CHAPTER XXXII

And then began the persecution which everyone must expect who is unfortunate enough to attain to a position of fame or its modern equivalent, notoriety.

The month was August, and no war worth the salary of a special correspondent was going on, so the newspapers were only too pleased to open their columns to the communications of the usual autumnal faddists, and the greatest of these is the marriage faddist. “The Curious Case” formed the comprehensive heading to a daily page in one paper, containing letter after letter, from “A Spinster,” “One Who Was Deceived,” “Once Bitten Twice Shy,” “True Marriage,” “I Forbid the Banns,” and the rest of them. Without actually commenting on the case, these distinguished writers pointed out day by day how the various points in the curious case of Marcus Blaydon and Priscilla Wadhurst bore out the various contentions of the various faddists. Now this would not have mattered so much but for the fact that it was the most ridiculous of these letters which, after a column’s advocacy of the principles of free love or some other form of profligacy, such as the “Spiritual Union,” or the “Soul to Soul” wedding, invariably wound up by a declaration that “all honour should be given to that brave little woman, who has thrown in her lot with the man she loves, to stand or fall by the principles which she has so fearlessly advocated”—these principles being, of course, the very principles whose enunciation formed the foundation of the ridiculous letter.

The most senseless of all these letters was signed “Two Souls with but a Single Thought;” and the superscription seemed an appropriate one, for the writers did not seem to have more than a single thought between them, and this one was erroneous.

Of course, after a time Priscilla became almost reconciled to the position of being the Topic of the holiday season, though earlier she found it very hard to bear. At first she had boldly faced the newspapers; but soon she found that the thought of what she had read during the day was interfering with her rest at night. She quickly became aware of the fact that persecution is hydra-headed, and every heading is in large capitals. She made up her mind that she would never open another newspaper, and it was as well that she adhered to this resolution; for after some days the American organs, as yellow as jaundice and as nasty, began to arrive, and Jack saw that they were quite dreadful. They commented freely upon the “case,” being outside the jurisdiction of the English courts, and they commented largely upon incidents which they themselves had invented to bear out their own very frankly expressed views regarding the shameless profligacy of the landed gentry of England, and the steadily increasing immorality of the English House of Commons. On the showing of these newspapers, Mr. John Wingfield was typical of both; he had succeeded in combining the profligacy of the one with the immorality of the other; and he certainly could not but admit that the stories of his life which they invented and offered to their readers, fully bore out their contention, that, if the public life of the States was a whirlpool, that of England was a cesspool.

It was only natural that the accredited representative of so much old-world iniquity should feel rather acutely the responsibilities of the position to which he was assigned; but he had been through the States more than once and he had also been in the Malay Archipelago, and had found how closely assimilated were the offensive elements in the weapons of the two countries. The stinkpot of the Malays had its equivalent in the Yellow Press of the United States; but neither of the two did much actual harm to the person against whom they were directed. If a man has only enough strength of mind to disregard the stinkpot he does not find himself greatly demoralised by his experience of its nastiness, and if he only ignores the “pus” of the Yellow Press no one else will pay any attention to its discharges.

He burned the papers, having taken care that Priscilla never had a chance of looking at any one of the batch. He was in no way sensitive; but now and again he felt tempted to rush off with Priscilla to some place where they could escape for ever from this horror of publicity which was besetting them. He did not mind being made the subject of leading articles, if it was his incapacity as an orator or his ignorance of the political standpoint that was being assailed; but this intrusion upon his private life was as distasteful to him as it would be for anyone to see one’s dressing-room operations made the subject of a cinematograph display.

How could he feel otherwise, when almost daily he could espy strangers—men with knapsacks and women with veils (mostly green), all of them carrying walking sticks—coming halfway up the avenue and exchanging opinions as to the best point from which the house could be snapshotted? Such strangers were no more infrequent than the visits of men on motors—all sorts of motors, from the obsolete tri-car to the 60 h.p. F.I.A.T. He was obliged to give orders at the lodge gates that on no pretence was a motor to be allowed to pass on to the avenue, and that bicycling strangers, as well as pedestrians with kodaks, were also to be excluded. But in spite of these orders, scarcely a day went by without bringing a contingent of outsiders to the park; he believed that excursion trains were run to Framsby solely to give the curious a chance of catching a glimpse of the lady who figured as the heroine of “The Curious Case” column of the great daily paper.

