A Double Marriage

Front matter

A DOUBLE MARRIAGE

A DOUBLE MARRIAGE

By LUCAS CLEEVE

Chapter 1

A DOUBLE MARRIAGE

PART I

CHAPTER I

"Dearest.—When you read this letter, I shall have gone—have disappeared from your life, and you and your mother, every one, will have the right to say I have behaved like a blackguard. I know that I have; I know that the world will have a right to blame me; and I know that you will never be able to forgive me. Only I ask you to try and forget me. I told you when I married that I was peculiar, unfit for married life, unfit to link my life with any girl's. I have tried—ah, you don't know, Lucille, how I have tried—to be a good husband, to learn to take an interest in small things, in the small, pretty little domesticites, which you make so graceful. I shall miss you, I know how I shall miss you, your sweet face, your pretty ways, but I feel that presently you will be happier, meet with some one who is far more worthy of you than I am. Something calls me always away to further corners of the earth. I am restless, imbued, as it were, with the detective spirit—the detective spirit which impels me to discover the secrets of Nature, to unravel the mysteries of phenomena, and I am not happy except alone. Luxury, comfort, even affection, irritate me, and you know how constantly I lose my temper. I can no longer control myself. You have told me of late that I had something on my mind—that I was unhappy, disturbed. You were right. For weeks I have tried to get over the mood which obsesses me, to drive my desires for wandering from me, to try and fall into your ways; but I have failed. The craving for solitude has taken possession of me, and every word you speak, every time the doorbell rings, or a visitor comes in, it drives me mad. I am afraid of myself. Your mother spoke to me last night. Every word she said was true. She said that you were not happy, and I know that you are not—that I have failed miserably. I fear I was rude to her. Ask her to forgive me. There is no one in the world that I respect more than your mother. I have no fault to find with you, you are adorable; but I have failed as a husband—failed miserably. I have no excuse to offer for having asked you to marry me—no excuse for going away. I am wondering whether some day you will understand. You have always said that I was not like other men. Perhaps I am mad—I don't know. One thing I beg of you, and that is, if ever you meet a man more worthy of you, and whom you can love, to put me out of your mind. If you wish to divorce me, I will make no defence; if you wish me to free you by other means, a letter will reach me care of my solicitors, and I will disappear completely from your path. After all, what is one life amongst so many? I should at least feel that I had a little atoned for this unpardonable act of leaving you. I have made over nearly all my fortune to you. See Greene & Hastings, and make what arrangements you like. The house in town is yours, and the little place. I do not want you to grieve. On the contrary, I hope that now for the first time you will be happy. Your tears have almost broken my heart, principally, I believe, because I have not known the right way to wipe them away—to make you smile. Forgive me, dear, if you can, or if you cannot forgive, then forget me. Let it be as if it had never been.

"Clifford Yelverton."

The man who had written the letter stood in the study at dawn, and looked around it for the last time. Then he laid the letter on the desk and went out into the hall, and put on his coat and hat. He unbarred the great hall door and lifted his eyes to the sky. There was a look of relief on his face—a look of exhilaration. So might a man step out of his prison and realise that Nature belonged to man, that his one inheritance was freedom, and that between him and creation a hidden secret rolled backwards and forwards, in a flux and reflux of silent understanding. The sky—he was unconscious of the underlying perception that not enough of it was visible to please him, that instinctively he panted for broader spaces, for expanses of wide waters, and great spans of heaven, for hilltops and deep ravines, and the great superfluity of distances. Then he lit a cigarette. The cool morning air whipped his face, seeming to woo him with a familiar touch. The street was still silent, and the silence brought memories back. This morning the old life whispered once more, telling him of moments they had once had together, laughing scornfully at his desertion, yet triumphant in his return. On the threshold of the door he hesitated, while his heart beat. It seemed to him that he heard a door open above. In another instant he would hear a voice calling him. He must not hear it. He darted out and slammed the door, and walked rapidly down the silent street. A sleepy policeman at the corner saluted him, as he turned the nearest corner.

