainted with shame and had a gusty temper. Still the promise given to Blanche had to be kept. He tapped with his knuckles at a door on the ground floor and, having been loudly bidden to come in, entered the room which was known as Mr. Maddison ’s study, though nothing was ever studied there except the sporting papers and the ease of the occupant. Veiled in a blue cloud of cigar-smoke was the huge, semirecumbent bulk of Jack Maddison, a man who had the physique of a prize-fighter and might have had the strength of one, had he not for years done all that in him lay to wreck a magnificent constitution. His square head was set firmly upon a great red neck above a pair of massive shoulders ; but his waistcoat bulged unhealthily and he had acquired a drunkard’s mottled skin.

Hullo, old Tristie ! he called out. ** Been colloguing with the missus, as usual ? Sit down and have a drink.”

Rolfe accepted the first invitation, tacitly declined the second and asked, '' How are you ? ”

Beas’ly seedy,” answered the other in a thick voice. Aches and pains all over my body. Can’t think what the devil’s wrong with me ! ”

” If you don’t know,” remarked his visitor, ” nobody does. But I take it that, as a matter of fact, everybody does.”

''Oh, for God’s sake,” bawled Maddison, ''don’t start preaching ! I know every blessed word of what you aren’t going to say. Brought this upon myself, digging my own grave, never have any health until I turn over a new leaf, and all the rest of it. Doesn’t the doctor rub that into me until I have to threaten to kick him ? Quite right, both of you, only you’re a bit too late in the day, you see. You won’t make a reformed character of me ; so you needn’t worry.”

" Jack,” said his discouraged mentor rather sadly, " why are you such an infernal blackguard ? ”

Jack did not seem to mind being called an infernal blackguard. '' Sure I can’t tell you, old man,” he replied, laughing goodhumouredly enough. " Built that way, I should say. Don’t come jawing to me about morality, because I don’t believe in it. Keep that sort of thing for your readers and admirers. I’ve no doubt your books are full of the noblest sentiments, though I never could get through a page of them myself/’

Certainly he did not look a promising subject for a lecture on morality in the abstract ; but a lecture upon his personal disregard of its claims was imperative all the same.

“ Perhaps,” Tristram Rolfe began, ” it may be contended that every man has a right to play the devil with himself if he chooses. Of course he hasn’t, because civilised beings live in community and no individual can break the rules without being more or less of a nuisance to his neighbours. But even if that view were admissible in the case of a bachelor, it obviously couldn’t apply to a married man.”

Oh, that’s it, is it ? ” returned the accused in a changed tone of voice. ” Now look here, my boy, I’m not going to have my domestic affairs interfered with by you or anybody else ; that’s flat. You’ve never done such a thing before and I’ll thank you not to do it again.”

'' I have never done such a thing before,” Rolfe assented, ” but I mean to do it now, whether you forbid me or not. Somebody must do it. There are limits even to Mrs. Maddison’s astonishing forbearance.”

” Did she put you up to this ? ” Jack inquired, with a scowl.

” Yes,” answered Rolfe, after a moment of hesitation, ” she did. She wishes me to make it clear to you that, whatever your other conduct may be, you are to cease humiliating her in public. I presume you are aware that she could divorce you.”

“ Rather ! Why don’t she do it then ? Because she jolly well knows on which side her bread is buttered ; that’s why. Call me what you please, you can’t say that I’m mean. She has clothes, jewels, a free rein, a big allowance, everything that a woman can wish for.” . . .

” Except the very small allowance of self-respect which is indispensable to her and which she is denied.”

” Self-respect ! Damn it, I can’t deny her that, and I should say she had about as heavy a stock of it as she could conveniently carry. I may have tried once or twice to give her a little dose of humiliation, as you call it, just to let her see what it felt like ; but I’ll be shot if I’ve ever succeeded ! It isn’t such a one-sided business as you make out either. You think it is because you only see one side of her. Come to humiliation, I don’t so very much enjoy having her wipe the mud off her boots on my face. Now I’m not making excuses for myself; I’m vicious and she’s virtuous, that’s granted. But I tell you she’s far and away the most aggravating woman I’ve ever come across in my life. And I’ve had some experience of women, first and last,” Jack concluded, indulging in a retrospective chuckle.

Apparently he had forgotten his refusal to discuss the domestic situation ; but that was only typical of Jack Maddison. His moods changed with such suddenness and frequency that you never knew where you were with him, and it is probable that he himself did not know from one minute to another what he would be at. He reverted to his first position when Rolfe decided to

A RELUCTANT INTERMEDDLER ii request as a personal favour that he would desist from public manifestations which nothing could justify.

“ You and I have been pals for a number of years, Tristie,'’ said he, and I’d take more from you than I would from anybody else ; but you’re getting upon dangerous ground this time. Drop it, old man, drop it ! You’re free of this house and you make yourself pretty well at home here ; that’s right enough. Don’t drive me to remind you that, when all’s said and done, it’s my house and that even an old friend may find the door of it shut in his face one day if he don’t mind what he’s about.”