But as far as Framsby itself was concerned, it did not contribute largely to the material of the nuisance. The truth was that the “sets” of Framsby, who had for some days made the road to the Manor suggest a picture of the retreat of the French from Moscow, owing to their anxiety to leave cards upon the young couple, now stood aghast at the information conveyed to them by the newspapers that Mrs. Jack Wingfield was not really Mrs. Jack Wingfield. They stood aghast, and held up their hands as if they were obeying the imperative order of a highwayman rather than the righteous impulse of outraged propriety. Some of them, who, through the strain put upon the livery stables, had been compelled to postpone their visit until a more convenient season, now affirmed that they had had their doubts respecting the marriage all along. There was some consultation among the “sets” as to the possibility of having their visits cancelled, as now and again a presentation at Court was cancelled. Would it not be possible to get back their cards? they wondered. The baser sort had thoughts of sending in the livery stables bill to Mr. Jack Wingfield.

But before a fortnight had passed it became plain to Jack and Priscilla that they were not going to remain without sympathetic visitors. Priscilla got a letter from Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst—a vivacious letter, and a delightfully worldly one into the bargain. The writer stated her intention of coming to lunch at the Manor House the next day, and of bringing a fire escape with her to allow of her getting in by one of the windows if she were refused admission by the door. And when she came and was admitted without the need for the display of any ingenuity on her part, she proved a most amusing visitor, showing no reticence whatever in regard to the “case,” and ridiculing the claims of Marcus Blaydon to conjugal rights, after the way he had behaved. Of course everyone with any sense acknowledged, she affirmed, that the marriage was between Jack and Priscilla.

When she had gone away Priscilla wondered if there was anything in what she had said on this point; and Jack replied that he was afraid that Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst was too notorious as a patron of notoriety for her opinion to have much weight. But as things turned out, that was just where he was wrong, for within the week several other ladies of considerable importance—county importance—called at the Manor, and were admitted. These were people who owned London houses and had a premonition that next season Mrs. Wingfield—they were sure that she would be Mrs. Wingfield by then—would be looked on as the most interesting figure in the world of drawing-rooms; and Priscilla found them very nice indeed, referring to her “case” as if it were one of the most amusing jests of the autumn season. They showed no reluctance in talking about its funniest features—its funniest features were just those which a rigid disciplinarian would have called its most serious features—and they promised faithfully that when she should appear in the court they would be present to offer her their support—their moral support. They seemed quite downhearted when she explained to them how it was her hope that the arbitrament of the Divorce Division would be avoided by a decree of a judge on the question of nullity. They had quite set their hearts on the Divorce Court, and had in their eye a toilet scheme which they felt sure would be in sympathy with the entourage of that apartment, and to which they thought they might be trusted to do justice.

But as the social position of these visitors was among the highest in the county, Priscilla began to feel that there was no chance of her becoming isolated even at the Manor House. The reasonableness of her attitude appealed, she saw, to some reasonable people. She had great hopes that it would appeal as well to one or more of His Majesty’s judges when the time came.

And she was not neglected by her dear friend Rosa Cafifyn; but this young woman came to her unaccompanied by her mother. The Caffyn household was divided against itself on this vexed subject of Priscilla’s attitude. Mrs. Caffyn, who had never encouraged her daughter’s friendship for Priscilla Wadhurst, was aghast at the publicity which her daughter’s friend had achieved.

“She was always getting herself talked about,” she remarked. “First there was that affair with the prince; everyone was talking about her speaking to him in French—in French, mind—for more than an hour.” (Mrs. Caffyn seemed to have acquired the impression that a conversation in French could scarcely fail to possess some of the elements of the dialogue in a French vaudeville, and she had heard enough about that form of composition to make her distrustful of its improving qualities.) “And then,” she went on, “there came all that horrid business about her marriage—the arrest of the man, you know, and all that. The next thing was the trial, where her name was mentioned in the hearing of all the common people—witnesses and people of that class—in the court. Later on there was the heroic drowning of the man, and then her marriage to Mr. Wingfield within a few months, and the electioneering business—I really think that she should have been more discreet than to get herself talked about so frequently. As for her present escapade, I can only say that it seems to me to be the crowning indiscretion of her life.”