And on the first floor a window was raised, and a pathetic little figure in a white wrapper, with hair falling around her in great waves, and two childish blue eyes, looked out, and barely caught a glimpse of his tall figure disappearing round the corner. She closed the window and sighed; then she went back to bed again and slept till the maid brought her a cup of tea.

"Has Mr Yelverton come back yet?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

The maid did not know he was out, but she had known him go early before to-day. He generally came back to breakfast.

To-day he did not return.

Lucille dressed with that feeling of loneliness, of strangeness, of mystery, which had been her portion ever since she married—the sensation of not understanding life, the feeling of impotence to readjust what had gone wrong, while woefully aware that everything was wrong. She ate her breakfast in silence, in the little methodical way which had so irritated him, taking everything in the correct way—the salt, the pepper, pouring out the coffee slowly, and taking time, consuming nearly half an hour; when he had finished in a moment, counting time for feeding as wasted from the day, sometimes eating little or nothing. A few weeks after their marriage, he had begun taking his cup of coffee away with him into his study, then at last Lucille had cried over it. Couldn't he even spend half an hour at breakfast with her? She only saw him at meals. He had restrained himself from growing angry, and after that had sat, good-naturedly bored, while she finished her breakfast, conscious that her being so well brought up jarred, that something barbarous within him demanded the companionship of a wild, untutored thing, snatching at corn in a field, or picking berries in some wilderness.

After breakfast she interviewed the cook, in the deprecating, timid manner of a very young wife, who is aware that she stands in the presence of a connoisseur, who must not be allowed to sound the depths of her own enlightenment.

Then she arranged the flowers, and wrote a few letters at her writing-table.

At eleven he had not returned, and she dressed and went to her dressmaker.

At one o'clock her mother came to luncheon, and commented on his absence.

Mrs Martin was very troubled over Lucille's marriage. Every one had told her that it was a mistake to allow the marriage to take place while Lucille was still so young, just seventeen, and especially with a man like Clifford Yelverton. To be sure, he was at the right age—thirty, the supposed prime of life of manhood's estate; but Clifford Yelverton was a man of no age. He had never been young. It was also likely that he would never grow old. He was a genius, people said, a man who had best leave marriage alone, go his own way; a man who needed no human companionship, whose own thought sufficed him. And it was no good Mrs Martin saying that Lucille was sensible, old for her age. She was merely demure, methodical, but quite a child—a child in sense, without the attributes of childhood; a little old-fashioned thing, as some only girls are apt to be; painfully sensible and practical, and unable to read character, or understand it, not recognising the strength of individuality—afraid of it; a little scornful, relentlessly narrow, and still building up ideals on the few novels she had read—audaciously expressing the sentiment that if people would only be sensible there would be no trouble in the world, quite unaware of the fact that, while still afraid of a mouse, she had set about the task of lion-taming. Her little attempts at netting him, had amused Clifford at first; at last they bored him. He was like a man who has accepted a bouquet of flowers, which for one instant pleased him, but which impeded his progress, his freedom of gait, and which he longed to throw away.

Mrs Martin would never have owned that she had worked hard to bring about the marriage, almost insisted upon it. Still less would she have owned that he was a catch for her daughter. Later, it pleased her to tell her friends, that Lucille might have married any one, but that they had seemed so much in love with each other; that it was a responsibility to be a mother, one never knew if to interfere, or leave things alone. Lately she had had an uncomfortable feeling. Lucille, who had always seemed strong-minded, appeared in the light of a little martyr, who had been sacrificed on the altar of mistakes. She looked much younger as a married woman, than she had ever appeared as a young girl.

The two lunched together. Then Mrs Martin went into the library to borrow a book she had seen there two days ago. On the table she espied the letter addressed to her daughter. Something bulky in its appearance brought about a misgiving. She went to the door and called her daughter, who was in the drawing-room feeding the parrot with some fruit she had brought from the dining-room.