It was the menace which Jack Maddison’s old friend had been expecting and which was to him a really formidable one. Nevertheless, he stood to his guns.

” I can’t promise,” he answered ; ” I’m dead against you in this matter. I tell you plainly that I have been urging Mrs. Maddison to apply for a divorce. She refuses — ^not, of course, for the reasons that you mention, still she does refuse — and if I can be of the smallest service to her by intermeddling, an intermeddler I shall be. Come, Jack, I know there’s some good left in you. Not very much, if one is to be truthful, but there’s some, and I won’t believe that you’re cruel for the mere satisfaction of giving pain.”

Jack, however, on his side, declined to be bound by promises. ” Mightn’t be able to keep ’em,” he explained. For the rest, he didn’t want to have a row — hated rows. Once more he exhorted his visitor to drop the subject and once more he suggested a drink (he himself had had several during the colloquy) as a token that there was no ill feeling.

There was singularly little ill feeling against the man in Tristram Rolfe's heart as he walked away towards the Chelsea flat where he dwelt. That he would fail in his mission had been a foregone conclusion : Jack Maddison was sure to say something like what he had said. Yet Jack might have said things which he had not said.

Odd that he didn’t,” mused Rolfe. “ No, it isn’t odd either ; it comes of his having been bom a gentleman. A coarse, foul-mouthed fellow who, as he says, doesn’t ‘ believe in morality ’ and sees no reason why he shouldn’t gratify his cravings and instincts ; only amongst those instincts there would be certain standards, inherited or inculcated, of which most likely he isn’t even aware. So one gets these seemingly queer amalgams. I wonder how or why Blanche aggravates him. Naturally she must show that she despises him ; but a less vindictive woman never breathed. He admits that he wants to hurt her, and I suppose he is annoyed because she doesn’t cry out or rail at him. The chances are that if he had a virago for a wife, he would fight with her and be defeated by her and love her. Oh, she’ll have to divorce him ! There’s no imaginable alternative.”

Chapter II

When Blanche Stanfield’s engagement to young Maddison was announced, her relations and friends agreed that she was doing extremely well for herself ; for in those days the bridegroom-elect was not only wealthy, popular and physically superb but had really nothing in his record to give pause to careful parents, unless it were a rumour that his bachelorhood had been what old-fashioned folks used to call rather “wild.” Genial, easy-going General Stanfield did not think much of that, holding that the traditional effervescence of youth is better worked off as a prelude than as a sequel to matrimony ; so there was a largely attended wedding in the old church of Marling-on-Thames, and not for a good many years afterwards did it become too flagrant a fact to be denied or ignored that poor Blanche was afflicted with one of the very worst of husbands. It was perhaps to be regretted that there was no offspring of this unhappy alliance. Some people thought that if there had been children, it might have made a difference ; but by the date at which this narrative opens nobody thought, or could think, that the differences between the pair were to be terminated by anything short of a dissolution of their union. The General, though averse to scandal, had felt compelled to intimate as much to his daughter ; so, in more vehement terms, had Mrs. Stanfield ; while Reggie and Kitty, Blanche’s brother and sister, had associated themselves warmly with the parental verdict. Thus, as the Stanfields were an outspoken clan, the weekends in her old home to which Mrs. Maddison had been wont to look forward longingly from Tuesday to Saturday lost something of their attraction for her.

Somebody else, to whom those weekly assemblages were at least equally dear, and who was so intimate a friend of the family that he ranked as a virtual member of it, was more than a little dejected by the prospect of their mutilation. Eaton Square, it was true, remained open to Tristram Rolfe ; but he was never so happy there, nor, what was more to the purpose, was Blanche ever so like her former self there, as in the quiet glades and shrubberies of Marling Park, where she and he had held such long and frequent confabulations without wearying for a moment of one another’s company. Since, however, he was fairly well inured to disappointments, he neither fretted unduly over this one nor thought of making it an excuse for absenting himself from the customary gathering.

They will want to know the latest report,” he reflected, as he took his place in the train at Paddington, ” and I shall enjoy a talk with Claude, anyhow.”

He had unfolded a newspaper, (which chanced to contain a highly appreciative review of Mr. Rolfe’s recently published novel), when his ear caught the sound of a heavy, irregular footfall on the platform, and he muttered, ” Oh, here comes Sidney ! Bother I ”

Nevertheless, he had a civil greeting for the tall, clean-shaven, handsome man who presently appeared at the window and nodded to him. Sidney Maddison resembled his elder brother in stature and strength, but in no other particular. He had considerable abilities, in addition to his good looks ; he led an irreproachable life, and it was commonly said of him that if he had not committed the initial blunder of entering the world some twelve months or so too late, he would certainly have conferred lustre upon a name which had been rendered more notorious than illustrious. But, as if the handicap of being a younger son with a small income had not been enough, an accident in infancy had left his right leg incurably shortened, and it may be that the latter misfortune had tended to a yet greater extent than the former, (fully alive though he was to that), to develop him into the somewhat C5mical mortal that' he was. He was a clerk in a Government Office, he enjoyed a certain literary reputation and he had — as he was perhaps a little too fond of asserting — ^no future. He sat down opposite Rolfe, pointed with his stick at the newspaper and asked :

“ Been looking at that rotten notice ? ”

I have only just glanced at it,’' answered Rolfe ;

it didn’t seem to me to be rot. Have you read it ? ”

The other signified assent. Corrected the proofs too,” said he.