But the Reverend Mr. Caffyn, who had been talking to his patroness, Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst, about Priscilla, was disposed to take the view of an easy-going looker-on at the world and its ways from a lesser altitude than that of his pulpit; and he smiled at Priscilla’s resolution to remain at the Manor. He did not think that it mattered much just then. Had she not married young Wingfield in good faith, and had they not been going about together ever since? he asked. He had in his mind, though his wife did not know it, the saying of the wicked witty Frenchwoman who had accepted the legend of the King’s making quite a promenade when deprived of his head, on the plea that, after all “c’est le premier pas qui coûte.” And so his daughter had no hesitation in paying her visit to the Manor.

It was when she was going through the gates that she recollected how Priscilla had talked to her upon that morning long ago at this same place. What had she said? Was it not that if she were to love a man truly she would not allow any considerations of morality or any other convention to keep her apart from him?

Rosa wondered if there really was anything in the theory which was held by some people, to the effect that sometimes a judgment followed hard upon the utterance of a thoughtless phrase. She wondered if the publicity in which Priscilla was now moving had been sent to her as a punishment for her impulsive words.

Perhaps it was the atmospheric envelope, so to speak, of this thought which remained hanging about her in the house and prevented her visit to her dear friend from being all that she expected it to be. It was of course a delightful reunion; but somehow Priscilla did not seem to be just the same as she had been long ago.

With these variations of visitors and with plenty to occupy her mind and her hands Priscilla found the weeks to go by rapidly enough. She took care to be constantly occupied, by undertaking the reorganization of the dairy in connection with the home farm, and she had no difficulty in reviving Jack’s interest in the scheme for introducing electric power for the lighting of the house and for the lightening of labour in whatever department of the household labour was employed. An expert on dynamos was summoned from Manchester, and his opinion bore out all that Priscilla had said to Jack on this interesting enterprise; and before a fortnight had passed the details of the scheme had been decided on and estimates were being prepared for the carrying out of the work.

In addition to her obvious duties Priscilla was making herself indispensable to Jack’s mother in her long and tedious illness, reading to her and sitting with her for hours every day. It was, however, when Jack was alone with his mother one evening that she laid her hand on his, saying:

“My dear boy, I had my fears at one time for the step you were taking; but now I can only thank you with all my heart for having given me a daughter after my own heart. I have, as you know, always longed for a daughter, and my longing is now fulfilled with a completeness that I never looked for. She is the best woman in the world, Jack—the best woman for you.”

“I hope that I shall be able to make her as happy as she has made me,” said he.

“Ah, that is the very point on which I wished to speak to you,” said the mother. “I wonder if you have noticed—-if you have thought that she is quite as happy as we could wish her to be. A shadow—no, not quite so much as a shadow, but still something—have I been alone in noticing it?—something like a shadow upon her now and then.”

Jack was slightly startled. He had taken good care that no newspaper containing an allusion to the “curious case” which was exciting the attention of all England and calling for immediate attention on the other side of the Atlantic as well, should get into his mother’s hands; but now that she was approaching convalescence, he knew that however vigilant he might be in this respect, an unlucky chance would make her aware of all that had happened since the beginning of the attack that had prostrated her. He had been living in dread of such a catastrophe all the previous week, and now he perceived that it was imminent. Priscilla had not been able to play her part so perfectly as to prevent the quick feeling—the motherly apprehension—of the elder lady from suggesting something to her.

“It would be the worst day of my life if any cloud were to come over her path,” he said. “I hope that if anything of the sort were to happen, it would only be a temporary thing—something that we should look back upon, wondering that it should ever have disturbed our peace.”

“What!” she cried. “You have noticed it?—there is something!—you know what it is?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, with an affectation of carelessness “there has been something—a trifle really—nothing of the nature of a difference between Priscilla and myself, but——”

“I am glad you can assure me of that—that it is not the result of any difference between you,” said she. “I know that the first few months of married life are usually the most trying to both the man and the woman; but you can assure me that it is not——”

“I can give you such an assurance,” he replied. “There has not been so much as a suspicion of difference between us in thought since she entered this house—in fact, since she became my wife.”

“What is the matter, then? May I not know, Jack? Don’t tell me if it is anything which concerns Priscilla and you only.”

