Broken to Harness: A Story of English Domestic Life

by Edmund Yates

"You don't understand me yet, Alice. I have left my husband."

"Left your husband! oh, Barbara, how dreadful! how could you!" and Alice Schröder's face exhibited such signs of unmistakable terror, that for the first time the magnitude of the step she had taken, and the apparent impossibility of its recall, seemed to flash upon Barbara. A rush of tears blinded her eyes; and she held out her hands appealingly, as she said, "You--you don't shrink from me, Alice?"

Astonishment, nothing more, had caused Mrs. Schröder's trepidation; in an instant she had rushed forward and wound her arms round Barbara's neck, saying, "Shrink from you, my darling? why, what madness to suppose such a thing! Where should you come but to my house, in such a case? Besides, it's nothing, darling, I suspect, but a temporary little foolish quarrel. Mr. Churchill will be here to dinner, and take you home with him afterwards."

But Barbara shook her head and burst into tears, saying that it was a matter which admitted of no compromise and no amicable settlement. And then, between floods of crying, she told Alice the outline of the quarrel; dwelling specially upon Frank's refusal to give up the letter he had received, or to say who was his correspondent. Alice seemed deeply impressed with the atrocity of Frank's conduct, though she doubted whether she herself would have had the courage to take such a decided step as leaving her home ("You always said I was wanting in spirit, Barbara; and indeed I should not have known where to go to"). She recollected Barbara's having been upset at a letter which had come to Frank at Bissett, before they were engaged; and she was full of "O my's!" and general wonderment, as to who could have written both these mysterious epistles.

"Very odd," she said--"very odd, and very unpleasant. You're sure it was a woman's hand, dear? People do make such mistakes about that sometimes. Most dreadful, indeed! Well, that's one blessing, I've often thought, with Gustav, and is some compensation for his grayness and his being so much older, and that sort of thing. For grayness is better than jealousy, isn't it, dear? and I'm sure it's pleasanter to think of your husband at whist than waltzing, as some of them do--whirling about the room as though there were no such thing as the marriage service And letters too, that's awful! I'm so glad you came here, Barbara darling; and so will Gustav be, when he comes in. We must tell him all about it. I tell him every thing now, he is so kind."

He was very kind, this heavy-headed elderly German merchant. When he came in, his wife at once told him what had occurred; and when he met Barbara in the drawing-room, before dinner, he took her hands in both of his, and pressed his lips gravely on her forehead, and bade her welcome, and told her to consider his house as her home. For Mr. Schröder had, in his strange old-fashioned way, a very keen sense of honour and of the respect due to women; and he felt, from the story that had been told to him, that Barbara's feelings had to a certain extent been outraged. He had never held much good opinion of the literary craft: he could not understand a calling which did not employ clerks and keep ledgers and day-books, which did not minister to any absolute requirement, and which only represented something visionary and fanciful. He shared in a very widespread notion that the morale of people engaged in that and similar pursuits was specially liable to deterioration; and he took what he understood to be Frank Churchill's defection from the paths of propriety as an indorsement of his idea, and a proof that he had been right in its adoption. He happened to let fall some remark to this effect, a few words only, and not strongly or savagely put, but they had immense weight with Barbara Churchill.