"Lucille, dear, did you know there was a letter here for you?"

Curiosity pierced in the tone of her voice. If they had been married longer, the letter would not have seemed so strange, but somehow

Lucille came into the room.

"From Clifford! how strange!"

She took it to the window. It was the first letter he had ever written her since their marriage. She wished she was alone.

Her mother, she knew, was watching her, watching the length of the letter. Had they quarrelled? Lucille was very reticent some- times. "Oh!" Something of horror in the tones made her mother take a step towards her. The doubts of weeks were verified in that "oh" from her daughter's lips.

"What is it, dear?"

"Oh, don't ask me for a moment, I can't understand it. I must read it again."

Lucille had never seemed to her mother so real, so human, as at this moment of horror, of distress. She had often said that Lucille was not impulsive enough. At this moment she seemed, for the first time, to take her place in the ranks of the living, the palpitating. The girl, the child who had become eighteen since her marriage, read the letter again. Her lips trembled as she turned to her mother, and held out the letter.

"I don't understand it. What does it mean?"

Her mother seized it greedily. She understood too well as she read it, and folded it up, and looked away out of the window. It was awful; but underlying the horror was the satisfaction that her daughter was a rich woman. It was only a few minutes later, that she realised that at eighteen, her daughter's life was ruined, utterly ruined, that she had not even the satisfaction of being a widow, of being able to marry again. She sat silent; then a sound fell on her ears.

Lucille was sobbing, sobbing as if her heart would break.

"I can't bear it," she said. "I can't bear it. He must come back.”

For the first time her mother realised that Lucille really loved Clifford, loved him passionately. She had never thought her daughter capable of love. The situation seemed to have opened the doors of complexity, to be leading out beyond the infinite. Everything that had gone before had been artificial—her life with her daughter in the tiny little house, their attempts at keeping up an appearance without means, the engagement, the marriage, the man's social position, which he disregarded, but which she had coveted for her daughter. The comfort, the wealth, the luxury, which he despised, everything hitherto had seemed to dwell on his possessions; the character, the personality of the man, his place amongst the human's, his heart, the girl's—all this had been overlooked.

To-day the man alone seemed to matter. To-day, when he was no longer there.

"Oh mother, what are we to do?"

To-day Mrs Martin realised that Lucille had never appealed to her for help before. Lucille seemed to have grown suddenly five years younger.

"We must send for Mr Twifield."

Mr Twifield was the family lawyer, who had taken charge of their little pittance for them free of charge, ever since her husband's death, and who had rejoiced in their good fortune in securing Clifford Yelverton.

Yes, they would have to consult him, but not to-day.

Not to-day, Lucille had said. It seemed to her that for a few hours she must be allowed to hug her grief, to understand, to cry, then there would be terrible things to face. Her mother stayed with her all night, trying to soothe, to explain, and to understand at once, while her daughter went through all the phases of grief, which such upheaval readily gave rise to.

At one moment she gave herself over to despair, at another she told herself that he would come back. At another she tried to grow resigned; but Mrs Martin noticed that not once did she reproach him. It was as if, for the first time, a glimmer of new light showed her the man, and herself by his side, the wrong woman, unable to cope with his personality.

At one moment she threw herself into her mother's arms with a confidence, an appeal that had never before existed between them. "You won't desert me, mother, will you? I have nobody but you." At another she turned upon her mother enraged, as she sought for explanations.

"Did you have any quarrel, dear? Can you, in any way, explain it all?"

Strange ideas floated through the mother's brain. Details of stories, which appear in the newspapers or are not heard in open Court. Was there any mystery of that sort? And her questions maddened the girl. The indelicacy of them nauseated her. Oh, if her mother would only stop questioning her.

