AFTER THE STORM.
As you sit in the bow-window of your comfortable lodging at your favourite watering-place during your annual autumn holiday, your breakfast finished and the débris removed, the newspaper rustling idly on your knees, and the first and pleasantest pipe of the day between your lips, you look up and see the aspect of affairs in the little street below very much changed from its normal state. The pleasure-boats--the Lively Nancy, which sails so regularly at eleven A.M. with a cargo of happy excursionists, and which arrives in port at irregular intervals varying from one to three, laden with leaden-coloured men and hopelessly-bedraggled fainting women; the William and Ellen, in which you go out to catch codling and plaice; and all the other little craft usually stationed on the beach--have been bodily removed, their owners and touters are drinking rum and smoking shag-tobacco in evil-smelling little public-houses, and their customers have no notion of putting them into requisition. The bathing-machines,--those cumbrous vehicles in which you have so often made that dread journey into the ocean, after being bidden to "stand by" while the horse gives his first awful jerk and afterwards dashes you against the sides of your travelling-prison, while you catch horribly-distorted glimpses of your wretched countenance in the miserable little sixpenny looking-glass pendant from the rusty nail and swinging here and there like a live thing convulsed,--the bathing-machines have all been dragged from the spot where they ordinarily stand like a row of hideous guardians of the coast, and have defiantly taken possession of one side of the little main street. The place where the German band subsidised by the town usually pours forth its perpetual iteration of the "Faust" waltz is now covered with roaring plunging waves, thick brown walls of water rearing their white crests a hundred yards off, as if in survey of their ultimate goal, tearing madly onward, gathering in size and strength at every stride, and at length discharging themselves with a thunder-crash in a blinding avalanche of spray. These 'waves, this roaring seething mass of trembling turgid water, is the great attraction to-day. In vain the monkey on the three-legged table clashes his cymbals, or plies the ramrod of his gun with frantic energy; in vain the good-looking Italian boy, his master, shows his gleaming teeth or touches his hat to attract attention; in vain the Highlander blows discord into his bagpipes until all the neighbouring dogs possessing musical ears are howling in misery. Nobody cares for anything but the sea to-day; the little parade is thronged with visitors all gazing seaward, all rapt in attention on the boiling waters; at one point, where the waves dash in and sweep over the solid masonry, boys rush in between the ebb and flow, returning happy if they have escaped, happier if they have been soaked by the spray. People look out all round and scan the horizon to see if there be any craft in sight, inspired with that singular feeling which only Rochefoucauld has dared to define, the feeling which sends crowds to watch Blondin's walk upon the high-rope, or the performances of a lion-tamer,--the feeling which, in a lesser extent, originates the sensation-loving element in us, and which is about the lowest in degraded human nature. Far away, at the end of the worm-eaten sea-besoaked jetty, is a little cluster of fishermen in dreadnaught and sou'-westers, patiently watching the weather, which to them is no toy nor amusement, but that on which hang their hopes of daily bread; and they will tell you if you ask them, that these big breakers thundering on to the shore are the result of some great storm that has taken place far away in the heart of the Atlantic; and that though the tempest is probably over now, these creations of its fury, these evidences of its wrath, will continue to roll and surge and foam for days to come.
So it was with the Adullam-Street household and its surroundings. The storm that had swept through it had been short, sharp, and decisive; but the traces of its wrecking power were visible long, long after it had past.
At first it seemed quite impossible for Frank Churchill to understand the extent of the misery which had fallen upon him. However roseate might have been the dreams, in which he had indulged, of the blisses of matrimony, he had lived too long in the world not to know that few indeed were the couples whose lives were not checkered by some occasional difference. These, he had been told, generally occurred in the early portion of a matrimonial career, while the two persons were each unaccustomed to the peculiarities of the other, and while ignorance was, to a great extent, supported and backed up by obstinacy and pride. The unwillingness of each to give way would eventually result in a clash, whence would arise one of those domestic differences popularly known as "tiffs," in which the actors, though horribly wretched in themselves and disagreeable to each other, were supremely ridiculous to the rest of the world, which either affected to be blind or sympathising, and in either case was sniggering in its sleeve at the absurdity of the scene. But these little sparring-matches were usually of short duration; and though a constant repetition of them might have a triturating effect upon the original foundation of love and constancy, yet Churchill had noticed that long before such a fatal result occurred, the sharp angles and points had generally become gradually rounded off and rubbed down, and the machine had begun to work harmoniously and with regularity. At all events no open scandal took place. That open scandal, if not an actual healer of wounds, is a rare anodyne to impulsive spirits and hearts, thumping painfully against the tightened chain which day by day, with corroding teeth, is eating its way into their core. Exposure, publicity in the press, Mrs. Grundy--these are the greatest enemies of the Divorce-Court lawyers; heavy though the list of cases standing over for hearing may be, it would be fifty times heavier could the proceedings be kept secret. Hundreds of couples now living together, hating each other "with the hate of hell;" scowling, carping, badgering, wearing, maddening, to desperation driving, from the hour they rise till the hour they retire to rest and fall asleep,--the one cursing his life, the other feebly bemoaning her fate, or openly defiant, "each going their own way;" a state of being more horrible, loathsome, and pitiable even than the other,--would be disunited, were it not for the public scandal. "For the sake of the children," for the scandal which would be entailed on their offspring, Mrs. Emilia will not leave Mr. Iago; and so they continue to live together, while the children are daily edified spectators of the manner in which their father treats their mother, and listen to the constantly-renewed expression of Mrs. Emilia's wish in reference to the possession of that whip with which to lash the rascal (their father) naked through the world.