For they immediately recalled to her recollection her several interviews with her aunt, Miss Lexden, when she first announced the engagement with Frank, and she remembered the acrimony with which the old lady had spoken of the class to which her intended husband belonged. The very words her aunt had used were ringing in her ears. "If I were to see you with broken health, with broken spirits, ill-used, deserted--as is likely enough, for I know these people,--I would not lift one finger to help you after your degradation of me!" "For I know these people!" Too well she knew them, it appears, when she predicated what had actually occurred. Not deserted, though; that at least could never be cast in her teeth. It was she who had taken the initiative:--she who had broken the bonds and--what could the world say to that? Would it not denounce her conduct as strange, unwomanly, and unwifelike? And if it did, what did she care? Her pride, her spirit, had often been spoken of; and she felt in no way ashamed of having permitted herself to be swayed by them in this great trial of her life. There must be many who would thoroughly understand her conduct, and sympathise with her; and even if there were none, she had the courage and the determination to stand alone. That she must to a great extent have right on her side--that what she had done could not be looked upon as extravagant or unjustifiable--was proved, she argued to herself, by the kind reception she had met with at the hands of Mr. Schröder, a man who, as she judged from all she had heard and seen of him; would not be likely lightly to pass over any breach of decorum. How or where the rest of her life was to be passed engrossed very little of her attention at first. She knew that there was no chance of reconciliation with her aunt; nor did she wish it. She had quarrelled with her husband, certainly, and would never be induced to live with him again; but her cheek flushed when she remembered what insults had been heaped upon Frank by her aunt; and she thought almost tenderly of him as she decided that after these insults nothing would induce her to humiliate herself to Miss Lexden's caprices. The thought of writing to Sir Marmaduke Wentworth crossed her mind; but Alice Schröder had told her that Sir Marmaduke was laid up with a dangerous illness in the Pyrenees; it would be very inopportune to worry him, then, with domestic dissensions; and moreover Barbara was in very great doubt as to whether the old gentleman, were he able, would not take an active part in promoting a peace, and whether he would not strongly disapprove of, and openly condemn, the course she had taken. He had a very high opinion of Frank Churchill, who was his godson; and unless it could be distinctly proved that he had committed himself--unless it could be distinctly proved--could it? what proof was there? had not her pride and spirit involved her in a snare? how could she make her case good before an unbiassed judge? There was the letter, and the letter in the same handwriting which he had received at Bissett; but she had no actual proofs that they were not such as should have been sent to any properly-conducted man. Great Heaven, if she had been too precipitate! if she had brought about an exposé by rashness and wretched jealousy; if she had wrongly suspected that kind and generous soul, and cruelly stabbed him without hearing his defence! As Barbara turned these matters in her mind, sitting in her bedroom on the first night of her arrival in Saxe-Coburg Square, she felt the whole current of her being setting towards Frank; and she covered with her tears and kisses his miniature which hung in a locket at her watch-chain. Must this be the end of it? could her fatal folly--if folly it were--darken the rest of her life? Oh, no! she could never acknowledge her error,--that would be impossible; her pride would never permit her to take the first steps towards a reconciliation: but Frank would come--she knew it; he would come and ask her to return; and she would go; and the rest of their life should be unclouded happiness.

But Frank did not come; and the next morning when Barbara found the hours wearing very slowly by, and no solution of her wretchedness arrived at; when little Alice Schröder's well-meant chatter --well-meant, intended to be consolatory, but still chatter after all--had utterly failed in giving the smallest consolation; when Captain Lyster had called, and having been properly prepared by Mrs. Schröder before he saw Barbara, had evidently the greatest difficulty in assuming ignorance and unconcern; when the day had worn on, and no progress had been made by her in any one way,--the bitter spirit rose in her more strongly than ever, and she felt more and more impressed as to the righteousness of her cause. The fact that Frank had not come to her, crying "peccavi," and imploring her to return, had, to a very great extent, convinced her that he must have been grievously in the wrong. Fully prepared not merely to forgive him what he had not done, but to be generous enough to meet him half way in an advance which ought to have been made by her alone, she was annoyed beyond description at his making no sign; and each hour that passed over her head strengthened her obstinacy and deepened her misery.

So several days went by. Barbara resolutely refused to go out; nothing could induce her to be seen in public, and none were admitted to the house save the intimate male friends of the family. Barbara stipulated, at once, that no women should be let in, and Alice, who believed in the most marvellous degree in Barbara, agreed to it. She did, indeed, suggest one female name, the name of a lady in whom she was sure, she said, Barbara would find great comfort; but Barbara, who had some acquaintance with the person in question, hissed out, "Cat!" with such ferocity, that little Alice never dared again to open the question. The men-friends were restricted to two or three, among whom Barbara was glad, for Alice's sake, to find Captain Lyster, and equally glad not to find Mr. Beresford. She remembered Lyster's confidence to her at Uplands (she had reason to remember it, she thought with bitterness), and that confidence, though accidentally distressing to herself, had impressed her with a high notion of the Captain's truth and honour. She felt as though she would have liked to have talked to him about her own troubles; but she did not know how to start the subject, and Lyster never gave her the smallest chance.

On the fourth day after Barbara's arrival, Mrs. Schröder asked her guest, as usual, if she would drive out after luncheon, and having received the usual negative, declared that she could not stand it any longer, but that air she must have. Barbara would excuse her? Of course Barbara would; nothing she liked so much as being left alone. Then Mrs. Schröder determined on riding, and ordered her horse and groom round to the door, and went out for a ride.