The difficulty of explaining seened greater, now that she was beginning to understand. Somehow, she grasped the situation, and the grasping it filled her with despair. He would never come back, she told herself. She could see him to-day as she had so often seen him, sitting by his window in the darkness, watching the sky, smoking silently. And she remembered how at first she had climbed on to his knee, and asked him what he was thinking about, and he had put one arm around her, awkwardly, and told her of travels of his, of distant countries, of strange, tropical phenomena, of Northern effects of light. And she remembered that his tales had bored her exceedingly, that she had always crept away unsatisfied, melancholy.

Once he had suggested that they should travel round the world, he and she, and she had told him that she could not leave her mother, that this first year they must be seen together in London, that she must be presented.

The day she was presented at Court on her marriage, he had forgotten all about it, and never returned till late at night. And she had cried, and told him that he did not love her, and he had been vaguely distressed. And she remembered that he had asked her to dress up again, and let him see her, and she had told him that the dress was all laid away now. A hundred times he had hurt her, without meaning to, and always she had cried. Now, to-day, she understood that Clifford Yelverton didn't need a wife who cried, in fact did not need a wife at all. Vaguely she was beginning to realise that he had married her out of pity. She had not understood any. thing till to-day. Now she understood that common-place, humdrum life was impossible to him, that he had no code, no laws, no creeds, no ideas of the detail of life, whose mind was enveloped in its own magnificence, wandering along spaces, watching the race of the earth with the stars, grasping at the substance of infinity, the while he lost his grasp of the infinitesimal things which are the atoms that form the vast sheet of mystery, which is spread over the world. He took the great covering, and cast it across the world, and laid upon it. She examined the warp and the woof and the tiny cross-running threads, and he had grown impatient, and afraid of himself, afraid of breaking away with violence, when the frail creature beside him demanded a tenderness of touch he was unable to give. Only twelve years between them in years, and she a sensible little thing, but between her mind and his, the height of mountains, the depths of an abyss; his, the roar of the lion on the storm-swept cliff, her's the piping of the bird on May mornings, the little bird which is busy with its nest, content with tiny blades of straw. And yet to-day it seemed to her that she, the little bird, understood the flight of the eagle to distant mountain crags.

He had told her of his wanderings, of his experiences, and she asked him to go to the theatre with her. He was bored, bored. He couldn't stand it. Yet, if he had told her better, explained, perhaps, they could have readjusted their life, each gone their way content.

And Mrs Martin, as the night came on, was conscious of a feeling of guilt. She remembered the words that had passed between them. How she had told him that Lucille was not looking well, that she needed more amusement, more life, more companion- ship, and he had answered, with a touch of impatience: "Well, why doesn't she have it?"

He had not understood—that Lucille was too young yet to make her own life, that she had looked to him to guide her, to explain the mystery of living, and that, from very wealth of understanding, he had failed, seeming to her to make mysteries of greatness, the while the secrets of life were plain to him, had ceased to be secrets. He unconsciously scoffing at the cocoon she was spinning, the while he already noted the beautiful colours of the butterfly who had passed the portals of the chrysalis.

"It is wicked of him. He must be a bad, unprincipled man," her mother said, and Lucille had turned upon her, and told her mother to be ilent.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

Mr Twifield was very indignant. The man must be crazy, or a villain, he declared. His wrath was in proportion, not only with his friendship for the Martins, but with the increased importance of Lucille Yelverton, as a woman with five thousand a year settled upon her, and a town house, and pretty country place. He, knowing their antecedents, realised as a lawyer, that she had not done badly at all. But he was also a man, and a man who had studied human nature. The question in his mind was whether Lucille would realise these advantages to the same extent as the grief she would feel at the loss of the man. As a man who had known her since infancy, and her father before her, he hoped that she would regret the man, although he was inclined to call him a scoundrel.