The exposure--the public scandal! To no one had these words more terror in their sound than to Frank Churchill. All his life he had shrunk from every chance of notoriety: had gloried in being able to work anonymously; not for the sake of shirking any responsibility, not from the slightest doubt of the right and truth and purity of whatever cause he might be advocating: but because, when he had shot his bolt, and hit his mark, as he generally did, he could stand calmly by and mark the result, without being deafened by empty pans or sickened by false flattery. His horror of publicity had been extreme; he had invariably refused all details of his history to contemporary biographers, and had never been so deeply disgusted as when he saw some of his work tracked home to its author by the gossipping correspondent of a provincial paper. It was good work, too--work creditable to his brain and his heart; yet had it been penny-a-lining written to order, he could not have been more annoyed at being accredited with it. And now the full garish eye of day was to be let into the inmost recesses of his heart's sanctuary! "Break lock and seal, betray the trust!" let the whole world revel in the details. A domestic scandal, and one besmirching a man who, despite of himself, had made some name in the world, and a woman whose triumphs had rung through society, was exactly the thing which the "many-headed beast" would most delight in prying into and bandying about. The details?--there were no details; none, at least, which the world would ever hear of, or which would give the smallest explanation of the result. There was the fact of the separation, and nothing more; what led to it must be the work of conjecture, and people would invent all kinds of calumny about him; and--great Heaven!--about her. The lying world, with its blistering tongue, would be busy with her name, warping, twisting, inventing every thing--perhaps imputing shame to her, to her whose shield he should have been, to her whom he should have protected from every blow.
And here must be exhibited one of the flaws in Frank Churchill's by-no-means-perfect character. His wife had taken a step which nothing could excuse, had given way to her passion; and, in obedience to the promptings of rage and jealousy, had done him an irreparable wrong, and covered them both with a reproach which would cling to them for life,--all this without any thing like adequate provocation on his part; so that he had been shamefully treated, and, had he been properly heroic, would have a fair claim upon your compassion, if not your admiration. But the truth is he was anything but a hero; notwithstanding the manner in which his hopes had been blighted and his life wrecked, notwithstanding his having been deserted in that apparently heartless way by his wife,--he loved her even then with a passionate devotion; and when he thought of her, perhaps vilified and calumniated, without her natural protector, wretched and perhaps solitary, he had almost determined to fling his pride--nay, what he knew to be his duty--to the winds, to rush after her and implore her to come back to his home, and to do with him what she would. Of course nothing could have been more degrading to him than such a proceeding, and it was fortunate that good advice was coming to him in the person of his mother.
Coming in to pay her usual afternoon visit, the old lady walked straight to the study, and after tapping lightly at the door with her parasol-handle, she opened it and went in. She found her son seated at his desk, his head buried in his hands, which were supported by the projecting arms of the chair. His legs were stretched out before him, and he seemed lost in thought. He did not change his position at his mother's entrance, not until she addressed him by name; when, on raising his head, she saw the dull whiteness of his cheeks, and the bistre rings round his eyes. She noticed too that his hands shook, and on touching them they were hot and dry.
"My boy," said the old lady, gently, "you're not well, I'm afraid! what's the matter with you? too much of this horrid work, or--why, good God, Frank, there are marks of tears on your face! What is the matter,--what has happened?"
"Nothing, mother--nothing to me at least,--don't be alarmed, dearest; I'm all right enough."
"Then Barbara's ill!" said Mrs. Churchill, rising from the seat she had taken. "I'll go to her at once, poor thing--"