“All the world thinks,” he continued, “that you are as jealous as a Turk, and that will add a sensational interest to the Duciehurst suit, of a kind that I despise”—he actually looked pained—“when it is developed that your wife found and restored the Ducie papers. I wish you had taken my advice; I wish you had taken my advice.”
And Floyd-Rosney said never a word.
He had come to be more plastic to counsel than of yore, and in a few days thereafter the train made its infrequent stoppage at Ingleside, and deposited Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s favorite old colored servant and her little charge, who sturdily trudged through the grove of great trees—vast, indeed, to his eyes—and suddenly appeared in the hall before his mother, with a tale of wonder relating to the bears, which he believed might be skulking about among the giant oaks.
CHAPTER XXII
Floyd-Rosney had expected that the restoration of the child to the mother would effect an immediate reconciliation with his wife. Therefore, he attained a serenity, a renewal of self-confidence which he had not enjoyed since the humiliating contretemps at Union Station. In the dismissal of his bill for divorce—the retraxit craftily worded and expressing with a dignity that might have seemed impossible under the circumstances his contrition for the hasty and offensive assumptions of his mistake, a sweeping recantation of all his charges and a complete endorsement of his wife’s actions in every relation of life,—he considered he had offered her an ample apology for his conduct and had held out a very alluring olive branch. He had a relish, too, of the surprise he had planned, partly to avoid a more personal method to court her forgiveness, in sending the child in charge of her favorite servant, old Aunt Dorothy, to alight unheralded from the train at Ingleside. He imagined her delight and gratitude and awaited, in smiling anticipation, altogether devoid of anxiety, her ebullient letter, brimming with thanks and endearments, and taking the blame, as she was wont to do in their differences, in that she had so misunderstood him and precipitated this series of perverse happenings that had exposed him to such cruel public misconstruction.
But this letter did not come.
He began to frown when the mail was brought in, and to sort the missives with a hasty touch for something that he did not find. The servants, always on the alert to observe, and agog about the successive phases of the scandal which they had witnessed at such close quarters, collogued over the fact that he laid the rest of the mail aside unopened for hours, while he sat with a clouded brow and a reflective, unnoting eye in glum silence, unsolaced even by a cigar. It was not good to speak to him at these crises, and the house was as still as a tomb.
Floyd-Rosney’s ascendency in life had been so great, so fostered by his many worldly advantages, that he could make no compact with denial, defeat. He had not yet reached the point where he could write to his wife and beg her forgiveness, or even reproach her with her agency in the disasters that had whelmed their domestic life in this unseemly publicity. He developed an ingenuity in devising reasons for her silence. She was too proud; he had let her have her head too long. She would not write—she would not verbally admit that she condoned his odious charges, which he often declared he had a right to make, if he were to believe the testimony of his eyes, witnessing her flight with her old lover, Randal Ducie, as he was convinced, boarding the train together. She would simply return unheralded, unexplained,—and that was best! He had himself inaugurated this method in restoring the child without a word. It was a subject that could not be discussed between them, with all its sensitive nerves, with its open wounds quivering with anguished tremors. No! She would come to her home, her hearthstone, her husband, as she had every right to do, even paying all tribute to her pride, to her sense of insulted delicacy. He saw to it that the papers containing the text of his full retraction and explanation of the circumstances were mailed to her, and then adjusted himself anew to waiting and anticipation.
He had been spared in the details of his life all the torments of suspense which harass men less fortunately placed. It may be doubted if ever before he had had cause to anticipate and await an event, and hope, and be deferred and denied. He could scarcely brook the delay. He began to fear that he should be obliged to write and summon her home. Once he even thought of going in person to escort her back, and but that he shrank from meeting her eye, all unprepared as she would be, he would have followed little Ned to Ingleside. Something might be said on the impulse of the moment to widen the breach. He could not depend upon her—he could not depend upon himself. She knew the state of his mind, he argued. Those papers, most astutely, more delicately than any words of his might compass, had depicted his whole mental status. Doubtless, after a seemly diplomatic interval she would return. The sooner the better, he felt in eager impatience. He had hardly known how dearly he loved her, he declared to himself, interpreting his restiveness under the suffocations of suspense and anxiety as symptoms of his revived affection. He became so sure of this happy solution of the whole cruel imbroglio that he acted upon it as if he had credible assurance of the fact. He caused certain minor changes, which she had desired, to be made in the house—changes to which he had no objection, but he had never taken thought to gratify her preference. He ordered the suite of rooms that she had occupied to be thoroughly overhauled in such a fever of haste that the domestic force expected to see the lady of the mansion installed in her realm before a readjustment was possible. At last everything was complete and exquisite, and Floyd-Rosney, patrolling the apartments with a keen and critical eye, could find no fault to challenge his minute and censorious observation. A new lady’s maid was engaged, of more skill and pretensions than the functionary he had driven from his service, and had already entered upon her duties in the rearrangement of her mistress’s wardrobe, and the chauffeur took heedful thought of the railroad timetables, that he might not be out of the way when the limousine should be ordered to meet Mrs. Floyd-Rosney at Union Station.
Under these circumstances the filing of Mrs. Floyd-Rosney’s bill for divorce and alimony fell like a bombshell upon the defenseless head of her husband. It was a genuine and fierce demonstration, evidently calculated to take advantage of every point that might contribute to the eventuation of a decree. The allegations of cruelty and tyranny, of which there were many instances that Floyd-Rosney, in his marital autocracy had long ago forgotten, including the crafty blow which he had given her under the cloak of the child in her arms, were supplemented and illustrated by the secret removal of her child from her care, and the determination to ship her out of the country against her will. Thus she had been constrained in defense of her personal liberty to flee to the home of her uncle, her nearest relative, although she was obliged to borrow the money for the railroad fare from a mere stranger whom she had met only once before. Notwithstanding the fact that her husband was several times a millionaire, he permitted her no command of money, her fine clothes and jewels and equipages being accorded merely to decorate the appurtenances of his wealth and ostentation. She recounted the indignity she had causelessly suffered in the allegations of his bill for divorce, all baseless and unproved as was evidenced by their complete retraction under oath in the precipitate dismissal of the bill. Her petition concluded by praying for an absolute divorce with alimony and the custody of the child.