” You wrote it, then ? I’m sure I’m infinitely obliged to you.”

” I don’t know why you should be. I am honest in these matters ; I write what in my poor judgment is i6 the truth, and you don’t need to be told that I am one of your staunchest admirers. Consequently, when I am given a book of yours to review, the result has to be a tame, laudatory article. Much good may this one do you ! ”

“ Oh, it does me good,” Rolfe declared, ” it does me good. Not, of course, in the way of increasing my royalties, because the British public has definitely made up its mind that it can’t be bored with me, but you are a very competent critic, and praise from you sets me on better terms with myself.”

” You do the same for me when you call me competent,” Sidney Maddison graciously responded. ” It is most unlikely that you will ever have to complain of me as a critic of fiction. Glad I don’t belong to the dramatic variety of the species.”

Tristram Rolfe winced perceptibly and seemed desirous of changing the subject. '' What do you think of Claude Hadow’s poems ? ” he inquired.

” Has he written any ? I have come across some verse of his in magazines. Not bad of its kind.”

” That boy has genius,” Rolfe boldly affirmed.

Sidney Maddison ’s eyebrows were lifted. “ Oh, les grands mots ! No, my dear Rolfe, your young friend has originality and a sort of reckless exuberance of diction. He may prove himself a poet when he finds his feet, but he doesn’t strike me as having found them yet in a technical sense. Meanwhile, it would do him no harm to bestow a little more attention upon prosody.”

As this could not be disputed, Rolfe made no rejoinder and resumed the perusal of his neighbour’s article, which was excellently written. Owing to his deft and polished style, Sidney Maddison was always pleasant to read, if seldom pleasant to converse with. The latter did not speak again until the train, speeding over a sunlit landscape, was nearing the destination for which he and his companion were bound, when he asked :

Why haven’t we the pleasure of seeing Blanche to-day ? ”

Rolfe looked up from his paper to reply : ** Jack isn’t very well. She said she didn’t like to leave him.”

Really ? I should have thought that she would like nothing better than to leave him, but women are unaccountable beings. It would never surprise me to hear that she had left him precipitately by being thrown out of the window into the area. I doubt whether he is safe when he is what you euphemistically describe as not very well.”

“ I don’t think,” answered Rolfe, with a slight frown, ” that there is any such danger. So far as I know, he is not threatened with D.T., if that is what you mean.”

That was what Sidney meant. It may even have been what Sidney hoped for, seeing that he was his brother’s next of kin ; but he only shrugged his shoulders, laughed and remarked :

” No doubt, if you consider that Blanche has nothing to fear, we may all set our minds at rest.”

A waggonette conveyed General Stanfield's guests from the wayside station to Marling Park, a substantial red-brick mansion, standing on a wooded height above the glittering river towards which its green lawns and many-hued flower-borders sloped. The drone of the i8 luncheon-gong could be heard as far off as the lodge, and so little was ceremony deemed requisite in the case of the new arrivals that the family party was already at table when they were shown into the dining-room. Their host, a spruce old gentleman with a creamcoloured moustache, got up to welcome them ; Mrs. Stanfield, small, dapper, dark-eyed, juvenile of mien for her years, extended her right hand to Tristram and her left to Sidney without rising ; Reggie, a sunburnt, khaki-clad youth who had been given a week’s leave from the front, and pretty, golden-haired Kitty, who wore a white cap and a blue uniform with brass buttons, were cordial in their greetings.

Nobody else was staying in the house, except Claude Hadow, the young soldier poet to whom allusion, eulogistic and disparaging, had been made in the train. With his delicate, refined features and the sheaf of straight black hair which, although brushed back from his forehead, had a trick of tumbling over his luminous grey eyes, he looked more like a poet than a soldier ; yet he had fought as well as his neighbours until he had perforce been invalided home. Home in the more particular meaning of the term he had none, his nearest surviving relatives being a grumpy old uncle and aunt who resided in the north of England and who had signified their entire willingness to delegate the care of a bad case of shell-shock to hands more capable than theirs. His friend and brother-officer Reggie Stanfield had decided that Marling was the very place for him, and Reggie’s kindly, hospitable parents had been as glad as they said they were to offer the poor lad a haven of rest. They soon grew attached to him and he to them ; but his chief ally was Tristram Rolfe, for whose rather difficult and intricate work he had an immense respect. Rolfe, always grateful for and surprised at quick comprehension on the part of any reader, had been further attracted by some specimens of young Hadow’s verse which had been diffidently submitted to him, and in this way there had sprung up between the two an intimacy unhindered by the disparity in their respective ages. The older man seated himself beside the younger at the luncheon-table, but had only spoken a few words to him when his attention was claimed by Mrs. Stanfield, who asked :