He had had an interview with Greene and Hastings. They had been very courteous, including themselves, identifying themselves, with the misdemeanours of their client, con- fessing that he had done wrong, laid himself open to suits for desertion, for restitution of conjugal rights. If necessary he would make a divorce possible. They knew him, and had known his father before him, and were convinced that he would do all that was honourable, as long as he obtained his freedom

"He was a man who ought never to have married, especially a young girl. The woman has yet to be born, who would understand Yelverton," the senior member of the firm explained gravely; "but, under the circumstances, we would certainly not advise Mrs Yelverton to sue; but should she do so, Mr Yelverton is prepared to do all she wishes. He deeply regrets any pain or inconvenience he has inflicted."

"Why, she is devoted to him," Mr Twifield had declared, and the fact had taken the firm by surprise. It seemed so incredible that any young girl should care for Clifford Yelverton, the scientific dreamer, the great, sprawling, uncouth man, who looked half savage, half giant, yet who possessed a charm indefinable, which had fascinated Lucille—fascinated her, without her being conscious of it, because of her youthful bewilderment.

Pressed for his address, the lawyers gave their word of honour to Mr Twifield, that they did not know it. He had started for Japan, they thought, and had left them power of attorney, with instructions to do exactly as Mrs Yelverton desired. Later on, he would give them an address why which he might be found if anything unforeseen occurred, for instance, in the event of Mrs Yelverton wishing to marry again.

"Marry again! marry again! How can she marry again when her husband is alive?" Mr Twifield had asked testily, and his outburst had been met with a moment's expressive silence. Then, with something of solemnity, the senior member of the firm, placing his finger-tips together, had enunciated a remark, which Mr Twifield was feign to believe the most extraordinary he had ever heard uttered by a respectable firm of London lawyers.

"We understand that our client has, in a letter to Mrs Yelverton, provided by just such a contingency."

"You mean?" Mr Twifield clutched the arms of the chair he was sitting upon and leaned forward.

"I mean nothing, Mr Twifield." The other lawyer spoke stiffly, "Mr Yelverton is a man of a particular disposition."

"He certainly is," Mr Twifield interposed. "I should think that the plea of insanity might even be entertained."

"A peculiar man," continued the lawyer, ignoring Mr Twifield's remarks. "He has no fear of death."

"The very idea is preposterous." Mr Twifield rose from his chair. "Can you imagine Mrs Yelverton being party to such a thing as that?"

"There have been stranger things in my experience, Mr Twifield," he rejoined, rising from his chair, "stranger things than that in my experience, and let us hope that no such emergency will arise."

"Do you realise, sir, that my client, that Mrs Yelverton is only eighteen years of age, and that the contingency we both hope may never arise, is just the one most likely to arise. A beautiful girl, young, disillusioned, wealthy, alone, deserted—why, it might happen in twelve months, or six."

"We must hope that it will not; but if it does, why, it will be time to consider the situation then."

"And you do not think that there is any chance of a reconciliation, of his coming back, regretting?" Mr Twifield spoke with entreaty in his voice. The situation of the young woman was becoming more tragic every moment, it seemed to him.

"I fear not." The lawyer spoke with some decision. "We have known Mr Yelverton for some time, and lately he has consulted us a great deal. He has nothing to complain of in his wife's conduct; he makes no charge of any kind, and he has hesitated before taking this step. Three days after his marriage; he already regretted it. He consulted us frequently, and we urged him to try and make the best of it, to avoid a scandal, to try and reconcile himself to his new life. We pleaded with him, I assure you, exactly as if Mrs Yelverton were our client, instead of he; we told him what a cruel, unjust act it would be, and I flatter myself it was our influence which made him put up with the situation as long as he has. They have been married nearly a year. I have never known Clifford Yelverton stay in a place for three months yet. We can understand that you fully appreciate the gravity of his act, but in a sense he is not responsible; he is not like other men."

"I shall, of course, take immediate steps on behalf of my client." Mr Twifield spoke pompously.

"You will be justified, of course," replied his opponent. "We should, of course, do the same thing if Mrs Yelverton were our client." He bowed gravely, and Mr Twifield left the office overwhelmed with the mystery of the whole situation.