“Dearest mother, there is nothing that can concern us without being a matter of concern to you. Still, this one thing—of course you must know it; but what I am afraid of is that you will attach too much importance to it—that you will not see how it may be easily cleared away.”

“You will tell me all about it, Jack, and I promise you not to think of it except in the way you say I should.”

“It really is quite a simple thing—five minutes should clear it away for ever; and so far from its standing between Priscilla and myself, it will, I am sure, only draw us closer to each other.”

He was not an adept in the art of “breaking it gently”; he had never had need to practise it. He felt that this, his first attempt, was but an indifferent success; he could see that so far from soothing her, his preliminary ambling around the subject was exciting her. And yet he feared to come out with a bare statement of the facts. He was snipping the end off a cigar; somehow he was clumsy over the operation; he could not understand why until he found that he was trying to force into the chamfered cutter the wrong end.

And his mother was noticing his confusion and becoming unduly excited.

Fortunately at this moment Priscilla entered the room—it was Mrs. Wingfield’s boudoir, a pretty apartment for an invalid, the windows overlooking a garden of roses. Never did Jack so welcome her approach. The moment she passed the door she knew what was before her.

“Oh, by the way, Priscilla,” said he, “you may as well tell mother just now all there is to be told about this disagreeable business. I have said that it is unlikely to take up more than a few minutes of the judge’s time. You can best do it alone, I know.”

He bolted.

His mother smiled, and Priscilla laughed outright; it was so like a man—each knew that that was just what the other was thinking—“so like a man!”

The elder lady’s smile was still on her face when Priscilla said:

“There’s really very little to be told about this disagreeable affair; but it must be faced. The fact is that we are applying to a judge to have my first marriage—that shocking mockery of a marriage—annulled, and everybody says that there will be no difficulty whatever about it.”

“I don’t suppose that there should be any difficulty, my dear,” said Mrs. Wingfield. “But what would be the good of it?”

“Something has happened which makes it absolutely necessary,” replied Priscilla. “But it is really the case that what has happened will make it very much easier for the judge. The wretch who, with a charge of fraud hanging over him, did not hesitate to make the attempt to involve me in his ruin, went straight from the gaol to America.”

Mrs. Wingfield nodded.

“Don’t trouble yourself, dear,” she said. “I know all the story; it is not all squalid; you must not forget that he died trying to save the others.”

“That was his lie,” cried Priscilla. “He managed to get safely to the shore and he turned up here trying to get money out of us to buy him off. Jack showed him the door pretty quickly; so now you can understand how necessary it is that we should have the marriage nullified. A judge can do it in five minutes. Jack has been to Liscomb and Liscomb, and they told him so.” (She was not now giving evidence in a court of law.) “Oh, yes; they had the opinion of Sir Edward upon it—five minutes! But in the meantime——”

“That’s it—in the meantime,” said Mrs. Wingfield slowly. She seemed trying to think out some point of great difficulty which had presented itself to her mind.

“In the meantime,” she repeated. “Am I right, Priscilla, in the meantime you—you——”

“In the meantime, my dearest mother, if Jack were to die, and in his will refer to me as his wife, the judge of the Probate Court would decide that I should get whatever that will left to me. Is there anyone who will say that I am not Jack’s wife? You will not say it, and you are Jack’s mother.”

“I certainly will not say it, Priscilla; but still—there are some who would say it, and—in the meantime—oh, it is terrible! my poor child; it is no wonder that there was a shadow cast upon your life. What you must have suffered—what you must still suffer! and how bravely you bore your burden in front of me!”

Priscilla had flung herself on her knees beside the sofa, and put her face down to the cushion on which the mother’s head was resting; but her tears were not bitter, and her sobs were soft.

So she lay, her right arm about the shoulders of the other, for a long time, in complete silence.

At last she raised her head from the cushion, and then bowed it down to the pale face that was there until their tears mingled.

“I know what you are thinking, dearest,” she whispered. “You are thinking that in the meantime I should not be in this house. Is not that so? Oh, I knew that that was your thought; but it will not be your thought when I tell you that....”

Her whisper dwindled away into nothing—it was not louder than the breathing of a baby when asleep.

But the elder woman caught every word. She gave a little cry of happiness, and held Jack’s wife close to her, kissing her again and again.

“Dearest,” she said, “you are right; your place is here—here—in the meantime.”