"Mary Greening," I retorted, "do you really mean that you detect in yourself a willingness to have an unjustified divorce and a huge, vulgar {92} fortune in the family, just because they are up to date?"
"Benjamin Raynie, if down at the bottom of my soul there is crawling and sneaking a microscopical acquiescence in the muddle Desire is making of life, it is probably due to the reason you mention. I am just as ashamed of it as I can be! I ought to be plunged in grief, like Lucretia. And I am--only--well, I want to help Desire, and I can't help her if I let myself feel like that. I suppose you'll think I'm an unmoral old thing, but I see it this way: if these affairs are going to happen in one's very own family, one might as well put them through with a high hand. I intend to stand by Desire. Of course the Ackroyds will do the same by Arnold. Desire will never be received in this town again with their consent. They are entirely in the right. But I shall {93} have to fight them for Desire's sake, just the same."
"Stubby! Stubby! There is n't a particle of logic as big as a pin-head about you, and I don't approve of you at all--but I do like you tremendously!"
Mary Greening rose abruptly, crossed to the window, and stood looking out for a time. Then she came back and, dropping awkwardly beside my chair, buried her convulsed and quivering face in the woolly sleeve of my jacket, while the tears dripped fast from her overflowing eyes.
"Stub," she brought out jerkily, between her sudden choking sobs, "I did n't make a long face and tell Desire 'whom God hath joined'--I--I tried to appeal to her common sense. Irreligious people often do have a great deal of common sense, you know. {94} But--I am the child of our fathers, too. I wish--I wish she would n't do it!"
IV
I certainly expected that Desire would come to me before she went away. I don't know what good I thought it would do. But we had always (or I supposed so) been such friends, this niece and I, that I could not believe she would take such an important step without an effort to gain my approval--my toleration would be more accurate. I--well, I thought she cared for my approval. But it seemed she did n't.
Of course, when one came to think it over, she could hardly enjoy such an interview. No doubt she was already sore in spirit from interviews she could not shirk,--with her mother, for {95} instance, not to mention her husband. And my views on promiscuous divorce are as well known in the family as are those of South Carolina. They are simple, those views, and old-fashioned, but also, I may add, cosmic; they run about as follows: it is hard that John and Mary should be unhappy, but better their discomfort than that society should totter to a fall, since all civilization rests upon the single institution of the marriage tie. I will admit that my bachelor state doubtless helps to keep my opinions uncomplicated.
When I came to think of it in the light of these convictions, it was n't remarkable that Desire stayed away. And yet the foolish old uncle in me was hurt that she did so. I felt that she ought to come and take her medicine. Did n't thirty years of affection {96} and indulgence give me some rights in her life?
Perhaps Mary Greening told her how I felt. At all events, in place of a call I received a letter:--