To Mrs Martin he confided that her daughter could sue for conjugal rights, presently; after a lapse of time for desertion, although the fact that he had left her his fortune would make this a difficult point to raise. There had been, so far as they knew, neither cruelty, nor infidelity. It would be difficult to bring a divorce, although he had declared that he would submit to it—make it possible.

It was the strangest case Mr Twifield declared—the strangest case in his whole legal experience. Mrs Martin had to explain to Lucille what form her suing might take, if she did make up her mind to sue him. The idea was revolting to her daughter, child as she was, as she had been till the day before, till that very morning, a child with a mind dwelling on small things. She seemed to have sprung into a woman in a night, a woman who could think and feel, and who was conscious of a great loss; a sentient being, an instrument, across whose chords a great sorrow swept, wringing vibrations of pain, that would tremble and echo on the air for years, the music of which would linger appealingly for a great amen that would never come, or which, if it did crash down at last, would break her heart.

She would not go to law, she said, and presently they gave up trying to persuade her. Instead, she said that she would not take his money. She would go back and live with her mother, just as they had lived in the old days, and she would find work.

It was when she came to this decision, that she realised how the world gives way beneath one's feet; the realisation gave her vertigo—mental vertigo, the worst sensation of all. The manner in which her mother took her decision to heart, gave her more pain even than her husband's behaviour. In his act she had seen the workings of a mind in keeping with his personality, with his character, with his whole presentment. In her mother, she realised that she had been used as a means to an end, sacrificed, that she had been considered a trump card in her mother's game with life, and that failing to win, her mother was disgusted with the game.

"My dear child, it is your duty to accept his money. Think of all the humiliation, the trouble he has brought upon us. Think of the gossip there will be." Then, growing hysterical, she added: "And think of me, dear, who, after all these years of sacrifice, now in my old age, when I thought that you were settled, provided for in life—why, dear, we simply can't live without it."

She had always realised that her mother was neither a sensitive, nor a proud woman, yet she had hoped that, in the hour of crisis, she would uphold her in her sorrow; her mother had seemed all she had to turn to. For one instant her heart froze within her, and a longing for her husband, such as she had never felt before, rose in her breast. He had seemed so strong, so powerful, taking life so easily, and making fun of the minor things which had troubled her so—the delinquencies of the servants, the bad fit of dressmakers, the prices of tradesmen. Now to-day, face to face with the tragedy of life, she seemed to see with his eyes how small, how despicable, these things were. And the second night after her husband's disappearance, she relegated her mother to the guest chamber, and elected to sleep alone. She had had no time to think things out, to try and understand, and her mother's constant chatter fatigued her. She had great decisions to come to, and she must come to them alone. While she combed out her hair, with something of the old methodical manner which had so irritated him, she was startled for the first time at her own youthful appearance. With her hair down, she looked little more than sixteen. Suddenly the cruelty of it overwhelmed her, and she threw herself on her bed, giving way to sobs, which, while they burned her eyes, salty, acrid, and wrung her heart, yet brought relief. Then gradually the sobs lessened, and she began to think. There were wild ideas of rushing after him, imploring him to return, which were followed by resolves to bear it in silence, the while her whole being recoiled from facing the long vista of loneliness. It was the years which stretched out before her, which dismayed, the long years with the mother who had failed her in the hour of crisis, who wanted her to live on the money the man had given her, who had so humiliated, so wounded her. She had read very few novels, of the less inspiring ones as a girl, but since her marriage, with something of childlike desire to seem grown-up, she had devoured some which she had been forbidden to read. The perusal of them had wiled away many a lonely, weary hour, and taught her more than her husband had. Now to-day, the stories she had read came to her mind. He had treated her like a cast-off mistress, she told herself, and the idea filled her with revolt. Every moment she had belonged to him seemed like an insult, the while her whole soul and body called out for him.